Who do I Respect?

Emma over at llmcalling tagged me in her new campaign of showing respect and admiration to others. To identify the people that we respect and admire and let them know.

Sound easy?  Well I have spent the last two days thinking about this, trying to single out one particular person, be they a politician, philanthropist, humanitarian, scientist etc whose work I admire and respect.  My list was endless and it was proving to be more difficult than I thought it would originally be.

Then the Ocado man arrived with the weekly shop and we got chatting and as he left I wished him “a good day” and then I realised...  Yes you can respect and admire people from afar but what about the people who serve you in restaurants, sit on the checkout at supermarkets, clean the streets, drive the buses, your neighbours, the list is endless.  Do we show respect for them? I would like to say as a society that we do but we have all seen incidents where we don’t.

So to answer the question, I like to think I show respect for everyone no matter what they do or where they are from.  As a 40 year old I still say “yes please” when asked if I want something, open doors for people, says “Thanks” and I even do the small talk that shop assistants (thinking M&S here) try and engage you in when I would rather not.  I admire the people who do the jobs I couldn’t or wouldn’t do knowing in some cases that they may have no other choice in what jobs they do.

Besides it puts a smile on my face when I give a big thank you to a sullen shop assistant and they get that startled rabbit in headlights look on their face.