Uh...very few people either living or working in Sarasota anywhere, including St Armands, are originally from that area or anywhere else in FL. My guess is that a minimum of 60% them arrived there in adulthood from the upper Midwest or Northeast, escaping the sour weather of their own areas. And most of the people they are waiting on, in season for certain, and out of season to a large degree (myself included here), are also from the northeast or Midwest, originally or currently. They never really even left their own little nooks and crannie, just moved to the area and, surprsie surprise, found more of their own. That said, I've never noticed any particular rudeness or extreme politeness in any of the shops there and we were there a lot, living just an hour away.

Actually, the very rudest salesperson I ever witnessed was in Bergdorf Goodman in NYC. My friend was going on about "her'-mees" scarves and the salesperson made a point of disdainfully snorting, "Air-mess'". I'm quite certain my friend never set foot in the store again, and although she might not have been able to pronounce Hermes correctly, she most certainly could afford to buy them. Stanley Marcus had it right. And believe me, the correct pronunciation of Hermes stuck with me forever...but for all the wrong reasons.

I think part of the reason that the Big Apple and environs have a reputation for rudeness is 1) the machine-gun speed patterns of NYers' speech 2) a certain abruptness of manner that your more bucolic Americans find a bit chilly and 3) an speaking accent that tends to grate on many non-New Yorkers.

Maybe I am missing something but I think Readers Digest's criteria for politeness is rather weak. It sounds more like criteria for common courtesy than for politeness. You hold the door for the person coming in behind you. Why is that so polite? Isn't it just common courtesy? I can't imagine walking in and NOT holding the door for the next person. What are you going to do, let it slam in their face?

An example of polite might be if someone is sitting down drinking coffee and GETS UP to open the door for say, an elderly person or maybe a mom with a baby.

A clerk thanks you for making a purchase. Aren't clerks supposed to do that? Isn't "thank-you" just part of the transaction? It is where I shop. At the grocery store, Walmart, department stores, the clerk begins the transaction with "hello" and ends it with "thank-you." It is very rare I don't get a hello and a thank-you. (And I don't live in a small town.)

Now as far as helping someone pick up papers they dropped, yes, I think that goes beyond common courtesy and to the level of polite. (Common courtesy might be not stepping on their papers!)

By the way, I have only been to NYC once but I found the people to be perfectly nice and don't recall encountering anyone I would call rude.

I just think it is ashamed that our standards are so low that "polite" can be defined as not letting a door slam in someone's face.

i have found a difference between native new yorkers and transplants. natives are generally much cooler and more relaxed. transplants try to hard too have a NY attitude (whatever that is). they are the ones who drone on about how you have to be tough to "make it" in NY and complain about the "bridge and tunnel" people. utter bores. don't much care for the transplants.

I so agree SunshineSue, but that verbal exchange and also the human contact we deem common courtesy in a service transaction aren't being considered the same base necessity other places. You can see that just from the comments here. So judging levels against each other is particularly hard when your subjective "politeness" criteria are held so low, as you state.

sunny16, the streets were not made narrow because of high premium value. NYC streets were planned and staked long before the property value became a premium, and a few hundred years before the advent of high rise buildings and extremely high population density per block. That's why the streets are narrow and crowded.

The best thing that ever happened to NYC is Frederick Law Olmstad who planned Central Park and fought for years in the 1800's against building developers who tried to hack away at the valuable land.

JJ5, Does a smile or a fake smile have a language barrier?

I'm from a small town in the Midwest. Where we all know each other and leave money (and make change if necessary)in a cigar box when we buy vegetables from the roadside stand.
And I will admit I made a big assumption she was from New York, but she did have a tee shirt on that said "I Love NY" and talked with a New York accent.

LOL " NY accent"
..that reminds me of not that long ago when an Irish lady asked me where I was from.
I was raised in the South but have lived in NYC for many years, now living in Oregon.
She thought I was from Texas
Most tourists TO NY buy those I love NY tee shirts, I have never seen one worn by a NYer.

I agree some people think New Yorkers are rude because we walk, talk and move very quickly. We have to. We have a lot more to do than you do - since 1)you're tourists and 2) even at home you probably don;t have to deal with so many time-consuming issues that we do.

And no - in most places clerks don;t say please and thank you and have a good day. They don;t because there's a line of 10 people waiting behind you - and it;s rude to all 9 of them to take extra time to chat with you. (If they did this for everyone no one would ever get anything done.) They're not being rude - you just think they are because you're expecting more time and attention than they have (or are being paid) to give you.

