8 ms·

>I often work with people who have never worked such jobs. They're upset that they're 'overworked' and spend their time in the fancy break room with all the per

by derg 7y ago

>I often work with people who have never worked such jobs. They're upset that they're 'overworked' and spend their time in the fancy break room with all the perks. Many I suspect have no clue. Not that it's a realistic idea but damn if everyone had experiencing working in the demanding, underpaid, crappy jobs in the service industry, we might be more empathetic and better off as a whole.

kingkawn 7y ago
Why is it not realistic?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
throwaheyy 7y ago
I’ve always thought that working in a retail/fastfood/service job of some kind should be a necessary requirement for graduating from childhood to adulthood.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  I found it annoying to work in retail but I appreciate where I am now 1000x more.
  - Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
    You learn a lot of little things you can do to make the cashier's job easier. My local store had a good sale on 12-packs of soda and so I decided to stock up with a dozen packs (I like a variety). I loaded them into my cart upside-down so the barcodes were facing up. The cashier just had to take the hand scanner and zap each one super easy and didn't have to lift any of them. It saved both of us time and effort and the cashier was extremely appreciative.
leetcrew 7y ago
I'm not so sure about that. I worked in a takeout place for a few years, and it just made me a lot more cynical. the privileged and the poor seem to enjoy abusing service workers at about the same rate in my experience.
- monoideism 7y ago
  > the privileged and the poor seem to enjoy abusing service workers at about the same rate in my experience. Agreed. When I worked retail and waiting jobs, I got grief from both out-of-touch wealthy people, and bitter poor people (although there were also kind people from both of those categories).
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Then you were lucky. Myself, and I suspect most people, I got grief from everyone. Poor. Middle Class. Wealthy. Those with accents. Those without accents. White. Black. Tall. Short. You name it. It's brutal if you have to work such jobs for a long time. (Like say, throughout high school and college.) A lot of people out there turn terrible as soon as they interact someone of lower status providing them a service. Even if you never make a mistake, you can't escape it. I remember a girl spilled a drink on the dress of some woman. Apparently the table was already bad, and it turned worse. Manager made me take the table. (Not proud about it, but I was the best doormat he had.) I don't even remember the rest of the night, but I remember that table. Remember every face. They didn't even look like bad people either. That's what was so surprising. Man, that has stayed with me. So if you only got grief from a few people, then you should thank your lucky stars. You got off easy.
    - monoideism 7y ago
      Please re-read my comment, because your response came across quite poorly. I didn't say I only got grief from a few people (quite the contrary!). Clearly you read into it what you wanted. Here's the gist of your response, without knowing anything about me or my background: - "you were lucky." - "thank your lucky stars" - "You got off easy" - "It's brutal if you have to work such jobs for a long time" I worked retail, bused tables, and waited for almost 3 years full-time, and I'm certainly not claiming to have only gotten grief from a few people. I never said anything even remotely close to "few people" in my comment. I suggested that there was a trend to the people I got grief from, in agreement to the GP comment. Note: a trend, not an absolute cut-off. In addition to the comment I was responding to, there are other comments in this thread making similar assertions, so I'm not the outlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717225
jackhack 7y ago
I agree wholeheartedly with this. Everybody needs a &^%$ job once in a while to reset their empathy scale. Walmart does something interesting for their software development process. Say a developer is working on a warehouse automation system -- that dev. is then trained and works in the warehouse for a month. Same goes for checkout/cashier, or customer service, or whatever. You WORK that job for a month and you'll understand just how trying it can be to struggle with lousy software on top of a sometimes difficult public. You'll know the trouble spots and the workarounds, and can take that education back to a nice safe quiet desk where you can then go on to help solve the problems.
- duxup 7y ago
  Man I wish I could do the job for the software I wrote more often. That probabbly explains why there are such great free development tools out there too ;)
- rogy 7y ago
  I work on software for datacenter server technicians and try and spend a week every quarter on the floor doing their job, honestly find it one of the most enjoyably aspects to my role
- eyepea2007 7y ago
  ...and imagine if the moonlighting software devs were only getting paid what the warehouse workers were receiving, instead of their normal developer pay.. the work becomes a lot "harder" / more thankless when your pay is 1/3 or 1/4 as much.
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    Add on the stress of wondering where your next meal is coming from, or how you're going to pay rent this month... every day, for the rest of your life, and your quality of life sinks dramatically.
    - amatecha 7y ago
      Yeah this stuff literally changes your life in pretty much every aspect. I have personally observed the shift in peoples' way of living and thinking as they move from one financial situation to another, whether upward or downward. I try to regularly reflect on my situation and recognize how comparatively lucky I am to be in the position I am in, and how it's never "set in stone".
slavik81 7y ago
You might be disappointed. Sometimes the least sympathetic people are the ones that have been there before. Shared experiences don't necessarily translate into compassion.
- Hoasi 7y ago
  > Shared experiences don't necessarily translate into compassion. Good point, it explains why well-traveled people often end up being insufferable racists.
- slg 7y ago
  It is the hazing mentality. "I had to survive through it and so should you." In the end, some people are just unsympathetic assholes regardless of their experience.
  - brandonmenc 7y ago
    As someone who spent years working service jobs, it's more like - I know that you don't have to be an incompetent asshole just because you're running a cash register or whatever.
nineumbrellas 7y ago
I bring this up often with friends. I believe everyone should have to work a food service/retail job. It puts a lot of things in perspective. I feel like I am a better human, having worked many.
rconti 7y ago
Fewer jobs for teens, fewer parents willing to 'allow' their kids to take a part-time job rather than participate in that additional extracurricular to give them a "leg up" in college admissions, school that's too expensive to afford on a part time income, all probably creates a feedback loop here. Nobody wants their kid working a crap job for life, so they do everything they can to keep them from that life, including any opportunity to even have a taste of it.
redpilotfoztail 7y ago
This could be part of highschool. Large swathes of content are ultimately useless and forgotten, there's room to force an off campus job at a dominoes or elsewhere. The main downside would be that these students would be competing against people who actually need the money.
greggman2 7y ago
I don't know if I agree. The idea seems to be "shut up about your 1st world problems. Try living in Somalia". https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as On the other hand Sony Japan apparently has a policy where new employees fresh out of college (vs employees with previous work experience) are made to work 2 weeks in retail at an electronic store to get a taste of what it's like for actual customers. I ask some employees if they got any thing useful out of the experience. Most said no, it was just like getting hazed.

