Minimum-Wage Jobs and Public Perception...

[TelegramSam]

Or as I like to call it, "The Instant-Jerkoff Phenomenon".

So if you work at a fast-food place, most people take one look at you and assume you're of subnormal intelligence. And then they mumble at you or don't bother to say what they actually want and get extremely angry at the fact that you don't seem able to read their mind? I mean, some of them seem to think you just murdered their firstborn if you put one too many pickles on their sandwich.

Three days in at the sandwich shop down the street and I'm starting to remember why I hated working at the burger drive-in so much during high school.

To quote Randall of "Clerks" - "You know, this job would be great if it weren't for the customers."

What is it about walking into a fast food place that turns some otherwise relatively normal people into complete raving jack***es?



Anyway, be nice to the clerks in the shops, they're human beings too you know.

[Flyingcursor]

I've worked for a living so I'm usually pretty nice. The only time I got downright hostile was when a manager at a fast food joint was yelling at an employee right in front of the customers. I lowered da boom on him. Several other customers and I left without ordering anything and I told the young, sobbing, girl who'd just been accosted she ought to quit right then and there. I don't know if she did or not.

[anniemcu]

... What is it about walking into a fast food place that turns some otherwise relatively normal people into complete raving jack***es?

They are usually members of the human race, known for its tendancy to extremes of both brilliance and stupidity... perhaps an overabundance of the latter.

Too bad our current incarnation of "civilization" tends to celebrate and revere the *ssh*le side.

... Anyway, be nice to the clerks in the shops, they're human beings too you know.

Absolutely! For other reasons too... mostly, they are just people trying to make a living, but some are equally capable of *ssh*liness ... suffice it to say... don't p*ss off he/she who handles your food!

[Monster]

I try to be nice to everyone I meet, starting off with the assumption that they will return the favor. I'm especially nice to food workers, since I don't want them to do unhealthy things to my meal!

If I go into a restaurant or fast food joint and things just look bad, the employees look unhappy, or things are terribly unorganized I will turn tail and leave. No biggie there are tons of other places to go.

If things aren't running smoothly at a restaurant, I tend to think that the management is somehow negligent, not the worker at the bottom of the ranks.

[susnfx]

Right after I graduated from high school, I worked for two months as a waitress. I knew at the end of the first week that I never wanted another job where I had to deal with The Public. I don't like them. Taking all their crap while attempting to keep a smile on my face was more than I could handle.

One night after closing time, as I was mopping floors and the owner was turning everything off in the kitchen, a group of people from a movie company pounded on the door and wanted steak dinners. I could see the dollar signs in the owner's eyes, and sure enough he fired up the grill and I had to stay and wait on them. I was ticked. I pushed their food at them as fast I could and served their coffee before they wanted it. When they finally asked for coffee at the end of the meal, I simply handed back the original coffee I'd poured out--now cold. They left me a $5 tip - the largest tip I ever got (this was back in the days of 25 and 50 cent tips). Did I feel guilty? No. Quitting to have surgery on my knee was a piece of cake to dealing with demands of The Public.

You have my sympathy, Sam. (I believe my pay was $2.25/hr. plus tips)

Susan

[Jeferson]

I try to be nice to everyone I meet, starting off with the assumption that they will return the favor.

For a lot of people, this is root of the issue. Some folks take a completely different approach and treat any employees like dirt, whether they're low-paid workers in restaurants or higher paid plumbers and electricians. "You're working for me, the customer, and I'm gonna boss you around." In my job, I have long-tem contact with people, and it's a pleasure to observe some people improve their attitude over time as they come to know and appreciate me. Still, there's the occasional bossy person out there who will never be satisfied...I just write them off and count myself thankful I'm not married to them. If you see high numbers of these people on a short term basis, it must be tough.

Jef

[emmline]

What is it about walking into a fast food place that turns some otherwise relatively normal people into complete raving jack***es?

I would argue that it isn't walking into a fast food place that did it, but rather that such people are inclined to out their inner cretin in many situations, such as when you must pull into a lane of traffic and slow them ever-so-slightly because it was your only chance.
I just think there is a rather high proportion of humans who have really bad manners, even if they're personable at times.

[chas]

The way I see it, it's just as easy to be nice and polite as it is to be cross and impolite. I don't think people are nasty because they think you're "of subnormal intelligence" -- even if someone IS of sub-normal intelligence, that's no excuse to be impolite. Please and thank you should be part of any exchange between the server and customer. And both the server and customer should be saying them. People are nasty because they're nasty.

