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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.
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.