“The difference between rude and inconsiderate is that the inconsiderate often fail to consider those around them, but when you point that out to them, they’re shocked, embarrassed, and apologetic to those affected by their negligence,” Ms. Carnelia informed me. “The rude. They don’t give a Flying Fudd.”

I enjoyed her distinction, because I never thought of it quite that way before, but it lacked that almost mandatory third logical extension to pound the point home. If I taught a class on providing provocative rhetoric, I would focus on the power of threes. Musicians love three beats, writers love the point, comparison, and an exaggeration, or a little hyperbole, to pound a point home. As much as I loved Ms. Carnelia’s simple distinction, it didn’t have staying power. 

While in the supermarket section of a huge Super box store, Ms. Carnelia spotted something of interest, and she accidentally left her cart in the middle of the store at a diagonal angle to examine it. We’ve all done it. We’ve all left that shopping cart in the middle of an aisle to unintentionally block everyone’s attempt to pass through. We, the momentarily inconsiderate, don’t consider how leaving a shopping cart in the middle of an aisle might inconvenience others. When we hear, “Excuse me, but I cannot get around your cart,” we scramble and angle that cart parallel to one side, as close to one side of the aisle as possible. We apologize, and hope that everyone involved will forget about it soon after it happened. We won’t. We, the inconsiderate, are mortified by how inconsiderate we were. We ask ourselves if this could be classified as rude, but as Ms. Carnelia outlined we failed to consider other people, so we were just inconsiderate. The rude may not intentionally place that cart in the middle of the aisle, but they are defined by what they do after it becomes obvious that they failed to consider other people. When someone asks to get through, they are put off by it. They might huff, sigh, or even offer us a dirty look. “What?” our unspoken facial expression asks. “How am I to blame here?” The rude will move their cart, just not as fast as the momentarily inconsiderate, and the rude will begin shopping again without an apology or anything else that recognizes what they just did.

I flirted with the notion of making the third plank of Ms. Carnelia’s distinction those who would purposely placed their cart diagonal angle in the aisle to prevent passage, but I’ve never known, or heard of anyone doing such a thing. I struggled with it for months, until Ms. Carnelia, the author of this dinstinction, offered it to me months later when she left her shopping cart in the middle of the supermarket section of a huge Super box store aisle to read through the ingredients of the various cereal choices before her. Two customers silently waited for her to recognize her faux pas, but she was so immersed in her reading that she didn’t even notice those two customers, until I pointed it out to her. 

“Oh, if they’re in that big of a hurry,” she said. “They can just go around.” I moved her cart for her while she was saying that. I also apologized for her when I locked eyes with those customers, since being with her made me tangentially responsible her her actions. When she finished her shopping, and we sat in my car, I reminded her of her defintions of rude and inconsiderate. She didn’t get why I was bringing that up, until I reminder her what she just did in the store. 

“Fine, I’m a hypocrite!” she spat, and she said it in a manner that suggested I was being a real PIA (pain in the butt) for calling for consistency from her. This led to my final leg of the three-part distinction scale with her being The Flying Fudd exaggeration of her own distinction. We could even characterize such a character as a Flouting Fudd, or someone who purposely flouts the conventions of courtesies we extend to one another. We could add another level to characterize the openly hostile, extremely aggressive types who can be abusive, but that takes us out of realm of our discussion here. 

Ms. Carnelia is no different than anyone else. She formed her defintion of the human condition based on studying others. She recognized the faults of others without reflecting on her own. That is a universal condition, of course, but what do we do with her interesting distinction between inconsiderate and rude? Most of us attach the philosopher to the philosophy, and when the philosopher violates their philosophy, we forsake the philosophy. My contention is, who cares who broke it down for us, if it’s gold it’s gold. If we can use it, who cares who said it? We can all judge those with inconsistencies, but what are they talking about when they’re talking about it? They’re talking about idealism. They know who they want to be, and whether they can achieve it or not is on them, but that shouldn’t prevent us from using what they say to try to define our ideal self.

***

The moment after I saw this Flying Fudd standing in the middle of the aisle, texting, I thought of Ms. Carnelia. I missed the opportunity for a more incriminating photo of him standing with one foot on the cart and the opposite cheek hanging lazily off to the left for those of us entering the store to enjoy. I wasn’t thinking quick enough to take that picture, but if I was, and a picture says a thousand words, I probably wouldn’t have needed this 1,000 word article to explain it. 

