Why are people in NY City so rude?

Well, for one thing, she's in the Bronx. While there are some nice neighborhoods, there are also a lot of people on the bottom of the economic totem pole. A lot of people are feeling fleeced when it comes to healthcare, so your sister is probably just a faceless drone for them to take out their rage on.

Some of it is also just a little bit of cultural stuff. You have to be a little louder and a little more annoying if you want to get anywhere. I was born here -and have been living here for all my 16 years- and I have trouble with that sometimes, but it's just the way it is. It's the same reason people shove their way in to subway cars and shove past you on the street: in NY, life keeps going, no matter what you're doing. People are going to keep walking right by you, the N is going to leave the station, and nobody's going to hear you if you don't put yourself out there.

There are also some things that I've found to be nearly universal in New Yorkers, from all boroughs. Mainly it's our idea of helpfulness, and how we have a conversation. In a normal, polite New Yorker conversation, you'll probably hear people talking over the ends of each other's sentences, chiming in randomly, and so on. This is fine if you're a New Yorker- you just roll with it. But for people from other places, it seems frustrating, like you're just continually getting cut off. Also, if I'm walking past some people and I hear them saying they're trying to figure out how to get somewhere, I'll chime in and tell them to take the F, or whatever they need. Likewise I won't mind if I'm with my friends trying to figure out how to make it to somewhere and someone chimes in telling me to take the B. I don't expect a conversation in either situation. To me, it's just being helpful. But for a lot of other people, it's being nosy.

I have to chime in with those who pinpointed the fact that your friend works in the Bronx as the reason for her exprience with rudeness. I have lived for significant periods of time in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx (where I have been living for about 5 years now). I have never experienced rudeness in any of the boroughs other than the Bronx. The degree of rudeness that I encounter here in the Bronx, almost daily, is simply on an unprecedented level. The people in the Bronx are completeley disrespectful of other people's boundaries and act as if everybody's purpose is to accomodate their convenience. They act like they have the power to rule over you, expect everybody to bend to their will and go into a tantrum when other people don't, without any regard for other people's boundaries and contrary to any sense of logic or even some common sense,

ln other words, your friend has nailed it in her description of the people that she encounters here, except she nailed the Bronx people, not NY people in general.

So the question is why are people in the Bronx so rude? I believe it's from a peculiar inferiority complex egging them on to act out in some warped self-validation exercise their underlying insecurity that screams "you think I'm nobody because I live in the Bronx? I'll show you! I can act like I'm the master of the universe, be as rude and obnoxious as I want and there is nothing you can do."

Of course, there are also perfectly lovely people who live in the Bronx and who possess good common sense and good manners, it's just that the frequency and the severity of the rude attacks as compared to the other boroughs does make one notice that there is something going on with the Bronx people on the rudeness scale which is unlike anything you would encounter in other boroughs.

Okay - first off, how do you know what hell really is? Your idea of it and mine might be very different. I think it's great in the city. Second, people who live in cities may have lived there all their lives - it is a way of life, of course, and very different to someone from the country. But the thing is, your way works for you, and their way works for them. Who are you to judge how anyone else lives? You mentioned the bible, so I know you know it's not up to you to judge anyone, yet you made several very judgmental statements - "you'd think they're all crystal meth addicts, they don't care about you or often it seems themselves, they're only after money and trying to con you out of it, they're liars, fornicators" - how do you know that? How can you judge an entire population of any given city based on however little you've seen of it?

You know, that's actually somewhat unusual. Some of it depends on what part of NY you're in. However, I've generally found New Yorkers to be considerate folks, even when compared to people in various parts of the 49 US States I've visited (no bridge to Hawaii! haha).

Sure, it's not a perfect Utopian happy-land, there are some really rude people here. Many of them are tourists actually, but there are many rude natives as well, I won't deny it. Even still, I find that the good people here counter that.

It's too bad she's having that experience. I must say, many patients to tend to act that way, I've known a few of them, but so many others are completely not that way.

I can't answer why she's run into that, or how to change it, but I hope things change for the better soon. Sounds like she deserves better; that's not the New York I know and love, and it saddens me to hear of experiences like that. Still, I hear so many stories of people who have come to visit or live here, and they rave about how surprisingly nice the people are. So, maybe her luck will change, and I hope it does. Really, not all of us are rude around here. Find the nice people, they're out there! Believe me, there are many of those who appreciate what she's doing. It just sucks that the people who complain are so much quicker to open their mouths than the ones who compliment.

Keep her head up, good things happen to good people...I sure as heck hope so, if my faith in humanity serves me well.

I can only speak for myself - In New York, most of us are in a rush to get where we need to go so we don't like to be bothered. I personally will NOT get rude with someone unless they were rude first. I won't tolerate sh*t from anyone. That's just the way I was brought up. I guess it also has a lot to do with what we have to go through on a daily basis. For example - While commuting you have to deal with annoying people who have no manners and like to blast their MP3 players so everyone in the train car can hear what theyr'e listening to, some people take 2 seats (1 for their @$$ and one for their bag, coat, etc.) and think that this is OK, some smack you with their NY Times newspaper while reading it on a already packed train/bus... I can go on...

I live in the NYC area and I still must agree with your friend. I've been all over this country via bus and plane, and I NEVER seen so many rude people as I've seen in the NYC area here where I live, especially the Blacks. I wish I can give you an answer as to why they are rude. That's one of the main reasons why I call myself "rebel" because around here, I am a rebel since I'm one of the few nice/friendly people that live in this area. Just because it's over-populated doesn't give them right to be rude. I love the south and would love to live down there one day.

Everyone has different views about people. There are rude people all over the world, not just New York, in general. In this world, not everyone is pleasant. I've lived in NYC my whole life and I, myself, wonder why I'm still living here sometimes because I've had many bad experiences with people who are just out of their league. You have to understand that in a city of 8 million people + mostly people who migrated from another country, not everyone is going to be the same.

The "rude" people in New York City aren't really New Yorkers. New York attracts a lot of people. Next time your friend meets a "rude" New Yorker tell her to ask her where they were born. I can guarantee it wasn't in the New York City Metropolitan area. I can guarantee it was either the south or midwest.

The rude New Yorkers are actually the transplants. New York is a tough place. Many people come to New York expecting to "make it'. Many people don't. These are the people that are pissed off an rude all the time. They hate their lives. They hate that they are failures. They are the same ones who go back home and badmouth New York to their friends and family.

You know the saying....

If you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere.

However, you have to remember......not everybody can make it in New York.

I think it's an urban thing (rudeness) that goes along with population density and the pace of life, for one thing. I noticed the same thing in Korea-- the people out in the countryside were shy and very polite, but the ones in Seoul would knock you off the sidewalk because it was so crowded. They didn't think it was rude, it was just a part of crowded city life. And don't forget, she's dealing with patients, and people aren't at their best when they're sick or hurting, so maybe they aren't an accurate cross section of New Yorkers.

i think people in big cities have to be tough or they attract the "crazies"! when i moved to chicago from a small town in ohio, i spoke to everyone who i made eye contact with. within three months i got a weird stalker, got cursed out, and almost got my purse stolen. then i stopped looking at people and questioned the intentions of people.

i don't think they mean it personally, it's just hard to know what a stranger is capable of doing and they want to protect themselves. still, i understand if she's offended.

another theory is that cheerios in NYC cost upward $10 a box. and we all know what happens when we don't get enough fiber ;) HAHAHAHAH~!!