Public Respect Tag

I Agree with People Who Don’t Want to Wear a Mask

Photo by C Drying at Unsplash I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the folks who don’t want to wear a mask, and I want to say to them, “I hear you.” First of all, there’s no question in my mind, masks are really annoying. I wear glasses and they’re always fogging up when I wear my mask. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten into my car only to realize,...

Upset? Angry? Try Respect.

Right before Christmas, we discovered we had been lied to by a sales rep at our cell phone store and, furious, we went back in January to return some unwanted merchandise we’d been told we “had to buy.” But the “lead” customer service rep who was processing our return – despite knowing we’d been lied to – acted as if we were the liars and refused to treat us with respect. And when we got even...

Respect For Opponents?

Respect can surprise us in interesting ways. How many of us would have the courage to deliberately lose an important race to an opponent who’d made a mistake? In December of 2012, in an extraordinary show of respectful sportsmanship, Ivan Fernandez Anay – a long-distance runner from the Basque region of Spain who was running in second place in an important race – deliberately...

Practicing “Regular Respect” Is Easy Until It Isn’t

If you’re like most people, you’ll hold a door open for a stranger when entering or leaving a public space like an office building, coffee shop or retailer. And, if you’re like most people, you’ll say “excuse me” when you bump into someone in public. And, you’ll say “bless you” when someone sneezes. These are all typical examples of what I call “Regular Respect.” Others call it “common...