OT - Are Yankees rude?

[Phait]

"There's a different kinda pride where I'm from, it's not like 'We're from New York, we're tough' or 'We're from Texas we like things big' it's more like 'We're from Indiana, and we're gonna move'" -Jim Gaffigan

[Jode]

"My ancestors, who immigrated to America and settled in Minnesota, were a brave, hardy people. They left the frozen wastelands of Scandinavia in search of a better life. They battled their way through subzero weather to the coast. They took off across the Atlantic Ocean in leaky boats, battling cold, disease, and starvation. They reached the shores of the New World and kept moving west, braving rugged terrain, terrible weather, and even hostile natives, in their search for a better life. Then they finally arrived in the promised land. Yes, they began their new lives in America, making their new home in a place... that was just as fuckin' cold and miserable as the one they left!!"

 

- Diane Ford

 

"People say I hate Yankees. I don't hate Yankees. I have a friend who hates Yankees. His hobby is reading the obituary page in the New York Times. That's a man who hates Yankees.

 

"But I say, y'all come on down! Breathe our air, drink our water, eat our food, marry our women. We only ask one thing: don't tell us how much better y'all used to do things back in Cleveland. We don't care. And if Cleveland's all that great - hey, man, Delta's ready when you are. They can have you back in Cleveland before suppertime."

 

- Lewis Grizzard

[fantasticsound]

Originally posted by Jode:

Anyone who doesn't think Yankees are rude should come endure one snowbird season with me at the beach. Just one. For the record, "Yankee" means anyone who is not a native Southerner who takes great pleasure in vacationing in the south and telling us how to live. In my opinion, northeastern Yankees, especially those from The City, are much easier to take than midwestern ones. More attitude, but generally more fun and more carefree. The snowbirds I deal with, from God-forsaken places like Wisconsin and Minnesota, are just cold, petty, miserable, CHEAP! don't forget CHEAP! people. Restaurants in my town lose their shirts every winter on anything that's not nailed down: salt, pepper, napkins, condiment packets, even lemons. One restaurant manager I know had to start charging extra for lemon wedges because the cheap sons'a bitches were squeezing them into their (free) ice water, adding sugar, and making lemonade. He was losing money on lemon wedges, fer crissakes.

 

Put it to you this way. I made only one New Year's resolution, and that was to not take any shit off any snowbirds this year, and to give as good as I got. I only had to follow it once. A couple came in my shoe store, and the wife made a comment about wanting to get her husband in some sandals, to which he replied, "Not gonna happen." Knowing it was hopeless and just making small talk, I said, "Well, you never know. We got my grandfather his first pair ever at age 82, and they're all he ever wants to wear." Asshole looks at me and says, "He must be mentally ill." What the fuck did you say?

 

In nearly four years, I had never thrown anyone out of my store. It was fun.

 

I really give every human being an equal chance to be my friend, I really do. But still... stereotypes don't just pop out of thin air, people. From January til March, where I live, if you have gray hair and that godawful nails-on-a-chalkboard midwestern accent, chances are you're an asshole. The statistics support it.

I suppose we should take your opinon highly because of your sunny, welcoming southern disposition.

 

No doubt there are plenty of self-entitled snowbirds, and they're on vacation so they tend to feel they should be pampered, but if that's your opinions of North-Eastern and Midwestern people, you're just prejudiced.

 

I suggest you go out of your little spot in the south and visit some Northern towns. While some of what others have said is true, if you take a good look around you'll find southerners on vacation up north who are every bit as self entitled as the snowbirds. You just won't find nearly as many for, what I believe, should be obvious reasons. (People tend to vacation in the sun more than in the cold. )

 

Frankly, while I'm willing to accept your description of your friend's decision to charge for lemon wedges, I hardly believe he's losing money from the tide of extra business derived from snowbirds, most of whom have and spend money in your fair city. He might not survive without them.

[Jokerelli]

The answer is yes and no. I am a southerner by birth who was raised in the northeast. People up here are always in a rush when it's "your turn" and don't want to be rushed when it's their turn. This might be a good example. This happens all the time. I am driving down a local highway at the speed limit 40 mph and someone will always pull out up ahead of you so you have to slow down not to hit them and then they drive 30 mph. Try not to get road rage in a situation like that. If the shoe is on the other foot, I always make sure that I will not do this to another driver.

