A City of Entitlement.

A City of Entitlement.

I was in the gym yesterday and while I’m never at a loss to find ‘humor’ in the gym I was struck by something that is almost a pandemic in this city, entitlement. To review, in case you’re not overly familiar with the use of Entitlement in this case:

Entitlement - the right to have something; something that one is entitled to (or believes that one is entitled to (source Wikipedia).

In this case what I’m referencing is the over arcing sense of entitlement that I see in this city and yesterday was a stark reminder. While working through my circuit in the gym a gentleman, who had previously noted that I was working in the area, began his client on one of the machines I was using. No big deal this is remedied quickly via the simple request, “Can I work in?” The trainer looked at me and said, ‘sure,’ and then returned to his conversation with his client who remained sitting on the bench. Not a big deal I’ll head somewhere else and finish but it struck me as odd that in an empty gym the ability to share wasn’t put into play.

You’ll see this in other aspects of life here, the train for example, of where our ‘sense of entitlement’ hinders the flow of life. The train will pull to the doors of a station and there will be people behind me who need to get out, I will step off the train turning quickly to place my foot in front of the sensor so everyone can get off and then back on quickly and someone who is standing on the platform will begin to force their way onto the train against the flow of people and seemingly oblivious to the people who stepped off the train to make room for people to leave. I was actually shocked a few years ago when I found myself stranded on the platform unable to return to my spot because of this.

Calgary, we need to drop the sense of entitlement and work on being nicer and kinder.

Be good to each other.

The train…

The train pulled to the station this morning and even though I was lacking my first cup of coffee I noticed someone who wanted to exit the train. Sure I’m big enough I could just push past them but instead I opted to move away, I have always thought it was more polite to move out of the way. When I moved to allow for this person to leave the train the two people behind me forced there way past me to get onto the train. Keep in mind we weren’t downtown so the train only runs one way, we were all going the same place.

I’ve been noticing little things like this in the last little while. A little politeness to your fellow citizen seems to result in someone walking over you to get what they want. We seem to have lost our ‘niceness’ Calgary. When I first moved out here ten years ago people held doors, gave way for others and were generally more polite. Now it seems that, like our parking costs, we’re attempting to emulate New York.

Now before someone accuses me of being Anti-New York I will quickly let you know that on my most recent trip to the Big Apple I was surprised with how gracious and kind the people there were. From stopping to help someone figure out the subway to the gentleman who paced my wife on the sidewalk so he could hold his umbrella over her head when the rain picked up. She wouldn’t have noticed except when she turned and saw a man holding an umbrella over her head while he got rained on. His answer, “I figured you wouldn’t want you hair getting wet.”

My homework for you? Find a door to hold open, find someone to help or even throw a couple of coins in a meter prior to it expiring. Do something nice, random and anonymous and let’s turn Calgary back into the friendly city it once was.

Jono