Good and bad etiquette


webmaster | 05/08/12

There are some public etiquette matters we need to take care of in Madera, especially since so many are failing at them.

The first concerns etiquette in supermarket parking lots.

Proper etiquette: When you take your groceries to your car in a grocery cart, proper etiquette requires that you either place the cart in one of the marked-off spaces provided for carts or you return the cart to the store. You never leave a cart in a parking place, especially if that parking place has shade. That keeps someone else from parking there. You do not leave carts in the driveways, or up against someone else’s car. Unsuspecting motorists may hit a cart, damaging their cars, along with the carts.

Bad etiquette: Never take a grocery cart home. Not only is taking grocery carts from the store premises theft, it winds up being littering when the carts are left on sidewalks, or lawns, or in gutters, or in the riverbed.

The second concerns etiquette at a traffic intersection.

Proper etiquette: Stop at stop signs. That not only is proper etiquette, it is the law. Some people think slowing down is equivalent to stopping, but it isn’t. The law says you have to stop, and other motorists in the intersection expect you to stop so they can go if they have the right of way.

Bad etiquette: Never slow down a lane of traffic to let a motorist into a traffic lane from a parking lot. This almost always ties up traffic behind you, and the result is that all the traffic behind you is slowed down or stopped so one car can get into traffic. You may have done that person a favor, but you have traffic behind you.

It may seem you are being polite to let motorists into traffic from parking lots, but being polite to one driver means you’re being rude to all those behind you.


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