English: Sinks in the public toilet of the Castle Terrace Parking Garage in Edinburgh, Scotland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The other evening I looked out of my window and saw a lad stood on the pavement below, apparently waiting for someone.  Seconds later another appeared from the archway inside which are the entrances to our apartments, he was clearly buttoning up his trousers having used our front doors as a public toilet.

It’s increasingly common today for this to happen – on homes, shop doorways, alleyways – and I’ve often wondered how they’d feel if I was to, for example, follow them home and piss on their doorstep.  “What the f*@k you doing?” he’d shout, “that’s my front door.”  To which I could reply “well you pissed on mine, I thought I’d return the favour.”  I wouldn’t because the sort of inconsiderate moron who thinks it’s ok to piss on someone else’s front door would react as only an inconsiderate moron would; not understand the point and lash out violently.  It’s not worth the hassle.  The thing is that often you’ll see people come out of the pub opposite, walk fifteen metres towards the town then piss on the wall or doorway of the workshop across the road from our building – as my folks would say “you should have gone before you came out.”

A few weeks ago as I was driving to work (which I rarely do) I got to the end of our street and as there was traffic approaching I stopped, I glanced in my mirror to see an idiot screech to a halt behind me.  He then started waving his arms at me, gesturing that I shouldn’t have stopped, to move, I could see him shouting “GO ON, F**CKING MOVE” – no doubt trying to impress his girlfriend with how he could order other drivers around.  I gestured at the car that was at that point passing in front of me and that would have been, if I hadn’t stopped, impaled in my driver’s door.  Later the same day another driver pulled out in front of me and I had to slam my brakes on, that driver started mouthing off at me because he’d stopped too, as though it was my fault for being there.  Finally, the next day I got shouted at while walking because I’d had the audacity to use a pedestrian crossing and made the driver stop.

This afternoon I went out onto the balcony to read for a while in the sunshine and saw two men from one of the houses along the street dropping numerous bags of cans and beer bottles into the large bins that are for the use of the eleven apartments of our building, they are usually overflowing by collection day so the last thing we need is other peoples’ rubbish too.  They disappeared back into their own garden before I could say anything but a neighbour from our building was driving out of the car park as they came back to put more rubbish in our bins – walking past their own in the process.  He asked them nicely not to use ours and they walked towards their own, inevitably though as soon as he’d gone they turned round and put the rubbish in our bin, muttering something about my neighbour and saying “it’s not like they’re not big enough.”  I said that they fill up quickly but they ignored me too.

Three stories of the attitude of so many people today, they’ll do what they like regardless of what anyone asks, other people’s feelings or whether they’re in the wrong.  In the end they just have no respect for anyone at all.

(The title is from a song by Indigo Moss)