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I dated someone who lived in a Section 8 housing complex. It was a major eye opener. Every one was terrible to every one else. I'd never seen anything like it. It validated the observation that the middle class has nothing to worry about from the lower class, they're too busy tearing into each other.

Generally, people behave poorly, are easily controlled/distracted, when they're scared and stressed. Like when they can't pay their bills. This Great Unraveling, where no one feel financially stable or secure, is turning everyone into savages.

I used to volunteer with meals on wheels in Harlem, and I swear the people in those buildings were 10x nicer and friendlier than the people in my own lower manhattan apt building.

In the projects, people always make eye contact and say "good morning"; in my building, people pretended like the other tenants didn't exist.

I wouldn't generalize too much based on a single experience.

I live nearby a low income city owned apartment complex. It's not a high rise, but is more dense than the surrounding houses.

There are many elderly people there who go out of their way to be nice to me and my family when we walk by. But there are others who don't have enough respect for the neighborhood not to just throw their garbage on the street. Literally garbage bags in front of their doors on their sidewalk (they have garbage cans less than 20 ft away which they could instead use). I wish I could understand why they don't see this as their own neighborhood and should treat it with more respect.

Generally what I notice is that there are some people with some mental issues who just yell and scream at people randomly. They need more than just housing help, but hey this is America, healthcare for those at the top is great. Then there are the elderly who IMO are the ones most deserving of the housig help.

Generally something feels broken, but I'm not clear what the fix is, it's definitely not one thing. And I don't think it's just money, because anyone living there is getting a substantially lower rent than market rate, and that's really my main point. I don't believe the root cause is money, as much as it's less education; mental or physical issues that make traditional work hard; and some misaligned societal incentives. Those all lead to financial issues that landed them there; basically financial hardship for many that I see is more of a symptom of a greater societal problem. I'm definitely no expert, and have never had to deal with any of that personally.

Psychopaths are very much over-represented amongst the richest (didn't get caught) and poorest (did get caught.) There aren't too many who took a middle path and ended up with middling results.

Um, vaguely (or maybe not so vaguely) racist/classist of you to drop "Section 8" and "savages" in your 1st and last sentences.

I think like some countries do mandatory military service, mandatory retail experience would do a lot of good for some people. Not until you have dealt with retail or restaurant customers are you truly armored against harshness the world. Seeing it from the other side also helps to build empathy for the people working the retail space.

Worked in retail in various positions and I would also recommend the retail experience for any aspiring entrepreneur, especially folks tumbling down the e-commerce rabbit hole.

Being able to provide good customer service while under fire builds character. That or it will break you and you will flee retail like the plague.

I think it's a huge character builder. You realize that some people are outright assholes and the most annoying thing you can do to them is keep your cool and kill them with kindness. Others are actually stupid, but most are just uninformed about whatever it is when they're 'bothering' you with questions.

There are so many sysiphian tasks in retail that you either come to the point where very little can shock you, or you're just kind of broken.

As a parent, I am sure as hell going to have my kid working a retail job for at least a few summers. It helps kids realize the kind of job they'll have if they don't work hard for something better (that was a huge incentive for me) and the kind of shit retail workers put up with (and that you should try to make their lives better).

My first 'real' job in HS I worked in the warehouse at Circuit City as seasonal staff (getting ready for the holidays) in 1998/99. 5am Saturday truck unloads, snotty people pissed that you can't fit a 32" CRT in the back seat of a Honda Civic, getting 100+ pound TVs from 3 stories up. Eventually I got the happy talk that I was no longer seasonal, I was sticking around- I was the only warehouse guy that got that and I was proud, even though it was $7/hr job with me carrying heavy shit, my work ethic was being acknowledged.

You learn a lot about gracefully doing things you don't really want to and finding a way to be the best you can be at the task at hand and deriving your satisfaction from doing the best you can, knowing that you gave it honest effort. I hustled my ass off, it was mindless, things were heavy and I was the big strong guy- that meant I got 90% of the fridges and rear projections and monster CRTs (looking at you Sony). I became 'that guy' for something, I had a 'skill' useful to the business that stood above others, that became my motivation. Do good work, stand out with quality.

