When Did Hospitality Get So Hostile?
February 10, 2023 3:25 PM Subscribe
Previously on the blue - Why Everyone Is So Rude Right Now (Nov 2021, 156 comments)
posted by meowzilla at 3:33 PM on February 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 3:33 PM on February 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I just assume longer waits and understaffed places are the norm when I eat out, honestly. Most folks seem to be doing their best.
posted by emjaybee at 3:36 PM on February 10, 2023 [28 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 3:36 PM on February 10, 2023 [28 favorites]
Recently I was at a gathering and one of the attendees was a long time owner of a popular restaurant here. They had sold a few months back. Covid made it tough on the entire industry, of course, but one thing in particular they mentioned was that the customers that were coming in after they re-opened were simply awful. So many were just such jerks and rude to the employees. It used to be the exception and now it was becoming the rule. They were relieved when they sold the place.
posted by azpenguin at 3:40 PM on February 10, 2023 [30 favorites]
posted by azpenguin at 3:40 PM on February 10, 2023 [30 favorites]
What an odd issue to both-sides.
posted by eviemath at 3:41 PM on February 10, 2023 [62 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 3:41 PM on February 10, 2023 [62 favorites]
Given COVID, I think part of the reason rudeness has increased is that more of the people who actually care about anyone else are staying home instead of eating out. So more of the people in restaurants, proportionally, are jerks who dgaf about anyone else.
posted by congen at 3:43 PM on February 10, 2023 [153 favorites]
posted by congen at 3:43 PM on February 10, 2023 [153 favorites]
Given COVID, I think part of the reason rudeness has increased is that more of the people who actually care about anyone else are staying home instead of eating out.
Succinct analysis—there’s absolutely something to this, yes
posted by Ahmad Khani at 3:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
Succinct analysis—there’s absolutely something to this, yes
posted by Ahmad Khani at 3:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
The income gap is widening, people are under financial pressure (credit card and auto loan delinquency is way up). So it's a combination of the people able to go out regularly being of the more entitled strata, and those going out infrequently having dulled social graces, dreading the check and needing the experience to justify it (even at places that are not doing 'fine dining'). And at a time that staff is increasingly over it, because of the same pressures on them.
A cover charge for bread is normal in the few places in Europe I've been, but it did feel strange at first.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:49 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
A cover charge for bread is normal in the few places in Europe I've been, but it did feel strange at first.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:49 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
Protip for NYT readers: Olive Garden will welcome you with open arms. And open baskets of breadsticks.
Which is a better deal than what you'd get with The Who.
posted by ensign_ricky at 3:50 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
Which is a better deal than what you'd get with The Who.
posted by ensign_ricky at 3:50 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
It's not just in restaurants - both my wife and mother report that the kids in their classrooms are way, way worse in terms of behavior compared to pre-COVID. It's improved somewhat this year, but still...
I think there's a lot of people out there who got broken by isolation and/or empowered by nasty tonal politics.
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:59 PM on February 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
I think there's a lot of people out there who got broken by isolation and/or empowered by nasty tonal politics.
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:59 PM on February 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
I have said this before but the truth is the pandemic has left us all, human and dog alike, undersocialized. Look at the spike in violent crime and mass shootings, for instance. Dogs bark at stranger dogs far more often. My only solution at present is mandatory boot camp charm school for one and all.
After you, Alphonse...
posted by y2karl at 4:03 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
After you, Alphonse...
posted by y2karl at 4:03 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
I'm a Cook Gaston, after you.
"You can have the whole goddamn fuckin' shit, man! You can kiss my ass in the county square cause I'm fuckin' buggin' out! I didn't come here for this! I don't fuckin' need it, I don't want it! I didn't get out of the goddamn Eighth grade for this kinda shit! All I wanted to do was fuckin' cook! I just wanted to learn to fuckin' cook, man!
-Chef, Apocalypse Now
posted by clavdivs at 4:10 PM on February 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
"You can have the whole goddamn fuckin' shit, man! You can kiss my ass in the county square cause I'm fuckin' buggin' out! I didn't come here for this! I don't fuckin' need it, I don't want it! I didn't get out of the goddamn Eighth grade for this kinda shit! All I wanted to do was fuckin' cook! I just wanted to learn to fuckin' cook, man!
-Chef, Apocalypse Now
posted by clavdivs at 4:10 PM on February 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
[taser] ***Zzzzt!!!***[/taser]
posted by y2karl at 4:12 PM on February 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 4:12 PM on February 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
What an odd issue to both-sides.
Yeah I don't think the two sides are parallel at all.
It may just be my perception based on my particular circumstances-- my partner is a union steward, for one thing-- but I feel that over the past three years in the US, attitudes among front-line workers have changed in what are perfectly reasonable ways. They're getting more shit from customers at the same time that they're suffering from thin staffing and ever more chaotic schedules and, in many cases, wage theft in a variety of forms. If any of this leads to workers clapping back when people (customers; managers) are horrible to them, that's fine in my view.
On the other side? I've been in two different places recently, a medical practice and a mom-and-pop bakery, where there are now signs telling customers they have to treat workers with respect. It blows my mind that people are going into a bakery and yelling at workers for not bringing their cookies fast enough. I have zero patience for people acting like that.
posted by BibiRose at 4:23 PM on February 10, 2023 [85 favorites]
Yeah I don't think the two sides are parallel at all.
It may just be my perception based on my particular circumstances-- my partner is a union steward, for one thing-- but I feel that over the past three years in the US, attitudes among front-line workers have changed in what are perfectly reasonable ways. They're getting more shit from customers at the same time that they're suffering from thin staffing and ever more chaotic schedules and, in many cases, wage theft in a variety of forms. If any of this leads to workers clapping back when people (customers; managers) are horrible to them, that's fine in my view.
On the other side? I've been in two different places recently, a medical practice and a mom-and-pop bakery, where there are now signs telling customers they have to treat workers with respect. It blows my mind that people are going into a bakery and yelling at workers for not bringing their cookies fast enough. I have zero patience for people acting like that.
posted by BibiRose at 4:23 PM on February 10, 2023 [85 favorites]
Makes me want to open a coffee shop just to kick assholes out of it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:30 PM on February 10, 2023 [82 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:30 PM on February 10, 2023 [82 favorites]
My region had far more extensive stay-at-home measures that anywhere in the US, and while there has been a small uptick in anti-social behavior, it’s fairly small. I don’t think you can put all of this on the pandemic. In the US, the trend of increasing hate crimes and people being jerks has also corresponded to the rise of Trumpism and political leaders normalizing that sort of behavior. Exacerbated by the pandemic, yes, but not I suspect that’s the secondary factor rather than the primary factor.
Anecdotally, my more conservative extended family didn’t reduce their socializing at all, even despite public health orders to do so. They socialized differently - at house parties rather than at bars in one case, or to the same relatively limited extent as pre-pandemic and pre-Trump in another case. So there certainly may have been an echo chamber effect in terms of what they became accustomed to as acceptable social behavior in the case where their locus of socializing changed (though the people socialized with remained the same, so probably not a huge effect). But that’s a different effect than the one postulated upthread.
posted by eviemath at 4:39 PM on February 10, 2023 [28 favorites]
Anecdotally, my more conservative extended family didn’t reduce their socializing at all, even despite public health orders to do so. They socialized differently - at house parties rather than at bars in one case, or to the same relatively limited extent as pre-pandemic and pre-Trump in another case. So there certainly may have been an echo chamber effect in terms of what they became accustomed to as acceptable social behavior in the case where their locus of socializing changed (though the people socialized with remained the same, so probably not a huge effect). But that’s a different effect than the one postulated upthread.
posted by eviemath at 4:39 PM on February 10, 2023 [28 favorites]
(People’s driving abilities, on the other hand, definitely suffered due to the pandemic!)
posted by eviemath at 4:40 PM on February 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 4:40 PM on February 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
This is why, in addition to common courtesy, whenever I interact with servers, clerks, etc. I try to give an unforced smile and a mild, pleasant greeting. I'm trying to communicate an impromptu contract implying, "I may be unknown to you, but I will be polite, treat you with respect and not unload on you for any reason."
I don't honestly know if it works, but I try.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [32 favorites]
I don't honestly know if it works, but I try.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [32 favorites]
I think up to the pandemic people thought there would be consequences to their actions from the authorities. The pandemic has made us realize that by and large the authorities aren't going to do anything so now we're in the war of all against all where you can do what you like and no one's going to stop you. Most people still believe in society and exercise restraint, or don't have these negative impulses to begin with, but there's a significant chunk that are anti-social and that's what we are seeing everywhere.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [40 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [40 favorites]
The pandemic has made us realize that by and large the authorities aren't going to do anything
...offer not valid for certain ethnicities
posted by Gadarene at 4:56 PM on February 10, 2023 [58 favorites]
...offer not valid for certain ethnicities
posted by Gadarene at 4:56 PM on February 10, 2023 [58 favorites]
it's a combination of the people able to go out regularly being of the more entitled strata
I would theorize that a lot of this is actually coming from the more precarious strata, for whom being able to order around waitpeople feels like one of the few remaining privileges of whiteness per se.
posted by praemunire at 5:11 PM on February 10, 2023 [26 favorites]
I would theorize that a lot of this is actually coming from the more precarious strata, for whom being able to order around waitpeople feels like one of the few remaining privileges of whiteness per se.
posted by praemunire at 5:11 PM on February 10, 2023 [26 favorites]
the archive link is down right now, can someone let me know if this is about "dining out" in the nationally applicative general case or "dining out" in the "person who can afford to live and do a prestige journo gig in NYC while assuming their experience is normative" case
posted by cortex at 5:11 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by cortex at 5:11 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's not just in restaurants - both my wife and mother report that the kids in their classrooms are way, way worse in terms of behavior compared to pre-COVID... broken by isolation and/or empowered by nasty tonal politics.
Oof. This is really not the same thing at all.
Adults going to restaurants are choosing what they do. They choose when and where to go, what to eat, even whether to do it at all.
Children going to school have no say in the matter, and indeed no say in pretty much anything. If they are broken, it is because we - the adults - have failed to take care of them.
I hope that your wife and mother blame the school system and our larger society that unrealistically insists on holding post-covid children to the same standards as pre-covid and fails to relax expectations on either students or staff, often in the face of staff overwork and inadequate resourcing. In particular mental health and special education services are nowhere near adequately funded, as I'm sure your family members know.
But going further, perhaps it is time to entirely overhaul the unfair and grossly authoritarian philosophy of schooling that enforces compliance and particularly trashes Black and disabled children. Replace it with recognizing children's agency, recognizing children as people, building in more buffer into expectations, having small classes, doing more child-led education, providing full accommodations and full inclusion for disabled students, and bringing mental health work and well being into the classroom, not merely as lip service but fully integrated into education.
Children - especially post-covid children - deserve only compassion, not blame. We are missing one hell of an opportunity to fix how we have been failing them all these years, not just during covid but all the way before that as well.
posted by splitpeasoup at 5:13 PM on February 10, 2023 [33 favorites]
Oof. This is really not the same thing at all.
Adults going to restaurants are choosing what they do. They choose when and where to go, what to eat, even whether to do it at all.
Children going to school have no say in the matter, and indeed no say in pretty much anything. If they are broken, it is because we - the adults - have failed to take care of them.
I hope that your wife and mother blame the school system and our larger society that unrealistically insists on holding post-covid children to the same standards as pre-covid and fails to relax expectations on either students or staff, often in the face of staff overwork and inadequate resourcing. In particular mental health and special education services are nowhere near adequately funded, as I'm sure your family members know.
But going further, perhaps it is time to entirely overhaul the unfair and grossly authoritarian philosophy of schooling that enforces compliance and particularly trashes Black and disabled children. Replace it with recognizing children's agency, recognizing children as people, building in more buffer into expectations, having small classes, doing more child-led education, providing full accommodations and full inclusion for disabled students, and bringing mental health work and well being into the classroom, not merely as lip service but fully integrated into education.
