# I'm not giving up my seat **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 16, 2013, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-not-giving-up-my-seat/647431 "2013-01-16T22:34:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 999
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2013, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-not-giving-up-my-seat/647431/999 "2013-01-21T20:41:22Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > I’m currently reading it and it’s an eye opener. I’d amend his conclusion. Most humans have adopted a retributive morality. We take it for granted that others will follow certain codes and punish them disproportionately when they fail to do so. I’d also be interested in further research about conservatism and ease of navigating the moral spectrum. Would that be that they comprehend fully Rawlian, Kantian or Utilitarian ethical arguments and discard them, or that they form heuristics by which they ignore ethical arguments with outcomes which dissatisfy them? Edit: Wait, no, Haidt is a joke. [Just remembered who he was](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt#Criticism). There’s fuck all equivalence between the two parties. > [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Could somebody explain to me how dyslexia leads to the mix up of “have” and “of”? I thought it had more to do with mixing up letters/numbers causing difficulty with reading and writing (and 'rithmetic) but I wasn’t aware of its effects on basic grammar. Well, the primary theory of dyslexia is that of the phonological deficit - dyslexics have a harder time reconstituting the phonemes that comprise words. Of particular note in correcting typographical errors would be the lower activation of the parietotemporal region and the occipitotemporal region, which would make it easier to miss typos for a dyslexic person. This would be amplified when the typos themselves are both correct words (so wouldn’t register on a spellchecker) and more or less homophones (depending on the accent). If the dyslexic person uses the heuristic of sounding out the words to determine their acceptability, the error is unlikely to register. > [@pancakes3](#): > > I have to keep asking every 5 pages, where on earth is all the vitriol coming from? This has really touched a nerve, and I can’t understand why for the life of me. I’m worried now that people will fly into an epileptic rage if I don’t mind my social niceties more carefully. I think it may be to do with the poisoning of the well with the term “entitled”, which carries considerable political second order signifiers. For instance, [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekd2HzI6Bfw)’s Santorum complaining about entitled children wanting food and healthcare. These issues are a matter of [framing](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM), something Republicans have historically been [very good at](http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm). As I mentioned above, humans tend to adopt retributive systems (no comment on the validity of such systems, I accept Hume’s Is/Ought distinction). Humans are incensed at the notion of exploitation - this informs both Marxist and Libertarian thought. In the former, the bourgeoisie are sustained at the expense of the proletariat, who by indoctrination and repression fail to throw off their masters. In the Libertarian, the unproductive exist at the mercy of the entrepreneurs while hindering their progress. The tyranny of the majority prevents the quashing of this group. Such terms can induce very interesting politicised responses. In fact, I’d consider the following an example of a Labriolan praxis. > [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > This thread is a rather interesting study in human social behavior. > > I’m noting some people’s usage of the word “rude” seems to be “anything that inconveniences me”. > > When you make a [request](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/request) of someone, you’re acknowledging the fact that they have free will, and the right to make a choice, and that whatever polite response you get is acceptable. That’s why it is a request. Because you come into the situation needing something from someone else, something which you acknowledge belongs to them, be it their time, their personal space, their perfectly natural right to sit in a chair of their choosing, or their possession. When you enter into a situation like that, you’ve already surrendered the right to harass the person further when they’ve given you their response back. > > This principle is at work in any number of examples: > > Let’s say I have a dollar, I’m going to the store to buy a candy bar. The drunk who hangs out illegally in front of the store asks me for some change. Yes, I have a dollar’s worth of disposable income. But it belongs to me and your request is not an emergency. If you ask me for change and I say “no”, I do not need to explain myself to you. **My dollar belongs to me, not you.