Follow that with stints as a motorcycle mechanic, a farm hand on a dairy farm, a job site laborer, and a summer doing roofs- there's literally nothing I can be asked to do in an office environment that is more grueling or requires more effort than any of those things- and I pay more in taxes every year than I probably made at all of those jobs combined.

I've been in the middle of some pretty shitty projects where I was having to give people the pep talks to keep them from quitting or to see it through to the end. 24+ year old 'adults' literally crying about not being able to take it anymore. I don't look down on them for being emotional, hell, I don't look down on them at all, but my first thought every time is you have no idea what a tough day of work really is.

As an aside, I'm not talking about not being able to handle harassment or some type of political infighting or all of those interpersonal issues that can have real and lasting emotional consequences. I'm talking about a shitty project or grueling stretch of work that has gone sideways that has everyone working long hours to try and save it.

> you have no idea what a tough day of work really is.

It seems like people have pretty varied relations to this stuff. I've worked in landscaping, bussing tables, stocking groceries, counter at a bagel shop, among others—and my reflections now are generally on how nice and easy it was to do that work. Being exhausted physically (e.g. 10 hour grocery stocking shifts and 4 mile bike ride each way, uphill on the way back) has upsides to it. There's a kind of satisfaction that happens afterward—you worked hard, and now you're finished. When things are bad in software development, they're just bad: you don't feel rewarded for going through the struggle, and there are rarely neat conclusions to things.

Additionally, people may just be 'wired differently' (or have different life experiences or whatever), so that when you see the 24+ year old adults crying, the may actually be going through something more difficult than what you've experienced in a work context.

> Additionally, people may just be 'wired differently'...

That leads back to my statement about not judging them per se. I can't ever imagine work/business related stuff, or even just general stress leading me to tears. But I'm also hyper logical and tears just aren't how I shed that storm cloud. I don't look at it as a macho or manly thing either, some of the most rugged 'manly' men that I've ever met (special forces, ridiculous outdoorsmen, Olympic wrestler), and admire greatly for their intestinal fortitude would shed a tear at all kinds of things I couldn't imagine, I just don't think stress would be one of them.

I also fully expect in most cases that a root cause for an unexpectedly 'over the top' reaction probably has to do more with something I'm either oblivious to or something else that's going on.

It's possible you're judging 'em a little more than you think—though putting "adult" in quotes may have just been a slip ;)

This reminds me of a comment I made on a programming blog a while ago:

"I sometimes wonder if young programmers should be required to work for a year in a cube farm with fluorescent lighting, no windows and only instant coffee. Say in a government department or something. We could think of it as the IT equivalent of compulsory military service."

> being an asshole is being an asshole. If you're going to be a jerk to someone who's working a random lunch counter, you're probably just generally a jerk

I'd take it step further. You should be gracious to a fault to the person at the lunch counter. Their life categorically sucks.

Wow.

> I'd take it step further. You should be gracious to a fault to the person at the lunch counter. Their life categorically sucks.

That's awfully fucking judgmental. I've got friends who have been working in the service industry their whole life. Many of them are much happier than I am. Just because you have some high paying office job doesn't mean your life is automatically better.

Being able to afford health care does.

Who is to say they don't have healthcare?

it sucks to live on minimum wage. don't glorify it.

Don't jump in and start altering someone else's factual story??

I worked retail customer service and then tech support for years before I got a high paying office job.

Money doesn't makes life your life automatically better, but it does make it many times easier. It won't solve all your problems, but solves a heck of a lot of them.

I try to treat service employees well, not because of some patronizing sense of responsibility, but because I empathize with their position.

They have a crappy job and low pay. Dealing with the stress of computer generated everchanging schedules, rude customers, and management that treats you like a child is bad enough. When you couple that with barley making enough to survive, it's a pretty tough existence (realitive to my own).

> They have a crappy job and low pay. Dealing with the stress of computer generated everchanging schedules, rude customers, and management that treats you like a child is bad enough. When you couple that with barley making enough to survive, it's a pretty tough existence (realitive to my own).

