Bounce houses cause quite a lot of excitement with their giant inflatable slides, fit not only for kids but even a 31-year-old. That is what JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater brought to our minds when he made a working-class hero exit after an altercation with a passenger on Aug. 9.

After the plane had touched down at JFK airport in New York, the passenger stood up out of her seat while the seat belt light was illuminated. Slater insisted that she take a seat. However, she ignored him and proceeded to retrieve her luggage from the overhead compartment. According to WCBS (www.newyork.cbslocal.com), passenger Philip Catelinet testified that while Slater was insisting that the passenger take a seat, her suitcase fell against Slater’s head. After Slater asked for an apology, the passenger insulted Slater, slinging expletives. Enraged, Slater walked to the public announcement system and fired back at the passenger, dropping f-bombs while verbally confronting the rule-breaker. His message to the passenger who insulted him was that he’d been in the business for 28 years and finally he had had it. He was done. In his now infamous escape from the stressful situation, he proceeded to open the emergency exit, slide down the inflatable escape slide and run from the plane to his car with his luggage in hand — but not before grabbing two bottles of beer from the beverage cart.

This has become an iconic moment of a service worker reacting to customer abuse. Workers take the poor treatment they are forced — even trained — to endure from their fellow citizens. That more people don’t respond as brazenly as Slater did to obnoxious behavior is the surprise.

Not to say that all workers who get annoyed should toss their job in the air and throw a tantrum. Workers should know that they signed up for jobs dealing with people, which implies they are prepared to deal with the possible irrational behavior and lack of manners of the masses. But just because employees are expected to cater to our needs doesn’t mean that those serving us are inferior beings.

When stressful service employment comes to mind, jobs like janitor or waiter may fit your schema, but don’t rule out positions such as teachers and IRS employees. According to ABC News (www.abcnews.go.com), from 2001 to 2008 there were 1,200 threats and assaults against IRS employees. Previously, these threats averaged out to about 170 per year, but recently have spiked to a current average of 900 per year, according to Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George. Maybe it is the bad economy, or maybe its our lack of people skills as a result of our increasingly isolating technological life. Either way, rudeness should not be escalating. As we advance, so should our manners.

Another overlooked example is the hardship that educators have to go through. Every year, teachers can expect calls, letters or visits from parents who complain about tardies, (which are more often than not the student’s fault), assignments, grades and teaching methods. In actuality, parents make work harder for teachers. According to the psychology journal Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, teachers find that dealing with parents’ criticisms causes workplace stress. Despite a need for people to enter the field of education due to the number of retiring baby-boomer teachers, new teachers are leaving. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (www.nctaf.org) calculated that almost fifty percent of new teachers quit their jobs within the first five years and the Department of Education’s available statistics shows that fifty-six percent of the teachers who stopped teaching in the 2003-2004 school year because they were dissatisfied with their jobs. This is in part because of stress, which ultimately hurts students. When teachers’ energy is drained, they may spend less effort on helping their students succeed.

Whether an employee or a client, people should make use of their manners and treat each other with respect. As an 11-year-old unaccompanied minor on a flight from El Paso, Texas to San Francisco, I had to sit next to a passenger who had had a little too much to drink. When he slapped the stewardesses’ rear-ends and made inappropriate comments, I wanted to scoot over to a different seat or even slide out an exit, if that had been possible. His actions bothered everyone around him and made everyone uncomfortable, especially the stewardesses.

If we should take anything from Slater’s reaction, it’s that all of us should put in the little amount of effort needed to curb our urge to be rude. Just be patient, use an “inside voice” or say “thank you.” Don’t project your problems with anger control and petty demands onto workers. The golden rule is golden for a reason: treat others the way you want to be treated.

This article first appeared in the September 10, 2010 issue of The Lowell.

All illustrations by Vivian Tong, coloring by Monica Zhang