Claude Bouchard Books

The subject of courtesy came to mind yesterday following a trip to Costco. It certainly wasn’t the first this subject entered my thoughts and unfortunately, it won’t be the last, but I thought I’d share a sampling of some of what I saw during an outing of less than an hour.

• Shortly after leaving the house, I witnessed a car suddenly change lanes without any indication and cut off another car, rather closely, I might add. The driver of the second vehicle honked and the gentleman in the first car lowered his window to give the finger. Sweet...
  
• Minutes later on the freeway, I watched in fascination as most cars tried to get ahead of most other cars in the merging lanes.
• I got to Costco and observed a couple of cars run right through a stop sign, oblivious or uncaring of other traffic.
• I turned into a parking lane to find a spot where I noticed not one but two vehicles, each occupying two parking spots. To take up two spots with a Nissan Versa is no easy task but someone had succeeded.
• I parked and was heading for the store when I saw a woman pulling out a shopping cart from a storage area. A colleague, who was further ahead, called back to suggest they’d get a cart right at the entrance so the first lady abandoned the cart inthe middle of the lane.
• Upon entering the store, the line stopped for a moment as a woman retrieved her membership card from her wallet in her purse, showed it, put it back into her wallet, put the wallet back into her purse and then moved on.
• Inside, I slalomed amidst countless zombies pushing carts aimlessly in one direction as they gazed in another. Going down one particular aisle, three such creatures with carts were coming in the opposite direction, positioned such that they blocked the entire width. One of them grudgingly moved aside when he realized I wasn’t backing out of his way.
• I pushed through several abandoned carts blocking an aisle intersection while their operators munched on Asian pork dumpling samples.
• As I left the store, I only needed to circumvent five people with their three loaded carts blocking the exit as they put their coats back on. I also managed to not run into the couple entering by the exit as I came out.
• And finally, I barely had to brake when that Mazda 3 cut across the double-line at the last moment to get the on-ramp to Autoroute 15 ahead of me.

So, the question was, whatever happened to courtesy?

The above is factual and should therefore be considered non-fiction. You can check out my fiction writing here: http://amzn.to/jfbH1k