It's possible to make quite a nice living working F&B, a customer service job, in a tourist town. Don't just assume everyone working a role is beneath you and living some kind of shit existence.

It has nothing to do with them being beneath me.

Their are people making a nice living in every industry. The overwhelming majority of service workers do not.

There's a possibility that my middle-aged waitress is independently wealthy and just doing this for fun, that doesn't stop me from leaving a $100 at Christmas time.

It's not because I think I'm better than her, it's because in all likelihood, I've been just a bit luckier than her financialy.

> It's not because I think I'm better than her, it's because in all likelihood, I've been just a bit luckier than her financialy.

This is exactly what people here are talking about. The $100 tip shouldn't have anything to do with you being luckier financially, it should be a gesture of appreciation. A $100 tip isn't a gesture of appreciation normally, it's a gesture of "I am more fortunate than you, but I take pity on you so here you are."

Solidarity with people less fortunate than you in not patronizing...social solidarity is a good thing.

so not only are you passing judgment on an act of goodwill, you are manufacturing the fundamental motivation and putting it into someone else's head as well.

that's called projection. you surely would have come across that in all your pop psych and pop philosophy reading that you are obviously doing lately, right?

Sharing money because you have more of it is not judgemental or saying someone is beneath you. Why would you think that?

> I try to treat service employees well, not because of some patronizing sense of responsibility, but because I empathize with their position.

That sounds like a patronizing sense of responsibility. I treat service employees the same as I treat everyone else I meet - like a person. Not because they're serving me food/coffee, or because I have some sort of empathy for their situation (I do, I worked retail for a long time), but because they're human beings just like me.

It's much easier to treat a service worker like they are beneath you specifically because they are serving you.

Understanding that they are people like you is the definition of empathy.

But I guarantee that you don't treat all people exactly equally.

How often do you leave a tip for a service person (beyond what is expected). How often do you tip your dentist, or your lawyer?

Maybe I am missing something, but why would you tip your dentist or lawyer?

I think the parent comment was implying that I don't treat everyone equally, e.g. I don't tip everyone that I interact with, when really that has nothing to do with it.

People do. A lot. My father was an ophthalmologist,and people really dig being able to see. It was just an endless parade of gifts and people stopping by to say thank you at our household.

> But I guarantee that you don't treat all people exactly equally.

No, I don't, and it would be incorrect to do so. I don't treat my solicitor the same as my barista, I have different relationships with those people. But for someone I don't know, I treat everyone equally, be they rich, poor, serving me, being served by me, saying hello on the street, etc.

> How often do you leave a tip for a service person (beyond what is expected). How often do you tip your dentist, or your lawyer?

There's an enormous difference between tipping people and treating them respectfully. When I order a coffee, I don't ever shout or abuse the people that are serving me. If there's a mistake, I'll be polite and point it out. If there's still an issue at that point, I'll be a little less polite and probably not return.

When I phone my solicitor, I'm always polite. I don't shout at them, or abuse them, and if there's a mistake, I point it out. I treat everyone the way I would want to be treated if the roles were reversed.

>>That sounds like a patronizing sense of responsibility. I treat service employees the same as I treat everyone else I meet - like a person.

I think it's totally OK to treat some people more nicely than you treat others, based on what you know about their position or what they are going through.

What if they aren't working there to survive? What if they are just teenagers living at home for some spending money? Or a retired person just trying to get out of the house?

Or someone working retail or service job in Singapore which has 0% unemployment? The answer, the most expensive worst service people in the world. The don't care about their job because there are 3 more waiting for them. There's also a huge social safety net there. It's not that there's no incentive to do well. It's perverse to say, but people sometimes don't care when you take away the floor.

I'm of the same opinion, they're working for minimum wage or near enough to it, maybe just being nice to them will make their day a bit better.

I've worked those jobs, and have been abused for an incompetent (or lying) boss. It's not my fault, please don't scream at me.

One guy did shout at me while I was out on a job, and then when I finished he gave me a bottle of a nice wine by way of gratitude for the work done and apology. That put a spring in my step (even if I don't drink wine).

Be nice to front line staff, because as you say, their lives suck.