Children - especially post-covid children - deserve only compassion, not blame. We are missing one hell of an opportunity to fix how we have been failing them all these years, not just during covid but all the way before that as well.
posted by splitpeasoup at 5:13 PM on February 10, 2023 [33 favorites]
Archive.is link, as an alternative while the other link is down.
posted by carrienation at 5:14 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by carrienation at 5:14 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
can someone let me know if this is about "dining out" in the nationally applicative general case
I hope I will not be accused of classism if I suggest that the people in the latest Waffle House footage probably did not stop there for a top-up after eating at the French Laundry.
posted by praemunire at 5:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
I hope I will not be accused of classism if I suggest that the people in the latest Waffle House footage probably did not stop there for a top-up after eating at the French Laundry.
posted by praemunire at 5:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
[another link to the other archive]
NY Post clickbait, but here's a bit of follow-up w/the chair deflecting Waffle House jedi
I would theorize that a lot of this is actually coming from the more precarious strata
depends on the establishment — versions of this seem to be happening across strata (to me) but the motivations are different. (as you said)
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:25 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
NY Post clickbait, but here's a bit of follow-up w/the chair deflecting Waffle House jedi
I would theorize that a lot of this is actually coming from the more precarious strata
depends on the establishment — versions of this seem to be happening across strata (to me) but the motivations are different. (as you said)
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:25 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
the archive link is down right now, can someone let me know if this is about "dining out" in the nationally applicative general case or "dining out" in the "person who can afford to live and do a prestige journo gig in NYC while assuming their experience is normative" case
It's actually an interesting and fairly nuanced article; this isn't a classic Style-section deliberately tone-deaf piece. It talks about both high- and lower-end dining:
The compulsion to act the tyrant isn’t confined to high rollers at expensive restaurants. (After all, fine dining and fast food both rely on low wages.) According to a 2021 study by the Fight for $15 and a Union, more than 77,000 conflagrations at fast-food outlets in California led to calls to 911 between 2017 and 2020, with 13 percent involving physical or sexual assault. Workers were choked, stabbed and beaten so savagely that they sustained concussions. All up and down the restaurant economy (indeed, across service industries: on airlines, at hotels and in hospitals and public schools), antagonism is on the rise.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:31 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's actually an interesting and fairly nuanced article; this isn't a classic Style-section deliberately tone-deaf piece. It talks about both high- and lower-end dining:
The compulsion to act the tyrant isn’t confined to high rollers at expensive restaurants. (After all, fine dining and fast food both rely on low wages.) According to a 2021 study by the Fight for $15 and a Union, more than 77,000 conflagrations at fast-food outlets in California led to calls to 911 between 2017 and 2020, with 13 percent involving physical or sexual assault. Workers were choked, stabbed and beaten so savagely that they sustained concussions. All up and down the restaurant economy (indeed, across service industries: on airlines, at hotels and in hospitals and public schools), antagonism is on the rise.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:31 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
We're overdue for Durkheim-on-anomie thinkpieces.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:34 PM on February 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:34 PM on February 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
The last time we went out for dinner, a woman in front of us in line had a complete meltdown, ending in loud demands to talk to the manager. We felt terrible for the poor front of house person who was stuck with it, to the point that we apologized to him that he was having to deal with this stuff -- it was embarrassing even being near that episode.
But I don't agree with the both-sides-ism of this. I've seen a lot of frazzled and stressed servers, and experienced slow and ineffective service at places that were severely understaffed. But I've never had a server go off, yell, demand to see my manager, or anything worse than be hard to get their attention in order to pay the check. On the other hand, I've seen quite a bit of entitled and rude behavior by customers. To the extent that this is a two-way street, I'd put more than half the blame on the customers, and the rest on owners who refuse to pay staff adequately.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:38 PM on February 10, 2023 [36 favorites]
But I don't agree with the both-sides-ism of this. I've seen a lot of frazzled and stressed servers, and experienced slow and ineffective service at places that were severely understaffed. But I've never had a server go off, yell, demand to see my manager, or anything worse than be hard to get their attention in order to pay the check. On the other hand, I've seen quite a bit of entitled and rude behavior by customers. To the extent that this is a two-way street, I'd put more than half the blame on the customers, and the rest on owners who refuse to pay staff adequately.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:38 PM on February 10, 2023 [36 favorites]
more than 77,000 conflagrations at fast-food outlets in California led to calls to 911 between 2017 and 2020, with 13 percent involving physical or sexual assault
Perhaps worth noting that this is a pre-pandemic statistic, which (as a single data point) cannot really support the subsequent statement that:
antagonism is on the rise.
What did these numbers look like before 2017? What have they looked like since 2020? Are they different in different places?
I don't really doubt that the thesis is true -- I'm sure we all have some anecdotal evidence for it -- but the article itself is frustratingly bereft of evidence. Instead we get weird ramblings about etymology and Derrida.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:39 PM on February 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
Perhaps worth noting that this is a pre-pandemic statistic, which (as a single data point) cannot really support the subsequent statement that:
antagonism is on the rise.
What did these numbers look like before 2017? What have they looked like since 2020? Are they different in different places?
I don't really doubt that the thesis is true -- I'm sure we all have some anecdotal evidence for it -- but the article itself is frustratingly bereft of evidence. Instead we get weird ramblings about etymology and Derrida.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:39 PM on February 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
The public, man. *weary sigh*
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:48 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:48 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think up to the pandemic people thought there would be consequences to their actions from the authorities. The pandemic has made us realize that by and large the authorities aren't going to do anything so now we're in the war of all against all where you can do what you like and no one's going to stop you.This is palpably true on the roads. I now wonder how many of the people honking at school children in the crosswalks are trying to make dinner reservation.
posted by adamsc at 5:49 PM on February 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
There has been an appalling rise in public incivility and aggression across the board in the U.S., and while the pandemic didn’t help, it’s not the cause. People’s reckless driving is not due to lockdowns that have been over for a long time, and in some parts of the nation were quite brief, for example.
There is simply a segment of the population that has made performative attacks on their perceived political enemies their politics. This has disinhibited bullies to indulge in nonconsensual sadism to relieve their frustrations. These people treat service workers as figurative punching bags as their preferred form of therapy. And have made online mob violence in the form of troll swarms attacking people who are, say, trans their leisure activity of choice. And it’s only when we get to the extreme end of the continuum with mass hate murders that there’s national agreement that this is actually a problem. But even in that case, there is a refusal to limit access of enraged bigots to guns. . .
I would say the problem is not that “people have discovered that no authority will stop them from acting badly.” It is that angry cis white conservatives have decided that treating others as you would wish to be treated is a loser mentality. It is about a will to power. This segment of the population is creating a social world in which authorities are either afraid to stop them or actively enable them—online, in restaurants, at school board meetings, wherever.
I think a whole lot of kind people were really hoping that with the end of the Trump presidency and lockdowns, all the entitled and sadistic harassment they saw around then would fade away. Well, it hasn’t happened. Nonconsensual dominance and taking pleasure in causing those you disdain to suffer are a growing lifestyle. It’s depressing! But understanding and naming the problem are vital if we are to actually mount an effective response.
posted by DrMew at 5:53 PM on February 10, 2023 [94 favorites]
There is simply a segment of the population that has made performative attacks on their perceived political enemies their politics. This has disinhibited bullies to indulge in nonconsensual sadism to relieve their frustrations. These people treat service workers as figurative punching bags as their preferred form of therapy. And have made online mob violence in the form of troll swarms attacking people who are, say, trans their leisure activity of choice. And it’s only when we get to the extreme end of the continuum with mass hate murders that there’s national agreement that this is actually a problem. But even in that case, there is a refusal to limit access of enraged bigots to guns. . .
I would say the problem is not that “people have discovered that no authority will stop them from acting badly.” It is that angry cis white conservatives have decided that treating others as you would wish to be treated is a loser mentality. It is about a will to power. This segment of the population is creating a social world in which authorities are either afraid to stop them or actively enable them—online, in restaurants, at school board meetings, wherever.
I think a whole lot of kind people were really hoping that with the end of the Trump presidency and lockdowns, all the entitled and sadistic harassment they saw around then would fade away. Well, it hasn’t happened. Nonconsensual dominance and taking pleasure in causing those you disdain to suffer are a growing lifestyle. It’s depressing! But understanding and naming the problem are vital if we are to actually mount an effective response.
posted by DrMew at 5:53 PM on February 10, 2023 [94 favorites]
See also: Behavior during the SOTU speech.
posted by achrise at 5:57 PM on February 10, 2023 [25 favorites]
posted by achrise at 5:57 PM on February 10, 2023 [25 favorites]
At some restaurants, bread is no longer free, which makes sense, given the price of quality ingredients, the investment of time in baking and how much goes to wasteWaste? Where do they think croutons and stuffing come from?
/former restaurant cook
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:58 PM on February 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
The @#%%@@$ pandemic isn't over. Why are you going to restaurants and demanding that some of the people most destroyed by it are going to be smiley faced at you? Get fucked and stay home.
This isn't a "both sides" story. I wish that pathological way of looking at the world would die.
posted by abucci at 6:02 PM on February 10, 2023 [29 favorites]
This isn't a "both sides" story. I wish that pathological way of looking at the world would die.
posted by abucci at 6:02 PM on February 10, 2023 [29 favorites]
You know, there's no law against rudeness. There's really not much legality regarding racism and bigotry, either, and what laws there are that might be enforced usually don't end up being prosecuted. All that really happens is that the people who are being rude , racist and bigoted end up feeling validated and vindicated. Really, what can the law do about this?
People need to start calling out other people who aren't being civil instead of letting it go by. "Excuse me, it's not okay to yell at the cashier/server/retail worker/her/him/them. They're just trying to do their job. How about you yell at me instead if you have to yell at somebody, or better yet, try to remember that we're all just people who are trying to live their lives the best way they can and not yell at anybody at all?" Of course, that's easier said than done and then there's always the worry that your intervention is causing an escalation and things become horribly physical.
With regards to Trump being a role model for obnoxious behaviour, sure. But he didn't suddenly appear out of a void. Trump is the poster child for obnoxious behaviour but there were (and are) plenty of public people who have been just as horrible as Trump before he came along and ruined lives. This has been coming on for a very, very long time and maybe has always existed. After all, people doing and saying horrible things to other people is hardly a new thing, whether it's been hidden or public.
posted by ashbury at 6:16 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
People need to start calling out other people who aren't being civil instead of letting it go by. "Excuse me, it's not okay to yell at the cashier/server/retail worker/her/him/them. They're just trying to do their job. How about you yell at me instead if you have to yell at somebody, or better yet, try to remember that we're all just people who are trying to live their lives the best way they can and not yell at anybody at all?" Of course, that's easier said than done and then there's always the worry that your intervention is causing an escalation and things become horribly physical.
With regards to Trump being a role model for obnoxious behaviour, sure. But he didn't suddenly appear out of a void. Trump is the poster child for obnoxious behaviour but there were (and are) plenty of public people who have been just as horrible as Trump before he came along and ruined lives. This has been coming on for a very, very long time and maybe has always existed. After all, people doing and saying horrible things to other people is hardly a new thing, whether it's been hidden or public.
posted by ashbury at 6:16 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
Carlo Christopher: Part of the new cruelty?
Mr. Perdue, Maitre D' at L'Idiot: I'm afraid so.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:19 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Mr. Perdue, Maitre D' at L'Idiot: I'm afraid so.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:19 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Counterpoint: No It Hasn’t.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:19 PM on February 10, 2023
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:19 PM on February 10, 2023
What an odd issue to both-sides.
There you have it, the NYT’s new slogan
posted by supercres at 6:24 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
There you have it, the NYT’s new slogan
posted by supercres at 6:24 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
The charitable explanation I try to think of is that everybody has been in low grade culture shock for three years.