 

Then you have certain ladies (I have never seen a man do this but I'm sure they exist too) in front of you on a long line and they are tapping their foot because they are impatient. Then when it's their turn, they will take forever to dig a penny out of their purse so they can have exact change meanwhile you are standing behind them with your money in hand waiting to pay.

I am not perfect but I try to be efficient and courteous in situations like this that can cause stress. One thing I have never been able to do is check out groceries well. For me the shopping cart always gets in the way.

[theblue1]

I think there's a little truth in what everyone says, and there are probably only one or two statements that are 100% true (and those aren't controversial, anyhow)... although I suspect, from my southern California perspective that the snow-bird problem is more an old folks problem (and I'll be in that demo myself before you know it)... my waitress and waiter friends have long kvetched about the denizens of Leisure World, the local planned retirement condo community, whose residents have been retired for two or three decades and whose pension funds haven't changed much since the time of President Ford... then there are the old guys who live in houses now worth a million bucks who go out "canning" in the alleys, driven by the 2.5 cents a can. And I feel myself getting that way. "$13.99 for pasta and it's a la carte? My gawd, I remember when you could take the whole family out for $14 bucks..." Sad thing is, I do.

 

And on the "yankee" thing -- as I understand it, it was originally a term for New Englanders. During the civil war of the 1860's, southerners used it as a general derisive for members of the Union (that is to say, the unseceded states). But since it remained a term of pride in New England, its perjorative value is strictly contextual.

 

And on the time thing, oh yeah. I worked for a few years for a transplanted New Yorker who never let it rest how "laid back" we California workers were. But when I called customers in the south I felt like I was stepping through some kind of time demodulator.

 

But I think that's why southerners are so good at telephone support and customer service... when I hear a nice, soft Georgia drawl I calm right down.

 

[Gosh. I just read that and it sounds so... so, patronizing. I'm sorry that wasn't my intent. I'm going to leave it because it shows how easy it is to come off wrong in this topic and because I realize my statement doesn't make anyone but me look bad. Well, not bad, maybe. Just lame. Mea culpa.]

[Jode]

Originally posted by theblue1:

But I think that's why southerners are so good at telephone support and customer service... when I hear a nice, soft Georgia drawl I calm right down.

 

[Gosh. I just read that and it sounds so... so, patronizing. I'm sorry that wasn't my intent. I'm going to leave it because it shows how easy it is to come off wrong in this topic and because I realize my statement doesn't make anyone but me look bad. Well, not bad, maybe. Just lame. Mea culpa.]

Naw. It just means you get it. And that you should chill on the PC worries. We's all just differnt. Thank God.

 

And Fantastic, there is no flood of business from snowbirds. They split meals. They bring coupons on top of coupons. And in my store, they simply don't spend at all. They are cheap. Some of them are so cheap, as I was told by the manager of the Winn Dixie, that they return their canned goods for a refund at the end of snowbird season rather than donate them to one of the numerous "clean out your cabinets" food drives.

 

I watched some poor 16-year-old kid get reamed at Dairy Queen the other day because he couldn't give a woman a coupon discount on top of a daily buy-one-get-one-free special. She hissed, "You're just screwing us, that's all." They are not merely annoying tourists. They're miserable people, and they act as though they're just as miserable at the beach as they would be under six feet of snow. No one else of any age from any part of the country is as hard to stomach as old people from the upper midwest.

[Dennyf]

Originally posted by LiveMusic:

Ya know the proverbial "yankees are rude" stereotype. From what I can tell, it has some truth to it.

Yeah? So what? Youse got a problem wit' dat?

 

The southerner will fret over such issues.

 

The northerner will move on to the next issue that matters . . .

 

Just kidding!!! Well, kinda . . .

[Dan South]

There are a wide variety of personalities here in the Northeast. As you get further out in the country, people are very laid back. No one cuts you off in traffic. People wait patiently in line for their turn and get aggravated only when some other customer monopolizes the line with some bogus price check to save nine cents. - Hey, asshole, here's a dime. Go away!

