The woman at Costco who hovers over the sample maker until the tray is ready, and then swoops in to take three, four, five samples at once before drifting away to hover over another station.

The guy who suddenly has a very important phone call or loud conversation that must be discussed during the few  moments of peace you manage to scrounge after a long day.

Literally anyone who doesn’t recognize that their constant singing could get annoying after the first ten minutes of it, especially when everyone in the room is attempting to work productively. Good singer or not, trust me — it gets annoying.

All of the above possess one god-awful attribute: a total lack of consideration for others.

Such societal pests used to be few and far apart, but now it seems I can’t walk down a hallway without getting shoved aside or having to sidestep the powdery fragments of fallen chips deemed unworthy of the effort necessary to pick them up.

Every week, I see kids who aim their candy wrappers and empty bottles at the garbage can. But upon inevitably missing their target, they don’t bother to throw away their trash, instead sauntering off without a care in the world. After recently telling one of said people to throw away his trash, I was met with the snarky retort, “If you care so much, then you do it.”

Clearly, some people don’t. That’s the problem.

We students have stopped caring about our negative impact on the lives around us, and even worse, we’re so accustomed to acting selfishly that we don’t even care enough to fix our self-serving attitudes. When I notice the mashed-up remains of a cafeteria cookie, while I may be saddened by the sight of such a tragic loss, my step does not falter in surprise. I’m unfazed by the fact that no one bothered to throw the cookie fragments away. When my parents leave for a weekend and I’m left with the house to myself, I don’t even bat an eye about leaving an avalanche of dirty dishes in my wake — letting them soak in their grime for my parents to clean up, assuring myself that I have other work to do.

I assume that I’m just looking out for myself. Maybe the woman at Costco is too. Or the loud guy on the phone. But none of us seem to remember that we can be a little selfish while still acting with consideration towards others. None of us seem to realize that our inconsideration is making the world a harder place to live in.

Not to demand that everyone remember to say “please” and “thank you,” but the core of human decency lies in how we choose to support and assist others. We can do this in the simplest of means: even in taking our fair share, doing our best not to disrupt others and walking the few extra steps to throw out a wrapper so a janitor doesn’t have to for us, we make a difference by slipping in and out of lives soundlessly. We make the world an easier place to live in. We all get wrapped up in our own issues sometimes, but that certainly doesn’t have to be at the expense of those just passing through our lives.

So to the Costco lady and the obnoxiously loud guy,

To the constant singers and the careless litterers,

And to myself and my many, many dishes,

Let’s all try to consider our inconsideration.