Courteous Cities

The result of Reader’s Digest survey of most courteous cities is out. The result I am sure will not be surprising for anyone. New York tops the list being the most courteous city, and Mumbai the lowest – the rudest city in world.

Reader’s Digest had its own undercover reporters doing the survey; testing on factors like holding the door open, saying ‘thank you’ to shoppers and helping someone pick up their stuff.

Stockholm according to them was ‘second’ best in shopping experience and from my personal experience I can say that is quite correct. I would give Stockholm high marks in other areas like experience of dining in restaurants. I always relish eating out in Stockholm and the servers are so courteous. That when there is no tipping like in New York.

Helsinki got rather low - 22nd position. I don’t think Helsinki is that discourteous? I have heard people not thanking you if hold the door open but not that no one holds the door open. In Hameenlinna that is not the case. Here people hold the door open and also say thank you. May be Helsinki scored low on picking up someone’s paper after they fell down on streets.

Amsterdam was two ranks above Helsinki. I have not found Amsterdam that co-operative for example - I had great difficulty in buying tickets from their automatic machines which had only Dutch interface. If you buy from counters you have to pay more and all tourist end up buying from there. I don’t think it takes much to have English interface in the automatic machines. Oh well, this is true even for Finland, they can put English interface in their ATMs as well.

Mumbai was lowest at 36th, bit unlucky that Delhi was not surveyed. It won’t have been lowest then. In Mumbai the Reader’s Digest reporter found that, let alone picking the fallen papers from a person, people walked on those papers in a super store. And a retailer even tried to justify his rude behavior! Good that they didn’t have any traffic related test or Indian cities would have made a hole in the bottom to find their place.

I hope this survey has some constructive effect.

Update 1 :- This post has generated the expected controversy. Mumbai mirror has picked it up in their blogger park. And Raj your comment is there. Read it here

Update 2 It seems that this is getting intersting. Even Indiatimes have picked up this post. You can see it here (scroll down on right side and see under communities.