 

But as you move toward the larger cities, people are a bit pushier, because we're busy. We have demanding jobs. We have long commutes. We have a lot of things going on in our lives and we can't afford to be delayed by someone who's waddling along looking at the scenery. If you think that we are rude for expecting to be able to move quickly from place to place or through a checkout line, then is it not also possible that the clueless jerk who is holding up traffic or monopolizing the store manager's time is ALSO rude (not to mention selfish and thoughtless and arrogant)?

 

It works both ways. What if you have to use the bathroom, and your wife is in there talking in the phone while she's doing her nails? She could do her nails in the bedroom. You can only take a crap in the bathroom. You're not rude for banging on the door; she's inconsiderate for hogging the bathroom.

 

I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. People there considered themselves to be very "friendly." In retrospect, that's not the right term. People from my hometown area are OUTGOING. They'll start a conversation with a perfect stranger and think nothing of it. But they're not particularly friendly when they get to know you well. There's a lot of petty authoritarianism there. People systematically try to put you in your place. It must be some social phenomenon left over from the industrial revolution where conformity was of paramount importance.

 

Here in the NY/NJ area, it takes a bit more effort to get to know people. They don't just walk up to strangers and start a conversation that frequently, and if YOU start the conversation, they eye you suspiciously at first. But when you become someone's friend, they support you. They don't stab you in the back.

 

I have friends who've worked in California, and they claim that there, it's the exact opposite. People are extremely friendly to your face, but they can be nasty when your back is turned. Of course, all three of these cases are generalizations. There are genuinely nice folks in California, and there are backstabbers in New York, but the point is that people here aren't inherently abrasive. They're actually very decent and supportive. It's a tough place to live, and people support each other, even perfect strangers. New Yorkers pull together in tough times like citizens of some enormous village with ten million inhabitants. I've seen this time and time again.

 

So, to make a long story short, this "rude yankee" nonsense is the result of ignorance. If you spent some time here, you'd see that we range from the very rude to the excedingly considerate. We may not walk up to you and act like a long lost buddy, but would you really want us to? Isn't that a little creepy? Spend some time getting to know some northeasterners, and you'll find that many of them are very cool people who can be very good friends and colleagues.

 

It's fun to watch the out of towners. I've gotten to the point where I can spot them immediately. They wear clothes and hairstyles that native New Yorkers never wear, and they walk slowly in little sidewalk-clogging clusters.

 

Thankfully, most of them don't venture far from Times Square except for the obligatory trip to Battery Park to catch the ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands. But sometimes they're brave enough to ride the subway. I love to listen to their conversations.

 

"Weeee jess got baaack from the Werld Traaaaade Santer."

"Reeealy?"

"Yeah, it was naahce!"

"Tomorruh, weeee're goin' tuh seeee Sintrul Paaaark."

"Is that near thuh Impaar Staaaate Building?"

"No, ah think it's bah FAO Schwarrrrrrrrrzzzzz, the beeeeg tooooyyyy stooore."

"I haaad one ah thayem pretzels them fellas sayell in the little caaaarts on thuh streeeet. It was GOOOD!"

"We all ate at Beefsteak CHAR-lie's laaast nahght. It wuz dee-LISH-uss. But it was soooo ex-PAIN-sive."

"Is this are staaahhhp?"

"Noooo, we gotta go tuh forty-say-cond street."

"How come we get off at forty-say-cond street when the hotel is on forty-third?"

"Ahhh don't know! That's what they SAY-edd we had tuh doooo."

 

 

Just funnin' with y'all! You're welcome to bring your southern hospitality, bad haircuts, and awful clothes up to New York whenever you like. We'll leave the light on for ya.

 

 

[Psychotronic]

Originally posted by Cereal:

Originally posted by Psychotronic:

Part of the problem is that we New Yorkers are quite geocentric, without really knowing it consciously. What's that mean? We think where we live is the best, and everywhere else sucks. We're smart, and everybody else is dumb. Add to that the sense of entitlement that some people have, which causes them to abandon any semblance of courtesy.

mmmmm...... ny

 

http://www.angelfire.com/nv/207/strippedcarsbrooklyn3.jpg

 

or california

 

http://www.hollisterranch.com/images/_hr_gallery/hr_classic.jpg

 

so tough to choose

Yeah, and we don't have those kind of surf breaks either, dammit!.....Nice right-hander, there.