The experience of eating out has changed and continues to change, along with a million other little things about life, and that makes people uncomfortable, and some people handle that very badly. Maybe especially the people who felt themselves in control and in charge when they were eating out.
posted by smelendez at 6:58 PM on February 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
The experience of eating out has changed and continues to change, along with a million other little things about life, and that makes people uncomfortable, and some people handle that very badly. Maybe especially the people who felt themselves in control and in charge when they were eating out.
posted by smelendez at 6:58 PM on February 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Bartender in San Francisco, can confirm. Luckily I work at a place that would be fine with my telling someone to go fuck themselves should the situation require it. Someone working at a corporate spot in Fisherman’s Wharf does not have that luxury, in addition to being at the mercy of Yelp reviews and other public shithousery.
The recent generation of kids who obtained their drinking permits during lockdown also have no idea how to treat service staff, or behave in public in drinking establishments. I can only assume this is all going to get worse.
posted by hototogisu at 7:02 PM on February 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
The recent generation of kids who obtained their drinking permits during lockdown also have no idea how to treat service staff, or behave in public in drinking establishments. I can only assume this is all going to get worse.
posted by hototogisu at 7:02 PM on February 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
To what extent is the proliferation of handguns and relaxation of carry laws a factor in the US? I would be significantly less likely to push back on an aggressive wanker if there was a risk they might produce a gun.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:10 PM on February 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:10 PM on February 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Remember the good old days when if one were rude to staff, service reflected back.
It was like sport and theatre.
posted by clavdivs at 7:21 PM on February 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
It was like sport and theatre.
posted by clavdivs at 7:21 PM on February 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
To what extent is the proliferation of handguns and relaxation of carry laws a factor in the US? I would be significantly less likely to push back on an aggressive wanker if there was a risk they might produce a gun.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen
"For your protection, our wait staff carry guns."
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:29 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen
"For your protection, our wait staff carry guns."
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:29 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
After all, people doing and saying horrible things to other people is hardly a new thing, whether it's been hidden or public.
i_am_joe's_spleen queries about more guns as a factor in a rise of restaurant shoot outs, let's toss in bars. If everyone was carrying would they still behave the same, hidden for years this horrible thing.
they have a gun.
even staff.
no because why in the hell would someone bring a gun into a restaurant.
It's because people feel "naked" without it, oh trust me, like a seatbelt or wearing gloves. But thats a paradox as the belts and gloves give a Ievel of protection whereas a gun is a steel binky.
posted by clavdivs at 7:35 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
i_am_joe's_spleen queries about more guns as a factor in a rise of restaurant shoot outs, let's toss in bars. If everyone was carrying would they still behave the same, hidden for years this horrible thing.
they have a gun.
even staff.
no because why in the hell would someone bring a gun into a restaurant.
It's because people feel "naked" without it, oh trust me, like a seatbelt or wearing gloves. But thats a paradox as the belts and gloves give a Ievel of protection whereas a gun is a steel binky.
posted by clavdivs at 7:35 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Getting a discount? Expect rudeness
Sometimes rudeness sells
Rob, Buddy and Sally each receive a bonus paycheck for a sketch previously written Buddy convinces Rob and Sally to at least consider investing their bonuses on his Uncle Lou's discount shoe store. After seeing the store, meeting Uncle Lou and reviewing the store's financials, Rob thinks it's a good idea and talks a reluctant Laura into going along with the decision. Laura may regret saying yes after receiving horrible service from the store's salesman
posted by robbyrobs at 7:36 PM on February 10, 2023
Sometimes rudeness sells
Rob, Buddy and Sally each receive a bonus paycheck for a sketch previously written Buddy convinces Rob and Sally to at least consider investing their bonuses on his Uncle Lou's discount shoe store. After seeing the store, meeting Uncle Lou and reviewing the store's financials, Rob thinks it's a good idea and talks a reluctant Laura into going along with the decision. Laura may regret saying yes after receiving horrible service from the store's salesman
posted by robbyrobs at 7:36 PM on February 10, 2023
Metafilter: weird ramblings about etymology and Derrida
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:42 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:42 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
> I can only assume this is all going to get worse.
A safe assumption in almost any context!
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:44 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
A safe assumption in almost any context!
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:44 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
I think a large number of people have sustained some level of brain damage from suffering COVID. There are loads of people simply not thinking or behaving normally.
I’m thinking with children, they’ve seen bad examples at home and in a heir neighborhoods.
People definitely did use more drugs and alcohol as well. Some of that stuff isn’t very brain healthy.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 7:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
I’m thinking with children, they’ve seen bad examples at home and in a heir neighborhoods.
People definitely did use more drugs and alcohol as well. Some of that stuff isn’t very brain healthy.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 7:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
I keep a list of groups of people with whom I'm willing, in some cases perhaps even eager, to get into an antagonistic confrontation.
It's a short list, and I can tell you right now that the people who have direct control over what goes into my food are nowhere on it.
Jesus.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 7:56 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's a short list, and I can tell you right now that the people who have direct control over what goes into my food are nowhere on it.
Jesus.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 7:56 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
"For your protection, our wait staff carry guns."
Cool! Suicide by busboy!
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:01 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Cool! Suicide by busboy!
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:01 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
People who care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people, are mostly still getting takeaway or eating outdoors.
Which means that the indoors of the restaurants are mainly full of people who DON'T care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people.
Unsurprisingly, people who think waitstaff's lives don't matter, are more likely to be rude to waitstaff.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:01 PM on February 10, 2023 [22 favorites]
Which means that the indoors of the restaurants are mainly full of people who DON'T care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people.
Unsurprisingly, people who think waitstaff's lives don't matter, are more likely to be rude to waitstaff.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:01 PM on February 10, 2023 [22 favorites]
I think a large number of people have sustained some level of brain damage from suffering COVID. There are loads of people simply not thinking or behaving normally.
I don’t know, I’ve got long COVID with neurological symptoms, but I’m not the one finding some group of “others” to blame societal problems on right now.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
I don’t know, I’ve got long COVID with neurological symptoms, but I’m not the one finding some group of “others” to blame societal problems on right now.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
My spouse and I went out to dinner with my brother and his spouse last week. We're doing okay but they make at least 4 times what we make. We split the bill. I swear to fucking gods that his finger hovered over the 18% tip button before I hit the 25% tip on the payment pad when we split the bill. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
posted by mollweide at 8:23 PM on February 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by mollweide at 8:23 PM on February 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
Eating at a restaurant is equivalent to murder or I guess maybe manslaughter or, at a minimum, reckless endangerment?
Let’s not just be rude to workers, let’s boycott restaurants altogether and deprive them of their livelihood. At least that way they’ll know we care about their health.
posted by lumpy at 9:05 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
Let’s not just be rude to workers, let’s boycott restaurants altogether and deprive them of their livelihood. At least that way they’ll know we care about their health.
posted by lumpy at 9:05 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
Think of all the bombastic shit Trump did in front of all of us for the last 6 years ... and all the time it was called "smart" and "strong man" by a loud portion of our nation.
Even if we knew his behavior was garbage it opened cognitive doors for every one of us. Mirror neurons are no joke.
I mean ... look at George Washington. One decision to not run again after two terms led the entire country on that one action alone until FDR/1951.
Trump has dented our public ability to act right. And it will not change for the better on its own.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 9:20 PM on February 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
Even if we knew his behavior was garbage it opened cognitive doors for every one of us. Mirror neurons are no joke.
I mean ... look at George Washington. One decision to not run again after two terms led the entire country on that one action alone until FDR/1951.
Trump has dented our public ability to act right. And it will not change for the better on its own.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 9:20 PM on February 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
People who care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people, are mostly still getting takeaway or eating outdoors.
At this point? No.
Trump has dented our public ability to act right.
I don't want to oversimplify, but it sure does seem like he "gave permission" to a whole lot of jerks to act out their jerk fantasies. Worship thugs, behave thuggishly. A cross-class phenomenon among white people, but it affects different groups along the social scale differently. Certain groups have always been able to get away with treating workers like shit, while others, whether in their roles as workers or as customers, have never really been part of the social compact of respectability to begin with (Waffle House). In between, a whole lot of folks who perceive themselves as aggrieved by the loss of the white privilege that marked them out from the rest of the masses, acting out.
posted by praemunire at 9:52 PM on February 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
At this point? No.
Trump has dented our public ability to act right.
I don't want to oversimplify, but it sure does seem like he "gave permission" to a whole lot of jerks to act out their jerk fantasies. Worship thugs, behave thuggishly. A cross-class phenomenon among white people, but it affects different groups along the social scale differently. Certain groups have always been able to get away with treating workers like shit, while others, whether in their roles as workers or as customers, have never really been part of the social compact of respectability to begin with (Waffle House). In between, a whole lot of folks who perceive themselves as aggrieved by the loss of the white privilege that marked them out from the rest of the masses, acting out.
posted by praemunire at 9:52 PM on February 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
Which means that the indoors of the restaurants are mainly full of people who DON'T care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people.
I get your point, but it's 2023 - like it or not, most of society has moved on. I don't think returning to some degree of normal (after getting vaxxed and boosted, of course) is unreasonable when literally everyone is returning to normal life and the government no longer considers there to be a national health emergency.
To the original topic - I have definitely seen an uptick in incivility and rudeness, and it seems to be mostly US-centric (here in Europe it's an issue too but I definitely haven't seen it to nearly the same degree). Honestly I just try to avoid restaurants (or social interactions at all) when I'm back in the US now. Between everyone walking on eggshells and the weird judgmental tipping culture that can't even decide on a "correct" amount it's just not worth it.
posted by photo guy at 9:58 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
I get your point, but it's 2023 - like it or not, most of society has moved on. I don't think returning to some degree of normal (after getting vaxxed and boosted, of course) is unreasonable when literally everyone is returning to normal life and the government no longer considers there to be a national health emergency.
To the original topic - I have definitely seen an uptick in incivility and rudeness, and it seems to be mostly US-centric (here in Europe it's an issue too but I definitely haven't seen it to nearly the same degree). Honestly I just try to avoid restaurants (or social interactions at all) when I'm back in the US now. Between everyone walking on eggshells and the weird judgmental tipping culture that can't even decide on a "correct" amount it's just not worth it.
posted by photo guy at 9:58 PM on February 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
I don't think returning to some degree of normal (after getting vaxxed and boosted, of course) is unreasonable when literally everyone is returning to normal life and the government no longer considers there to be a national health emergency.
Lib politicians joined the GOP when they realized that doing the right thing is political suicide, with their 1%er donor class equating “back to normal” with their economic survival and staying on top of the heap. The rich and the powerful are still being more cautious than they’re telling you to be. Also: how liberals killed masking.
posted by supercres at 10:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
Lib politicians joined the GOP when they realized that doing the right thing is political suicide, with their 1%er donor class equating “back to normal” with their economic survival and staying on top of the heap. The rich and the powerful are still being more cautious than they’re telling you to be. Also: how liberals killed masking.
posted by supercres at 10:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
Yikes. I haven't been to a restaurant since 2019. I mostly subsist on cheap staple foods like cabbage, eggs, black beans, spinach, and brown rice. My bank account is growing steadily and i've lost 40 pounds.
Think i'll continue.
posted by Chronorin at 11:58 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
Think i'll continue.
posted by Chronorin at 11:58 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
I'm disappointed that methods enacted during the pandemic to reduce in-person contact, like being able to order/pay in a restaurant with your phone, have been so poorly implemented and/or received. Even before the pandemic, restaurants were shifting to counter-service and other ways to reduce the need for servers.
