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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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I saw this earlier and I'm glad it was removed almost immediately.
Working retail/service in the US is a joke because people have become so entitled that they don't even think of service workers as humans anymore. When I used to work retail at a certain big blue box electronics store I was screamed at, yelled at, belittled, called names, and in a couple very extreme cases had items thrown at me and one person took a swing at me.
This is just another example of that. People here in the US are so detached from reality and laser focused on their routine that they literally cannot comprehend that workers may want to spend a holiday with their family too. Or worse than that, they think workers don't deserve to be at home with their families on a holiday, because they deserve service more than you deserve to see your family. God forbid they microwave a meal that one day.
It's pure entitlement and it's disgusting. Surprisingly I found that the lower income/societal class the person is the more entitled they would act towards me as a service worker.
One time I was dealing with a really bad migraine while I was running register at Walmart. I was barely functioning and could barely stand up straight. This lady comes through my line starting out all compassionate until she suggests that she lead me in a prayer that Jesus might heal me. I try to politely decline because I'd rather not hold up the line forming behind her. Well, also because I'm atheist but I had been in customer service for years at that point and knew better than to bring that tidbit up.
This lady starts into the most hate fueled tirade I've ever heard. Talking about how I'm a heathen, my migraine was a punishment directly from God, I deserve every second of my suffering, and calling me everything but a child of God. All because I tried to politely decline a performative prayer from her because there were now 3 people in line behind her. Like 20 minutes later I got taken out in an ambulance because I fainted from the pain trying to stand up after using the bathroom on my break.
Another guy tried to get me to discount his entire order because he supposedly knew the guy that owned the contacting company that built the store. Try to tell him that I don't have the ability to do that and he'd have to talk to a manager. He gets right up in my face and starts yelling about how no one else ever had a problem with it and how with one phone call he could make it so I would never be able to work at Walmart again. Along with several threats to my person. If I never set foot behind a cash register again it'll be too soon.
Despite never really having any problem customers in my 14 or so years of working in food service, I'm right there with you. Between the stress of dealing with people day in and day out, working every holiday with no overtime or holiday pay, and being expected to do the work of 2 people and not take any vacation time because "the company can't afford to hire more people," I will never work retail/service again. People talk about dreaming that they're back in high school, I dream that I'm back working there. Even 3 years after I left the industry.
Living in a place where stores are shut sundays, ther isnt any service for my restaurant (beer/wine, or problems with keg equipment) and it's actually quite refreshing.
If I run out, I run out. If there is no keg beer because the cooling unit stopped working then there isn't any. No ribs on sunday night because we were busier than normal..on saturday. People understand.
it's amazing.
*ps, if they dont, then thats their problem, not mine.
Man, around here restaurants are also closed on Sunday AND Monday...
Most here open Sunday for bunch/late lunch, close in the evening, then close Mon & Tue. This is why (during off season) we close wed & thur.
You lost me entirely on the last point. That's pure propaganda, mate.
Yeah, I've had the opposite experience in my 20+ years of customer service work. Most of the times I've been screamed at by an entitled customer, they've been upper-middle class.
Self loathing doesn’t respect socioeconomic class.
Nope. I worked retail for years at the same yellow-and-blue themed electronics store and they're spot-on. The absolute worst are the ones carrying tacky designer bags. Think the giant LV logo ones. They were almost universally nightmares to deal with that had $1000 deposit requirements for cell phones.
You've dealt primarily with low/middle income customers and you don't think that sways your "findings?"
I dealt with quite a range of incomes. I pull their credit reports to qualify them for service. I knew exactly what their financials looked like.
Sorry man, but no, granted that's my personal anecdotal experience.
That doesn't mean there weren't people who were complete assholes at all levels, but generally speaking the most entitled people were the ones who didn't deserve to be. I guess I could clarify that people who wanted to act like they were happy with life were the worst, most entitled people I came across. The people who either did actually hold status or didn't care if they did were more tolerable.
I won't pretend to be an expert and understand. The only things I've thought over the years were either 1) They needed to feel more important than someone, and service workers are a good scapegoat there or the more unfortunate one 2) There are just more points of contention. Someone doing well won't react as badly to their laptop being fried compared to someone who isn't doing well - they have different impacts on the people. That one is more important, but I don't think that excuses the pure abuse that was hurled at me either.
Similar question to what I posed the other person; do you really think you've serviced an equal number of low income and high income customers to back up your conclusions?
A bit difficult to make that claim when I imagine you didn't know each customers background, noted it down, and accounted for how proportinal your compared groups were.
It's simpler than that, and worse.
You are beneath them.
In their worldview, there is The Hierarchy,™ and everybody's role is to do as they're told by people above them. There is no other force in their moral universe. Nothing else decides what is real.
People stuck in this mindset are vicious when they have so few opportunities to be the boot instead of the face. It's identifying with the aggressor.
when education isn't liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor.
t. Paulo Freire
The chain of screaming
A good number of people assume retail workers choose to be there and are getting overtime.
Clearly untrue for most.
Poo rolls down hill. It’s sad, I think that is the only way certain people can feel some sense of experiment. Working on ourselves and our own perceived inadequacies is hard, dirty work.
That's my personal belief as to why. As long as they can think they're better than someone else they don't have to actually work on themselves.
Where I live our stores are closed on Sundays except those located in larger railstations and gas stations.
And right in the time where people should be with their families, in Advent, stores are allowed to open up on the four Advent Sundays and everyone goes fucking wild.
Now, the retail store lobby or whatever it is called here is rallying for stores to be allowed to open up 8 Sundays a year, because 'people want the convenience to be able to shop on a Sunday'. You know what? No. Fuck those people. Get your groceries on a Saturday or during the week and chill the fuck out on a Sunday.
It's insane to me how people apparently just can't go one day without getting something from a store.
I think it's beautiful to have one day in the week where (most) people just don't have to work at all. I really don't like how the hypercapitalism of the US just swaps over to Europe more and more.
That last sentence is the exact opposite of my experience having worked a decade in various retail positions. Aside from the people who were on drugs, I never had any big issues with lower income people, all the arrogance and assholery and entitlement almost always came from the douchebag in the Audi with the flashy gold watch, not from Peggy who came down to the store in the family's broken down Olds to grab a pint of milk and half a gallon of gas.. Lower income people tend to know what's up, and be the most attached to reality. Money is what allows you to dissociate from the struggles of everyday people
This seems like there's more going on than what either you or Scrubbles are seeing.
I think it's part of what I've seen called the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" effect. There's a certain group of poor folk who have been convinced that, any day now, they're going to come into wealth (through some nebulous means and no real action of their own), and so act like they are already part of the wealthy class. Even going so far as voting for benefits for the wealthy and against their own interests, including voting for the destruction of the very social programs that support them.
Just an assumption on my part, but I think you would find a correlation between political affiliation and treatment of service industry staff when it comes to lower income people.
There's a world of difference in disposition between new money and old money, in my experience, and flashy-car-and-expensive-jewelry rich is decidedly new money. Families with generational wealth tend to be more discreet about it, and often have a "noblesse obligee" mentally about how they engage with the world. New money's much more likely to pull the "don't you know who I am?!" card.
Similarly, there's a split between working class folks who know the score and recognize that they're all in it together with the guy behind the counter, and the sort of temporarily-embarrassed millionaires who have themselves convinced they're better than they are.