by derg 7y ago

kingkawn 7y ago

Why is it not realistic?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

throwaheyy 7y ago

I’ve always thought that working in a retail/fastfood/service job of some kind should be a necessary requirement for graduating from childhood to adulthood.

cameronbrown 7y ago
I found it annoying to work in retail but I appreciate where I am now 1000x more.
- Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
  You learn a lot of little things you can do to make the cashier's job easier. My local store had a good sale on 12-packs of soda and so I decided to stock up with a dozen packs (I like a variety). I loaded them into my cart upside-down so the barcodes were facing up. The cashier just had to take the hand scanner and zap each one super easy and didn't have to lift any of them. It saved both of us time and effort and the cashier was extremely appreciative.

leetcrew 7y ago

I'm not so sure about that. I worked in a takeout place for a few years, and it just made me a lot more cynical. the privileged and the poor seem to enjoy abusing service workers at about the same rate in my experience.

monoideism 7y ago
> the privileged and the poor seem to enjoy abusing service workers at about the same rate in my experience. Agreed. When I worked retail and waiting jobs, I got grief from both out-of-touch wealthy people, and bitter poor people (although there were also kind people from both of those categories).
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Then you were lucky. Myself, and I suspect most people, I got grief from everyone. Poor. Middle Class. Wealthy. Those with accents. Those without accents. White. Black. Tall. Short. You name it. It's brutal if you have to work such jobs for a long time. (Like say, throughout high school and college.) A lot of people out there turn terrible as soon as they interact someone of lower status providing them a service. Even if you never make a mistake, you can't escape it. I remember a girl spilled a drink on the dress of some woman. Apparently the table was already bad, and it turned worse. Manager made me take the table. (Not proud about it, but I was the best doormat he had.) I don't even remember the rest of the night, but I remember that table. Remember every face. They didn't even look like bad people either. That's what was so surprising. Man, that has stayed with me. So if you only got grief from a few people, then you should thank your lucky stars. You got off easy.
  - monoideism 7y ago
    Please re-read my comment, because your response came across quite poorly. I didn't say I only got grief from a few people (quite the contrary!). Clearly you read into it what you wanted. Here's the gist of your response, without knowing anything about me or my background: - "you were lucky." - "thank your lucky stars" - "You got off easy" - "It's brutal if you have to work such jobs for a long time" I worked retail, bused tables, and waited for almost 3 years full-time, and I'm certainly not claiming to have only gotten grief from a few people. I never said anything even remotely close to "few people" in my comment. I suggested that there was a trend to the people I got grief from, in agreement to the GP comment. Note: a trend, not an absolute cut-off. In addition to the comment I was responding to, there are other comments in this thread making similar assertions, so I'm not the outlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717225

