By Stephanie Abbajay

Hanging right inside the entrance in my bar in Washington, D.C. is a sign that reads, “Kindly control yourselves.”

It has hung there for 15 years now, and serves as a polite admonition to our customers that we expect them to behave.

We do not tolerate bad behavior at the Toledo Lounge. When my sister and I bartended there, we routinely put patrons (almost always boys) in “the penalty box” for transgressions ranging from whistling at us to get our attention, banging their fists on the bar to order drinks, saying something crude to a waitress or some other loutish behavior.

Being in the penalty box was the Lounge’s version of a time-out: we ignored you for ten minutes, which was agony for a Bud-drinking frat boy whose friends got to continue their festivities, until you got it together. Then you got one more chance, and you’d better be sorry.

We routinely threw people out for being rude, crude, lewd or otherwise uncivilized. Cut in line for the bathrooms? Unacceptable. Use a racial slur? You are gone. Pinch a waitress? Buh-bye.

When Dave Stine was working the door (yes, that is how we met, in my bar), he was the enforcer. You don’t want to be thrown out by Dave Stine. If a cute girl sashayed her way to the front of the line, cutting ahead of dozens of patient people, and tried to flirt her way in you know what Dave Stine would do? Send her to the back of the line or ban her entirely, bless his heart. It was both egalitarian and civilized.

Invariably, people complied with our rules and penalties. Why? Because no one – no one – wants to be thrown out of the Toledo Lounge on a Friday night.

Our tenet was this: these are the rules of conduct. Respect them or there are consequences. Rules to live by, I think.

Would that the Lounge’s gentle yet effective method was applicable to other adults in this country. Sadly, bad behavior is everywhere lately, from Kanye West’s grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV awards, to Congressman Joe Wilson yelling at the president during his live speech, to Serena Williams brandishing her considerable muscles, not to mention her tennis racket, at the line judge at the U.S. Open. (And you certainly didn’t have to be a lip reader to know where Serena offered to put her racket.)

This is not acceptable behavior for adults. And they hadn’t even been drinking (at least I assume not.) Robin Abcarian, writing in the Sept. 16 Los Angeles Times, said “the nation seems to have come down with a serious case of impulse control disorder.”

That’s it, isn’t it? We simply can’t control ourselves. Impulse control disorder, ICD, is everywhere, from your friend who texts during lunch, to the 17-year who Twitters as she plows though the intersection, to the rapper who rushes the stage, to the tennis star who can’t take the heat of foot faulting at triple match point, to the congressman who yells at the president to the screamers on MSNBC and Fox News.

Symptoms of ICD include (but are not limited to): the sense that you are superior to others; that your opinion is more important; that conventions, civility and all expectations of decorum do not apply to you. What Serena Williams did was not befitting of a champion, and her utter lack of contrition only compounds her deplorable behavior. Joe Wilson’s outburst was unacceptable not for what he said (hey, the guy is entitled to his opinion, and he may even be right) but for when and how he said it. Repeat after me: if you are a congressman, you do not yell at the president of the United States while he is speaking to congress and the nation. You just don’t do that. (One would have thought that Nancy Pelosi’s absolutely withering glare would have been enough to get Wilson to repent. Sheesh, I’d hate to be one of Pelosi’s grandkids, caught with my hand in the cookie jar.)

As for Kanye, I think expectations are pretty low when it comes to rock stars, but I do believe that if you have won an award you should be able to give your acceptance speech without someone grabbing the mike from you and announcing that someone else deserved it more.

What then, is to be done about ICD? I was heartened to hear that a bipartisan group has formed to combat incivility. Mark DeMoss, a conservative PR honcho and former Romney adviser, and Lanny Davis, a Democratic politico and former Clinton aide, have launched the Civility Project, aimed at restoring civility in our society. DeMoss and Davis are encouraging people to take the civility pledge: "I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. I will stand against incivility when I see it."

That’s all well and good, and I hope everyone takes it. But if the pledge doesn’t work, there’s always the penalty box. Hey, it works at the Lounge.

Stephanie Abbajay is a reporter and columnist for the Jersey County Journal.