(You can in fact get more time and attention in a lot of places in NYC - they're just the more expesnive places - where the extra money you're paying offsets the extra time you're taking.)

As for holding doos etc. I agree that there are a huge # of impolite people (and not in NYC only - I've run into it everywhere - and sadly it seems to be mostly young people who 1) seem to feel they are entitled and special and 2) have no consideration for others. I've had young men walk through a door I was holding open for an elderly woman with a cane. And others push through a door I opened for myself - while I was carrying my purse, an umbrella and 3 bags of groceries. (In the latter case I said something and received a curse in return. I can only assume the young people were raised by wolves - and that bared teeth is the only means of dealing with them. )

But - what is rude differs by culture - and I would argue that NYC is by necessity a different culture than most places in the US in some ways. So don;t expect everything to be the same. It won;t - and it's not rudeness - not different habits due to different circumstances.

>>> I agree some people think New Yorkers are rude because we walk, talk and move very quickly. We have to. We have a lot more to do than you do - since 1)you're tourists and 2) even at home you probably don;t have to deal with so many time-consuming issues that we do.<<<

Oh, geez. Really?!?!?! We don't have to deal with as many time-consuming issues as you do?

...what is rude differs by culture -

In some countries it is considered a terrible insult to show the bottom of your foot.

It all boils down to .. The Rude Factor is really not about where the person lives, it is about the person. If you had a rude salesperson, it is not because they work at Bergdorfs or Saks, or that they live/work in New York. It is because the person is rude.
I am surrounded by nice people here, is it Portland? I don't know- but most of the people I speak to , are from Wisconsin, Chicago, California, so who can say why they are not rude...they are just not rude people..regardless of where they live.
Maybe if people teach their children some manners, we can expect more people to be polite someday..that might be an idea.

>>We have a lot more to do than you do - since 1)you're tourists and 2) even at home you probably don;t have to deal with so many time-consuming issues that we do<<

OMG. This is first rate fodder for the Fodor's JackA$$ Hall of Fame.

I just long for the day when I can be so self-important.

"2) even at home you probably don;t have to deal with so many time-consuming issues that we do."

Oh really, and what would those issue be?

Let me see....

Most of us have to get up and get to work on time tomorrow.
Many of us have to deal in some way with kids who are out of school for the summer.
Many of us have a doctor/dentist/chiro or other appointment tomorrow.
Many of us travel for business and have to get across town - or across state - for a business appointment...on time...dealing with traffic...or weather....or other variables.
Many of us need to run errands during lunch hour or squeeze it in the day somehow.
Many of us need to run to the grocery store or market for something tomorrow.
Many of us need to make sure a very important item gets mailed or shipped in time to meet a deadline.
Many of us need to feed ourselves and/or family tomorrow.
Many of us would like to fit in a session at the gym, or a mani/pedi, or a haircut or a massage tomorrow.
Many of us need to shop for a birthday/ wedding/ graduation/ etc. present and make sure we have it or it arrives on time.

Dang! You are RIGHT! Only New Yorkers have "time consuming issues" to deal with.

The rest of us are just merrily meandering around smiling and saying please and thank you and being polite and not worrying about taking care of our jobs, families and ourselves.

Thanks for clarifying the REAL differences between your life and ours!

nytraveler...are you a transplant?

Starrsville, You go girl!!! LOL!

It is an amazing thing. There are actually sales clerks in my town who can say hello WHILE they are checking your groceries. And not only that they can say thank-you WHILE they are handing you your reciept. It takes absolutely NO MORE TIME for them to be polite. Maybe I just live in a town with exceptionally talented sales clerks but I suspect that, with some practice, even a New York sales clerk could learn to speak and check groceries at the same time.

Yes, jorr, there's thousands of reams of paper on tracking and response and yes, a smile or "fake" smile can often be mistranslated. Cultural "smiles" are different and in different context. Your "fake" or effusive might be some other cultures normal or subdued.

nytravler is right. I checked with a stopwatch and the extra smiles, "please" and "thank you"s have added 7.5 seconds to my transactions so far today.

Here's to saving time with rudeness!

"Lost" about 35 seconds today during today's time consuming issues by being polite (smiles, hello, please and thank you).

Not sure it's worth the tradeoff - being rude and saving time vs. using good manners in public.

Maybe the Etiquette Handbook will help shave more time off those 35 seconds.

I'd rather go to small town America than New York. New York isn't a reflection of America between coasts.