gobear:
No. Shame on you for thinking I was serious. I find talking on the phone during a face to face interaction to be rude, and this was simply an absurd illustration based on gex gex’s unrepentant attitude when several people pointed this out.
If you want a more serious example, try this one on: In my position I occasionally give lectures, and I often provide this service to my company’s customers. Just because I’m the vendor in this setting does not give the attendees the right to talk on the phone instead of giving me their attention, though much to my chagrin this occasionally happens. It would be quite easy for someone to quietly leave the room (or step out of the checkout line, as the case may be) and the fact that they do not indicates a definite lack of manners. I also find it just a tad snotty to assume that because one person in these exchanges is serving the other that some altered standard of conduct now applies – which is precisely what gex gex would have us believe.
Do you not state yourself that people should be treated with “grace and kindness”? Though your referral to them as “inferiors” in that same statement brings back visions of Mel Brooks as the king of France using peasants for target practice. Do you really look upon another person and say to yourself, “this person is beneath me?”
I have long held the theory that something subtle happens to your mind when you pass the 4000 Post Threshold. Kind of like that one episode of Voyager where Tom Paris goes warp 10 and becomes a lizard, only with posting ridiculous crap and storming off the boards in a huff instead of mating with Janeway.
Next time someone threatens not to rent there anymore because they don’t think they should have to pay late fees or something like that, take a page from Gord and say something like “Suits me just fine. Door’s that way.”
You’re saying a person’s employment can render him so inferior to others that others are well within their rights to completely ignore that person’s existence even while that person is trying to help them. You’re saying that people (not all, but some, PEOPLE) exist only to serve you. I thought that sort of mindset went out in the '30s.
I’m not saying that you must venerate the retail employee, but you should at least treat him or her with a modicum of respect. One’s job does not make one a fucking pack animal.
Pshaw. To pretend that breeding and class don’t matter in social relationships is fantasy. Do you think that the people you see on “Cops” or “Jerry Springer” are your social equals?
I never said that, so don’t put words in my mouth. I am vehemently against rudeness to retail people, but at the same time, I don’t really want to interact–I want them to do their job. Since I spent a good chunk of years behind the counter, working my ass off, I feel I know what I’m talking about. I didn’t spend my time in retail constantly trying to prove “I’m as good as you”; I did my job and worked hard.
Being in retai makes noone inferior–if you bothered to read what I posted, you’d see that I said all work is honorable.
What makes people inferior is stupidity; laziness; shiftlessness; selfishness;and refusal to better oneself.
Jesus Tapdancing Christ, Gobear, what fucking planet do you live on? Do you think you’re in Victorian England? Your Jerry springer example is asinine. Are you saying that some college kid trying to earn an honest buck at a video store is in the same category as a guy on the “I like to bugger my grammaw” episode of the Springer show? This is America Gobear. We don’t HAVE social classes. We are (supposedly) an egalitarian society. Check the Declaration of independence, “…all men are created equal.” And what do you mean by people “bettering” themselves? Grabbing for a buck? That’s it? Anyone who makes less money than you is “inferior?” What do you do for a living that makes you so damn important and “superior?”
Why don’t you wake up? Jiminy, we may not have an traditional aristocracy in the US, but if you think we don’t have social classes, you’re an unobservant moron. Or do you think the generations of sociologists who talk about the dwindling of the middle clas or the formation of a permanent underclass are just making it all up? All men may be created equal and have equal civil rights, but that does not mean we are an egalitarian society. In stead of an aristocracy of birth, we have an aristocracy of money–the more money you have, the more influence you have. When was the last time a poor man was elected president? How many poor people are in Congress?
But that does not apply to the relationship between retail clerk and customer. That is more comparable to the relationship between employer and suboordinate. All work relationships are hierarchical; you are not your boss’s equal at work. The boss tells you what to do, not the other way around. Similarly, the relationship between a retail clerk and a customer is subordinate to superior. The customer is the boss–if the clerk gfucks up, the customer can get the clerk reprimanded. The reverse does not usually happen unless the customer is a truly egregious asshole.
No, that’s not what I said. To repeat, all work is honorable as long as it is done well. The amount of money one makes has nothing to do with one’s worth as an individual., but it has much to do with how one is regarded by others. One of the truths you need to learn, my inexperienced friend, is that life is a hierarchy. Everybody is somebody’s superior or inferior by rank, wealth, tenure, seniority, education, or some other status indicator.
On reflection, It think I can come up witrh at least 3 kinds of hierarchy"
I:Intrinsic. The worth of person being dependent on his or her moral character. In that sense, a hardworking, virtuous, and moral retail clerk is superior to her mean, petty, despicable customer.
II: Organizational. The retail clerk is subordinate to his supervisor, who, in turn, is subordinate to his district manager.
III: Societal Here we hav ethe values of the gretaer society determine a person’s rank. So, say, a public school teacher, who works a hard, thankless, yet vitally important job is outranked by a spoiled, immature, and lazy movie star. The teacher’s job is by far more useful to society, but the movie star gets the adulation and the money.
We do not live in an egalitarian society; no such society can exist.
[hijack]Elitist fucking snob jerk.
Oooo! All inferior beings must bow to the ineffable GOBEAR! Be happy that his Highness is willing to grace you mere mortals with his very presence! For he is your Superior! Bow you unworthy dogs! BOW! He has shown you the wonder of the social divides! He has cut the wheat from the Chaff, and you are CHAFF! Get down on your knees and kiss the sainted ground he trods in hopes that some of his superiority might somehow (although unlikely) infect your worthless beings![/hijack]
Personally, I never set foot in a video store, other than to buy movies. If you wait a bit, most films drop in price to where buying them is almost as cheap as renting, and you don’t have to return them.
That’s pretty good, ParticleWill. I may have to hire you as my official clearer of the way once I become emperor.
And yeah, I do have strong opinions on what is worthy and unworthy.
Akira Kurosawa was a better director than Michael Bay.
Victory Hop Devil Pale Ale tastes better than Budweiser.
Stephen Sondheim is a better composer than Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Thomas Hardy is a better novelist than John Grisham.
Verdi’s operas are deeper and more profound than Puccini’s (although ol’ Giacomo was pretty damn good)
First Class is a better seat than Coach.
A Porterhouse steak, grilled medium with sauteed onions tastes better than a hamburger.
So to the general charge of elitism, I plead guilty.
Mind you, none of this has anything to do with the hierachical nature of life, especially as in the customer-video clerk relationship. The customer is the boss, and as such needs to be satisfied more than the clerk’s feelings of equality need to be soothed.
I think that the popular resistance of accpeting that they subordinate positions in a democratic society merits a GD thread.
