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All of those reasons are valid, but not unique to hospitality industry. I think we might be backgrounding one particular reason too much: customers are a heada

All of those reasons are valid, but not unique to hospitality industry. I think we might be backgrounding one particular reason too much: customers are a headache. One of the subheadings of the article is "They're just yelling the entire time". I find it interesting that this hasn't been discussed as much, maybe because we are culpable? Maybe at one point of time we were that high maintenance customer? Maybe there is a general culture problem we all have regarding how we treat strangers, especially those who are bound to serve us to an extent. And looking at that need for transformation might be hard on our ego than the transformation of structural non-industry-specific inequities.

Valkhyr 5y ago
I highly second this. I've worked retail before (Apple Retail, Genius Bar specifically, so probably one of the more decent and better paid retail jobs in the grand scheme of things), and dealing with customers was one of the primary reasons I changed careers. You only need so many people looking down on you because of nothing other than your job, to make you want to do something else.
jjoonathan 5y ago
A purely introspective approach is fundamentally limited to addressing the cases where the problem is within ourselves. It cannot address cases where the problem is within other customers or within business practices.
square_usual 5y ago
Is that a cultural thing? I'm always surprised when I see American service workers complain about abusive customers, because in my region in South India I've very very rarely seen anyone abuse their servers. A few complaints, maybe, but no yelling or pressure. IME the class divide in India is wider, so it makes me even more confused.
- bkav 5y ago
  I believe so. When I was working in customer service, I had an English coworker. He said that the way customers treated us regularly would probably never have happened in England. Not once. Things haven’t gotten better since then.
- jl6 5y ago
  I can only compare the USA and The UK but my experience is that the customer/server relationship in the USA often takes on a “master/subservient” tone whereas in the UK that kind of behaviour would be considered “posh” and somewhere between laughable and despicable by the majority.
  - railton 5y ago
    This is my experience too comparing UK and USA. I worked as a cleaner for some summer schools at university and only the American students (c.f. UK and Japanese students who were also there) treated me like I was complete trash. It was very eye opening.
- discreteevent 5y ago
  I was shocked in the US to see an American colleague get really angry with a waitress over the quality of a steak. It's ok to complain but to think you can dump anger on someone who is on minimum wage and who had nothing to do with the problem is beyond me. I lost any respect I had for him.
  - dreamcompiler 5y ago
    Several of my single-and-dating women friends have told me they pay close attention to how their date treats the server when they first go out. If he acts like a jerk to the server, they assume he'll eventually act like a jerk to them too and thus there won't be a second date.
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  Could be cultural, but a data point from France is that while I, personally, don't often see abusive clients, I have friends who work in this industry, and they do complain about this. Some of them are Americans, and they tend to find working here more of a drag than in the States. They mostly complain about people being generally rude, followed by big parties each having extremely specific requests and later quarreling about the check (as in who has to pay for what). They also mention that they usually make less money here, because although the wages are higher, they don't usually get any tips. Also, cost of living is higher (Paris, as opposed to US cities other than NY / LA / SF).
Aloha 5y ago
Management culture shifted sometime ago, I've often said unions are a problem you earn. We are contributing here to the problem as a society, but management is often just outright hostile now in service sector jobs. Employees are treated as disposable fungible objects, with no inherent value. Like, There was a cultural shift some decades ago, and as corny as it sounds, the shift in culture began when we went from having a "Personnel Department" to "Human Resources" - resources are something you often extract and use up, to the point we have a special way to call out resources that are renewable. As much as I hate the "words matter" phrase, I think here they clearly do, as they've clearly subtly altered peoples thinking about people who work for them, and their disposability.
- DubiousPusher 5y ago
  At eery restaurant job I worked and every restaurant job anyone in my family worked, the management was poor. Their worst sin was writing the schedule last minute every damn week and wielding it like a weapon. Get on the wrong side of the boss and you get the worst shifts posted at the last possible notice.
- rswail 5y ago
  Changing Personnel to Human Resources was definitely the start of that process. It was an attempt to "professionalize" the work that Personnel departments did and make it sound more important. It meant that you could have "Vice President of Human Resources" which sounds as "impressive" as "Vice President for Manufacturing". It also leads towards today's stupidities where these same people are called things like "Leader for People and Culture" or some other BS touchy-feely title. Employers do what they can to commoditize and standardize their use of workers. Anything to make them more fungible makes them more replaceable and therefore easier to a) lower costs (ie wages) and b) automate.
- acituan 5y ago
  I must say, as much as I agree with the contents of your argument, and I am not saying this was intentional, I resent the fact that you've co-opted the reply-space to plug back in managerial or organizational culture issues, which was already being discussed in the rest of the thread extensively. I wish you would have stayed on topic with the idea of customer culture issues, or lack thereof.
grasshopperpurp 5y ago
I've worked in various retail jobs. Most customers range from kind to inoffensive. The negative experiences from the exceptions stand out and occupy more headspace. If you (general - not you) think you could improve how you treat people, please work on improving, but most people here are probably fine and have nothing to feel guilty about.

