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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

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

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.