Since unemployment is the lowest it's ever been in the US in 20 years, with immigration numbers falling for various reasons, the amount of people willing to take up a service job and be abused is going to continue to drop as they find different jobs, ones without terrible hours and terrible customers. All the restaurants around me are hiring - I don't think they're going to ever fill those positions.
posted by meowzilla at 12:22 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Since unemployment is the lowest it's ever been in the US in 20 years, with immigration numbers falling for various reasons, the amount of people willing to take up a service job and be abused is going to continue to drop as they find different jobs, ones without terrible hours and terrible customers. All the restaurants around me are hiring - I don't think they're going to ever fill those positions.
posted by meowzilla at 12:22 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's a 9-11 of deaths every week in america right now. That nothing burger of a the pandemic. But you know, all the cool kids are ignoring it, so that makes risking other people's lives like... totes chill. Like drunk driving.
No wonder the empathy is gone. It wasn't fun caring about wait staff as if they were people.
Any word on whether this trend extends to civilized countries?
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 12:39 AM on February 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
No wonder the empathy is gone. It wasn't fun caring about wait staff as if they were people.
Any word on whether this trend extends to civilized countries?
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 12:39 AM on February 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
It's a 9-11 of deaths every week in america right now.
That's an order of magnitude less than are killed in car crashes... every day.
I guess everyone who gets in a car is heartlessly and callously choosing to endanger everyone around them too and probably a Trumpist?
posted by Dysk at 12:47 AM on February 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
That's an order of magnitude less than are killed in car crashes... every day.
I guess everyone who gets in a car is heartlessly and callously choosing to endanger everyone around them too and probably a Trumpist?
posted by Dysk at 12:47 AM on February 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
Any word on whether this trend extends to civilized countries?
As I said above, the recent anger/testiness in the US (which I'd argue goes well beyond restaurants) seems to me to be a uniquely American phenomenon. It's not like things here in Sweden are perfect, but you don't see people flipping out and walking on eggshells like I seem to in the US.
If you're talking about the pandemic, well things here are just as opened up as the US. Even the more cautious EU countries like Norway and Germany have long since relaxed pandemic restrictions. I haven't seen a mask in months. Like it or not, that's just the state of the world now.
posted by photo guy at 1:56 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
As I said above, the recent anger/testiness in the US (which I'd argue goes well beyond restaurants) seems to me to be a uniquely American phenomenon. It's not like things here in Sweden are perfect, but you don't see people flipping out and walking on eggshells like I seem to in the US.
If you're talking about the pandemic, well things here are just as opened up as the US. Even the more cautious EU countries like Norway and Germany have long since relaxed pandemic restrictions. I haven't seen a mask in months. Like it or not, that's just the state of the world now.
posted by photo guy at 1:56 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
People who care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people, are mostly still getting takeaway or eating outdoors.
This is no longer true. It was definitely true even just a year ago, but people have been trying to get back to normal, or the new normal anyway, for quite a while. And honestly, I completely understand. It takes a mental toll to continue to isolate yourselves and to live in pandemic mode.
I've been in hospitality my entire adult life and I still have a couple of bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The pandemic was difficult for us to say the least. We had staff that had been with us for over a decade that we lost. When we did the final (and hopefully permanent) re-opening last year, we started with 90% new staff. The historical knowledge of how the bars work and the little quirks and tips that got passed around via the old hats was no longer there. My business partner and I both didn't realize how much that actually formed the work culture of our places and there were some rough times getting staff fully equipped to deal with the idiosyncrasies of our bars. Couple that with hiring people who didn't necessarily have the longest resumes in food service because it was extremely difficult finding (and keeping) staff for the first several months and I think that the service that customers experienced was definitely not to the level it had previously been. I'm confident in saying that our experience was not unique in this, it was more the norm.
And yes, one of the reasons it was difficult keeping staff was how horrible certain customers had become, but a lot of it was also lack of income. Business was very up and down for a while, and bartenders couldn't count on their former $50/hr ave. take home. Sometimes they'd walk with barely $100 for their shift. No one is going to want to deal with the general public very long for that kind of money, especially the general public we have now.
I think that there's so much hate in the air, so much violence and othering of people in this country that it's really setting people off. It's in the air, it's osmosis, whatever, but there seems to be a general dis-ease in the population, even a low level anger, and it comes out at one of the few humans that you interact with these days, the food service or retail worker. So many of our interactions are done digitally, via text or screen, that when interacting with an actual human being people have forgotten how to be people and some of them are giving it their worst.
posted by newpotato at 2:16 AM on February 11, 2023 [48 favorites]
This is no longer true. It was definitely true even just a year ago, but people have been trying to get back to normal, or the new normal anyway, for quite a while. And honestly, I completely understand. It takes a mental toll to continue to isolate yourselves and to live in pandemic mode.
I've been in hospitality my entire adult life and I still have a couple of bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The pandemic was difficult for us to say the least. We had staff that had been with us for over a decade that we lost. When we did the final (and hopefully permanent) re-opening last year, we started with 90% new staff. The historical knowledge of how the bars work and the little quirks and tips that got passed around via the old hats was no longer there. My business partner and I both didn't realize how much that actually formed the work culture of our places and there were some rough times getting staff fully equipped to deal with the idiosyncrasies of our bars. Couple that with hiring people who didn't necessarily have the longest resumes in food service because it was extremely difficult finding (and keeping) staff for the first several months and I think that the service that customers experienced was definitely not to the level it had previously been. I'm confident in saying that our experience was not unique in this, it was more the norm.
And yes, one of the reasons it was difficult keeping staff was how horrible certain customers had become, but a lot of it was also lack of income. Business was very up and down for a while, and bartenders couldn't count on their former $50/hr ave. take home. Sometimes they'd walk with barely $100 for their shift. No one is going to want to deal with the general public very long for that kind of money, especially the general public we have now.
I think that there's so much hate in the air, so much violence and othering of people in this country that it's really setting people off. It's in the air, it's osmosis, whatever, but there seems to be a general dis-ease in the population, even a low level anger, and it comes out at one of the few humans that you interact with these days, the food service or retail worker. So many of our interactions are done digitally, via text or screen, that when interacting with an actual human being people have forgotten how to be people and some of them are giving it their worst.
posted by newpotato at 2:16 AM on February 11, 2023 [48 favorites]
If you project out the current Covid death rate for a year we'll end up around with 15,000 deaths caused by COVID in the United States this year. There are roughly 50,000 deaths a year in the United States from car accidents. The number of people that COVID will kill will be about a third of the number of people that cars will kill. That's not what most people mean by an order of magnitude.
I don't know how much you've driven lately but I think that saying that everyone who gets in a car is heartlessly and callously choosing to endanger everyone around them is a pretty appropriate, if somewhat hyperbolic, description of many drivers. We are inured to the risks of driving and I think that might mean that it's less valuable to use the costs of car culture as a comparison to other activities. I know that I'll probably never ride a bicycle in the city again because I can't trust drivers not to kill me.
The argument that everyone has decided that COVID is over so we should move on is odd. It doesn't strike me as a particularly strong argument to help me decide how I should behave. After all, everybody else is doing it is not an argument that most of our parents would have accepted from the time we were small children. A stronger argument for me would be to say that I'm just tired of COVID restrictions and I don't want to do it anymore. I'm not there yet. I'm vaxed. Paxlovid is still effective. I probably won't get seriously ill if I catch COVID. On the the other hand some people are immunocompromised, some people are unvaccinated, and some people are unlucky. I have to consider whether my behavior increases the risk of someone else catching COVID.
posted by rdr at 2:22 AM on February 11, 2023 [21 favorites]
I don't know how much you've driven lately but I think that saying that everyone who gets in a car is heartlessly and callously choosing to endanger everyone around them is a pretty appropriate, if somewhat hyperbolic, description of many drivers. We are inured to the risks of driving and I think that might mean that it's less valuable to use the costs of car culture as a comparison to other activities. I know that I'll probably never ride a bicycle in the city again because I can't trust drivers not to kill me.
The argument that everyone has decided that COVID is over so we should move on is odd. It doesn't strike me as a particularly strong argument to help me decide how I should behave. After all, everybody else is doing it is not an argument that most of our parents would have accepted from the time we were small children. A stronger argument for me would be to say that I'm just tired of COVID restrictions and I don't want to do it anymore. I'm not there yet. I'm vaxed. Paxlovid is still effective. I probably won't get seriously ill if I catch COVID. On the the other hand some people are immunocompromised, some people are unvaccinated, and some people are unlucky. I have to consider whether my behavior increases the risk of someone else catching COVID.
posted by rdr at 2:22 AM on February 11, 2023 [21 favorites]
The article’s emphasis on the traditional roles and duties of host and guest, make me think of the French idea of a table d’hôte consumed while at a chambre d’hôte. You are going to be eating at the host’s home at a table which may include other guests - as well as the host themselves. My most recent experience of this in lockdown era France, involved an owner/chef who had got fed up with his Michelin starred restaurant guests. We had a four hour long meal together in his room which featured two farting labradors, an antique- but still workable looking - shotgun set over his mantelpiece and a mid meal break to chat with the chimney sweep. It was delicious and nobody was rude to anyone else.
posted by rongorongo at 3:19 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 3:19 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
If you project out the current Covid death rate for a year we'll end up around with 15,000 deaths caused by COVID in the United States this year.
The current daily average COVID death rate in the US is 449. More than 15,000 people have already died from COVID this year (as in the past 40 days). Assuming we stay at this same death rate, more than 150,000 people will die of COVID this year.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:59 AM on February 11, 2023 [31 favorites]
The current daily average COVID death rate in the US is 449. More than 15,000 people have already died from COVID this year (as in the past 40 days). Assuming we stay at this same death rate, more than 150,000 people will die of COVID this year.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:59 AM on February 11, 2023 [31 favorites]
Ack... You're right. I slipped a decimal place when I did the math. The context for that part of my comment was in reply to a previous comment saying that COVID death rates were an order of magnitude smaller than car accident death rates. Turns out COVID deaths will be several times car deaths. Thank you for catching that.
posted by rdr at 4:36 AM on February 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by rdr at 4:36 AM on February 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
Just a reminder that y'all are talking about the death count not the death rate.
posted by entropone at 4:51 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by entropone at 4:51 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was responding to a comment that cited the death rate as 9-11 a week. Maybe my maths is wrong, but there aren't enough weeks in the year to get that to 15k, nevermind 50k. If the quoted death rate was wrong, you have an issue with the person that posted it, not me. My point was just that 9-11 deaths a week across a country the size of the USA is not a lot.
449 a day is several orders of magnitude off the quoted figure I was responding to.
posted by Dysk at 5:09 AM on February 11, 2023
449 a day is several orders of magnitude off the quoted figure I was responding to.
posted by Dysk at 5:09 AM on February 11, 2023
In my little business (martial arts) we had a period of time when people were weirdly over the top, like standing there yelling about policies we've had for a decade. The wave seems to be passing. The kids seem to be doing better too.
I think it's a form of PTSD. Denial is just as much a characteristic of trauma as anything else, so those pushing awareness of Covid away are just as, if not more, vulnerable. I know when I was at the nadir of my own childhood PTSD, and I didn't have a handle on my own strategies, I was volatile (although in different ways.)
I really feel for anyone in any service industry or front desk role right now and I try to go out of my way to be appreciative.
Is it uniquely American? No. In Toronto we've had a small rash of weird incidents, including one where a beloved member of the media died after being shoved on the street - hit his head and that was it.
However I would say that based on my 2019 road trip...things are more volatile in the US in general, and perhaps some supports are fewer, and that may impact things.
I was born in the US and have been travelling there my whole life to visit family and so forth. In 2019 my kids and I camped in upstate NY and stayed in Philadelphia and outside of Baltimore. I felt I had to remind my kids to be extra careful to look for lines for the showers and to mind their personal space...especially in campgrounds where most of the trailers or sites sported Trump and pseudo-military paraphernalia.
I also was shoved in front of a mural of the Declaration of Independence. I was talking to a panhandling woman, and one of the passersby took exception to me doing that, basically giving me a lecture about how, as a tourist, I shouldn't feed the birds because they would poop on the lawn (this is the actual analogy given. Right in front of the human panhandler.) I said thanks for the advice and still handed the woman a twenty, and the person whose advice I had not taken shoved me as they moved on with their day.
