Mama Tiger, this attitude pisses me right off.

The BBQ Pit
41

What this woman says she is trying to teach her child and what he has obviously learned from it seem to be two very different things.

She says she is trying to teach him that studying and a good education are very important and can help with career choices later in life. What he seems to have learned is that if you are “overworked and underpaid” then you have no education stemming from the fact that for one reason or another, you did not study.

I think much of the problem stems from using what she assumes to be negative examples of not studying (people working service jobs) instead of positive examples of studying (college professors, brain surgeons, etc.)

Admirable goal on her part, unfortunate result. The kid has learned to look at service personnel as inferior based on a faulty leap in logic.

And you know what one of the biggest factors that make most service jobs a nightmare is? Fucking customers who treat service personnel as inferior.

Congratulate her on keeping up the vicious cycle.

42

I think there’s a few service workers with inferiority complexes here.

Seriously, this is a situation where a mother is trying to instill the value of education in her son through an example of someone who most likely doesn’t have a college degree and is obviously unhappy in his service job. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sheesh.

43

And the offense is stemming from the fact that you don’t have to use someone else’s “failure” (or success for that matter…) as a yardstick for your self-esteem. “Teaching by example” is pretty shitty when the side effects include making judgment calls on every person in the service industry, including the level of education and whether or not they’re slackers.

It’s rude. One might question your upbringing…

44

When I was working at the Grand Canyon, a friend of mine was working for the summer on the NPS trail crew, grading the trail and repairing the rebar that prevents erosion. He was also working on his Master’s in Geology at the time. He told me that when he was working on the trail, a father and son hiked down and he heard the father tell his son, “That’s the kind of job you get when you flunk out of school.”

45

“Most likely” my ass! Have you not read what anyone has written?

First of all, the guy could be well on his way to getting a fucking degree (Bachelors, Masters, whatever) and this is the job that allows him to take the classes he needs and still earn enough to pay for the gas to get back and forth to class.

Therefore, he isn’t working there because he lacks education–he works there so that he may obtain education. If this were the situation then the mother should have lauded him and held him up to her son as a good example of what she has been trying to teach him.

How could she have known this was the case so that she might do this, you say? Exactly my fucking point. She didn’t know. She assumed and by doing so she is teaching her child that this guy did something wrong and that’s why he is working that position–when in fact it may be that he is doing everything she is teaching her son he should do and by doing so is working in that position.

Second, who’s to say that this guy isn’t very well educated and was working a very lucrative job out of state when his mother, an aging widow with declining health, suddenly took a turn for the worse and he, being an only child, had to abandon his position to come home and help take care of her. So instead of his one cushy office job he now holds two service jobs to make enough money to supplement her meager Social Security earnings since the cost of her medication just eats through it, leaving nothing left. He can’t go back to his office job because the only sitting service they can afford can only sit with her during the day and he must be there with her at night.

Now, is that a huge assumption on my part? Yes. Is it any less likely to be the truth based on what we know? No.

The point is that no one here has any fucking clue why this guy was working behind the deli counter at Sam’s Club. Just as neither of the women who were discussing his situation knew.

The mother in the OP should have been teaching her child that he should strive to be whatever he wants in life (even a chicken-handling deli guy) and that having a good education will likely help that. That’s all. By using examples of people who are working hard for a living (providing, by the way, the very goods and services that arrogant people who look down on people they assume have no education are in need of), she is doing a lot more harm than good.

46

Why did you wait 20 minutes for a chicken?

Wow, you must have some patience. :smiley:

47

Because she must not have studied hard enough to learn how to make one herself.

48

I guess some people’s purpose in life really IS to serve as a warning to others. I thought that was just a crass bumper sticker up until this thread. I feel so enlightened.

49

Bwah-fuckin-ha! :smiley:

50

I have taught all three of my kids the importance of an education in order to meet their career goals. My oldest was recruited out of college to move out of State to work for a large corporation. He is making more money at 21 than most people twice his age.

