PROFANITY -- THE NEW NORM: You can fill in between the letters. A foreign couple stood near me and the woman read the shirt aloud confused. She and her husband proceeded to get into a debate on what it meant and why the young man was wearing it.
I too am confused why any intelligent individual would wear such a shirt. That may be the answer. Lack of intelligence. Which leads me to this blog.
When did profanity become the norm? When did it become acceptable? My 3-year-old nephew announced at dinner the other evening that his brother was a “buttocks.” While we all laughed, we also knew that he was only mimicking what he had heard somewhere else. (I know we should not have laughed, perhaps that too is part of the problem).
In the course of a day, I wonder how many obscenities we see or hear. We have become numb to it. I remember the first time I cursed in front of my parents and ate soap. I clearly remember the taste of it. I must have been ten or eleven. Do kids still eat soap?
Society today has changed with the advent of technology. There are so many different ways in which we receive information. Some of them are gentler than others. I did a google search of the word obscene and was amazed at the amount of pornography that it led me to. I am pretty capable on the computer but I don’t hold a candle to my daughter’s generation. She can get around the web fast and furious. Sure, I can put up parental controls but I can guarantee that she could get around them if she wanted to. I prefer to parentally control it by teaching her right from wrong.
With this ugliness in society, superior manners and service truly stand out (which is how this will come full circle relating back to our industry). Customers select chauffeured service for a number of reasons. You will never hear a chauffeur on a cell phone with a passenger in the back of the vehicle cursing out the person on the other end of the line, but you won’t think twice when it occurs in a taxi. The way we differentiate ourselves is by creating an environment for our client which is safe in multiple ways: safe transportation and safe from the ugliness of the world.
I am interested to hear your thoughts and observations.
Print | posted on Monday, June 15, 2009 9:30 AM