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