jackhack 7y ago

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Everybody needs a &^%$ job once in a while to reset their empathy scale. Walmart does something interesting for their software development process. Say a developer is working on a warehouse automation system -- that dev. is then trained and works in the warehouse for a month. Same goes for checkout/cashier, or customer service, or whatever. You WORK that job for a month and you'll understand just how trying it can be to struggle with lousy software on top of a sometimes difficult public. You'll know the trouble spots and the workarounds, and can take that education back to a nice safe quiet desk where you can then go on to help solve the problems.

duxup 7y ago
Man I wish I could do the job for the software I wrote more often. That probabbly explains why there are such great free development tools out there too ;)
rogy 7y ago
I work on software for datacenter server technicians and try and spend a week every quarter on the floor doing their job, honestly find it one of the most enjoyably aspects to my role
eyepea2007 7y ago
...and imagine if the moonlighting software devs were only getting paid what the warehouse workers were receiving, instead of their normal developer pay.. the work becomes a lot "harder" / more thankless when your pay is 1/3 or 1/4 as much.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  Add on the stress of wondering where your next meal is coming from, or how you're going to pay rent this month... every day, for the rest of your life, and your quality of life sinks dramatically.
  - amatecha 7y ago
    Yeah this stuff literally changes your life in pretty much every aspect. I have personally observed the shift in peoples' way of living and thinking as they move from one financial situation to another, whether upward or downward. I try to regularly reflect on my situation and recognize how comparatively lucky I am to be in the position I am in, and how it's never "set in stone".

slavik81 7y ago

You might be disappointed. Sometimes the least sympathetic people are the ones that have been there before. Shared experiences don't necessarily translate into compassion.

Hoasi 7y ago
> Shared experiences don't necessarily translate into compassion. Good point, it explains why well-traveled people often end up being insufferable racists.
slg 7y ago
It is the hazing mentality. "I had to survive through it and so should you." In the end, some people are just unsympathetic assholes regardless of their experience.
- brandonmenc 7y ago
  As someone who spent years working service jobs, it's more like - I know that you don't have to be an incompetent asshole just because you're running a cash register or whatever.

nineumbrellas 7y ago

I bring this up often with friends. I believe everyone should have to work a food service/retail job. It puts a lot of things in perspective. I feel like I am a better human, having worked many.

rconti 7y ago

Fewer jobs for teens, fewer parents willing to 'allow' their kids to take a part-time job rather than participate in that additional extracurricular to give them a "leg up" in college admissions, school that's too expensive to afford on a part time income, all probably creates a feedback loop here. Nobody wants their kid working a crap job for life, so they do everything they can to keep them from that life, including any opportunity to even have a taste of it.

redpilotfoztail 7y ago

This could be part of highschool. Large swathes of content are ultimately useless and forgotten, there's room to force an off campus job at a dominoes or elsewhere. The main downside would be that these students would be competing against people who actually need the money.

greggman2 7y ago

I don't know if I agree. The idea seems to be "shut up about your 1st world problems. Try living in Somalia". https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as On the other hand Sony Japan apparently has a policy where new employees fresh out of college (vs employees with previous work experience) are made to work 2 weeks in retail at an electronic store to get a taste of what it's like for actual customers. I ask some employees if they got any thing useful out of the experience. Most said no, it was just like getting hazed.