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Cadwell NOT Caldwell
Stop Delaying Me!
[ 6 minute read ]
I am important, move aside.
Yesterday, I was in my local Co-op. I always talk to the staff. I fell into a conversation with a young woman staff member about her university studies and what her younger brother wants to study. Her colleague, who I suppose outranks her because he has set hours for set days and she just works set hours when the manager says she should, kept scowling at her. I swiftly steered the conversation onto customer satisfaction and loud enough for her colleague to hear said, 'Your colleague knows that it is important to make sure the customer feels welcome and so staff should be prepared to engage in conversation.' He went away to practice grimacing in the mirror. I had been taking a lot of her time up though, and staff had been sacked for ignoring their shelf-stacking duties in the past. My bad.
A finely placed word at the right time can make a huge difference to our personal comfort. It can accord us extra pleasurable time or ruin a long day.
I was once on a bus heading home from a job I had just quit. I had been a lorry driver and had gained a lot of experience on the road. Something you rarely hear in London are car-drivers frustratingly sounding their horns at other drivers. Whenever I have driven in London; and I have driven in every borough, I have never seen anyone merit a honking telling-off.
I was seated on the bus with a clear view of the road ahead. A car pulled out of a side road, the driver perhaps a little bit cheeky and lacking patience for the bus to pass. The driver, rather than simply tooting with a double tap, such I might have done, held his hand on the horn for that extended time to say, 'You evil and selfish idiot. You are stupid and I hate you from now to eternity.' The bus driver also braked. He didn't need to; all he had to do was tone down his acceleration for about ten seconds, or just 'lift' (lift the right foot from pressing so hard on the accelerator).
'Driver', I called, 'Would you mind according other road users the same respect you expect from them?' He stopped the bus; never mind that the car had irritated him because he had to, in his mind, brake. I expected that the other passengers would support my words. There was silence.
'Get off the bus!' he rose from his seat and approached me. He realised I was a big bloke then.
'No.' I answered. He went back to his driving seat and we started going again. When we got to my home town, the bus had to wait to pull into the bus stop while a car exited from it. We passengers had all risen to queue in the aisle but couldn't get off. I was first in the queue. I felt someone pushing me in my back. I turned to the chap and said, 'I can't get off until he opens the door. Stop pushing me.'
When I got off the bus, the driver gave me 'the finger'. I was public enemy number one! Not only to him, but also to the other passengers. Why?
There is absolutely no reason to lean on your hooter when someone pulls out in front of you. There are a number of reasons why they might have hurriedly pulled out: When you reached to adjust your sunglasses on your face, did it look like a wave to the errant driver who pulled out? Were you driving at a significantly lower speed than the speed limit? Did the other driver pass their test yesterday? Is the other driver trying to beat traffic to get their small and choking child to the Emergency Department at the hospital? Or do drivers think everyone is an idiot because so many people in their long driving experience have made a mistake; or were they just not practiced at pulling out into heavy traffic?
I watched a YouTube video yesterday, which made me proud of British drivers. It was one of those videos of an American commenting on a video sent in by one of their British fans. In this case, it was an onboard camera shot of a British police car escorting an ambulance to the Accident and Emergency Department of a hospital. There was heavy traffic and queues of traffic at roadworks and roundabouts. Only about 1 in 400 drivers failed to get out of the way in a timely manner. I could see that they could have, in a lot of instances, done better; but I am a fluent driver across the UK and Europe and I look in my mirror a lot!
Most remarkable, I noted, was the oncoming traffic never slowed unless the police car needed to overtake a car that had pulled over to let it pass, on its side of the road. In those instances, the oncoming vehicles stopped short to make sure they did not stop parallel to the stopped car on the police car's side of the road. Really sensible drivers. An oncoming HGV driver stopped short of a traffic island, and left a good space for the police car and ambulance to pass the cars wedged in to the side of the road but not leaving enough space for the ambulance. The police car and ambulance went around the traffic island on the wrong side of the road. This HGV driver had stopped when the emergency vehicles were still 500-600 metres away. The driver knew that the car drivers might not think to do the same as he did; to allow the swift passage of the emergency vehicles.
We Brits really are exceptionally good at driving on our tight roads. I think we tend to forget that.
Here is more: I was in the outermost lane on the M5 when the link from the carburetor to the air intake came loose. Being a diesel van, clouds of black unburnt hydrocarbons spewed out of the exhaust. I knew what had happened, and I had meant to get it fixed but contracts and time-constraints had foiled my attempts. I should have taken the van off the road and hired one; I know!
I took my foot off the accelerator and pushed down on the clutch to disengage the gearbox. I needed to coast to the hard shoulder and cross two lanes of motorway traffic to do it. Disengaging the gearbox reduces the drag of the gears inside, on the coasting speed. I was amazed that all the traffic on my left, in the lane I needed to enter, had slowed to let me in. I (it turned out to be unnecessary) 'blipped' the accelerator twice to release more hydrocarbons so the drivers in 'lane one' would see I was in trouble. Of course, my hazard warning lights were on. It wasn't necessary; they too had braked to allow me to cross their lane and get to the hard shoulder. Astonishing awareness! I had been doing 70mph and got to the hard shoulder at 62mph in about eight seconds! I honestly expected that I would have been stranded in lane three! I fixed the van and rejoined the motorway.
Why did I drift from the opening paragraph on talking to staff in a supermarket to British road-users?
The parallel I hoped to make was on adapting our behaviour to suit the needs of the circumstances and environment so things go smoothly. There are other shops I can go to, other than the Co-op. I am, however, a member who can vote at AGM-type meetings. It is important for managers and supervisors to recognise friendliness and kindness in their staff and not make snap judgements just because they don't want to stack shelves themselves.
'We are really busy. Just get on with your work!'
On the road:
'I have the right of way, you idiot. Now I shall need to brake, and a second, or three, of my day is wasted because you are are stupid, stupid, stupid!'
***
Sometimes, I am surprised that when I give my name to reception staff, I need to spell it. Of course, most of the time I fail to recognise that they might be thinking I am not British with a British name; I tan really easily even in low winter sunlight. 'Cadwell', I say, 'with a 'C'.' I am not really sure if that helps, so I sometimes explain it, 'Cad' as in a sneaky and mean man in the 1920s, and 'well' as in a place where you draw water from.' I get blank looks, or I have to say it twice and then I get blank looks.