Think of a typical day in our angry world. You open social media and read abuse either directed at yourself or someone else, then you get in your car and find yourself aggressively overtaken while driving at the speed limit. You pull into a shopping mall car park, where another driver executes a fast three-point turn to take your park, and then shouts a stream of abuse when you honk.
You find another park but your car gets damaged by a rogue trolley rolling into it; its previous user couldn’t be bothered putting it away.
In the cinema you grit your teeth while those around you light up their phones to send texts, put their feet on seats and talk throughout the movie.
Lining up at the airport to take a flight, the person in front of you shouts abuse at the airline staff because they are going to charge for extra carry-on.
When you board the flight and head down the aisle to your window seat, your neighbours do not want to get up to let you in, so you have to squeeze past them. When the attendants come around to tell people to turn off their phones, no one listens, including the people and their children watching videos without headphones.
The passenger in front of you reclines their seat for the duration of the 55-minute flight and then when disembarking, those in the rows behind you do not wait to let you out.
If you are a person of extreme calm and equanimity, you may be able to let all this happen around you and remain unaffected. But for most of us, the selfish behaviour of others degrades our experience of being in the world. It can even provoke some of us to respond with anger – worsening the situation and the general degraded atmosphere of our public spaces.
Why go outside, more of us are thinking, when we could just stay at home and avoid the stress?
Australia’s Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association released a landmark report in December 2025 that highlighted a staggering shift in customer behaviour.
The report detailed a surge in violence, with physical violence against retail and fast-food workers doubling since 2023.
They also reported verbal abuse as the norm, with 88% of workers reporting being verbally abused in the last 12 months.
Governments and businesses are now acting to protect workers who are on the frontline. Last year saw a significant hardening of laws across Australia, responding to the surge in the incivility with a range of criminal sanctions including the Victorian crimes amendment bill 2025, which creates specific new offences for assaulting or threatening “customer-facing workers”. It includes indictable offences carrying up to five years in prison, specifically to address the rise in abuse in retail, hospitality and transport.
Meanwhile the Bus Industry Confederation reported in late 2025 that physical attacks on drivers had increased by 80% since 2022, while verbal abuse against drivers surged by 184% in some states during the same period.
Because of this incivility, many Australian bus fleets are being retrofitted with full-height driver safety screens.
A more narrative account can be found on a recent AskAnAustralian Reddit thread. When asked what had changed about the country in the last 10 years, users flooded in with examples of worsening civility.
“Disproportionate escalation from annoyance to violence. Basically no self control.”
“In the stores, on the bus, on the roads, on the phone … mass entitlement and selfishness all around. The social code is broke and I can’t see any way to fix it from here.”
“Social media has opened up mass narcissism and everyone has main character syndrome. It’s every person for himself.”
While government and industry are cracking down on an uncivil public, what can we, the public, do?
A lot, actually.
Table of Contents
Be the bigger person
Roman Stoic Seneca wrote thousands of years ago that “we are bad men living amongst bad men and only one thing will calm us and that is if we agree to go easy on one another”.
Going easy may feel like tolerating bad behaviour, but it can be crucial in lowering temperatures and preventing escalation.
It also stops you from being the arsehole in the situation. So – let the other car take the park, let the drivers in, give the thank you wave. Wait your turn to exit the aircraft.
As Marcus Aurelius wrote in his diary: “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injustice.” When someone is rude to you, the most radical thing you can do is remain passively polite. It breaks the contagion of rudeness. In its place you can start a contagion of kindness.
Get comfortable with discomfort and inconvenience
Try not to treat every minor inconvenience – a delayed bus, a sold-out Instagram-worthy pastry – as a personal affront. When something doesn’t go your way, put it in contrast with some truly uncomfortable news, such as a cancer diagnosis. You’ll quickly realise that most of our daily outrages are remarkably boring and no big deal.
Have a strategy for managing anger
Sometimes when you feel a sharp sense of fear or injustice, for instance when someone is driving aggressively and putting you in danger, anger can arise quickly and feel impossible to stop. But when you feel anger in the pit of your stomach, notice it and treat it as the sign to pause. Take a few deep breaths before you speak and act. Once you’ve said something out of anger, it’s impossible to take back.
Be patient
Slowing down, or leaving the house a little earlier than usual, takes away the urgency and stress which leads us to speeding, not letting other drivers in, or overtaking recklessly. Realising that these things only get us somewhere a minute or two faster means we might not take risks driving that can cause accidents. An accident is going to chew up far more of your time and energy than going with the flow of traffic, even if it is a little heavy at times.
Acknowledge that everyone is the main character
Part of the epidemic of rudeness is the implied assumption that other people do not matter as much as you. The airline staff you are shouting at, the gig economy worker you’re not thanking as she delivers your food, the pedestrian you don’t let safely cross the street. It’s a failure of imagination not to see another’s inner life; to treat others as if they don’t have feelings, don’t get hurt or don’t feel afraid when we yell at them.
There is a version of ourselves in every person and they need to be treated with kindness and respect – just the way we would wish to be treated.
Question the systems that drive people to the edge
This is a challenge for corporations, government and business. Sure, as individuals we need to treat others well. But social bonds fray when systems fray. If your airline is constantly running behind schedule and you are failing to invest in enough staff, then you are responsible for degrading conditions that contribute to a lack of civility.
If you have a call centre which makes it difficult for humans to speak to humans, then you need to take some responsibility when the staff you do employ get abused after long wait times.
There was never a golden time where everyone was entirely civil. Rudeness has always existed in public. But to stop things getting worse than they are now, we all need to take stock and do better.
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Brigid Delaney is the author of The Seeker and the Sage, about Stoic philosophy (Allen & Unwin, A$32.99)
