this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Maybe in some places. But when I go out to a restaurant, I'm often surrounded by a few dozen other diners, and no one is acting up or shouting at waiting staff. I have seen customers be obviously rude to staff but it's very rare compared to the number of "normal" interactions. Sure not everyone is friendly and totally polite, but entitled, shouting or just being an ass is an absolute exception, like less than 0.1%. I also worked as a waiter in a couple of different restaurants over a two year period, and don't remember any incidents either to me or my colleagues.
When I read comments like this it makes me wonder if I've been lucky enough to live and work in decent places, and the USA is just an nightmare hellscape, or if the reality there is much more normal and we just hear an unrepresentative sample of it.
the USA is just an nightmare hellscape
If you are visiting a restaurant you really only get a sense of what's happening at your table. Same when you reach a cashier - you might overhear what happens straight ahead, but not much more than that. People can be very rude without being very loud - if you work in customer service you have to deal with these people all the time, and you can't escalate things either. It's not something other customers are aware of.
Totally agree that eating at a restaurant doesn't mean you see all the subtle ways people are douches. But the comment above was about people shouting, so I assumed that the "10% of people are rude" was meaning obviously and noticeably rude. If it's just 10% of people are impatient / distracted / not very friendly / kinda annoying. Then sure, but I don't think anyone would be surprised with such a mild claim.
And as I said, I was a waiter in a busy restaurant for over two years. And the staff spent a lot of time complaining about the job to each other (as you do) and while many customers were annoying, kept changing their orders, or were a bit drunk and laughing loudly the whole time, blah blah, I don't remember anyone ever complaining about a customer being as rude as I regularly read / see on the Internet. I never encounter a "Karen".
I've always assumed it is just that Internet focusses on the tiny number of extreme behaviours and makes it sound more normal. But then I hear people say things like 10% of people are awful to staff and it makes me think that maybe there's a real cultural difference.
Sorry, somehow totally skipped over the part of your comment where you said you worked as a waiter! I didn't intend to explain your own job to you at all haha. There are definitely demographic differences I've noticed, and specific workplaces... I've worked a relatively small number of customer service jobs. Cafe was broadly as the previous commenter described, maybe 5-10% of people were.. not great. Although, no shouting or anything when I worked there. Just rude, entitled people. Pubs are not so bad, in my limited experience, drunk people are annoying but in a different way. The worst was a job where I had to take customer calls (not quite a call centre)... There I had to deal with the closest thing to a "Karen".
Oh god, yes. I worked in a call centre for six months and it was dreadful. The combination of dealing with sometimes frustrating situations + the anonymity of a voice only call... People were regularly dreadful. Definitely at least 10% very rude people.
I also took it to be a sign of the 'banality of evil', that people having a nice time with their friends, eating some nice food, are generally pleasant. But put them in the privacy of their own home, speaking to a faceless stranger, and suddenly they can be awful. But I tried not to judge them to harshly. The design of call centres, with long hold times and staff with no real power to do anything helpful, is pretty much guaranteed to frustrate the most saintly of people.