My kids were really shaken up by the experience, especially since I had been reminding them to be careful. It made me deeply sad. Philadelphia is amazing, the scale of the art is crazy and the history is overwhelming. On all ends. For the first time in years, I felt connected to both joy and sorrow at being American.
And then I was reminded that right now, in American society, there's a hard edge that here in my family we kind of call the "deserved poor" view. If you are suffering, you must have done something wrong and you should have known better. If you work a fast-food job, you should have made something better of yourself. If you are serving people, you have put yourself on the end of an equation that means you had better behave with deference in order that those who have done better can judge whether you are worthy or not...worthy of a tip, worthy of a scholarship, worthy of investment, and so on. Small mistakes - parking tickets!!! - can land you in jail.
It's really complicated and Toronto isn't far behind the curve, and seemingly trying to go down it, but I think there are still some shades of difference there. Just shades though. Same black and white mentality.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:09 AM on February 11, 2023 [26 favorites]
I think it's a form of PTSD. Denial is just as much a characteristic of trauma as anything else, so those pushing awareness of Covid away are just as, if not more, vulnerable. I know when I was at the nadir of my own childhood PTSD, and I didn't have a handle on my own strategies, I was volatile (although in different ways.)
I really feel for anyone in any service industry or front desk role right now and I try to go out of my way to be appreciative.
Is it uniquely American? No. In Toronto we've had a small rash of weird incidents, including one where a beloved member of the media died after being shoved on the street - hit his head and that was it.
However I would say that based on my 2019 road trip...things are more volatile in the US in general, and perhaps some supports are fewer, and that may impact things.
I was born in the US and have been travelling there my whole life to visit family and so forth. In 2019 my kids and I camped in upstate NY and stayed in Philadelphia and outside of Baltimore. I felt I had to remind my kids to be extra careful to look for lines for the showers and to mind their personal space...especially in campgrounds where most of the trailers or sites sported Trump and pseudo-military paraphernalia.
I also was shoved in front of a mural of the Declaration of Independence. I was talking to a panhandling woman, and one of the passersby took exception to me doing that, basically giving me a lecture about how, as a tourist, I shouldn't feed the birds because they would poop on the lawn (this is the actual analogy given. Right in front of the human panhandler.) I said thanks for the advice and still handed the woman a twenty, and the person whose advice I had not taken shoved me as they moved on with their day.
My kids were really shaken up by the experience, especially since I had been reminding them to be careful. It made me deeply sad. Philadelphia is amazing, the scale of the art is crazy and the history is overwhelming. On all ends. For the first time in years, I felt connected to both joy and sorrow at being American.
And then I was reminded that right now, in American society, there's a hard edge that here in my family we kind of call the "deserved poor" view. If you are suffering, you must have done something wrong and you should have known better. If you work a fast-food job, you should have made something better of yourself. If you are serving people, you have put yourself on the end of an equation that means you had better behave with deference in order that those who have done better can judge whether you are worthy or not...worthy of a tip, worthy of a scholarship, worthy of investment, and so on. Small mistakes - parking tickets!!! - can land you in jail.
It's really complicated and Toronto isn't far behind the curve, and seemingly trying to go down it, but I think there are still some shades of difference there. Just shades though. Same black and white mentality.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:09 AM on February 11, 2023 [26 favorites]
Dysk, the "9-11" refers to the September 11th terrorist attack death count, it's not "approximately ten."
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:19 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:19 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
Yeah, the "9-11" should be "9/11 (01)", meaning almost 3,000 people.
posted by Miss Cellania at 5:43 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Miss Cellania at 5:43 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Any word on whether this trend extends to civilized countries?
Haven't heard anything of this sort from either the hot take desks or the viral trends in my anglophone side of the region, no.... I've been reading about this when it comes up here, which boggles me because for work-related reasons, your wait staff culture is so performatively nice, in my recollection.
posted by cendawanita at 5:44 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Haven't heard anything of this sort from either the hot take desks or the viral trends in my anglophone side of the region, no.... I've been reading about this when it comes up here, which boggles me because for work-related reasons, your wait staff culture is so performatively nice, in my recollection.
posted by cendawanita at 5:44 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Instead of getting bogged down in specious arguments about what level of COVID does or doesn't technically count as a pandemic, I think we could maybe agree that "every single person who eats at a restaurant is an uncaring jerk who doesn't care about human life" is painting with a broad brush, and that it's reasonable that a bunch of people here are pushing back against it.
The pushback isn't against "COVID still exists and is bad." It's against "...and therefore, everyone who has eaten at a restaurant probably habitually screams at waitstaff."
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:47 AM on February 11, 2023 [17 favorites]
The pushback isn't against "COVID still exists and is bad." It's against "...and therefore, everyone who has eaten at a restaurant probably habitually screams at waitstaff."
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:47 AM on February 11, 2023 [17 favorites]
As I said above, the recent anger/testiness in the US (which I'd argue goes well beyond restaurants) seems to me to be a uniquely American phenomenon. It's not like things here in Sweden are perfect, but you don't see people flipping out and walking on eggshells like I seem to in the US.
I won’t oversimplify things by suggesting this is exclusively due to certain factors — goodness knows that US culture has had deep fault lines for a long time — but I cannot help but think that there has been an uptick in recent years in foreign state actors leveraging digital media to drive wedges into those existing fissures.
Millions of bots on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram…Russian-supported politicians, organizations and online media…it’s definitely had an impact.
Add this to our own corrupt, classist and racist forces in national politics as amplified through social media, and we live in an era when it has become so easy for internal and external bad actors to manipulate and aggravate those pre-existing conditions in our national mental dysfunction.
COVID then becomes just another rallying point for those forces to coalesce around and inflame public tension, distrust and hatred.
posted by darkstar at 6:08 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
I won’t oversimplify things by suggesting this is exclusively due to certain factors — goodness knows that US culture has had deep fault lines for a long time — but I cannot help but think that there has been an uptick in recent years in foreign state actors leveraging digital media to drive wedges into those existing fissures.
Millions of bots on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram…Russian-supported politicians, organizations and online media…it’s definitely had an impact.
Add this to our own corrupt, classist and racist forces in national politics as amplified through social media, and we live in an era when it has become so easy for internal and external bad actors to manipulate and aggravate those pre-existing conditions in our national mental dysfunction.
COVID then becomes just another rallying point for those forces to coalesce around and inflame public tension, distrust and hatred.
posted by darkstar at 6:08 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
And then I was reminded that right now, in American society, there's a hard edge that here in my family we kind of call the "deserved poor" view. If you are suffering, you must have done something wrong and you should have known better. If you work a fast-food job, you should have made something better of yourself. If you are serving people, you have put yourself on the end of an equation that means you had better behave with deference in order that those who have done better can judge whether you are worthy or not...worthy of a tip, worthy of a scholarship, worthy of investment, and so on.
It's called the Just World hypothesis or fallacy, and America is indeed sick with it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:13 AM on February 11, 2023 [19 favorites]
It's called the Just World hypothesis or fallacy, and America is indeed sick with it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:13 AM on February 11, 2023 [19 favorites]
I think there's truth to the foreign influence but I will point out that the right-wing Christian "rage machine" predates social media. It was deliberately booted up in the 1980s as a response to desegregation in the 1970s.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:16 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 6:16 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
People who care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people, are mostly still getting takeaway or eating outdoors.
Which means that the indoors of the restaurants are mainly full of people who DON'T care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people.
I’m sorry, this makes no sense. Restaurants and bars are as packed as they were pre-COVID, so for there to be some statistically-significant amount of people still refusing to eat out while restaurants are as busy as always would mean that a lot more people are eating out more often.
I’m also getting realllllll tired of Metafilter’s applause of COVID absolutism. Like it or not, about 98% of the public has stopped wearing a mask, and to continue to insult, well, basically everyone by saying they’re horrible people who don’t care if they kill people (!) is beyond the pale.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:16 AM on February 11, 2023 [39 favorites]
Which means that the indoors of the restaurants are mainly full of people who DON'T care about not getting other people sick, not giving other people long-COVID, not killing other people.
I’m sorry, this makes no sense. Restaurants and bars are as packed as they were pre-COVID, so for there to be some statistically-significant amount of people still refusing to eat out while restaurants are as busy as always would mean that a lot more people are eating out more often.
I’m also getting realllllll tired of Metafilter’s applause of COVID absolutism. Like it or not, about 98% of the public has stopped wearing a mask, and to continue to insult, well, basically everyone by saying they’re horrible people who don’t care if they kill people (!) is beyond the pale.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:16 AM on February 11, 2023 [39 favorites]
I find moral arguments based on popularity of a position (in either direction - the “everyone’s doing it so we shouldn’t call it immoral” or the “I’m better than you sheep because I do the unpopular thing” direction) to be beyond the pale. Or at least asinine. We can certainly find many counterexamples to both. (In the first case: slavery, various genocides, as well as less severe forms of discrimination and oppression. In the second case: much of the far right wing internet.) I don’t want to opine about eating out (I think there’s nuance and variation in peoples’ situations that would be impossible to convey given current levels of emotion around the issue), but sometimes a large number or even majority of people do, in fact, engage in less-than-moral behavior.
posted by eviemath at 6:40 AM on February 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:40 AM on February 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
I also think this is largely a derail in a discussion of causes of antisocial behavior in the US.
posted by eviemath at 6:41 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:41 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
this is gonna be real anecdotal but I think there's some middle ground here:
so in my part of Arizona people had kinda fallen roughly into two camps as early as like April or May 2020, the "I am never leaving my house again without a bleach shower prepared" contingent vs. the "this whole thing is STUPID and I wish to make ZERO CHANGES and I am ANGRY THAT I CAN'T GET A HAIRCUT" contingent
(nb there were only like a couple weeks here that you couldn't get a haircut? I think because the shitty governor's wife owns a hair salon? but ok go off I guess)
obviously this wasn't a perfect dichotomy but if you did, like, a scatter plot or whatever, that's where most people were at
you could probably make a pretty good argument that Team Bleach Shower on the whole were super cognizant of not wanting to spread around a virus because they're generally more pro-social, or at least aware of being a person in society, and that these values might also make them way less likely to yell at service staff
you could also argue that Team THIS IS STUPID were uhhh kind of already angry and yelling, and that probably many of them regularly consume media specifically designed to make them angry and yelling, so it's probable they're more likely to yell at service staff
and yes absolutely the calculus has changed for 2023 as the pandemic wears on people & Team Bleach Shower alters their risk calculations, and I wanna come down hard on the side of "not everyone eating in a restaurant right now is an evil monster," but here's the thing:
I don't think Team Bleach Shower is eating in restaurants nearly as often as they were pre-pandemic
I don't think this is necessarily always because they're making pandemic-related choices, although sure, it can be that
I think that if they're anything like me, their brains are just so dang broken that they fuckin' forgot restaurants are a thing and you can go eat at them
drive thru? sure.
delivery? yeah you betcha, let's pretend that's in the budget now even though one sandwich costs like thirty bucks.
