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Comment by humanistbot | Hacker News Reader

Working retail as a teenager made me lose faith in humanity -- and all the theories that blame anonymity for online toxicity. Sure, the darkest parts of the internet can be cesspools, but give the average person a tiny bit of entitlement and power, and they'll abuse others just for the pleasure of it. And this was over a decade ago. So glad I got out and into software. I can't imagine what it must be like working retail right now.

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Having worked both in a fastfood restaurant and a grocery store I can definitely agree with this.

Everything from a person throwing a sandwhich at the drive through worker because her precooked ham was pink and therefore raw...people screaming and ranting because their over medium eggs, cooked on a 900° grill are too soft or too hard.

Getting screamed at because we were out of Schweppes tonic water, Nope, Canada Dry isn't the same, it had to be Schweppes, and only cans because the person was a solo drinker.

I was probably screamed at by random people more in the two years I spent at those jobs, 3 months at one and a bit over a year and a half at the other, than i have been in the entirety of the rest of my life.

I could first relate to this when I was working in a kitchen and how awful people can be when they fully assert up front that because of your job, you can be treated however they feel entitled to treat you. Also reminds me of the Stanford prison experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

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