[Jack]

I'm only "twenty something" but I've had around a dozen jobs and every one of them has been of the "menial, back-breaking" type and I agree with your every word. However, I take the occasion of an irate customer to try to find Christ in them. It's interesting, if nothing else.

[missy]

5 summers of my life were spent working at an amusement park (in merchandise) and a couple of winters at a store similar to Target (running the cash register). I always tried to be pleasant to everyone, and try now to be so to those that "wait" on me.
However, it does sometimes get to be too much on both sides of the fence. You can only answer "Where the restroom?" (when there are maps and signs all over the park) so many times before it gets to you. And you can only take getting the wrong order so many times before you snap.
I remember one particular hot, long day at the park. Someone came up and asked me if you could see the fireworks from the parking lot. I answered yes. He asked again if I was SURE you could. I answered yes. He told me he was going to really be mad if he went out to his car and he could see the fireworks. I said, "don't worry, you'll be able to". He continued for several more minutes. Finally, I could take it anymore and said "Sir - I live 3 miles from here and I can see the fireworks from my back yard and our dog barks every night at 10pm. Trust me - YOU CAN SEE THE FIREWORKS FROM THE PARKING LOT!!!".

[Nanohedron]

I don't think people are nasty because they think you're "of subnormal intelligence" --

Agreed. I think they're probably already nasty by habit, and use the dichotomy of roles as a convenience for expressing it. When I was a waiter, I witnessed an interchange between a customer and her server who was in college at the time. The customer, by way of making small talk, inquired after the server, and upon learning that she was a student with definite goals, became snide and suggested (in different words, but the meaning was the same) that as her server had descended to a waiter's lot she would do well to consider that her time in school was a vanity, a lost hope and a waste, and she should stop fooling herself about her likely future. I was astounded at that on a variety of levels.

I like Cran's take on dealing with such things.

[Monster]

I don't think people are nasty because they think you're "of subnormal intelligence" --

Agreed. I think they're probably already nasty by habit, and use the dichotomy of roles as a convenience for expressing it. When I was a waiter, I witnessed an interchange between a customer and her server who was in college at the time. The customer, by way of making small talk, inquired after the server, and upon learning that she was a student with definite goals, became snide and suggested (in different words, but the meaning was the same) that as her server had descended to a waiter's lot she would do well to consider that her time in school was a vanity, a lost hope and a waste, and she should stop fooling herself about her likely future. I was astounded at that on a variety of levels.

I like Cran's take on dealing with such things.

What a crank this lady was!! I bet she'd be a pleasure to be married to!

[Nanohedron]

I don't think people are nasty because they think you're "of subnormal intelligence" --

Agreed. I think they're probably already nasty by habit, and use the dichotomy of roles as a convenience for expressing it. When I was a waiter, I witnessed an interchange between a customer and her server who was in college at the time. The customer, by way of making small talk, inquired after the server, and upon learning that she was a student with definite goals, became snide and suggested (in different words, but the meaning was the same) that as her server had descended to a waiter's lot she would do well to consider that her time in school was a vanity, a lost hope and a waste, and she should stop fooling herself about her likely future. I was astounded at that on a variety of levels.

I like Cran's take on dealing with such things.

What a crank this lady was!! I bet she'd be a pleasure to be married to!

That's not the only time I've seen the same basic scene play out, either. It's just the example that always comes to mind. Some people are just horrible to others.

[anniemcu]

I would say that *everyone* should be required to serve time as wait-person for ... say, a month... that would straighten out a few, let me tell ya!

[susnfx]

Although I'm the sole medical transcriptionist for six physicians, I occasionally help out with other duties at our clinics. About six months ago I was filling in at the front desk for someone at one of our clinics when a woman came in to be seen for something-or-other. She was a new patient and unbelievably rude to me. She looked over the privacy policy every doctor must now have patients sign and started asking me idiotic questions such as "Will you give my records to my uncle?" I said, "No." She said, "Your paper doesn't say that." I replied that it states that we must have her permission to give her records to anyone at all. She said, "It says here you have a longer version of this paper. I want to see that." Being unfamiliar with that particular office, I couldn't find it but called and asked to have it faxed from our main office--this made her angry too, in spite of the fact that I apologized for the delay. By the time she was taken back to an exam room, I could have socked her right on the nose.

A week or so ago I happened to be filling in again in that office when a woman came in and when I asked to see her insurance card, went into a tirade about why I needed it and how stupid it was since we already had a copy of it on file. Suddenly it came to me: it was the same woman back for a checkup.

I spoke to the doctor after she left and he told me she'd been as nice as pie to him and to the nurses--not a rude word out of her. It was just the person at the front desk, the one she apparently considered beneath her, who received the trash treatment.

Susan