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Have you had much experience working in food service? The iteration happens incredibly quickly. Any kind of cultural factor (like, say, a predisposition to unde

Have you had much experience working in food service? The iteration happens incredibly quickly. Any kind of cultural factor (like, say, a predisposition to underestimate the tolerances of white people) will quickly be erased by dozens and dozens of experiences. When you are waiting tables all day, you're optimizing for two things: tips, and, even more so, limiting annoying situations. A hypothetical server who carries the bias you describe will learn quickly, like, within a night or two, that haranguing their customers about spiciness will result in both worse tips and a lot of extra hassles. In your example, you were so agitated about the spiciness that you even got their boss involved—that's a huge hassle for a server, a big waste of time and something that probably annoys their boss. I can say from experience that servers do not have the luxury of making decisions based on arbitrary cultural factors. The data is being drilled into them all day, every day, and in all but the most unusual cases, servers will take the path of least resistance to quick turnover and tips. And if you want to deal in stereotypes, don't underestimate the practicality of immigrants.

learc83 8y ago
>In your example, you were so agitated about the spiciness that you even got their boss involved I don't think you're really interested in a debate here. First you confused me with someone else, I never said anything about anyone's boss. Second you altered the story to make the person who did tell that story look bad. They didn't say anything about being agitated or getting the boss involved. They said the waiter asked and they confirmed 3 times and then the boss came out to ask a 4th time. As to the rest of your point, I think you really underestimate the power of confirmation bias, and I dont buy the servers are just too busy to sterotype schtick.
- ForrestN 8y ago
  Apologies for confusing you with the other person. I don't know if reading between the lines is the same as changing the story—maybe it's "cultural" but I would never push a server about a food preference to such a strong degree that there need to be multiple conversations about it. I tend to be more deferential in cases like this. I'm sure you're right that I shouldn't assume the person was agitated. I think I'm reading too much into the fixation on demonstrating a capacity for spicy foods. There's something deeper bound up in that, but it's not my place to speculate about something I don't have first hand experience with. You can buy it or not, but my broader point is that people who have not been servers probably shouldn't express confident opinions about what it's like to be a server. The fact that a wide variety of cultures treat white people ordering spicy food the same way, and that this happens with so much reliability and to such a strong degree, makes it very unlikely that a kind of mass anti-white hysteria is forcing many thousands of people who otherwise have little in common with each other to behave starkly against their own interests, over and over again, day in and day out.
  - learc83 8y ago
    Stereotypes exist, and people have irrational confidence in the relative spiciness of their culture's cuisine. Unless you have some kind of spice challenge, your food isn't that hot. Just about every wing place in America sells wings that you can order that are just as hot as food you can find at your average Indian restaurant, or Jamaican restaurant, or Sichuan restaurant. Every job has folk wisdom and heuristics. I worked retail and then retail tech support for years. I've had to deal with plenty of employees who wouldn't listen to customer's preferences because that preference didnt match some heuristic they were using. They had the same justifications--"They don't really want it, they'll just end up returning it." Those employees who insited on treating all of their customers like children because of a few bad experiences were consistently poor performers. Their heuristics were detrimental, but they kept using them because people are very vulnerable to confirmation bias. No mass hysteria required. Listen to your customer. Give them advice, warn them if necessary, but don't treat them like a child because you once interacted with an asshole who looked a bit like them.
    - ForrestN 8y ago
      The key is in your last sentence—you're extrapolating outward from "once interacted," but I think if you actually spoke to people who work in these restaurants, you'd learn that, in fact, the situation is "constantly interacted," albeit maybe "asshole" isn't as accurate as "person who overestimated their own tolerance."
      - learc83 8y ago
        If it was "constantly" happening, given the thousands of times I've eaten at restaurants that serve spicy foods over my lifetime, I should have seen this fairly regularly. My theory is that servers are the same as retail employees--a small difference in behaviors between groups reinforces preconceived stereotypes, which causes them to overestimate the differences between groups. Also, you're saying things like "in fact" based on what you think that other people think the frequency is.

learc83 8y ago

>In your example, you were so agitated about the spiciness that you even got their boss involved I don't think you're really interested in a debate here. First you confused me with someone else, I never said anything about anyone's boss. Second you altered the story to make the person who did tell that story look bad. They didn't say anything about being agitated or getting the boss involved. They said the waiter asked and they confirmed 3 times and then the boss came out to ask a 4th time. As to the rest of your point, I think you really underestimate the power of confirmation bias, and I dont buy the servers are just too busy to sterotype schtick.

ForrestN 8y ago
Apologies for confusing you with the other person. I don't know if reading between the lines is the same as changing the story—maybe it's "cultural" but I would never push a server about a food preference to such a strong degree that there need to be multiple conversations about it. I tend to be more deferential in cases like this. I'm sure you're right that I shouldn't assume the person was agitated. I think I'm reading too much into the fixation on demonstrating a capacity for spicy foods. There's something deeper bound up in that, but it's not my place to speculate about something I don't have first hand experience with. You can buy it or not, but my broader point is that people who have not been servers probably shouldn't express confident opinions about what it's like to be a server. The fact that a wide variety of cultures treat white people ordering spicy food the same way, and that this happens with so much reliability and to such a strong degree, makes it very unlikely that a kind of mass anti-white hysteria is forcing many thousands of people who otherwise have little in common with each other to behave starkly against their own interests, over and over again, day in and day out.
- learc83 8y ago
  Stereotypes exist, and people have irrational confidence in the relative spiciness of their culture's cuisine. Unless you have some kind of spice challenge, your food isn't that hot. Just about every wing place in America sells wings that you can order that are just as hot as food you can find at your average Indian restaurant, or Jamaican restaurant, or Sichuan restaurant. Every job has folk wisdom and heuristics. I worked retail and then retail tech support for years. I've had to deal with plenty of employees who wouldn't listen to customer's preferences because that preference didnt match some heuristic they were using. They had the same justifications--"They don't really want it, they'll just end up returning it." Those employees who insited on treating all of their customers like children because of a few bad experiences were consistently poor performers. Their heuristics were detrimental, but they kept using them because people are very vulnerable to confirmation bias. No mass hysteria required. Listen to your customer. Give them advice, warn them if necessary, but don't treat them like a child because you once interacted with an asshole who looked a bit like them.
  - ForrestN 8y ago
    The key is in your last sentence—you're extrapolating outward from "once interacted," but I think if you actually spoke to people who work in these restaurants, you'd learn that, in fact, the situation is "constantly interacted," albeit maybe "asshole" isn't as accurate as "person who overestimated their own tolerance."
    - learc83 8y ago
      If it was "constantly" happening, given the thousands of times I've eaten at restaurants that serve spicy foods over my lifetime, I should have seen this fairly regularly. My theory is that servers are the same as retail employees--a small difference in behaviors between groups reinforces preconceived stereotypes, which causes them to overestimate the differences between groups. Also, you're saying things like "in fact" based on what you think that other people think the frequency is.