Seriously.
These days, many things divide us — the election, COVID-19, vaccines and passports, LNG, logging, and development.
I can respect the perspective of almost anyone on any side of these issues, but folks who insult, yell or ignore grocery store clerks, wait staff, baristas, fast food servers, nail techs and the like — make no sense to me.
I was in a fast-food drive-thru before work the other day, and some arse was aggressively honking in the lineup because it wasn’t moving fast enough for him.
Dude, how is that helping?
I have also witnessed Squamish folks yell at retail clerks over the provincially-mandated mask policy.
The worker on the receiving end of this abuse is likely paid barely enough to support herself in this overpriced town.
Why treat people this way? Because you can, right? You have the power in our capitalist culture that espouses: “the customer is always right.”
But wrong.
You are just a jerk.
These same bullies are likely not rude to those who have power over them — the CEO they are trying to impress or the potential client they want to close a deal.
It is entitled privilege at its worst.
For the service worker — I have been a waitress, fast food worker, grocery, clothing, shoe and video store clerk — the feeling of being publicly humiliated, berated and insulted never leaves you.
No joke.
The academic article Customer abuse to service workers: an analysis of its social creation within the service economy, published in SAGE Journals states:
“It is very hard for service workers not to take abuse personally. In service jobs, heavy with emotional labour, service workers are expected to bring their emotional personalities to the job. Hence, when customers abuse them, it becomes very difficult for the workers to distance themselves from this abuse.”
Further, the study states that once workers expect to be abused by customers, they may proactively treat customers generally with less civility.
That isn’t going to bode well in a tourist-dependant town now is it?
One of the study’s conclusions is that those in power at these establishments have to step up and support their employees to the point the culture shifts from one where the worker has to take all crap to one where such abuse is condemned.
I vote for quirky signs that read something like: “If your treatment of our staff sucks, so will your meal.”
I am half-joking, but something has to shift.
The study quotes a bus driver who had been the target of continued abuse.
“Management do nothing. And it’s about time that somebody got off their high horse and said enough’s enough. And I think it should happen now.”
Amen.
