Mama Tiger, this attitude pisses me right off.

The BBQ Pit
1

From this thread:

Mama Tiger says:

You know what? I said it in the other thread, but I think this deserves a thread of it’s own for people like you (not just you) that look down on service workers.

We are in an economy now where people who used to work in nice office jobs are now working at convenience stores and retail jobs to make ends meet and keep their homes. I don’t believe that anyone has the right to disparage people because of the jobs they are working- I mean, they’re working, right?

Gah, maybe it’s because my father (who is educated) works at Wal-Mart now (he’s very near retirement age). He worked in corporate enviornements up until about 10 years ago when the owner of his former company “downsized” him and replaced him with his son. He loves his job, he does a fantastic job, and he is one of the best people in retail I’ve ever dealt with. He’s not some fucking idiot who didn’t “study enough”.

That just fucking sticks in my craw. You certainly have a right to your opinon (that you "liked her style) but I’m here to tell you I don’t like it at all. It pisses me right the fuck off, in fact. It’s not just uneducated slobs working in retail anymore, honey. It’s people who can’t make ends meet, people who got laid off, and people who are thankful to have ANY job right now. Disgusting.

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Missing link, I knew that would happen.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=201823

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While I think it’s great to teach your kids the importance of education, to do so while pointing and essentially making fun of someone STANDING RIGHT THERE isn’t really productive.

4

To be honest, I think you’re overreacting. I don’t think that either of the people involved (MamaTiger or the person she was talking to) are “looking down” on people in the service industry. MamaTiger acknowledges that the guy was overworked and underpaid…I think that goes directly against the supposition that she’s looking down on him. I don’t see any problem with the other woman trying to use it as an object lesson to her kid that if he wants to have as many options open to him as possible in the future, he needs to get a good eduction.

I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who are working in the service industry because they like it, but I think that it was pretty plain that this guy was not one of them. Yes, there are a lot of people who are working at those sorts of jobs because the job market sucks right now and people have to live. However, I don’t think you can argue that the chances that you’ll have to do a job you hate are much lower if you have a good education. The woman was just trying to impress upon her son that the chances are much better that he’ll wind up doing something he likes rather than being “overworked and underpaid” if he applies himself.

I don’t see any malice or classism there. Sorry.

::shrug::

And jarbabyj, I don’t see any indication in the thread that any of those comments were made within hearing of the worker guy in question, and I certainly don’t see anyone “pointing and making fun”.

5

I read from that thread that she was standing in line in front of this guy who was too slow for her tastes, and was talking aloud with another woman in line regarding his job. I’d like to hear what the situation really was.

6

Looks to me like the “Gotta love her style” part was sarcasm.

7

What makes you say that, whiteboy? In the OP her comment of “Gotta love her style” is followed by a big grin smilie- (apparently it didn’t copy over in my quote and I don’t know how to type one).

8

If the kid said it in front of the guy, then that is just plain rude.

If the kid said it out of earshot, then it’s not quite so bad. However, I can see also Zette’s point. The kid almost seemed judgemental by his comment (although it’s hard to say just what he was like without having been there).

The kid will one day know the truth, though. I don’t think “Study hard and stay in school and you’ll go far in life” is such a bad message to instill in the chillun.

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Zette, I agree totally.

Obviously this woman who is so ready to teach her child about the importance of education, isn’t ready to teach her child about manners.

At ten years old, he should already know enough not to jump into a conversation between two adults with a rude comment about someone standing right there. Instead of correcting his mouth, his mother agrees with him.

As for those who have said no one was “looking down” on the man, are you kidding me? The little spawn implied the man worked there because he didn’t study enough and his ill mannered mother agreed. How do either one of these two people know this man’s situation? If you don’t consider that looking down on someone, I’d hate to see what you consider to be rude.

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Well, we’re hear to educate. Type :smiley: to get the grinny guy.

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Hey, thanks Q.E.D. I rarely use smilies, so I feel all edumacated now. I shall never have to fear working at Jack-In-The-Box again!

:smiley:

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Boy, you guys really jumped to a whole bunch of conclusions here. Okay, I’ll expand on my OP and see if you’re still willing to jump in with both feet first.

First, we did NOT discuss this man within earshot of him. He was 30 feet away from us, behind a counter. We turned our backs when discussing how slowly he was moving because we did NOT want to offend him but we were also frustrated with his refusal for the previous 15 minutes to bother to try to respond to what was becoming a regular customer request. Like I said, there were a whole bunch of us waiting for chickens. It was Friday afternoon at 5:00. Roasted chickens are a popular quick dinner item, especially on Friday when nobody wants to cook.

Second, this woman and her son were having most of their personal discussion in Spanish, which neither I nor the counter person could understand. She and I discussed in English only the education part, and that only when her son said it in English.

Third, when we discussed the importance of education, it was not to mock the man – who we all agreed was overworked and underpaid – but, as Jadis suggested, simply to help her son understand that without a good education he may well find himself stuck in a job where he, too, is overworked and underpaid.

But the fact was that he had a whole line of customers waiting on chickens, while he was in the back trimming fish. So who was being rude, us for asking him politely if we could have a chicken and then waiting for a looong for him to provide it to us and then thanking him politely when he finally gave them to us, or him for making a half a dozen people wait for 15-20 minutes while he did a task for which there was no current demand? Or perhaps management for not teaching him how to prioritize his tasks?

