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submitted 8 months ago by bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 254 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

[-] EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone 60 points 8 months ago

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.

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[-] Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml 38 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Man, around here restaurants are also closed on Sunday AND Monday...

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[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 26 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] porcariasagrada@slrpnk.net 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

when education isn't liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor.

t. Paulo Freire

[-] antrosapien@lemmy.ml 10 points 8 months ago

The chain of screaming

[-] MNByChoice@midwest.social 14 points 8 months ago

A good number of people assume retail workers choose to be there and are getting overtime.

Clearly untrue for most.

[-] CazzoBuco@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago

You lost me entirely on the last point. That's pure propaganda, mate.

[-] Glytch@ttrpg.network 30 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] Maeve@kbin.social 7 points 8 months ago

Self loathing doesn’t respect socioeconomic class.

[-] TurboDiesel@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

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[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

[-] CazzoBuco@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

[-] Maeve@kbin.social 12 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 10 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] voidf1sh@lemm.ee 9 points 8 months ago

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

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[-] bearwithastick@feddit.ch 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

[-] e8d79@feddit.de 71 points 8 months ago

Oh no, not a single day in the year where some shops have closed! If they visited my country they would probably have an aneurysm. Nothing is open on Sunday or public holidays. On Saturday most shops close at 18:00 many close much sooner. It depends for the rest of the week but you can not be open after 21:00.

[-] DillyDaily@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

Even in my own country, Australia, where our retail culture is quickly copying the US, customers can be so entitled. People get mad about reduced hours on public holidays.

But just 50-60 years ago, most stores were closed on Sunday and only open for a few hours on Saturday's. They'd be closed for the entire day on public holidays. The people I often see getting angry at shops for closing at 10pm instead of 12am on Christmas day are usually old enough to remember the "good old days" (as they themselves call it)

The same entitled people will complain about self serve checkouts, robot janitors and AI stock management systems. They complain that there aren't enough human staff, But then they go and treat the few humans there are with more cruelty, abuse and disrespect than they'd ever consider using when talking to Siri. Do you want humans working here or not or not? How about you treat them like the human beings they are.

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 60 points 8 months ago

Did Elon Musk make the top image? Fuck any store in the US that was open Thursday or had crazy long hours Friday, and DOUBLE fuck you if you went to one.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 56 points 8 months ago

Fellow Americans, remember: if you eat out for your Thanksgiving meal, leave a fat tip for your wait staff who is working on Thanksgiving. Minimum 25%.

[-] Shayeta@feddit.de 58 points 8 months ago

Naw man, 0% that shit.

I'm not playing this "oooh our food is cheap" bullshit game only to find out that is because the wait staff is underpaid. I came here to eat, not do math in my head while looking over the menu, INCREASE THE DAMN PRICES. I don't give a shit if it ends up costing MORE than tipping as long as the cost is fucking upfront.

I'm not your employer, I'm not paying you. And if your employer can't keep the restaurant afloat without underpaying you then that bitch should SINK. I'M SICK AND TIRED OF THIS SHIT.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago

We’re all sick and tired of it. That doesn’t mean you have to fuck over the wait staff to make your point.

[-] electrogamerman@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

The customers are not fucking over the wait staff, the owners are.

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[-] GiveMemes@jlai.lu 15 points 8 months ago

Then you should attempt to convince other people in order to make change instead of being a dick to waitstaff.

Sorry you're justifiably angry. Doesn't give you a free pass to be a piece of shit tho

[-] myplacedk@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

Are you seriously saying that the customer who pays full price and no more is "a piece of shit", and not management who chooses to underpay the staff?

I'm not having any of that. I'd rather just not eat out. Enjoy no tip AND one less customer.

I'll pay extra when I get extra. I paid over 150% yesterday. I've given big tips for free services. People sometimes give my cash tip back assuming I accidentally gave them 10x my intention. But not when it's a simple transaction when I get what I ordered and I'm paying the advertised price.

[-] Jordan_U@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Yes, I am saying that "the customer who pays full price and no more is "a piece of shit".

"and not" ??

"management who underpays staff".

Both of those people would be peices of shit.

I don't really understand why you would expect anyone to think that only one of those could possibly be shit at the same time.

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[-] filoria@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 months ago

The only way to institute change in an industry is by changing the supply/demand dynamics. If servers are underpaid, there'll be less people willing to be servers (supply goes down) which will drive prices up. Every time you tip, you are intentionally interfering with the fair market for service labour.

The solution to the problem is not to grin and bear the status quo, but to convince other people to not tip. At least, according to typical economic theory.

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[-] SirQuackTheDuck@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

I've seen restaurants that add a per-person Christmas booking fee for dinner on 24-26 December. I'd assume it is for the wait staff, but the union conditions aren't really all that great for the service industry.

Country: NL

[-] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Working on holidays like christmas and new years in the netherlands means 150% hourly wage.

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[-] STUPIDVIPGUY@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Being an asshole doesn't change societal expectations you're just fucking over your server. If you want to protest tip culture then stop going to sit-down restaurants entirely.

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[-] HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 16 points 8 months ago

Exactly. While I normally eat at home with family, the last time I ate out, I left a 40% tip, because my waiter was a college student that could not afford to fly home, but still treated us absolutely awesome, and the math came out to about what she would have paid for a flight home at the time.

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[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's always ironic and super self aware wolf when a customer says they "feel bad" for you because you're working on Sunday, Christmas, etc, or working in the dead of night for 24/7 establishments.

Also, Catholics and many other Christian denominations literally believe that people who work on a Sunday go to hell for violating the Sabbath, yet after Sunday mass tons of them flood into restaurants, causing the cooks and wait staff to go to hell.

[-] Ambiorickx@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

Isn’t “Arbeitsnehmer” one who takes labor? I would think the worker gives his or her labor, and the industrialist takes it.

[-] Exusgu@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Here "arbeit" translates to "job" better than "labour". One provides the job, the other takes the job (and consequently does the labour).

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[-] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Arbeitnehmer (job taker) is employee, Arbeitgeber (job giver) is employer.

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[-] camelbeard@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

In Dutch we have werknemer and werkgever.

Werknemer takes work (person with a job)

Werkgever gives work (company hiring people)

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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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