My daughter is continuing her education and working at a bagelry for extra money. She will go into her field once she graduates.

My youngest is only 12 but already has planned for his future. He recently received the Presidential Educational Award.

There is no question that all three of my children are, or will be, very successful.

I can proudly say that I did not instill these values by teaching them to belittle another human being.

51

evilbeth, you truly are evil. :smiley:

52

Okay, to answer a few points raised. And this involves information I did NOT want to include in here because people are going to assume I’m classist. But it does have a bearing on some of the assumptions I was making. And it’s a local phenomenon unlike anywhere else I’ve ever lived.

This butcher was a young man with the speech pattern (and it’s a VERY unique one) that told me that he was raised right here in this part of the Westbank of New Orleans, and it’s a pretty safe assumption he went to the local schools where the education he got was minimal at best. Check school stats for the U.S. if you doubt me. (In fact, a report came out just within the past week that of the 70+ failing schools in the state of Louisiana, something like 50 of them are in the New Orleans metro area.)

And because of his particular accent and based on my experience living around here (where if a second language is spoken it is generally French in any case – this IS Louisiana, folks), it was fairly safe to assume that (a) he probably didn’t understand Spanish any more than I did, and (b) he probably has no more than a high school education, if that (since the local public schools also have a dropout rate of about 40%). He struck me as another fine product of the New Orleans school system whose really, really crappy education has left him unable to get any job other than a low-paying service industry job. I’m not saying there aren’t kids from New Orleans schools who don’t succeed. They just start off with 2-1/2 strikes against them.

As to the snarky comments about why did I wait 20 minutes for a chicken, did it never occur to anyone else that I perhaps had other shopping to do so did it and would check back every five minutes or so to see if there was any progress on the chicken front? Gosh, what a concept.

And last but not least, I really wonder how honest a mistake it could be mismark 50 chickens. One or two, yes. But 50? He had to print out 50 bad labels and stick them on the lids and look at them once that way, and then stick the lids onto the bases and look at them a second time at that point. And considering how hard he was going out of his way to be as rude to his customers as he could get away with, it just didn’t strike as at all unlikely that he either did it on purpose, or else that even if he noticed he’d done it simply couldn’t be bothered to fix it even if it cost people a whole bunch of money. Which in either case is reprehensible.

53

OK, OK, I guess this is a good thread to tell a little tale of mine, since it is definitely about the topic at hand:

Years ago, I was working a decidedly dead-end job in retail. I was going to school part time, and working on my pottery as much as I could. (Even had a wheel and kiln at home.) I made no secret at work of my pottery activities, even giving them invitations to several gallery shows I was in. (For one show, we even got ia nice write-up in the L.A. Times! Woo Hoo!)

So, there I was, happily pursuing my dreams of fine art pottery, and doing pretty well with it. (Critically, but not necessarily financially. Pretty familiar story, eh?) But I was happy and proud with my modest progress. Galleries, juried shows, sales–I was very active. It’s also worth noting here that when I did invite my coworker friends to my gallery shows, they didn’t seem to want to acknowledge it. It was like it didn’t “compute”, or something.

Anyway, one day at this dead-end retail job some of the younger girls (who were attending a local junior college or planning to as soon as they got out of high school) were talking about their grades. I made some comment about how I hated high school, and how I didn’t remember much of it. (I started to really blossom in college.)

So their response to me? “Well, that’s why you’re still here.” (Meaning, “that’s why you are still working this dead-end job.”) I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe they’d say that. Especially these girls, who had complained before that I talked “too fancy” for them (my vocabulary was apparently too advanced for them). These girls, who knew what I did in my free time, and knew about my successes in fine art ceramics. And they’d say this to me? I gave them an opportunity to take it back. Oh no. They repeated it, and laughed.

I never was so hurt in my life, I don’t think. I had always considered these girls my friends, but I did not talk to them for days after that. (It really shook them up, since I am generally laid-back and talkative.)

