this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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People arent going to forego basic pleasantries as a society. If we are going to fight alienation and build communities with the workers around us... we gotta talk to strangers.
somebody who doesn't care about me asking how i'm doing doesn't fight alienation
me lying to them as expected doesn't fight alienation
committing the social faux pas of telling the truth doesn't fight alienation, and it might get me fired.
Someone who does care asking fights alienation. Enough people behind the counter have picked up on the fact that i do and then later I catch some on their smoke break where they can speak more freely and things go from there. I know the people at my local stores as at least casual friends, we dont visit each other but we chit chat and have a rapport. I generally break the ice by complaining about my bullshit job I just got off to kinda indicate we're on the same team. I've made quite a few friends over the counter and have gotten into a position where my setting them up with union organizers to get the ball rolling has gotten the goods. If someone is posting here, you can trust them with the truth and they are the people who should be asking. Building a rapport with the workers in your neighborhood is cool and good. To do so, you gotta express interest in their day. Despite the general rule about not being honest when asked that, it is a viable option. It comes in phrasing you can say 'its been a rough one today' and they'll say 'sorry to hear that. Hope the rest of the day goes better.'. They dont want details but its acceptable to say its been a bit of a crap day. Most other people work and understand having a bad day at work, its relatable af. And frankly, part of the job of cashier is human interaction and customers who want to avoid it are all about self checkout, which really helps corporations cut jobs. I wont apologize for or 'kill the part of myself' that wants to interact with the people around me. If that makes you uncomfortable then that is on you to deal with. You are making an incredibly unreasonable and unrealistic ask of the entirety of society to suit your comforts and there is a wide gap between that and society being ableist, sorry to say. A public facing job is going to involve idle chit chat. Under communism I would imagine you wouldnt have to do that kind of job and someone who is better socially could handle it. You cant just tell people not to interact with other people when those interactions make you uncomfortable, im sorry you're in a position that they cant be avoided and that is a social issue. But people being friendly or polite isnt a social issue. Its just something thst makes you uncomfortable
you are not sufficiently critical of social norms. this is an ableism and accommodation thing.
the proscribed interaction i described is bullshit and there's no room for what you want to do when it's crowded out by the empty routine.
and maybe hit the enter key once in a while
No it isnt. If that is the level of accommodation you require then it's something you need to deal with. How would you suggest strangers interact? Purely transactionally or otherwise we dont speak to one another? Aside from access to jobs that require less social interaction, which i think seems a lot more reasonable than everyone changing their behavior seems a lot more practical, im really not sure what action yku would like to see.
by not fucking asking questions they don't care about the answer to. it's all well and good if you are genuine but you're doing that in a sea of disingenuous custom and that problem needs to go away.
How do you know they don't care about the answer? I bet quite a few do. You gotta adjust the level of detail to how well you know someone, they arent looking for a whole conversation, you both have shit to do. People are generally nicer than you're giving credit for i think. I have this rosy image cause I talk to a lot of strangers and most are delighted to have a quick chat
I would disagree. People generally do want to know how others are feeling and these conversations often start with some sort of proscribed ritual but can then turn into either conversations or repeated short interactions can possibly build up a rapport. At the very least, it doesn't hurt to be polite.
We must at least acknowledge each other as human. Walking through the world in our own little bubbles considering every other service worker in our life as nothing but a facilitator of our goods and services is awful and contributing to the alienation we're in today.
i'll take a "hey" and a nod over the bullshit. if people communicated autistically it would make the thing you and galaxybrain want to do easier because the signal would be clear and honest instead of drowning in the meaningless noise.
So I used to have an issue like this about the expression "bless you" when people sneeze. I'm solidly in the atheist camp, and the entire history of the phrase is nonsense anyway.
But I finally realized it doesn't matter. People started saying it because of the plague, but it's still courteous to say something when someone sneezes. It doesn't matter if you say, "bless you" "salud" "gesundheit" etc, just that you say something.
It's polite, that's it. I'm not forsaking my beliefs and converting to Christianity by saying "bless you" whether it bothers me slightly or not.
I dont say anything when people sneeze. I see that as etiquette as opposed to manners. Manners make sense where etiquette is pure social convention.
Saying please and thank you is manners cause it's an acknowledgement of the humanity of someone you are asking something of and these little gestures like saying 'how's it going?' As a greeting that acknowledges that you and the person you are speaking to are human and they need to be loved just lice everybody else does.
Etiquette is not being allowed to have your elbows on the table or needing to acknowledge when someone sneezes. I can understand someone being upset at someone for never using please and thank you. I had a roommate that didnt get the difference between asking and telling and that makes you seem like an asshole. I dont think anyone is gonna mind not being blessed after sneezing and if someone did, I would find it unreasonable.