dine-in restaurant?! oh RIGHT I remember those, you like sat down and someone brought you bread or chips & we all went there all the time and it was super normal, if you were a teen or a thirty-something with nothing else to do you could just be at Denny's or a Waffle House for hours, I think about that now & it hits me like a utopian-alien social phenomenon from a spec-fic novel
so yeah I don't think this accounts for the entirety of, or even most of, the thing where people are noticeably ruder now, honestly I'd give more weight to the aforementioned media that deliberately makes people angry & yelling about stuff
but I think "pro-social people are eating in restaurants less often" and "it is possible to be a pro-social person and choose to eat in a restaurant in 2023" can both be true, wow that was a lot of words to say that
posted by taquito sunrise at 7:20 AM on February 11, 2023 [26 favorites]
so in my part of Arizona people had kinda fallen roughly into two camps as early as like April or May 2020, the "I am never leaving my house again without a bleach shower prepared" contingent vs. the "this whole thing is STUPID and I wish to make ZERO CHANGES and I am ANGRY THAT I CAN'T GET A HAIRCUT" contingent
(nb there were only like a couple weeks here that you couldn't get a haircut? I think because the shitty governor's wife owns a hair salon? but ok go off I guess)
obviously this wasn't a perfect dichotomy but if you did, like, a scatter plot or whatever, that's where most people were at
you could probably make a pretty good argument that Team Bleach Shower on the whole were super cognizant of not wanting to spread around a virus because they're generally more pro-social, or at least aware of being a person in society, and that these values might also make them way less likely to yell at service staff
you could also argue that Team THIS IS STUPID were uhhh kind of already angry and yelling, and that probably many of them regularly consume media specifically designed to make them angry and yelling, so it's probable they're more likely to yell at service staff
and yes absolutely the calculus has changed for 2023 as the pandemic wears on people & Team Bleach Shower alters their risk calculations, and I wanna come down hard on the side of "not everyone eating in a restaurant right now is an evil monster," but here's the thing:
I don't think Team Bleach Shower is eating in restaurants nearly as often as they were pre-pandemic
I don't think this is necessarily always because they're making pandemic-related choices, although sure, it can be that
I think that if they're anything like me, their brains are just so dang broken that they fuckin' forgot restaurants are a thing and you can go eat at them
drive thru? sure.
delivery? yeah you betcha, let's pretend that's in the budget now even though one sandwich costs like thirty bucks.
dine-in restaurant?! oh RIGHT I remember those, you like sat down and someone brought you bread or chips & we all went there all the time and it was super normal, if you were a teen or a thirty-something with nothing else to do you could just be at Denny's or a Waffle House for hours, I think about that now & it hits me like a utopian-alien social phenomenon from a spec-fic novel
so yeah I don't think this accounts for the entirety of, or even most of, the thing where people are noticeably ruder now, honestly I'd give more weight to the aforementioned media that deliberately makes people angry & yelling about stuff
but I think "pro-social people are eating in restaurants less often" and "it is possible to be a pro-social person and choose to eat in a restaurant in 2023" can both be true, wow that was a lot of words to say that
posted by taquito sunrise at 7:20 AM on February 11, 2023 [26 favorites]
I'll might get flamed for this but... I have to wonder if this "huge increase" in antisocial behavior is something that's being noticed more frequently by people because it's being discussed and portrayed in media more frequently. And in threads like this one. There's name for this phenomenon that escapes me right now... but it's like seeing more red Toyota Camrys on the street after spending time shopping for red Toyota Camrys.
I work with the public, in a retail space. Granted, the space I work in is more hobby-friendly versus needs-adjacent (such as a grocery store). I live on the north side of Chicago in a dense neighborhood full of all different kinds of people. Admittedly a very deep blue area. But we get all kinds of shoppers in my store/establishment, including people stopping by after lunch for fun, or just popping in to window shop, or the extended families of the people who are doing the buying. We get people who travel miles and miles because my store is very good and sought after. So people from wealthy areas, poorer areas, the Red 'burbs, etc. And I go to restaurants... not as much as I did pre-pandemic, but much more so than many people in this thread are self describing. And I do grocery shopping, go to the hardware store. Just went to the movies. I bicycle during warmer months and I drive a car pretty regularly. I ride public transit but not often enough to make real observations of trend.
I have not noticed a big increase in antisocial behavior. I'm not doubting anyone's stories here. I certainly did notice weirdness during the pandemic, especially at first. But if anything people were a little less edgy then—at least publicly. OF COURSE we get a share of jerks and bad behavior where I work. But I don't see any kind of increase. I'm 52 years old, FWIW.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:24 AM on February 11, 2023 [16 favorites]
I work with the public, in a retail space. Granted, the space I work in is more hobby-friendly versus needs-adjacent (such as a grocery store). I live on the north side of Chicago in a dense neighborhood full of all different kinds of people. Admittedly a very deep blue area. But we get all kinds of shoppers in my store/establishment, including people stopping by after lunch for fun, or just popping in to window shop, or the extended families of the people who are doing the buying. We get people who travel miles and miles because my store is very good and sought after. So people from wealthy areas, poorer areas, the Red 'burbs, etc. And I go to restaurants... not as much as I did pre-pandemic, but much more so than many people in this thread are self describing. And I do grocery shopping, go to the hardware store. Just went to the movies. I bicycle during warmer months and I drive a car pretty regularly. I ride public transit but not often enough to make real observations of trend.
I have not noticed a big increase in antisocial behavior. I'm not doubting anyone's stories here. I certainly did notice weirdness during the pandemic, especially at first. But if anything people were a little less edgy then—at least publicly. OF COURSE we get a share of jerks and bad behavior where I work. But I don't see any kind of increase. I'm 52 years old, FWIW.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:24 AM on February 11, 2023 [16 favorites]
It's the "frequency illusion" or the "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon."
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:46 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:46 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
I had a customer service worker literally throw a food item at me the other day (I had been waiting for it for a while but hadn't said anything about it cuz obvs they're busy--another worker noticed me standing there and asked what I was waiting for, then turned and talked to the other worker who started yelling something I couldn't make out before she came out and threw the item at me and snapped, "HERE'S YOUR [ITEM]").
I figured it wasn't about me and went on with my day. Otherwise, outside of people speaking to me in the most deadpan, you-sound-like-you-want-to-die-do-you-need-me-to-call-someone voice (which isn't rude just out of the norm for customer service expectations and idc if people are peppy), I haven't experienced rudeness from workers. But I've worked customer service and would rather die than start shit with a customer service worker, so that probably contributes too.
I'm curious about the socialization thing because I think under-socialization isn't the full picture. A lot of the people acting like this are people who refused to isolate at any point in the pandemic. At least that's what I see in my family. I wonder how much is not about lack of socialization, but the drop-off in socialization with those in their family and friend circles who had an iota of conscientiousness. The "good influences" disappearing, basically.
posted by brook horse at 7:48 AM on February 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
I figured it wasn't about me and went on with my day. Otherwise, outside of people speaking to me in the most deadpan, you-sound-like-you-want-to-die-do-you-need-me-to-call-someone voice (which isn't rude just out of the norm for customer service expectations and idc if people are peppy), I haven't experienced rudeness from workers. But I've worked customer service and would rather die than start shit with a customer service worker, so that probably contributes too.
I'm curious about the socialization thing because I think under-socialization isn't the full picture. A lot of the people acting like this are people who refused to isolate at any point in the pandemic. At least that's what I see in my family. I wonder how much is not about lack of socialization, but the drop-off in socialization with those in their family and friend circles who had an iota of conscientiousness. The "good influences" disappearing, basically.
posted by brook horse at 7:48 AM on February 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
basically everyone by saying they’re horrible people who don’t care if they kill people (!) is beyond the pale.
I think you're right. I can't write off everyone who isn't masking at this point. But like the post here itself, I can wonder why we as a society are behaving this way, whether it's about mask safety or simple kindness at a meal.
And wonder when I'll get to eat at a diner again. Sigh.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 7:55 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think you're right. I can't write off everyone who isn't masking at this point. But like the post here itself, I can wonder why we as a society are behaving this way, whether it's about mask safety or simple kindness at a meal.
And wonder when I'll get to eat at a diner again. Sigh.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 7:55 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
their brains are just so dang broken that they fuckin' forgot restaurants are a thing and you can go eat at them
That's adjacent to me. I started working remote about 6 months ago and rarely leave the house except for groceries. I would leave more often if we weren't still dealing with Covid, but because we are it's like... let's not. So, even on those rare days where they do request me onsite, it's just... "ugh. I would have to drive 8 blocks, pay for parking and figure out what to eat?" if I were to go out for lunch versus "leftovers are fine" or "whatever the caf has is fine".
So, yeah, I crave going to restaurants again. And, I do! Just nowhere near as much. It is, as taquito sunrise said, something "broken" in me. If, by broken we mean "kinda sorta forgot that was a thing". But, also I think I see their larger point of when you forget something is a thing, you can also forget there are certain social mores related to such a thing.
********
I won't critique the article because it seems that we have moved on from the article and just a general discussion of how things are in the here and now of dining experiences and whether or not any of it has to do with changes in recent years (Covid, mostly).
Anecdata: I worked food service off and on (almost completely on) for... let's say 30 years. Started as a busboy when I was 11 getting paid under the table to being in "management" (technically, but fought tooth and nail to stay on the floor) and a good 12+ years of that was full time.
This... hostility is not really new to me. Has it increased? I don't know. I've been out of food service for almost 8 years. But, everything I am reading in the comments and in the initial article are just... not new.
Above, I said I have forgotten about restaurants as a thing. That is true in the sense of it is not an obvious "go-to" for us any more if we haven't had dinner planned out. But, we still go out. And, when we do, I haven't noticed a change pre vs post Covid life.
Granted, we are pretty relaxed when we go out to eat and treat the people that are taking care of us like people, so...
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 8:14 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
That's adjacent to me. I started working remote about 6 months ago and rarely leave the house except for groceries. I would leave more often if we weren't still dealing with Covid, but because we are it's like... let's not. So, even on those rare days where they do request me onsite, it's just... "ugh. I would have to drive 8 blocks, pay for parking and figure out what to eat?" if I were to go out for lunch versus "leftovers are fine" or "whatever the caf has is fine".
So, yeah, I crave going to restaurants again. And, I do! Just nowhere near as much. It is, as taquito sunrise said, something "broken" in me. If, by broken we mean "kinda sorta forgot that was a thing". But, also I think I see their larger point of when you forget something is a thing, you can also forget there are certain social mores related to such a thing.
********
I won't critique the article because it seems that we have moved on from the article and just a general discussion of how things are in the here and now of dining experiences and whether or not any of it has to do with changes in recent years (Covid, mostly).
Anecdata: I worked food service off and on (almost completely on) for... let's say 30 years. Started as a busboy when I was 11 getting paid under the table to being in "management" (technically, but fought tooth and nail to stay on the floor) and a good 12+ years of that was full time.
This... hostility is not really new to me. Has it increased? I don't know. I've been out of food service for almost 8 years. But, everything I am reading in the comments and in the initial article are just... not new.
Above, I said I have forgotten about restaurants as a thing. That is true in the sense of it is not an obvious "go-to" for us any more if we haven't had dinner planned out. But, we still go out. And, when we do, I haven't noticed a change pre vs post Covid life.
Granted, we are pretty relaxed when we go out to eat and treat the people that are taking care of us like people, so...
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 8:14 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
I’m also getting realllllll tired of Metafilter’s applause of COVID absolutism.
rhymedirective, since we're talking about what's producing tension, misunderstanding, and strong reactions . . . is that really what you've observed since you've been on the Blue?
I've seen some strong assertions, like a few in this thread, , but nothing at all that seems like "absolutism" across that board.
posted by pt68 at 8:24 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
rhymedirective, since we're talking about what's producing tension, misunderstanding, and strong reactions . . . is that really what you've observed since you've been on the Blue?
I've seen some strong assertions, like a few in this thread, , but nothing at all that seems like "absolutism" across that board.
posted by pt68 at 8:24 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
The adage that if you want to see who people are, see how they treat wait staff, has never been truer than it is now.
posted by jscalzi at 8:28 AM on February 11, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by jscalzi at 8:28 AM on February 11, 2023 [15 favorites]
What I'm mostly experiencing from retail/service workers these days, consistently, is noticeable relief and gratitude when I approach them with a simple good mood and patience. Which tells me by inference that they're mostly dealing with people who are not acting that way at all.
