The Hired Help, eh?
"There's a word for those people...it's called 'The Hired Help'"
...This is a sentence I have heard uttered by more than one elderly well-to-do great-aunt or another during my time on this planet. While at face-value this statement could even be construed as having racial undertones, it is more the socio-economic references that makes my blood boil...
What is it about our culture that makes it accepted practice to demean and diminish those who are paid less than we are? Usually the sentence at the top of this blog has been uttered in reference to a cashier at some retail estabilishment, someone most likely making less than 10 dollars an hour, someone who apparently did not sufficiently lick the individual's bunghole enough in order to recieve human consideration.
So here I am, someone who makes a good living, someone who owns a home, and I would never in a million years think to treat a cashire or a waiter/waitress, or any other person working a job as if they are lesser than I am. Maybe it's because I once was one of those "lowly" retail workers who was underpaid and treated like pond-scum. Why is it that people think that someone who is so horribly underpaid, with no benefits, would honestly be inspired by your nasty attitude and unfounded sense of entitlement to do anything more than the bare minimum required of them? Why should a cashire, or a waiter, or clerk of any type give a damn about what YOU the fleeting consumer think about them?
So back to my parenting philosophy:
I plan to raise my child to be a polite consumer and a good tipper who appreciates the fact that the person who is ringing them up at a register or serving them a meal at a restaurant is doing so without reasonable compensation. That one should only expect good service when they are deserving of good service. That "please" and "thank you" are currency that can be used to purchase good will and respect from others. I plan to teach my child that no person was put on this earth to serve them, that it is a privledge to live in a country where one can afford to pay someone to serve them dinner and clean their plates and refill their beverages...that it's a priveledge to live in a country where someone will place your groceries neatly in a brown paper bag for you, or ask you if "you've found everything you are looking for".
I recently heard a story about a 4th grader who was held back after class by her teacher after she was seriously missbehaving and she told her teacher that she didn't need to listen to him because her father made at least 5 times as much money as he did. Now you know damn well that 9 year old did not come up with that comment on her own, she most defintely heard this from her father in passing...
...This is the culture we live in...where our value is determined by our paycheck and our children are taught that respect is given based on wallet size and nothing else...where our children are taught that others have been placed on this earth to serve them and that those people are somehow a lower form of human. This is something we are all guilty of in one way or another, this is something we should all be working to eliminate from our culture...
I will never forgive myself for not responding to the relative who uttered the above sentence in exactly this manner:
"it must feel nice to tell that cashire off, to call her manager in an attempt to get her fired from their 6 dollar an hour job because she didn't bag your groceries in quite the manner that you wanted, they must not have been paying enough to be able to hire one of those truly well-trained cashires that know that bread and yogurt can't possibly go in the same bag...don't worry, you showed her...she got fired and had to go home to her kids and tell them that they have to eat something out of a can again tonight because she lost her job and can't afford to bring home anything real to eat...so now her kids will go to bed hungry, and will have to get up in the morning and go to school without adequate nutrition and without enough sleep because they stayed up all night worrying about where mommy is going to get enough money to pay the rent....rent for a too-small apartment in a crappy city. Now her kids will go to a crappy school in a crappy city and do poorly because instead of focusing on learning their minds will be focused on all of their problems at home instead...and maybe those kids will drop out of school...and in a few years you can treat them like crap in a restaurant as they serve you a sandwich with too much mayonnaise on it...and maybe you can get them fired for no good reason too...and start the whole cycle over again...there's a word for "those" people, right? What was it again? Oh, yeah...The Hired Help. The hired help who you might rely upon to wipe your self-righteous ass some day when your rotting in a nursing home...lets hope they help themselves by shitting in your jello and hiding your pain meds you inhumane piece of shit.
...This is a sentence I have heard uttered by more than one elderly well-to-do great-aunt or another during my time on this planet. While at face-value this statement could even be construed as having racial undertones, it is more the socio-economic references that makes my blood boil...
What is it about our culture that makes it accepted practice to demean and diminish those who are paid less than we are? Usually the sentence at the top of this blog has been uttered in reference to a cashier at some retail estabilishment, someone most likely making less than 10 dollars an hour, someone who apparently did not sufficiently lick the individual's bunghole enough in order to recieve human consideration.