** You’ve asked for it, and I’ve politely said no. If you get upset at me, you’re the one being rude. Because you’re not making a request, you’re making a **DEMAND**. Civilized people (and especially people who are not being rude) do not make demands. They ask politely. They accept the response given. > > I have a seat on the bus. An able-bodied person wants the seat nearest the window, which I am sitting in. They request that I get up out of my seat and give it to them. This is not an emergency situation, no one is going to die or even be severely inconvenienced if I say “no”. So, when I say “no”, that is my right. No rudeness has happened yet- not your request, and not my response. If you continue to badger me for the seat, that means your request was not a request, it was a demand. No was not the answer you would have accepted, therefore you weren’t really asking me for a favor, you were telling me what to do as if I were a thing that belonged to you. As such, you can politely go fuck yourself. > > I do not owe you an explanation. I do not owe you my seat. **I do not owe you the dollar in my pocket.** I do not owe you room and board in my house. I do not owe you the time of the fucking day. At this point, I don’t owe you the courtesy of verbal contact. Once I’ve declined your request, and you’ve arrogantly and presumptively decided that my answer wasn’t good enough for you, your highness, then **you’ve become a non-person**. You are a petulant child, screaming because after you knocked the ice cream out of another kid’s hands, you’ve dropped your own, and you feel bad. I know it hurts. But sometimes bad things happen to bad people. It’s just too fucking bad. You’ll live, and you’ll get over it, or you’ll continue to be a whiny petulant child who is butthurt by the concept of other people. Society and politeness compel me to dignify your selfish requests with a polite response. Some requests are absurd on the face of it, and you should feel bad for asking. Telling me to move when there are other seats to sit in means you’ve got it in your head that everyone else on the planet is here to provide for your comfort. > > I know it’s utterly fucking baffling, the concept of other people not being obligated to acquiesce to every demand you make of them. It just eats you up inside and turns your whole fucking world upside down. The arrogance of other people to want to have the things they’re entitled to and that you are not entitled to! How dare they not do whatever you want them to do all the time! Why, why… they’re… RUDE!!! Yes, that’s it. They’re “rude”. They’re a definition of rude that only applies when the word is uttered by someone who has no concept of their own rudeness, so they project and label everyone else as rude. > > You know how I got my dollar, you loitering drunk? I earned it, and now I’m going to spend it on me. You want a dollar so you can buy booze? You’ve got two options- you can ask people for money and accept the word “no” as an answer, or you can ask people for a job, and also accept the word “no” as an answer. If you can’t hold down a job because you’re a drunk, wait a while. Eventually the lack of money will prevent you from buying and consuming booze, and you’ll no longer be a booze hound. It’s amazing! You want to sit where I’m sitting? Let me tell you how I managed to claim such a nice seat. When I got there, it was not occupied. So what you have to do, is arrive at a time when the seat is not occupied, numb nuts. This is some really complicated shit. > > Oh, you would like me to do a personal favor for you? > > I might not be inclined to do a personal favor for you. Maybe you’re morbidly obese and you smell like the inside of an elephant’s anus, and I don’t want your fat rolls spilling into my seat. Maybe you’ve got the personality of a paramecium, and the way you phrased your request revealed you to be an enormous pus-filled bloody dickhead. And you know what? That means it’s not your lucky goddamn day. But there’s some good news. You now have a wonderful new opportunity: You now get to turn yourself around, and go home, and take a long shower, grab the largest dildo you can find, and shove it up your ass. That is now your privilege. You may do so with gusto, if you wish. With or without the lubrication of your choosing. I would not presume to tell you what brand to use, or what color dildo you should prefer. Because that would be too presumptuous of me. It’s frankly none of my goddamn business. So if I asked you very politely to use the red dildo on yourself this time, and you chose to use the black one on yourself, you know what? There’s not a goddamned thing I can say about it, because you get to choose how you get to go fuck yourself. That is your sacred right. Just like it’s my sacred right to tell you I’m not getting up for you unless you’re in a wheelchair or I’m feeling particularly generous today. We all have our boundaries, and I do you the courtesy of respecting yours. The way you plow yourself in the ass is your business. I promise you, I won’t get involved- just as long as you don’t feel too entitled to the seat I’m sitting in, the money in my pocket, or anything else that doesn’t already belong to you, I don’t care what phallic objects penetrate you between your seat cushions. > > If we are crystal clear about this concept, you may continue to be a bloody cunt to people who decline your arrogant requests. But I don’t have to give you the time of day. > [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > 1. One dollar per run tip would make it minimum wage. That’s all. A dollar tip. Every little bit helps. > > 2. Customers who tip more than that end up paying me 80% of my total tipping income and I remember each one of their names and