It seems that we've lost the sense that we owe anything to one another, even simple patience and courtesy, because it really doesn't take much effort to not be an asshole in public, certainly less than anger and yelling require; so the path of least resistance is usually at least passive blandness. But something has slipped, between Trump giving everyone's worst impulses permission to be taken out for show and the pandemic demonstrating very clearly to us all that we do not live in a society that cares about us, or taking care of us, in any real way. So why should we care about each other any more? We've lost the simple reciprocity of courtesy and care that is essential in society. I hope we are able to regain it.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:29 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
It seems that we've lost the sense that we owe anything to one another, even simple patience and courtesy, because it really doesn't take much effort to not be an asshole in public, certainly less than anger and yelling require; so the path of least resistance is usually at least passive blandness. But something has slipped, between Trump giving everyone's worst impulses permission to be taken out for show and the pandemic demonstrating very clearly to us all that we do not live in a society that cares about us, or taking care of us, in any real way. So why should we care about each other any more? We've lost the simple reciprocity of courtesy and care that is essential in society. I hope we are able to regain it.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:29 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
I just realized this author was the same one who wrote a recent essay about life on Oahu. (NYT gift link.) Definitely a bit of a departure for the NYT and I checked to see if she has written fiction, but no, it seems she's pretty much a food writer. Coming from Hawaii, I am sure she is quite familiar with shitty customer behavior, which is probably several magnitudes worse than on the mainland and with even uglier class connotations. So I find her take on this here interesting and unexpected.
posted by BibiRose at 8:33 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by BibiRose at 8:33 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
By extension of previous arguments, one could say "everyone seems to be ruder to waitstaff so clearly being rude to waitstaff is an acceptable thing to do, I think hinting that there's something wrong with acting this way is insulting to all the people who are just acting normally rude towards waitstaff. You're way behind the times, acting nice towards them like it's 2018 or something"
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:38 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:38 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Weirdly I've found myself being more polite and thanking people excessively when I have to interact with them in person. The other day I thanked the receptionist at the doctor's office for updating my file with my correct phone number, and then again when she re-sent my request for specialist consult with my updated phone number so that they could reach me to schedule an appointment at some time in the future. Then I thanked her again and said I was sorry for taking up so much of her time rambling trying to explain how I knew they had the wrong phone number in the first place.
I suppose it could be because deep down I'm on the brink of exploding at any moment and so I pathologically try to make every interaction as accommodating as possible so as to avoid conflict that may get out of hand quickly.
Then again I don't live in America so...
posted by some loser at 8:38 AM on February 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
I suppose it could be because deep down I'm on the brink of exploding at any moment and so I pathologically try to make every interaction as accommodating as possible so as to avoid conflict that may get out of hand quickly.
Then again I don't live in America so...
posted by some loser at 8:38 AM on February 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
Waiters are on-demand servants (to be generous) whose livelihood depends on the whim of those who want the experience of having servants.
US supremacist culture says you're worth as a human is what you earn.
Discretionary income is at a long-time low.
Things are, generally speaking, bad and getting worse for a lot of people.
The United States as an institutional (and often as a society) is incredibly punitive and callous, as evidenced by rates of incarceration, gun deaths, and a myriad of other metrics.
The United States has never adequately reckoned with its base nature as an institutional (and now global) slaver imperialist and just had the starkest example of this shameful reality as it's chief executive for 4 years.
Tipping culture is directly tied to US history of enslavement.
People function within these realities along a continuum of cognitive dissonance and conditioned/prescribed externalization of their own discomforts.
So, in summary: Servants typically bear the brunt of their "benefactors" ire, and given that said benefactors have less to spend anyway, they have less to tip. Less to tip means less to earn. Less to earn means less worthy as a human. Less worthy as a human means more appropriate to externalize discomfort onto in the conditioned and prescribed ways, typically punitively/cruelly.
This is a tragic and painful feature of US based capitalism, and it tells the story of labor relations in the states pretty well. If the system valued basic human rights at all, it could not exist as it does now. But, generally speaking, the system doesn't. And unfortunately, that's a mostly bipartisan condition.
posted by CPAnarchist at 9:38 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
US supremacist culture says you're worth as a human is what you earn.
Discretionary income is at a long-time low.
Things are, generally speaking, bad and getting worse for a lot of people.
The United States as an institutional (and often as a society) is incredibly punitive and callous, as evidenced by rates of incarceration, gun deaths, and a myriad of other metrics.
The United States has never adequately reckoned with its base nature as an institutional (and now global) slaver imperialist and just had the starkest example of this shameful reality as it's chief executive for 4 years.
Tipping culture is directly tied to US history of enslavement.
People function within these realities along a continuum of cognitive dissonance and conditioned/prescribed externalization of their own discomforts.
So, in summary: Servants typically bear the brunt of their "benefactors" ire, and given that said benefactors have less to spend anyway, they have less to tip. Less to tip means less to earn. Less to earn means less worthy as a human. Less worthy as a human means more appropriate to externalize discomfort onto in the conditioned and prescribed ways, typically punitively/cruelly.
This is a tragic and painful feature of US based capitalism, and it tells the story of labor relations in the states pretty well. If the system valued basic human rights at all, it could not exist as it does now. But, generally speaking, the system doesn't. And unfortunately, that's a mostly bipartisan condition.
posted by CPAnarchist at 9:38 AM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
A server’s shitty behavior can’t cost you your job, though.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:28 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by gottabefunky at 10:28 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't eat out nearly as much as before. I'm probably not the only one who thinks in terms of overall probability: any specific interaction (i.e. meal inside a restaurant) has a probability of my catching or transmitting a virus. To minimize this probability overall, I need to minimize those interactions, and choose lower-probability instances.
The lowest overall probability would come from zero interactions, but that is balanced against the probability that my quality of life will be bad enough to make it 'not worth it'.
So, my number of times eating in a restaurant is not zero, but it's a lot lower than previously.
There are people who just ignore all this and just do whatever they did. They're going to outnumber people like me.
posted by amtho at 12:31 PM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
The lowest overall probability would come from zero interactions, but that is balanced against the probability that my quality of life will be bad enough to make it 'not worth it'.
So, my number of times eating in a restaurant is not zero, but it's a lot lower than previously.
There are people who just ignore all this and just do whatever they did. They're going to outnumber people like me.
posted by amtho at 12:31 PM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
I know folks who run a restaurant that's been in their family for generations who are done with it because the pandemic was awful. First the lack of support for small businesses and the stress of layoffs and supply chain issues, then the difficulty of yo-yoing between being open and closed due to infection/exposure, then the problem of staffing up and the relentless, demoralizing drag throughout - the significant uptick in dreadful behavior from customers. I'm sorry to see them setting things up to get out of a much-loved family enterprise that had enough support to survive through all the financial and logistical challenges. But having white-knuckled my way through my stint in food service over 20 years ago, I can't blame them for not finding putting up with the public worth it any more. I was scarred enough from normal awful customers, it sounds like a nightmare out there now.
posted by EvaDestruction at 12:43 PM on February 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by EvaDestruction at 12:43 PM on February 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
I feel like people are ignoring Dr. Mew's extremely perceptive comment:
I don’t think we can be too surprised that these heavily armed people who hate us and now look forward to their coming opportunity to kill us are a bit more irascible with us when they have to deal with us in public than we're accustomed to — and the existence of such people markedly increases the tensions in public interactions in general.
To a very uncomfortable degree, the situation in the US right now parallels the state of affairs which prevailed in Rwanda right before the Hutu killed all those Tutsi. Unlike the Hutu, our potentially violent conservatives are not a majority, but what they lack in numbers, they more than make up for in weaponry.
If you think I’m exaggerating, glance at this video about conservative Congress people replacing their wonted American flag lapel pins with AR-15 lapel pins.
posted by jamjam at 2:17 PM on February 11, 2023 [22 favorites]
I would say the problem is not that “people have discovered that no authority will stop them from acting badly.” It is that angry cis white conservatives have decided that treating others as you would wish to be treated is a loser mentality. It is about a will to power. This segment of the population is creating a social world in which authorities are either afraid to stop them or actively enable them—online, in restaurants, at school board meetings, wherever.A substantial, and very heavily armed minority are just waiting for the ball to drop so they can get out their weapons and start killing the people they think are The Problem, and those problem people happen to include a lot of the people who are commenting in this thread.
I think a whole lot of kind people were really hoping that with the end of the Trump presidency and lockdowns, all the entitled and sadistic harassment they saw around then would fade away. Well, it hasn’t happened. Nonconsensual dominance and taking pleasure in causing those you disdain to suffer are a growing lifestyle. It’s depressing! But understanding and naming the problem are vital if we are to actually mount an effective response.
I don’t think we can be too surprised that these heavily armed people who hate us and now look forward to their coming opportunity to kill us are a bit more irascible with us when they have to deal with us in public than we're accustomed to — and the existence of such people markedly increases the tensions in public interactions in general.
To a very uncomfortable degree, the situation in the US right now parallels the state of affairs which prevailed in Rwanda right before the Hutu killed all those Tutsi. Unlike the Hutu, our potentially violent conservatives are not a majority, but what they lack in numbers, they more than make up for in weaponry.
If you think I’m exaggerating, glance at this video about conservative Congress people replacing their wonted American flag lapel pins with AR-15 lapel pins.
posted by jamjam at 2:17 PM on February 11, 2023 [22 favorites]
I'm as down on angry conservatives as anyone. But I've spend the last 7+ years living in extremely blue bubbles, and have witnessed no shortage of rude and entitled customers. I'm happy to blame the far right for anything and everything, but I'm not sure how the far right is responsible for customers who aren't conservative yelling at waitresses.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:46 PM on February 11, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 2:46 PM on February 11, 2023 [23 favorites]
Did you not notice "the existence of such people markedly increases the tensions in public interactions in general.", or do you just think it’s not true?
It’s like mass shootings: not that many of us have experienced one directly, but they’ve changed public life profoundly.
posted by jamjam at 3:05 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
It’s like mass shootings: not that many of us have experienced one directly, but they’ve changed public life profoundly.
posted by jamjam at 3:05 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
60-year-old dies after spectator fight at Vermont middle school basketball game; cause of death pending
posted by achrise at 3:38 PM on February 11, 2023
posted by achrise at 3:38 PM on February 11, 2023
To a very uncomfortable degree, the situation in the US right now parallels the state of affairs which prevailed in Rwanda right before the Hutu killed all those Tutsi.
parallels, how so? Would this include mass Tutsi deaths before the assassination by Hutu thugs or the subsequent wars and uneasy peace that exist now.
posted by clavdivs at 3:45 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
parallels, how so? Would this include mass Tutsi deaths before the assassination by Hutu thugs or the subsequent wars and uneasy peace that exist now.
posted by clavdivs at 3:45 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
"The pushback isn't against "COVID still exists and is bad." It's against "...and therefore, everyone who has eaten at a restaurant probably habitually screams at waitstaff."
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:47 AM on February 11
In a post about how lots of people are screaming at wait-staff? While others say covid is basically over?
I think Jamjam, and the Dr Mew are more on track than I am with this.
Also, for the "Its not as deadly as cars therefore its no big deal crowd" so uh, do you have a "big-deal" line? [link to cdc leading causes of death] I mean, we're not Killing Waitstaff at anything near the levels as cancer, so should we feel comfortable maintaining or increasing the kill-rate for staff.
I am one of the metafilter a-holes who is extreme, but "anything less than 50K deaths is a ok" is beyond the pale even for me.
Lets treat wait staff better and school staff and librarians and immunocompromised and non-whites and the poor and kgbt+. Lets accept less hate and harm.
Cars are a devastation to our health, our communities, our atmosphere, to wildlife. Many of those 50,000 people could be alive today. Those waitstaff are people, lets stop handwaiving away all this death and dispair.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 7:45 PM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:47 AM on February 11
In a post about how lots of people are screaming at wait-staff? While others say covid is basically over?
I think Jamjam, and the Dr Mew are more on track than I am with this.
