What are Manners?

When I went around the school to interview people for my podcast teaser earlier this week, we came across a very rude (what I would call rude) Music teacher who immediately rejected us as he said “you need to inform me before you come to my class, you need to write an email and I will let you fill out a form and that is when you can come”. Literally so sassy and so disrespectful—he is saying that I should let him know before I ask people from his band to do a quick 2 second interview. He probably thinks that we are purposely trying to disrespect and neglect his prowess in the band, which is why he “told me off” in front of the entire band. However, I don’t know the people in the band, and they don’t know me, and just an innately arrogant music teacher trying to illustrate a student’s lack of manners is simply a joke. 

I do not understand why I need to get “permission” to go to other people and talk to them. It is as if people needing to receive permission to say hi to others before they do so. Talking to people is not the same as disruptive behavior, let alone the interviews only take maximum 1 minute. Him yapping for 2 minutes trying his best to lecture me of my “disrespect” is more wasteful of his energy and time than me taking one minute to interview students and produce content that would influence more youths worldwide. This music teacher is also afraid of people being racist against him so he never tells us where he is from but we all know that he is from Hungary and he never acknowledges that.

I can safely come to the conclusion that he is a fragile individual with no sense of respect and care for others and only cares about his “dignity” and reputation that doesn’t matter one bit because in the perspective of a student, we only care about the teacher’s respect for students and their support to our ideas. I am not saying disrupting others’ is a sign of respect, but telling people that they need to “report” to you until they receive your approval with formal requests is simply arrogance. That is disrespect as well. I genuinely don’t know how to perceive this, but society’s manners are sometimes too silly and too complicated for people to understand and follow. At least in my opinion.