where they live and I always do my very best to serve them. They are the reason I delivered when I did, because the 60% of customers who tipped nothing were simply a burden on my time and prevented me from earning money. > > 3. Thank you. I realize how annoying it is to pay all this extra, and how it’s not included in the price of the meal. Especially when they rip you off for the meal itself. Tipping is an absolutely stupid way of paying someone for their time. It’s the stupidest way to pay someone, and yet, it’s still better than not paying them. So I thank you ever so much for remembering to tip me when I delivered, and now, I thank you very much for tipping my drivers. These are hard working folks who, many of them, lost their better paying jobs in the down economy. This is what they have that is keeping them from being completely unemployed. Under-employed is the word for it. Thank you for helping them out. They have families and kids, and they used to live on more money than we could ever afford to pay them directly. They have to make ends meet. The tip is the only way they can. Ask your driver about the very best deals the company has to offer. There’s usually coupons attached to the box, but he can also tell you if you didn’t know, for example, which day of the week the wings are always on sale, which day of the week is two for one pizza day, etc. You’ll get your tip back and thensome in savings, if you know where to look. > > 4. How much is a good minimum tip: I’ll take whatever you have, **as long as it’s not coins** , or if it is coins, they add up to more than a dollar. **That’s not enough** , but 10 bucks a night from the dollar-tippers ends up being 1/3 of what I need to make. That’s more than zero. > > 5. If it is raining, or snowing, the inside of my car is trashed, and my clothes are soaked to the skin, and my car may not have a working heater. Most of us have to drive cars where the maintenance is focused on things like keeping the engine running, we can’t afford to fix the heater. **Please give generously in bad weather** , or consider getting it yourself… you know you don’t want to make the trip in such nasty and dangerous weather, so go ahead and be nice to the driver. You might be the only reason he can afford to eat a hot meal that night. Remember, these big chains give their own employees 20% discount on pizzas, not free pizzas. That’s 8 bucks and change after taxes. I can’t even afford to eat here with my employee discount. **Help me have a nice meal tonight after everything I’ve been through.** > [@Papa John claims health care reform is too expensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-john-claims-health-care-reform-is-too-expensive/640945/14): > > **Men in huge mansions driving fancy cars are stomping on people who live in absolute utter poverty, and blaming Obamacare.** > > We need a single-payer system. That way, my health care is derived from my income, regardless of where I work. Or whether I work at all, since people are firing employees over elections, and not actual policy changes that harm their bottom lines in any way shape or form. > > **There is no compromise with unrepentant greed and selfishness.** > > When Democrats compromised with Republicans to create Obamacare as the alternative to single-payer, the Republicans still didn’t vote for it. So what was the point of compromising? Then when we implement it, governors say they won’t allow it to happen, and employers shit on their workers and **screw them completely out of being able to live their lives**. All to save 50 cents a delivery. > > They can afford it. They could afford to pay us minimum wage, and did so for many, many years. By all rights, they should be paying us that amount anyway. But since they have been able to afford to pay 3 more dollars per hour, and that’s before a decade of inflation made us poorer, they can easily afford to pay us an extra 50 cents to ensure that I can see a doctor when my appendix is about to burst. > > … > > Now, the only solution is not to compromise any further on this issue. We must have single-payer. Otherwise businesses which employ the lowest-paid workers in our society will abuse us and put us out on the streets. We cannot afford to have our incomes cut at all. We live paycheck-to-paycheck and one tip at a time as it stands. There’s nothing we can do if our hours are cut. You cannot live on 500 dollars a month. It’s not possible. If businesses won’t make painless business decisions, and governments won’t implement the laws, then it’s time to give them no options except mandatory single-payer healthcare. When hours get cut and my workers have to choose between eating or paying their electric bill, I want them to be able to see a doctor and have them get treated for hypothermia when they have no heat. > > And the reason is because the difference between myself and my workers is a dollar or two per hour. If I can’t afford it, there’s no way in hell \*they \*can. Editing mine. I found the juxtaposition amusing. The “bad things happen to bad people” expressed a belief in a Just World (unless it was a typo) and the UDHR declares that every human has the right to be considered a human under law (rather than an entitled privilege!). Those declarations are supposed to bind governments, though, not citizens. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-not-giving-up-my-seat/647431)._