I have two sons who both work in different fast food restaurants. One works for the world's largest chain. The other works for a more upscale chain. Contrary to what many people seem to think, fast food chain employees actually have brains and are able to size up and judge their customers, too. And some people are dicks.
First, my son who works for the most successful fast food chain in the world has no complaints about his customers. His customer base is made up of people living in subsidized housing, from the homeless shelter across the street, day laborers, construction workers, taxi drivers, and locals from the recently gentrified areas (dinks with dogs). His customers behave normally and are friendly.
My other son, however, has a more upscale clientele; business people, upper-middle income, tourists, and so forth. Imagine a busy street in one of DC metro's more expensive, touristy areas. He has the most rude, belligerent, cheap, lying, pathetic excuses for customers. Well-dressed women mock the foreign worker for not being able to speak English well. Well-dressed men try to finagle extra meat for no extra cost, even going so far as to threaten my son with being fired if he doesn't give them the extra food at no cost.
Wow, threatening teenagers and recent immigrants while at the same time demanding more for less. Just who do they think take minimum wage jobs? You want more for less? Stop yelling at the teenagers and immigrants willing to serve your ugly mug for low pay and hard work. Morons.
My son has been yelled at, used as a ruse for free food, lied about, threatened, and cheated out of money by apparently well-off individuals. He has stories about middle aged women, with every appearance of being solidly in the middle classes somewhere, screeching and demanding free food for things completely out of his control. Something goes slightly wrong, we're not talking cancer here, and some people lash out at the weakest person in the vicinity. It's disgusting.
Whatever happened to self control? Or of empathy? I think these oddly mean people with their shallow material wealth haven't ever had to really work. They must have gone from coddled child to spoiled teen to privileged adult without ever having to see the world from the other side of the counter.
We live in a wealthy area in the DC metro area. We saved to live here. We worked minimum wage jobs to finally work our way up to a little wealth ourselves. And I have never lived anywhere with people so shrieky and ready to take offense. Just today I saw a woman in an expensive mini-van lean out her window and screech at a family of non-English speakers who walked against the light.
Yes, a crime against humanity deserving the most hateful of condemnation. But what this ugly woman didn't see was that this family was encouraged across the street by the lead car who thought he was doing a nice thing for this small group of tourists who took the waving forward as a request to walk. So, some idiot with a life far too important to be patient with foreigners crossing against the light let the world know how it made her feel -- ugly and mean. As if we don't have real problems to scream at. Pathetic.
She probably has a nice family, lives in a nice home, gets her nails done, but she has to publicly curse out a bunch of tourists who made her wait maybe 15 seconds. It was a disgusting scene, and I pity her. If she could have seen the rage on her face...over a trifle.
I don't know. My sons are getting an education far beyond anything they can learn in school. They're learning about people and character. People who break down because they're out of pulled pork are not the kind of people one wants to emulate. I tell them to learn from the losers and copy the good ones. Because there are good customers. Sometimes, a restaraunt runs out of avocado. Adjust. It's not the end of the world.
The End of the World is the end of the world. We all soon enough run out of time. Let's not think waiting an extra 15 seconds is that time and treat other people poorly. It's bad character, embarrassing, immoral, and will never lead to anything other than your eventual humiliation in front of people who work harder than you. Have some character and use that time to think of something nice to do for someone else. You are not all that. Ask the women who come in to clean your house. Ask your server. He's watching you, too.
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