Mr. Fudd either didn’t care, or he didn’t care enough to know that he forced the store patrons who entered the store to snake their way around him. It wasn’t a huge hassle, as you can see in the second wide shot, there was plenty of room to snake, but the whole idea of a fella throwing his posterior up to force others to walk around him irked me so much that I ended up taking about a dozen photos of the man. He’s a large man, as you can see, so my guess is that he was a former high school sports star, probably an offensive lineman, whose job it was to force people to go around him.  

We all need to phone, text, or email people in stores at various times in our lives. Modern technology has made communication, via devices, almost mandatory at times, but this indulgence should come equipped with its own commandments, and that list should contain all the ways in which we inconvenience, confuse, bother, and ignore those around us when we’re on a device. When, not if, but when we need to text, we should all remember to move to a location in which we bother the least amount of people possible. We all make mistakes, and sometimes our adjustments are worse than the original situation, but the more effort we put into avoiding inconveniencing others, the better. I don’t know if Ms. Carnelia would consider Mr. Fudd a one on the Fudd scale, but it was one of those situations where we say, “This is one of those situations.”

As we can also see, in the second wide shot, this man’s stay in the aisle was something of a prolonged one, as he was so comfortable standing in everyone’s way that he switched legs. For the purpose of your entertainment, I waited and watched the man. Was he waiting for someone? It turned out, he wasn’t. My guess was that he was waiting for a text with the list of items he was to purchase. Once he received marching orders, the man proceeded to snake his way around the store solo. 

I probably should’ve dropped a big, old “Excuse me sir, but do you realize you’re standing in the middle of the aisle? Do you realize we all have to walk around you?” on him, but I’m not one of those people. If I dropped that on him, I’m quite sure I would’ve realized he was inconsiderate as opposed to rude, but we have to help these people consider more often, right? Or, is it just me?

***

Our subjective inclination is to think anyone who stands in the middle of any aisle, for any reason, knows what they’re doing. “They knew what they were doing,” we say with a level of impatience. “They knew exactly what they were doing!” I know they don’t, because I remember the times I didn’t. When Starbucks comes out with a new frappacino flavor, it takes us out of our element, and we go to the aisle to read the ingredients before we purchase. We don’t think about the cart, the aisle, or the people we’re inconveniencing with our actions, until they let us know. Some of the times, we get so caught up in our world that we aren’t conscious of our surroundings. Some of the times, we slip up and others write about us our worst day. 

When we’re forced to quick beep that guy who won’t go on a green light, we think they’re either slow learners, far too casual, or hooked on cough syrup. “We got all day here buddy!” we shout from the inner sanctum of our vehicles. “ALL DAY!” When someone offers us that same polite, wakeup beep it drives a proverbial spike into our spine, because we know that polite, quick beep. We’re polite, quick beepers. We’re the ones who are so impatient that we don’t give a guy three seconds to move his foot from brake to accelerator. We’re the impatient, so how can we get mad at quick, beeping impatient types? They’re our people.

“Who cares how fast you get there, as long as you get there,” someone said when they were talking. They emphasized the latter in foreboding tones to give it more profundity. We understand that speed kills and we’re not suggesting anyone speed, we’re just saying get out of the way so we can, while we still have the quick twitches necessary to avoid accidents. We realize we’re putting our lives on the line, and we know we’re more impatient than most, but we don’t want to waste one minute of our life waiting for those who are addicted to cough syrup to snap into the present tense.

My dad trained me to be conscientious, and while I’ll never be as conscientious as he was, my scorecard is filled with plusses. If you’re anything like the yeahbuts of consistency that yip at the ankles of those who try to make a point, you’ll “Yeah, but aren’t you the guy who put a cart out to block people when you saw a new flavor of frappacino?” to dismiss me. Do the yeahbuts do this to intellectually defeat a point, do they want to pull down to their level, even though no one is applying for a level, or do we just enjoy dismissing people. The third point, for those of us who need that third beat, is a question sent to the yeahbuts who seek to expose the inconsistencies and hypocrisies inherent in philosophers, because they exhibit human frailty. The annoying thing about philosophy is that an overwhelming majority of it, outside deities, comes from humans, and humans are so flawed that they usually end up ruining their own philosophies. The yeahbuts wear us down, until they clear the deck of all philosophers and their philosophies, but they have no end game. They just want us to join them in their desert of decay, and the veritable wasteland of idea.