Valkhyr 5y ago

I highly second this. I've worked retail before (Apple Retail, Genius Bar specifically, so probably one of the more decent and better paid retail jobs in the grand scheme of things), and dealing with customers was one of the primary reasons I changed careers. You only need so many people looking down on you because of nothing other than your job, to make you want to do something else.

jjoonathan 5y ago

A purely introspective approach is fundamentally limited to addressing the cases where the problem is within ourselves. It cannot address cases where the problem is within other customers or within business practices.

square_usual 5y ago

Is that a cultural thing? I'm always surprised when I see American service workers complain about abusive customers, because in my region in South India I've very very rarely seen anyone abuse their servers. A few complaints, maybe, but no yelling or pressure. IME the class divide in India is wider, so it makes me even more confused.

bkav 5y ago
I believe so. When I was working in customer service, I had an English coworker. He said that the way customers treated us regularly would probably never have happened in England. Not once. Things haven’t gotten better since then.
jl6 5y ago
I can only compare the USA and The UK but my experience is that the customer/server relationship in the USA often takes on a “master/subservient” tone whereas in the UK that kind of behaviour would be considered “posh” and somewhere between laughable and despicable by the majority.
- railton 5y ago
  This is my experience too comparing UK and USA. I worked as a cleaner for some summer schools at university and only the American students (c.f. UK and Japanese students who were also there) treated me like I was complete trash. It was very eye opening.
discreteevent 5y ago
I was shocked in the US to see an American colleague get really angry with a waitress over the quality of a steak. It's ok to complain but to think you can dump anger on someone who is on minimum wage and who had nothing to do with the problem is beyond me. I lost any respect I had for him.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  Several of my single-and-dating women friends have told me they pay close attention to how their date treats the server when they first go out. If he acts like a jerk to the server, they assume he'll eventually act like a jerk to them too and thus there won't be a second date.
vladvasiliu 5y ago
Could be cultural, but a data point from France is that while I, personally, don't often see abusive clients, I have friends who work in this industry, and they do complain about this. Some of them are Americans, and they tend to find working here more of a drag than in the States. They mostly complain about people being generally rude, followed by big parties each having extremely specific requests and later quarreling about the check (as in who has to pay for what). They also mention that they usually make less money here, because although the wages are higher, they don't usually get any tips. Also, cost of living is higher (Paris, as opposed to US cities other than NY / LA / SF).

Aloha 5y ago

Management culture shifted sometime ago, I've often said unions are a problem you earn. We are contributing here to the problem as a society, but management is often just outright hostile now in service sector jobs. Employees are treated as disposable fungible objects, with no inherent value. Like, There was a cultural shift some decades ago, and as corny as it sounds, the shift in culture began when we went from having a "Personnel Department" to "Human Resources" - resources are something you often extract and use up, to the point we have a special way to call out resources that are renewable. As much as I hate the "words matter" phrase, I think here they clearly do, as they've clearly subtly altered peoples thinking about people who work for them, and their disposability.

DubiousPusher 5y ago
At eery restaurant job I worked and every restaurant job anyone in my family worked, the management was poor. Their worst sin was writing the schedule last minute every damn week and wielding it like a weapon. Get on the wrong side of the boss and you get the worst shifts posted at the last possible notice.
rswail 5y ago
Changing Personnel to Human Resources was definitely the start of that process. It was an attempt to "professionalize" the work that Personnel departments did and make it sound more important. It meant that you could have "Vice President of Human Resources" which sounds as "impressive" as "Vice President for Manufacturing". It also leads towards today's stupidities where these same people are called things like "Leader for People and Culture" or some other BS touchy-feely title. Employers do what they can to commoditize and standardize their use of workers. Anything to make them more fungible makes them more replaceable and therefore easier to a) lower costs (ie wages) and b) automate.
acituan 5y ago
I must say, as much as I agree with the contents of your argument, and I am not saying this was intentional, I resent the fact that you've co-opted the reply-space to plug back in managerial or organizational culture issues, which was already being discussed in the rest of the thread extensively. I wish you would have stayed on topic with the idea of customer culture issues, or lack thereof.

grasshopperpurp 5y ago

I've worked in various retail jobs. Most customers range from kind to inoffensive. The negative experiences from the exceptions stand out and occupy more headspace. If you (general - not you) think you could improve how you treat people, please work on improving, but most people here are probably fine and have nothing to feel guilty about.