So here I am, someone who makes a good living, someone who owns a home, and I would never in a million years think to treat a cashire or a waiter/waitress, or any other person working a job as if they are lesser than I am. Maybe it's because I once was one of those "lowly" retail workers who was underpaid and treated like pond-scum. Why is it that people think that someone who is so horribly underpaid, with no benefits, would honestly be inspired by your nasty attitude and unfounded sense of entitlement to do anything more than the bare minimum required of them? Why should a cashire, or a waiter, or clerk of any type give a damn about what YOU the fleeting consumer think about them?
So back to my parenting philosophy:
I plan to raise my child to be a polite consumer and a good tipper who appreciates the fact that the person who is ringing them up at a register or serving them a meal at a restaurant is doing so without reasonable compensation. That one should only expect good service when they are deserving of good service. That "please" and "thank you" are currency that can be used to purchase good will and respect from others. I plan to teach my child that no person was put on this earth to serve them, that it is a privledge to live in a country where one can afford to pay someone to serve them dinner and clean their plates and refill their beverages...that it's a priveledge to live in a country where someone will place your groceries neatly in a brown paper bag for you, or ask you if "you've found everything you are looking for".
I recently heard a story about a 4th grader who was held back after class by her teacher after she was seriously missbehaving and she told her teacher that she didn't need to listen to him because her father made at least 5 times as much money as he did. Now you know damn well that 9 year old did not come up with that comment on her own, she most defintely heard this from her father in passing...
...This is the culture we live in...where our value is determined by our paycheck and our children are taught that respect is given based on wallet size and nothing else...where our children are taught that others have been placed on this earth to serve them and that those people are somehow a lower form of human. This is something we are all guilty of in one way or another, this is something we should all be working to eliminate from our culture...
I will never forgive myself for not responding to the relative who uttered the above sentence in exactly this manner:
"it must feel nice to tell that cashire off, to call her manager in an attempt to get her fired from their 6 dollar an hour job because she didn't bag your groceries in quite the manner that you wanted, they must not have been paying enough to be able to hire one of those truly well-trained cashires that know that bread and yogurt can't possibly go in the same bag...don't worry, you showed her...she got fired and had to go home to her kids and tell them that they have to eat something out of a can again tonight because she lost her job and can't afford to bring home anything real to eat...so now her kids will go to bed hungry, and will have to get up in the morning and go to school without adequate nutrition and without enough sleep because they stayed up all night worrying about where mommy is going to get enough money to pay the rent....rent for a too-small apartment in a crappy city. Now her kids will go to a crappy school in a crappy city and do poorly because instead of focusing on learning their minds will be focused on all of their problems at home instead...and maybe those kids will drop out of school...and in a few years you can treat them like crap in a restaurant as they serve you a sandwich with too much mayonnaise on it...and maybe you can get them fired for no good reason too...and start the whole cycle over again...there's a word for "those" people, right? What was it again? Oh, yeah...The Hired Help. The hired help who you might rely upon to wipe your self-righteous ass some day when your rotting in a nursing home...lets hope they help themselves by shitting in your jello and hiding your pain meds you inhumane piece of shit.
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TheJoeD on
Well here's my take.
If I see someone busting their ass, I'm not going to demean their career, but I think the bias with me, as with a lot of people is that the lower paying jobs don't always have the most ambitious people working for them.
My example of choice: Dunkin Donuts. I don't generally blow my top if a 16 year old kid screws up my order, but god damn if a 40 year old does. It says to me "this person is incompetent, and probably always has been." I don't really have the opportunity to get to know my local bagel handler, so that's the *assumption* that's made, and I'm definitely not alone.
I think anyone who has ever had an order messed up or whatever carries this bias on to their next outing.
If people were fired more often, I think it would be a good motivator to do better at their job, rather than "you made a mistake, let's have a team meeting."
If I see someone busting their ass, I'm not going to demean their career, but I think the bias with me, as with a lot of people is that the lower paying jobs don't always have the most ambitious people working for them.
My example of choice: Dunkin Donuts. I don't generally blow my top if a 16 year old kid screws up my order, but god damn if a 40 year old does. It says to me "this person is incompetent, and probably always has been." I don't really have the opportunity to get to know my local bagel handler, so that's the *assumption* that's made, and I'm definitely not alone.
I think anyone who has ever had an order messed up or whatever carries this bias on to their next outing.
If people were fired more often, I think it would be a good motivator to do better at their job, rather than "you made a mistake, let's have a team meeting."
