people call me "rude" but i do not see how i am "rude".
examples from just today:
today i think was perceived as rude on many occasions. i do not know the recipe for icing, so i omit to decorate my cakes with it.
when i got to an office block where i was going to install a new module i wrote over the weekend, there was someone in a car who was stopped at the entrance to the carpark talking to a person who was walking out of the carpark in the opposite direction.
i needed to go into the carpark so i tooted the horn, and she ignored me. then i pressed the horn and kept it on until the person in the car in front drove off to their car park space.
when i got to my car space and got out, the person in the other car got out and yelled at me. she said "you're a rude bastard!" she then went on to say something else which i failed to catch. i thought she was a selfish b***h, but i did not say it because i could see she was unstable in her anger, so i practiced restraint and walked into the building without acknowledging her. how dare she consider me to be rude, when it was her who was rude for getting in my way. she was clearly in the wrong and i let her get away with it, so i was anything but rude.
inside the building, after a while i went to the tea room and someone handed me a biscuit, and he said "these are so nice! you should try one".
i did not take the biscuit because he had handled it with his hand, and who knows where his fingers had been? i said i did not think i would like it so i declined, and he said "just try it" and i said "i can tell by the look of it that i would not like it so no thanks". he said "yeah whatever", he tossed the biscuit on the counter and walked out and he said "jeeezus", and i think he assumed i was being rude. if i had said "no thanks, i have no idea where your hands have been" then he would have been offended i guess, so i refrained from saying it. he may have scratched his testicles for all i know. i am not going to risk my health just to be accommodating to his gesture. anyway, i did include the word "thanks"in my reply to him, so i tried to be polite. he was a strange man so i do not care.
later in the day, i was in the supermarket, and there were 2 women with prams (strollers) heading in opposite directions who were stopped and chatting and blocking the aisle and i said "sorry could you get out of my way please?". one woman pushed her pram to the side and as i walked through the gap, they muttered something at me which sounded as if they were not happy with me. i think they thought i was rude.
but i said "sorry" and "please" in the one sentence that i uttered to them so they are crazy to assume i am being rude if they thought that. maybe they were simply unhappy that they were required to get out of my way. who knows.
later at a newsagent, i was buying some receipt books, and i commented to the counter person that the price had gone up from $3.50 to $9.00 and i asked why. she said it was because the old brand ran out of stock for a week and they had to get this new brand in to fill the stock hole, and that after a week, the price would come back down.
i said "ok", and while she was ringing up my purchase on the cash register, she started to talk about how her suppliers often ran out of stock, and that it affected her customers and shahahsiehrlkfjlj ( i lost interest so i did not understand her after i lost interest). and so i said " i am sorry i am not interested. can i please have the change?" and she gave me the change and she seemed offended.
i am sorry i was not interested, but it is of no use for her to continue to talk to me after i disengage because she is wasting her time. i did not listen to, or mentally compile her words after i lost interest, so i failed to understand, and it saved her from spending futile energy on me.
on the subject of change, most people in shops like to put change in customers hands, and they hold the change in the air hoping i will take the change with my hand.
but i just look at the change and i do not offer my hand to take it, and i wait for them to put it on the counter before i will take it.
apparently that is rude as well.
rudeness is in the mind of the beholder.