I’ve held those minimum wage front-line jobs. I have NEVER made a group of people wait for something for 15-20 minutes while I did something else for which there was, at that point in time, zero demand. Not to mention I was a lot more polite to people when I spoke to them. This man was borderline nasty to us all.

Frankly, I don’t see how encouraging a child to further his education and study hard can be bad, especially when confronted with the kind of mindless job that a guy in the butcher shop at Sam’s Wholesale Club has – especially when it was clearly a family that was from elsewhere, judging by the thickness of their Spanish accents. My impression was that this woman moved here so her kids could have a good education and better themselves, and she’ll do anything she can to persuade them of the importance of the education in that process. I didn’t see the need to put that in my OP in the first place; perhaps I should have, in retrospect. But I have to say that the earlier as a parent you can persuade your kids of the importance of studying, the better off you are; I thought her efforts were admirable and was happy to help her reinforce what was clearly an important message that she’s trying to instill in her kids.

But I also didn’t mention in my OP that as I checked out, I discovered that our friend the butcher had marked the chickens at $50.70 each instead of $5. Accidental? I really have to wonder…I caught it, but I wonder how many other people ended up eating $50 chickens that evening and didn’t notice because they were buying several hundred dollars’ worth of other stuff (which people often do at Sam’s)?

My first pitting…gee, I feel like I’ve lost my SD virginity.

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Oh, come on, Zette.

Mamatiger offered her anecdote in a thread titled Wouldn’t it be nice if customers stopped being FUCKING MORONS?

Don’t you think it’s reasonable to infer that she would agree that the attitude described was FUCKING MORONIC, and that her comment that you “gotta love it” might be a tiny bit sarcastic rather than literal?

A lot of people feel that our little pal

:rolleyes:

is overworked and underpaid, too.

If his customers take the time to take context into consideration, I think that :smiley: has the requisite jobskills to handle the situation, although I can see how you might think he’s somewhat overqualified.

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I also think we need to know more about the situation. I made my comments about it in the orginial thread.

If the kid and mother were within earshot of the employee, that’s just plain rude and there’s no excuse for it.

But like I said in the other thread, the single biggest driving force in me getting a college degree was working in the service industry with 50 year old waitresses and cashiers that didn’t want to be there but had no alternatives. A little kid isn’t going to really grasp the plethora of reasons why someone might be working retail and I don’t see any problem with a parent simplifying the whole “get an education, get a good job” lesson for him in the right situation.

You can’t deny the fact that little education is the biggest contributing factor to a career in the service industry. One has to wonder why you’re getting your undies in such a bunch over someone pointing out that obvious fact. May sound like an assholish thing to say, but it’s the truth. All personal ancedotes about how you used to be a CEO and now work the drive thru at Burger King aside, because we all know stories like that are the exception and not the rule, it boils down to giving your child a message in the appropriate situation. Read: not within earshot, in a situation where the worker is obviously unhappy, ect.

I’ve worked damn hard to get an education, no one paid my way. I did it because I value education. I’ll be damned if someone’s going to tell me I’m not allowed to instill those same values in my kid.

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I see now that mama tiger posted more details. Upon reading those details, I don’t think there’s anything to be upset about.

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Thanks, lezlers. We were trying very hard not to insult the young man behind the counter; but the fact was he was being petty and obnoxious to his customers.

And Larry, I guess I shouldn’t have posted that in that “Wouldn’t it be nice if customers weren’t FUCKING MORONS?” thread, but I was still so incensed at the $50 chicken that my feeble brain made some bad connection and I told it there. I probably should have pitted the guy separately; he certainly deserved it for the way he was treating his customers, all comments about his education or lack thereof notwithstanding.

(Although I hasten to add that if he’s a product of the fine New Orleans public school system, chances are that he does NOT have an education that will serve to get him any well-paying job; but that’s a separate issue entirely.)

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With regard to my last post:

:o

18

Hmm, the original post says people were waiting on the roasted chickens. That sounds like something someone in their DELI would be responsible for stocking. If this man were in the back cutting fish, it may not have been his job to do at all.

Perhaps that explains why he didn’t know how to mark the price correctly as well. Sounds to me as if he may have been filling in for someone who wasn’t doing THEIR job.

“Our friend the butcher” also doesn’t have a minimum wage job. Per salary.com a butcher (depending on the size of the grocery store/supermarket and location) makes between $12-25 per hour.

I know people with a good education who don’t make $25 an hour.

Some people make money based on a learned skill, not a book education.

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Very well aware of that Daisy, I work out of a union hall. Some of those “union boys” are pulling in upwards of 40 to 50 bucks an hour for manual labor. That’s a hell of a lot more than I make.

Point is, the guy in the OP seemed genuinly unhappy and dissatisfied at his job in a grocery store. I think those are reasonable circumstances that could inevitably lead to an “get an education and you won’t end up here” comment. Doesn’t matter who’s job he’s doing, what he ate for breakfast that morning or any of dozens of nuggets of information about him. The main point remains the same.

20

This wasn’t a butcher shop in a regular grocery, it was at Sam’s Wholesale Club, part of the Wal-Mart Chain (Motto: “Shit Wages Are Our Specialty!”). And it’s a combination deli/butcher shop. So it WAS his job. I’d be surprised if he makes over $8 an hour; in New Orleans, service wages are particularly low, and I know most of the people at Sam’s or Wal-Mart don’t make much over minimum wage, if at all.

But how much learned skill OR education does it take to see that if you have 15 customers waiting for one thing and zero for another, maybe you should reverse the order of the tasks you’re doing?