You know what they say, if you think everyone is a jerk – than you might just be the jerk. Well, that just might apply to Houston. Evidently, all of the verbal bashing of other cities, the animosity toward outsiders – not to mention our less-than-friendly driving antics – have caught up with us. The company, Preply, have recently conducted a survey ranking the rudest cities in the country concluding Houston to be the rudest city in Texas, as well as the 10th rudest city in the US.
Preply is an online language-learning company that operates in nearly 200 countries worldwide. In an effort to deepen the cultural understanding of cities across the America, and underlying local behaviors thereof, the organization conducted a survey of US cities ranking those most polite, and most rude.
“We surveyed over 1,500 residents of the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. and asked them about the rudeness level of their city, including the prominence of certain typically rude behaviors, to help travelers determine what to expect when visiting,” the organization wrote on the site.
As for what typifies rude, the survey identified the most common rude behaviors, as reported by respondents, are: being absorbed by phone in public; not letting people merge in traffic; not slowing down around pedestrians; being noisy in public; not acknowledging strangers; watching videos in public; talking on speaker in public; closed off body language; not respecting personal space; and being rude to service staff.
“To calculate the rudest and least rude cities, survey respondents were asked to rate the rudeness of the average resident of their city on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely polite and ten is extremely rude,” the organization wrote of its methodology. “We used this data to calculate the average “rudeness score” in each city. Cities that scored above average were ranked as the most polite, and cities that scored below average were ranked as the rudest.”
Houston, believe it or not, landed on the rude list, ranking as the 10th rudest city in America according to its own residents.
“The top cities with ruder ‘locals’ included Philadelphia, Boston, Memphis, Detroit, and New York City. This means residents born and raised in these cities have grown up accustomed to certain behaviors, which likely originated from the city’s culture itself.”
It’s worth to note that no other Texas city made the rude list. Conversely, Austin topped the list of the most polite cities.
“From our results, it seems that Austinites enjoy a laid-back, friendly city atmosphere, even as the city continues to grow rapidly. In general, the state of Texas has a reputation for politeness and friendliness, along with the rest of the South, underscoring the stereotype of Southern hospitality. It makes sense that five of the most polite U.S. cities are concentrated in the Lone Star state.”
See also: Houston Named ‘Dog Capital Of The World’ In Recent Study