{"id":53567,"date":"2025-11-26T23:51:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T23:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/53567\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T23:51:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T23:51:20","slug":"zohran-mamdani-put-your-grin-to-good-use-and-prod-courtesy-from-nyc-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/53567\/","title":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani, put your grin to good use \u2014 and prod courtesy from NYC workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani\u2019s trademark smile carried him a long way toward victory this month, and last week his affability helped turn his meeting with President Donald Trump into an Oval Office lovefest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now he can employ his smiley superpower to make daily life better for New Yorkers: He can\u00a0call on the city\u2019s 300,000 employees to turn on the charm when they interact with the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walk into any city agency or court building seeking help, and odds are you\u2019ll get barked at and herded like a dumb animal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ask an MTA employee why the train isn\u2019t running, and you\u2019re apt to hear \u201cCan\u2019t you read the sign?\u201d followed by a muttered expletive.<\/p>\n

At the McCarren Pool in Brooklyn,\u00a0\u201cthe attendants in the ladies\u2019 room are definitely from a prison movie,\u201d a local commented on Reddit.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bruising everyday experience, a bone-penetrating assault on your personal dignity.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBetsy McCaughey<\/p>\n

Last week I went to Family Court<\/a> at 111 Centre Street to be appointed as guardian for an elderly woman bed-bound in a nursing home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I arrived at 9:30 am, the appointed time, and found a line of about 80 people snaking around the outside of the building, waiting to go through the one available metal scanner. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The line inched ahead \u2014 but when I was third from the door, a burly man in a guard\u2019s uniform suddenly burst through it.<\/p>\n

He brusquely blocked me with his arm and yelled at us to turn around and proceed to a different entrance. Everyone who had patiently waited for as long as 40 minutes would now be at the back of the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said calmly \u2014 I had waited long enough, I explained, and so had others; we would like to enter.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think you\u2019re someone special?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I told him.\u00a0\u201cWe are\u00a0human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u00a0pushed my way around him and into the building, taking the two women behind me\u00a0along.<\/p>\n

The fact is, everyone in that line deserved\u00a0dignified treatment \u2014 but\u00a0that\u2019s not what\u2019s being meted out by\u00a0our\u00a0employees at 111 Centre Street.<\/p>\n

When I got upstairs to wait outside the assigned courtroom, it was no better: Guards screamed at me for asking questions about when my case would be called, and wouldn\u2019t even confirm I was in the right hallway. \u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what our citizens encounter all too often in city agencies and courtrooms.<\/p>\n

Only 27% of New Yorkers rate such city services as good or excellent overall, reports the Citizens\u2019 Budget Commission<\/a>,\u00a0even though we give high ratings for fire protection and garbage collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the many months of mayoral campaigning, as candidates battled over Trump and\u00a0the fate of Gaza, the quality of Gotham\u2019s public services and their delivery were\u00a0barely mentioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To the extent\u00a0Mamdani discussed quality-of-life issues,\u00a0he reduced them to one word:\u00a0\u201cdignity.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cA life of dignity should not be reserved for the fortunate few,\u201d he asserted.<\/p>\n

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But the only dignity he seemed to care about was financial,\u00a0saying that it\u2019s up to the City Hall to help\u00a0working people afford food, or a decent place to live, or childcare.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo New Yorkers should be ever be priced out of anything they need to survive,\u201d he declared. \u201cIt is government\u2019s job to deliver that dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, the jury\u2019s out on whether the city\u2019s budget can ever make good on those promises<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But on Day 1, Mamdani can go a long way toward closing the dignity gap in this hardscrabble city\u00a0by ordering his employees to treat citizens with respect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Previous mayors have gone out of their way to make a point of such a policy.<\/p>\n

Once, the story goes, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia\u00a0approached a group of city workers incognito and waited while they ignored him.<\/p>\n

When one of them finally spoke to him, the irascible LaGuardia knocked the hat off the worker\u2019s head, shouting, \u201cTake off your hat when you speak to a citizen!\u201d<\/p>\n

That would never fly today \u2014\u00a0 but in the 1990s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani\u00a0also\u00a0called for more civility from public employees.<\/p>\n

He instituted the NYPD\u2019s<\/a> \u201cCourtesy, Professionalism and Respect\u201d motto, which should be the code of conduct citywide.<\/p>\n

Target is mandating its in-store workers to smile and make eye contact with shoppers.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s good business.\u00a0Customers have options. \u00a0<\/p>\n

New Yorkers sometimes find themselves with no option but to walk into a city courtroom or seek help from a city agency.\u00a0When they do, they deserve the same courteous treatment that customers get.<\/p>\n

Many New Yorkers feel skeptical about Mamdani. Others dread the impact of his rhetoric and his pricey promises.<\/p>\n

Launching a civility campaign, and putting some energy behind it, could help soften some of the fear.<\/p>\n

Put that grin to work, Mr. Mayor-to-be.<\/p>\n

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani\u2019s trademark smile carried him a long way toward victory this month, and last week his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[29533,419,1442,9,24,55,54,56,299,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-53567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-city-employees","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-mayors","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-city-news","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}