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.
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.
Despite never really having any problem customers in my 14 or so years of working in food service, I'm right there with you. Between the stress of dealing with people day in and day out, working every holiday with no overtime or holiday pay, and being expected to do the work of 2 people and not take any vacation time because "the company can't afford to hire more people," I will never work retail/service again. People talk about dreaming that they're back in high school, I dream that I'm back working there. Even 3 years after I left the industry.
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.
You lost me entirely on the last point. That's pure propaganda, mate.
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.
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.
A good number of people assume retail workers choose to be there and are getting overtime.
Clearly untrue for most.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
Fuck that
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.
Isn’t “Arbeitsnehmer” one who takes labor? I would think the worker gives his or her labor, and the industrialist takes it.
Here "arbeit" translates to "job" better than "labour". One provides the job, the other takes the job (and consequently does the labour).
They're job providers, we need to give them all the tax breaks
In Dutch we have werknemer and werkgever.
Werknemer takes work (person with a job)
Werkgever gives work (company hiring people)
A lot of Americans' lives rely on going to a place to spend money or work for money.
The funny thing is that the Arbeitnehmerrechte will costs us den Wohlstand and the reason why we’re getting abgehängt in sectors like the automotive industry.
Hahaha suuure. I mean that's what the großaktionärs and their pathetic lobbyists tell you, so it has to be true, right? I mean, why would they possibly lie to you about something that makes them richer and all workers poorer?! The actual reasons why german wirtschaft suffers are not related in the slightest to Arbeitnehmerrechte. There are many reasons, here are just some of them:
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HUGE lack of staatliche Investitionen (that's the main difference to the wirtschaftlich successfull states in the world). This is something that piled up during the last decades actually, because the former regierungs were even worse in this regard that the current one, basically destroying whole industries that could have had a bright economic future in this country. Instead, the current FDP dullis that run our Regierung mostly gift 39Mrd. to Unternehmen (by lowering their Steuers) which mainly benefit said Großaktionärs (who don't spend the money so it's not in the Wirtschaftskreislauf at all) and only lead to approx 11 Mrd. of private investments by those Unternehmen. So it would have been much more productive to invest that money directly as Regierung.
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Dumb as fuck decisions by EZB to raise Zinsen through the roof (because they don't understand the difference between a temporary Energiepreis-Schock and Inflation), making private and public investments more expensive and thus hindering them.
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Low wages leading to low Kaufkraft in Mittelschicht, leading to very little Konsum, which in turn becomes a problem for local Wirtschaft.
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(Not a small point): External factors like china not buying as many cars from our zurückgebliebene Autoindustrie anymore (that completely fucked up by trying to milk their last century dampfmaschinen technology for ever, missing the anschluss)
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Who's Wohlstand? I've worked 40, 60, 80 and even 100-Hour weeks and at the time I've always had to live paycheck-to-paycheck because my Bosses would pay close to minimum wage (less than if gerechnet auf die Stundenzahl), invent breaks I didn't take to balance out any overtime I had or just not pay overtime in the first place (but still demand it).
Explain how my Wohlstand was diminished by having too many rights
Yeah actually it's the opposite