[strat0124]

Its probably because most southern folks aren't used to how loud people express themselves up north. I don't find any more or less rude behavior in any part of the country, and I've lived all over New England, Illinois, Tejas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Calipornia, ect. You YANKEES IS LOUD! LOUD I SAY!

[Desdinova]

I am a CT Yankee in the truest sence although I no longer live there. We used to say when referencing Boston that they have snobery raised to an artform. It's not that the folks are rude as such as others have mentioned, but to folks from most elsewhere it can be taken as rude.

[kylen]

Well I'm gonna be a Southern Gentleman in, tick-tick-tick, 2 months or thereabouts I reckon so we'll see.

 

Hehe, wonder if they'll be able to tell I'm an import? Yee-Haw...Yankaas indeed !

[fantasticsound]

Originally posted by Jode:

...And Fantastic, there is no flood of business from snowbirds. They split meals. They bring coupons on top of coupons. And in my store, they simply don't spend at all. They are cheap. Some of them are so cheap, as I was told by the manager of the Winn Dixie, that they return their canned goods for a refund at the end of snowbird season rather than donate them to one of the numerous "clean out your cabinets" food drives

 

I watched some poor 16-year-old kid get reamed at Dairy Queen the other day because he couldn't give a woman a coupon discount on top of a daily buy-one-get-one-free special. She hissed, "You're just screwing us, that's all." They are not merely annoying tourists. They're miserable people, and they act as though they're just as miserable at the beach as they would be under six feet of snow. No one else of any age from any part of the country is as hard to stomach as old people from the upper midwest.

Except, perhaps, crochety southerners with nothing better to do than hurl generalizations and insults at others because of personal prejudice combined with some real and specific events.

 

Again I will point out that this is true of people from all over the country in other places. You only notice it because of the high number of old people from the Chicago area and New York/New Jersey areas that come south for large periods of wintertime.

 

Your Dairy Queen incident is laughable, only because I've seen the same incident played out time and time again across all ethnic, racial, and geographical boundaries in this country. But you hold tight to those prejudices and, guess what? You'll always see what you want to see and you'll always be right.

[Gabriel E.]

Grew up in an uptight victorian city in Canada(Halifax, N.S.). People there are not friendly and are generally uncomfortable with people who are. Strangers take great pains not to make eye contact. People are also easily offended.

 

Now I live in New Orleans and it's customary to say hi to strangers you pass on the street and wave to people sitting on their front porches (which people do a lot here). Strangers will open up and make conversation at the bus stop. Even with all the racial tension and crime people are still civil with one another. It's a much better way to live.

 

The snowbirds I deal with, from God-forsaken places like Wisconsin and Minnesota, are just cold, petty, miserable, CHEAP! don't forget CHEAP! people.

That's interesting. To date, I have not met anyone from Minnesoota who wasn't really nice. On the other hand, I haven't met anyone from Toronto who wasn't a completely obnoxious jerk.

[Dan South]

The top photo is East L.A. The bottom is Montauk. Your point being?

 

 

Originally posted by Psychotronic:

Originally posted by Cereal:

Originally posted by Psychotronic:

Part of the problem is that we New Yorkers are quite geocentric, without really knowing it consciously. What's that mean? We think where we live is the best, and everywhere else sucks. We're smart, and everybody else is dumb. Add to that the sense of entitlement that some people have, which causes them to abandon any semblance of courtesy.

mmmmm...... ny

 

http://www.angelfire.com/nv/207/strippedcarsbrooklyn3.jpg

 

or california

 

http://www.hollisterranch.com/images/_hr_gallery/hr_classic.jpg

 

so tough to choose

Yeah, and we don't have those kind of surf breaks either, dammit!.....Nice right-hander, there.

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

Originally posted by Dan South:

The top photo is East L.A. The bottom is Montauk. Your point being?

 

Montauk my ass.

 

If you grew up here and surfed, that photo is a legend to you, and it's tantalizingly hard to see because we're not allowed to surf there.

 

It's the Hollister Ranch, one of California's most revered surf spots. Near Santa Barbara, about two hours north of LA. It's a private and heavily guarded community, but it's a right break to die for.

