The bad manner of Chicago

As I got off the phone with a man working for a Chicagoland newspaper, I shook my head and realized that the phone call had confirmed my suspicions about the rudeness entrapping Chicago.\nMy current task in my Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau internship is to update our media database. So I called this fellow, explaining who I was and asking if I could have a moment of his time to verify some information. Expecting a polite "uh-huh" on the other end, I began to read his contact information to him but was interrupted by a loud, nasal snort.\n"I'll save you some time," he began. "This is a Chicago newspaper, and we're sure not going to be printing anything from Brown County, Indiana," he said sarcastically, enunciating the words "Brown County" as if he was referring to a puddle of cicada waste.\nI was stunned. He could have said, "I'm sorry, miss. This is a regional newspaper, and we only print information from within this area." \nThis experience reminded me of another incident on a trip to the Woodfield Mall north of Chicago. My parents and I had just left the mall and were sitting in our car looking at a map to figure out the best way home. The car was parked -- not turned on -- merely sitting in a parking lot filled with hundreds of other spaces. \nAll of a sudden, there was a tap on the driver's side window. My father rolled down the window, and a middle-aged man leaned in and glared at us. He started waving his hands and informed us that by sitting in our parked car we were altering the entire Woodfield shopping mall traffic, and we didn't even realize it. \nAfter my father explained that we didn't live in the area, he started to go off about stupid people from Indiana and how they didn't belong in the big city. \nWell, obviously we hadn't been informed that it is against Woodfield zoning regulations to sit in your parked car. The guy obviously just wanted our space, as the mall was packed, but it wasn't as if we were one of those annoying people who get in their car, turn their lights on, fiddle around doing who knows what and then take five minutes to cautiously back out of their parking space. \nI'm sure right now people from Chicago are reading this column and shaking their head, thinking that the dumb country girl from Indiana can't make it in the big city.\nI'm not from Indiana, actually, but I have lived in many other big cities and have noticed that in none of these cities are the people more rude than in Chicago, and I say this most objectively. I don't know if any of you Chicagoans are irritated because the wind is so darn strong or because you're sick of hearing your own accents, but I must say that Chicago needs to calm down. \n I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to say I hate Chicago. But I don't. Deep down, I know that the people in Chicago are no different from people in Indianapolis, or Kalamazoo, Ind., or Intercourse, Pa., or wherever. I know that the day-to-day frustrations of traffic and crowds can start to bother anyone, especially those in the big city.\nBut I beg you to remember your manners because people aren't the cold slabs of concrete that metropolises are composed of. People are the warmth and life of cities, and everyone deserves respect and courtesy as they conduct their daily lives.