I get what you're saying in general, but I do think there are some social niceties that are just a pointless ritual most likely invented by French Nobility. I dont think asking someone casually how their day is going and expecting a response measured to how well you know each other is bad, that falls under manners. Shit like not being allowed to wear a hat indoors and things along those lines, most of which evolved from intentional class signifiers are silly and bad.
my entire contention is that the polite convention is bad actually.
That’s literally how it works in many non-American cultures, yes. Seems extremely weird how pushy you’re being about this.
Literally what you’re trying to do, kind of invalidates your entire argument
That’s great, happy for you and them.
How many others have you gotten fired for trying?
Virtually nobody outside of weird ass Krauts and Nordics act like this. If anything, your average person is far chattier to strangers than your average Burgerlander. In most countries, you can get away discussing (and arguing) politics with random strangers while you can't even discuss politics with acquaintances in the US. Taxi uncs are a thing throughout the world. They're anything but quiet.
But then again, that's the price Western European societies and their settler-colonial spawns pay for being the geographical origin of capitalism. It turns their society into a crowd of completely atomized individuals that can't even communicate with each other who start malding whether someone gives them a simple greeting, a social custom that has existed in every single human society throughout history and honestly even in every single nonhuman society.
I may not be a world-weary traveler, but I have spent time in different cultures and they have been more cordial and more interactive with each other across the store counter than the "serve me now robot" mentality of USians. The only times I have seen the "don't exchange greetings" mindset in other cultures are when it's explicitly across the class divide, where the bourgsies wouldn't deign to speak with the lowly proles serving them.
No, it's literally what Le_Wokisme and apparently you are trying to do. The default social behavior is to recognize that the person serving you is human and the common way to do that is to greet them in some way, usually by asking them about the state of their being (which is by the way common across many non-western non-global north cultures). There is room for behaving differently depending on particular circumstances. If someone behind the counter is clearly having a bad day and their body language is clear they don't want to talk, then maybe an understanding sad-smile and a nod will suffice. But insisting that we're better off or that it's more respectful to not to say anything in recognition of the human interaction you're having is absurd. I say this as an introvert with social phobias who had/has to work retail and service. It's still a thousand times more degrading to be treated as if I were a vending machine or as if I'm not even there than it is to be greeted in passing even when I don't feel like making small talk.
Amazing what kind of positive things can come out of basic human social interactions.
Am I actually reading this on hexbear? Someone is making the argument that it's wrong to attempt to let people know what their options are for unionizing because of the potential their bosses might find out and retaliate? I guess that's it, we better throw in the towel, any attempt at unionizing is a wash, now that the capitalist class might do some shit to punish it. ~~Also, @GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net made it clear they were talking about being on the service employee side of the counter - they are talking about telling their customers about their union organizers and being successful,~~ not handing out strike fliers to a worker while they're working ffs.
My advice to anyone still reading this thread is to do what you think is right for that particular circumstance with that particular service person. Obviously I can't speak for all neurodivergent people who work retail because at least one in this thread doesn't want to be greeted. But speaking for myself and the coworkers and friends I've known who have expressed their sentiments with me, many if not most of us appreciate being greeted and asked how we're doing, not ignored.
If i made that clear I was bad at writing, I feel you represented my case well but I was totally the customer. I didnt talk radical shit while they were behind the counter or anything. Just after years of friendly chit chat while getting groceries or whatever, I would get to know people and then I'd often catch them on breaks, usually the people I got along with were also work friends amongst themselves, so we could talk more freely in those times. After that I just give em email addresses for my friends on the labor board and for the local IWW chapter to use as resources with issues at work. After a bit of that, it handles itself. This is a process that takes years. It wasn't like, a plan or anything, I just have the mindset that I should be friends with the workers in places I shop all the time.
In what universe is conceding the class war ever going to help us? The bourgeois might fight back so we shouldn't do anything?
Thomas Sankara:
For the record I havent gotten anyone fired cause this wasnt a strategy to spread radical theory and unionize places i dont work. I just figure if im going to see the same people at the stores I go to often then it makes sense to be friends on at least a casual basis.
Anywhere I go frequently im on first name basis with most of the staff. After a year or so of casual chit chat with people, a lot of the ones who like I vibe with most were also friends with each other and id run into them on their smoke breaks where we could be more open. All I did was hook em up with the emails of my friends on the labor board and my friends in the IWW. This wasn't some mission, I was more pointing out that having a rapport with the person behind the counter is praxis, but you should do it anyway. Adjust for frequency of visits and how busy they are, dont hold up the line or be a bad customer cause you blather at them when they have shit to do. But I care DEEPLY about the conditions of those who provide me with goods and services, and the only way to learn about that in a useful way is to talk to your fellow workers, they are most often found at work.
None, because i'm smart. Only really get into radical stuff when you spot people on break, who i have already established a rapport with by asking about their day and continuing the conversation as we do the checkout thing.
For the rest, other people have already represented my case pretty well and I dont feel like entertaining this any further.