 

I, of course, have never once in my life crawled through miles of chapparal, ran from guard dogs, or snuck under razor wire fences before dawn and waited for sunup to surf Hollister. Nope. That would be illegal.

 

Are Yankees rude? I don't know. I'm busy hijacking this thread to talk about surfing.

 

- Jeff

[Dan South]

Originally posted by Jeff Da Weasel:

Originally posted by Dan South:

The top photo is East L.A. The bottom is Montauk. Your point being?

 

Montauk my ass.

 

If you grew up here and surfed, that photo is a legend to you, and it's tantalizingly hard to see because we're not allowed to surf there.

 

It's the Hollister Ranch, one of California's most revered surf spots. Near Santa Barbara, about two hours north of LA. It's a private and heavily guarded community, but it's a right break to die for.

 

I, of course, have never once in my life crawled through miles of chapparal, ran from guard dogs, or snuck under razor wire fences before dawn and waited for sunup to surf Hollister. Nope. That would be illegal.

 

Are Yankees rude? I don't know. I'm busy hijacking this thread to talk about surfing.

 

- Jeff

See, I TOLD you it was Long Island. Everybody knows that in California you can do anything you want on the beach. Play volleyball. Swim without a lifeguard on duty. Have a bonfire and party all night.

 

When you start imposing RULES and REGULATIONS, we'll then you're clearly in the New York/New Jersey area, where you can spend thirty days in jail for changing your swimming trunks in the rest room (as opposed to the official bathhouse that you have to PAY for). Everybody knows that Tony Soprano runs all of the beaches here, and the cops and the local politicians all work for Tony, so there's really nothing you can do about it. Fuggeddaboudit!

 

Private beaches, my ass! That's what I hate about those Pebble Beach f-ckwads! You want me to PAY for the privilege of driving on your piece of shit road? Sure! You have the only coastline in California worth seeing! Right! Sometimes I wish that O-s-a-m-a would park a van in the middle of that finger-up-their-a$$ neighborhood. F-ck-ng arrogant a$$holes! I hope they all drown in a water hazard.

 

[theblue1]

I have friends who've worked in California, and they claim that there, it's the exact opposite. People are extremely friendly to your face, but they can be nasty when your back is turned. Of course, all three of these cases are generalizations.

I think that beneath the regional style, people are really a lot more the same. So, on the surface the NY'er may seem rude or at least short and the Californian laid back and friendly but in the long run you're going to get the same fundamental kinds of behavior.

 

People in California used to be a lot friendlier. It was a very different place in the 50's... outside of LA, everything was pretty rural, but then it filled in faster than you can say Ice-9, a bunch of recessions sent waves of transplanted rust-belters careening through. Visitors used to remark on how friendly everyone out here is but now only Germans say that (and I suspect they say it everywhere... I think it's in a book the German tourism industry hands out to them on the way out of the country ).

 

According to my folks, who were both born in southern California, it used to be really friendly, and, according to my dad, with no race problem between anglos and latinos and the then-handful of African Americans. But I think this may have been part of my ol' man's over-burnished memory of a halcyon time that never quite existed... Anyhow, he blamed all subsequent problems on the influx of midwesterners (like my mom's people -- or his own parents) during the depression and after the war.

[Jode]

Fantastic, I won't belabor the point with you any further except to say: it's not just me. Come to my town and ask around. Also, these folks' children and grandchildren are somehow much nicer than they are.

 

But they've all basically left as of this week. Business is up. Seriously.

[fantasticsound]

Originally posted by Jode:

Fantastic, I won't belabor the point with you any further except to say: it's not just me. Come to my town and ask around. Also, these folks' children and grandchildren are somehow much nicer than they are.

 

But they've all basically left as of this week. Business is up. Seriously.

I would but I couldn't find one listing of Redneck Riviera on Mapquest!

 

Where in the south are you, Jode?

[Jode]

Originally posted by fantasticsound:

I would but I couldn't find one listing of Redneck Riviera on Mapquest!

 

Where in the south are you, Jode?

I live in Florida, but I work in Gulf Shores, AL.

[Compact Diss]

I have no idea what you are talking about...

[Compact Diss]

I have no idea what you are talking about...