There is just NO DAMNED EXCUSE for that attitude. You don’t know why someone is working where they are, and there is NO EXCUSE for assuming that they are there because they did try hard enough in school. I especially was pissed with these girls, because they knew what I was doing with pottery, and they knew I was doing well with it. And yet I’m still some “loser”?

Yes, this attitude stinks, big time.

54

That should be: “…and there is NO EXCUSE for assuming that they are there because they did not try hard enough in school.”

55

Something about this thread makes me really sad. It may be because when I was a kid I used to read a lot of “teen” novels set in the 1950’s & 60’s, and the fathers of those fictional characters had normal jobs. Butcher, postman, barber, high school coach. Those were considered respectable ways of providing for one’s family, with mom doing a little part-time work on the side. Now it seems everyone’s considered a “loser” if they’re not making top bucks and driving a fancy car. The middle class is gone and in its place are thankless minimum-wage jobs and snobbery.

I respect you, MamaTiger, and there was a time when I would’ve given the Mom in your story a high-five myself. But I’ve worked in a lot of environments and have found admirable and despicable people scattered throughout the various socioeconomic levels. IMHO character shines wherever it’s found. It doesn’t sound like the employee you ran into was doing a good job of serving his customers.

56

Look y’all, I’m sorry, but I find myself being slowly corrupted here! :smiley:

I’ll take the Master’s if I may, although I have been a Bachelor for many years now.

What (or perhaps who) are the requirements for the Master’s?

God, how badly I wanted to bold evilbeth’s f-word up there, but I refrained!

Saving myself, I suppose!

Love Y’all! :wink:

Q

57

I think a lot of the foaming-at-the-mouth “how DARE you judge me?!” types are missing an important point here.

The kind of “instilling the value of education” in children I’m talking about here has nothing to do with insulting the guy. The guy could be a goddman nuero surgeon moonlighting in Sam’s Deli for all we know.

The point I thought the mother was trying to make was “study hard and you won’t have to work a job like this if you don’t want to” which I don’t think is a bad lesson. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

It’s not a matter of who is working the job it’s a matter of the job itself.

58

I know what you mean fessie and it is sad the prevailing attitude seems to judge people by their economic success rather than other, perhaps less tangible qualities.
My husband has 3 siblings.
All are astounding middle class or lower middle class.
All have remained married to the same people for over 20 years and still seem to actually love their spouses.
All have raised really nice children that have received partial or full scholarships to college.
All are involved in charitable activities through their respective churchs.
When one of our nieces came out to her devout church-going parents,she was assured that she was loved and cherished for who she was-not who she had sex with.
However, none of them have made a lot of money either-they’ve been too busy raising their children and having a life.

59

There’s nothing wrong with coaching a kid to study hard.

But to point at a specific individual, (whether they know they are being pointed to or not) and use them as an example of “What bad things will happen to you if you don’t study.” is a bad idea. As pepperlandgirl said, it’s a “looking down” on someone attitude. There’s a difference between “Study hard and you won’t have to have a dead-end job.” and “Study hard and you won’t have to have a dead-end job like that guy, right over there. Yeah…that guy.”

Sure, the message the mom was trying to get across (study in school and open yourself up to more employment opportunities) is sound, but pointing to a specific type of individual is a bad idea. Because this kid may end up doing what my coworkers did to me later on. They shared their (flawed) viewpoint about my education to me. They thought it was OK to think that about me, and they said it in front of me. But they’d never have even thought such a thing in the first place if someone hadn’t planted the seed in their head, right?

And this kid seems like he may well be on his way of doing the same thing as my bratty coworkers. Because mom is teaching him that it’s obviously OK to point to some poor sod behind their back, and assume certain things about them and their educational background. So when this kid becomes a little older and possibly a little more full of beans (as kids will do) he’s more apt to express the same attitude he was taught by his mom. And he very likely might say it to the person he’s making assumptions about, rather than (tastefuly :coughcough: ) behind the person’s back. And that stinks.

60

Hey, that’s so great ! I guess quite a few of us must do vanity searches on ‘plump chicks’ eh ? . . . huh ? Oh.