Deadly attitudes

Because of the additional feature, I asked to buy the more expensive one.

“We doh have dat to sell,” she bluntly replied.

“Well, why do you have it displayed?” I asked. No answer.

She turned and kept talking to her friend with me standing at the counter. Worse to come.

She called out to the passing young man, asking: “Do you notice any ‘ting different in me today?” Young man, looking puzzled, said no.

“Yuh eh see nutting?” she asked again. “Look at my hair, my new style, boy,” she pleaded with him, and me still standing there. Anyhow, I then insisted in getting her manager’s phone number, eventually buying the less expensive item.

This consumer experience may appear trivial. Some may ask what is my problem. But discourteous consumer service could help kill the very business which pays the employee’s salary. I have long understood the need for good industrial relations, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, healthy work conditions, etc. But good heavens, rude, careless consumer service looks like an epidemic across the country now. From what I know, hear and read, I am not the only one. Hence, so much happiness to meet a courteous, caring clerk or public servant.

Attitude formation and change is a big subject in social psychology.

There are, of course, good attitudes, for example, in entrepreneurship, in self-reliance, generosity, kindness, loyalty towards your employer, towards keeping a clean house and community, etc. But there are bad attitudes, deadly ones that can kill a business, an organisation, even a country. You cannot develop a country, from top to bottom, without having a collective set of positive attitudes for development.

An attitude, as the dictionary explains, is also about body language, posture. You see a lot of that in stores, restaurants, at public service counters. As if you begging for service, and if you only complain, well, well. Attitudes don’t drop from the sky. They are often cultivated by the environment, structure. So for example, I wonder what kind of self-improvement or work attitudes are being cultivated in CEPEP or URP workers when you see them sitting at the roadsides, idling from eight in the morning. It takes a stout heart to overcome.

An attitude, more than what the dictionary says, has three major components – knowledge (cognition), emotion (affect) and a prepared disposition to behave in a certain way. That is, you already have a programmed mentality to sift or screen any incoming information.

Worse yet, if it is an opinion which opposes the one you already have on the particular subject - religion, politics, gender, reforms to preliminary inquiries, plea bargaining, jury trial, corruption by your political party – even when research and facts on the table.

Attitudes are stubbornly tied on to material self-interest. No wonder that all the seminars, lectures and “change agents” fail in purpose.

The enemy is the emotion which becomes the shield preserving the attitude, and the self-interest which subconsciously drives you to rationalise your original opinion. The birthplace of fanatics. Even hypocrisy.

Amidst all the manifesto slogans and Independence Day speeches, including those from the very top who, in these respects, are guilty as anybody else, much of our attitudes towards service and development are at best inappropriate - at worst, selfishly subversive. And sadly, even if oil prices rise to $200, the attitudes required for national development would not materialise. In fact, they will get worse.

Take crime and national security - our number one problem. Do you see the collective or individual attitudes required to deal with this number one problem? In fact, sometimes I wonder which is more deadly – the crime itself or our attitudes to finding solutions?