While for quite many, it seems like common sense that everyone should strive to be nice to each other, some people aren’t that kind. And their unkindness shows up in various ways. For example, making unnecessary comments about strangers.

A few years ago, today’s OP became a victim of such a whiny, unkind man who complained about them wearing headphones, even though it was actually a hearing aid. They explained what the device was in their ear to the man and added some context that made him regret making a comment in the first place.

More info: Reddit

Sadly, not all people are nice to strangers who haven’t done anything wrong to them

Image credits: Mark Paton (not the actual photo)

A few years ago, the author, while shopping at Home Depot, was harassed by a man who thought their hearing aid was headphones and said he hated when “kids” wore them

Image credits: Sven Dowideit (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Pixabay (not the actual photo)

Image credits: u/why_are_you_so_awful

The author explained what kind of device was in their ear and that they needed it after their service in the Air Force, which flabbergasted the man

Today’s original poster, to whom Bored Panda reached out to for additional context, wears a hearing aid. It’s a small electronic device that a person wears in or behind their ear. Hearing aids improve the processing of speech and hearing comprehension for people with hearing loss.

One day, they were in a self-checkout line at the home improvement retail store Home Depot. There, they heard a boomer, a man likely born between the years 1946 and 1964, complaining about them. Up until this situation, the author never had a rude altercation with a rude older person in public. They had only witnessed something similar a few years ago: “I watched as an older woman threw a fit over getting a tomato slice on her burger when she had asked for no tomatoes. She berated the young cashier for 10 or so minutes. Then, when she had gotten a refund, she left in a huff, declaring that she would never eat there again.”

This man complained about “those kids that wear headphones everywhere.” Note: the OP wasn’t wearing headphones, just a hearing aid.

Yet, on one hand, this man wasn’t so far off — kids nowadays do actually wear headphones very frequently. For instance, a recent study revealed that in the US, parents of 2 out of 3 children between the ages of 5 and 12 revealed that their kid uses headphones or earbuds regularly. 

This trend has a few not-so-good side effects. For example, in the Guardian, there was an opinion piece published where the author worried that headphones, paired with the phone and internet, are a tool for kids to tune out their parents nearly infinitely and lose connection with them. 

Then, a lot of people worry about headphones damaging kids’ ears. Well, it’s not only a worry — it’s a proven fact. High-volume audio can be damaging and even eventually lethal for tiny cells inside the ears, which can cause hearing loss. Children’s ears are especially vulnerable to this.

There are several ways to reduce hearing damage from headphones, both for adults and children: 

• Not listening to higher than 60% of the maximum volume;
• Limiting the hours of headphone use during the day or taking breaks;
• Using noise-canceling headphones, because with them, there is no need to increase the volume to hear over outside noises. 

While we can acknowledge that hearing damage in children due to extensive headphone use is surely a problem, the boomer’s complaint about headphones likely wasn’t concerned as much about that as just about the fact that the OP was wearing something in their ear and he didn’t like it. 

Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)

And, as we mentioned before, it was a hearing aid, not headphones, so the complaint was not only rude but based on a false observation as well. As the author guesses, he expected them to apologize or get into a verbal fight with him. Besides awkward stares and awkward tension, people around didn’t react in any way either. So, the person simply corrected him that it was a hearing aid and not headphones. 

This made the boomer confused on why a person of OP’s age would even need one and said that they must be doing something stupid to get it. Then, the original poster answered that they got it from their service in the Air Force. 

Simply said, the Air Force is the national military branch that primarily manages aerial warfare. Typically, it’s responsible for gaining and holding out control of the air, providing support to land and naval forces, and carrying out strategic and tactical bombing missions. So you can probably understand how piloting such machines would warrant needing hearing aids down the line. 

While we aren’t sure which country the OP is from, since they never clarified it, we can only guess. And we guess that they’re likely from the US, Canada, or Mexico based on the fact they were in Home Depot, and there are these stores in these countries.

And since we don’t know which of these countries is actually the origin of the original poster, we can’t say for sure in which Air Force they served. But it doesn’t add or take away anything from today’s story, does it? After all, the main point is that they served in the Air Force and got hearing loss from that, no matter in what country it happened. 

After the entitled boomer learned the author was in the troops, he froze and stayed quiet for the rest of the time there, likely due to the “don’t say bad stuff about the troops” rule. Yet, he never apologized for his rude complaint. 

The thing that vexes the OP the most is that these kinds of interactions aren’t anomalies, and they happen quite often. The stories from under the post and elsewhere on the internet only prove this. The author believes that it’s due to the fact that boomer generation is watching the world change around them, and they are terrified of what it has become: “For all of human history, elders have been respected and looked up to for knowledge, but now, they’re seen as outdated fools.”

The OP also thinks that the globalization of the economy is another reason behind generational differences regarding manners and respect for others: “Boomers still hold a lot of wealth and refuse to pass it down because they don’t like the world they created. We are governed by a gerontocracy that fundamentally doesn’t understand the world that most young people exist in.”

Not to mention the topic of mental health that’s quite divisive between different generations. The original poster believes that some of these kinds of tantrums might be due to mental issues of these people that sadly likely won’t ever be recognized by them. So this leads to people being constantly harassed by others just because of their disability or that person’s inability to simply be respectful to people around them, which results in stories like this. 

The author feels upset that these kinds of rude encounters aren’t rare, which was proven by stories shared by people in the comments

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