"Hey!" Hell!

OK, I grew up in a different time and place. People actually had manners back then. The way I grew up, when you interrupt someone -- no matter what they're doing -- the first two words you should say are "Excuse me". A couple of years ago, one of my colleagues got a temporary asignment to Ramstein AB, Germany (near Kaiserslautern). Before he went, he aked me for any tips or advice I could pass along. I pased along a paper I had written quite some time ago, which included this advice: the four most important expressions you need to know when visiting a foreign country (where English is a foreign language) are "Excuse me", "Please", "Thank you", and "Do you speak English?".

Sadly, such niceties seem to have gone out of style. This morning, I was over at my favorite home improvement place and, as I was crossing the street, some uncouth moron pulls up in a car and stops and yells "Hey!" to get my attention.

Well, he got it. Just not in the way he had hoped. I stared for a second and said "'Hey!' hell! What kind of way is that to address someone?". And then I walked off.

Admittedly, there aren't a whole lot of things that will get my goat, but out-and-out rudeness is one of them.