ABSTRACT
Politeness is a social good: everyone is happier when people are polite. The English, as they say, love a queue, and hate nothing more than those who cut in front of them. Indeed, I don’t think I have ever felt a deeper shame than bouncing up to a colleague by a coffee urn, greeting him enthusiastically and then helping myself to a cup … Before realising I had, in my enthusiasm to greet him, inadvertently cut to the top of a very long queue, and had around fifteen other colleagues scowling and muttering at my rudeness. It was at a work event, and I immediately called a friend to panic I thought I might be about to be sacked on the spot for this kind of inexcusable error, or that I would need to resign from shame.