Also, for the "Its not as deadly as cars therefore its no big deal crowd" so uh, do you have a "big-deal" line? [link to cdc leading causes of death] I mean, we're not Killing Waitstaff at anything near the levels as cancer, so should we feel comfortable maintaining or increasing the kill-rate for staff.
I am one of the metafilter a-holes who is extreme, but "anything less than 50K deaths is a ok" is beyond the pale even for me.
Lets treat wait staff better and school staff and librarians and immunocompromised and non-whites and the poor and kgbt+. Lets accept less hate and harm.
Cars are a devastation to our health, our communities, our atmosphere, to wildlife. Many of those 50,000 people could be alive today. Those waitstaff are people, lets stop handwaiving away all this death and dispair.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 7:45 PM on February 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
Did you not notice "the existence of such people markedly increases the tensions in public interactions in general.", or do you just think it’s not true?
The last place I lived voted 87% for Biden, and the neighborhood I'm in right now voted 79% for Biden. I'm sorry, but people need to own their own poor behavior and they can't just blame it on right wing nutjobs somewhere else. That's a feel-good answer that's meant to make those of us who aren't supporters of Gaetz and Greene feel good, but unfortunately poor behavior is a lot more generalized.
parallels, how so? Would this include mass Tutsi deaths before the assassination by Hutu thugs or the subsequent wars and uneasy peace that exist now.
Thank you for pushing back on this. It was a lazy and deeply inaccurate comparison.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:08 PM on February 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
The last place I lived voted 87% for Biden, and the neighborhood I'm in right now voted 79% for Biden. I'm sorry, but people need to own their own poor behavior and they can't just blame it on right wing nutjobs somewhere else. That's a feel-good answer that's meant to make those of us who aren't supporters of Gaetz and Greene feel good, but unfortunately poor behavior is a lot more generalized.
parallels, how so? Would this include mass Tutsi deaths before the assassination by Hutu thugs or the subsequent wars and uneasy peace that exist now.
Thank you for pushing back on this. It was a lazy and deeply inaccurate comparison.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:08 PM on February 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
The Rwanda massacre was pushed by mass media, mainly radio, as I recall, with semicryptic slogans such as 'cut down the tall timber' , and facilitated by importing anomalously large numbers of machetes.
If you think the messages on Truth Social, OAN, and NewsMax are anything like that subtle you have your head so deeply buried I don’t think you’ll ever get the sand out of your ears. Just read the comments on the YouTube video I linked, keeping in mind that they’re on a far left channel!
And if you think the millions upon millions of dollars of surplus military equipment that the W administration rather notoriously transferred to police departments large and small, urban and rural and possibly the Trump administration as well, but I don’t know that for a fact, has just evaporated and is not still out there somewhere, I don’t know what to tell you.
And for a nightcap, check out the 16 acre 'cop city' being built in a formerly protected forest just outside of Atlanta where the police just executed a protestor, and tell me you don’t think that’s an extremely ominous development which looks for all the world as if it were designed to pacify a city largely controlled by black politicians from an impregnable fortress in case of the kind of unrest that might result from, oh I don’t know—a successful coup?
It amazes me that we’ve reached reached a point that looking around, seeing what’s actually happening, and drawing fairly obvious inferences has become "lazy and inaccurate", while willful blindness and shouting 'nah, nah nah, I can’t hear you' has somehow been transmogrified into sober responsibility.
posted by jamjam at 8:53 PM on February 11, 2023 [9 favorites]
If you think the messages on Truth Social, OAN, and NewsMax are anything like that subtle you have your head so deeply buried I don’t think you’ll ever get the sand out of your ears. Just read the comments on the YouTube video I linked, keeping in mind that they’re on a far left channel!
And if you think the millions upon millions of dollars of surplus military equipment that the W administration rather notoriously transferred to police departments large and small, urban and rural and possibly the Trump administration as well, but I don’t know that for a fact, has just evaporated and is not still out there somewhere, I don’t know what to tell you.
And for a nightcap, check out the 16 acre 'cop city' being built in a formerly protected forest just outside of Atlanta where the police just executed a protestor, and tell me you don’t think that’s an extremely ominous development which looks for all the world as if it were designed to pacify a city largely controlled by black politicians from an impregnable fortress in case of the kind of unrest that might result from, oh I don’t know—a successful coup?
It amazes me that we’ve reached reached a point that looking around, seeing what’s actually happening, and drawing fairly obvious inferences has become "lazy and inaccurate", while willful blindness and shouting 'nah, nah nah, I can’t hear you' has somehow been transmogrified into sober responsibility.
posted by jamjam at 8:53 PM on February 11, 2023 [9 favorites]
Having the way if life we've been accustomed to for decades suddenly, even if temporarily, rugpulled is enough in itself to destabilize society whatever the specifics, but having it occur in the Trump era made it that much worse. I think it's somewhat of an all of the above situation, but the worst factor is rampant conspiracy propaganda. A quarter to a third of the population is now under a false enlightenment in which they don't trust any consensus view of reality, or have connection to any kind of reality, and that has an enormous impact.
posted by blue shadows at 10:07 PM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by blue shadows at 10:07 PM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
I eat out pretty frequently and I’ve not observed any rudeness, like at all. J know it’s out there because I’ve seen signs posted about there being zero tolerance of rudeness. There were signs in the ER, if all places. I’m super bummed that several excellent restaurants closed. We don’t have too many places left that aren’t chains, so supporting the local places is important to me, and I’m lucky enough to afford it plus tip well. I don’t wear a mask any longer, almost no one does, but I will if the infections go up again, and I’ll stop eating out. Take out business was astronomical for some of these restaurants. We have a garden so come summer we will not eat out much at all.
posted by waving at 11:25 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by waving at 11:25 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I won’t oversimplify things by suggesting this is exclusively due to certain factors — goodness knows that US culture has had deep fault lines for a long time — but I cannot help but think that there has been an uptick in recent years in foreign state actors leveraging digital media to drive wedges into those existing fissures.
I'm a bit behind on this thread (as it happens, I was flying back to the US yesterday) but I think there might be some truth to this and why it's so much worse in the US. I think social media and the rise of online ecosystems (most of which have algorithms that promote conflict) has been horribly destructive on its own but I have no doubt that all those bot farms fanning the flames are not helping either. Sadly I don't have a good solution, at this point it feels like hatred and rudeness are so baked in to the US culture that there's no removing it.
posted by photo guy at 8:15 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm a bit behind on this thread (as it happens, I was flying back to the US yesterday) but I think there might be some truth to this and why it's so much worse in the US. I think social media and the rise of online ecosystems (most of which have algorithms that promote conflict) has been horribly destructive on its own but I have no doubt that all those bot farms fanning the flames are not helping either. Sadly I don't have a good solution, at this point it feels like hatred and rudeness are so baked in to the US culture that there's no removing it.
posted by photo guy at 8:15 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
There's definitely a phenomenon of conservatives acting like jerks! But there's also a phenomenon of liberals and leftists also acting like jerks. Personally, I'm a lot more sympathetic to someone who thinks that Trump voters don't deserve politeness than I am to someone who thinks that trans people don't deserve healthcare, and I am absolutely not both-sidesing this, but I think it's 100% true that politics in America is increasingly acting like a polarized fandom. When my conservative family members talk, I basically hear the same shit that Xbox stans said about GameCubes back in the day, only the thing they're shit-talking isn't graphics cards, it's the environment and democracy and human life.
I don't really keep track of which groups of people are considered "Them" by conservatives, but I find it unsurprising that teachers, librarians, etc are treated with the same hostility (and sometimes subjected to the same violence) that openly LGBTQ people are. And I wouldn't be surprised, either, if some of them had found ways of subjecting retail workers to the same hostility and contempt—even just through the logic that where you work is an indicator of whether you've succeeded or failed in life. (That's not new, either: Maggie Thatcher famously said that anyone who takes the bus to work past 30 has wasted their life.)
I will say, on this front, that I have seen some shockingly rude behavior towards retail employees and waitstaff from people who were purportedly left-wing: screaming at employees for not wearing masks, getting weirdly fighty because some company policy or some product that they store is offensive in some way, etc. I haven't seen a lot of it (and haven't seen a lot of shittiness towards waitstaff in general, thankfully). But I've seen it, and I have mixed feelings about any ideology that says you basically shouldn't have to try and show kindness to others if they fail your political gom jabbar test.
And, again, that has nothing to do with the goodness or badness of the individual ideologies. I am way more sympathetic to people who freak out over masks not being worn than I am to genocidal pricks, obviously. But I think that two years of being stuck indoors and online got people real damn used to how permissible it is to scream at one another online, and carried it back offline. I'm really hoping that that shit will diffuse now that socialization is happening again, and I'm optimistic that it will, because it's just so wearying and I think most people have a limited appetite for it. Which is how society developed those social norms in the first place. (Fingers crossed that the midterm results proved that folks are sick of the culture-war bullshit, and would generally like everybody everywhere to settle down a little bit.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:53 AM on February 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't really keep track of which groups of people are considered "Them" by conservatives, but I find it unsurprising that teachers, librarians, etc are treated with the same hostility (and sometimes subjected to the same violence) that openly LGBTQ people are. And I wouldn't be surprised, either, if some of them had found ways of subjecting retail workers to the same hostility and contempt—even just through the logic that where you work is an indicator of whether you've succeeded or failed in life. (That's not new, either: Maggie Thatcher famously said that anyone who takes the bus to work past 30 has wasted their life.)
I will say, on this front, that I have seen some shockingly rude behavior towards retail employees and waitstaff from people who were purportedly left-wing: screaming at employees for not wearing masks, getting weirdly fighty because some company policy or some product that they store is offensive in some way, etc. I haven't seen a lot of it (and haven't seen a lot of shittiness towards waitstaff in general, thankfully). But I've seen it, and I have mixed feelings about any ideology that says you basically shouldn't have to try and show kindness to others if they fail your political gom jabbar test.
And, again, that has nothing to do with the goodness or badness of the individual ideologies. I am way more sympathetic to people who freak out over masks not being worn than I am to genocidal pricks, obviously. But I think that two years of being stuck indoors and online got people real damn used to how permissible it is to scream at one another online, and carried it back offline. I'm really hoping that that shit will diffuse now that socialization is happening again, and I'm optimistic that it will, because it's just so wearying and I think most people have a limited appetite for it. Which is how society developed those social norms in the first place. (Fingers crossed that the midterm results proved that folks are sick of the culture-war bullshit, and would generally like everybody everywhere to settle down a little bit.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:53 AM on February 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm in the middle of reading The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World, by Max Fisher, which touches on a lot of the polarization issues people are talking about in this thread (up to and including some pretty horrific massacres, like the Rohingya in Myanmar). It hasn't talked about angry restaurant patrons but that's not in the book's remit. If you're interested in this topic, it's been pretty good so far.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:17 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:17 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
According to a 2021 study by the Fight for $15 and a Union, more than 77,000 conflagrations* at fast-food outlets in California led to calls to 911 between 2017 and 2020, with 13 percent involving physical or sexual assault.
This is the report from Fight for $15 and a Union. It summarizes 911 call records relating to threatening or violent incidents at four fast food franchises (Burger King, Carl’s Jr., Jack in the Box, and McDonald’s) in nine cities in California. The worst location was the McDonald’s at 322 S. Center St in Stockton, with 2,213 incidents over the study period.
* The author means "conflagrations" metaphorically: these are threatening or violent incidents, not fires.
posted by cyanistes at 9:31 AM on February 12, 2023
This is the report from Fight for $15 and a Union. It summarizes 911 call records relating to threatening or violent incidents at four fast food franchises (Burger King, Carl’s Jr., Jack in the Box, and McDonald’s) in nine cities in California. The worst location was the McDonald’s at 322 S. Center St in Stockton, with 2,213 incidents over the study period.
* The author means "conflagrations" metaphorically: these are threatening or violent incidents, not fires.
posted by cyanistes at 9:31 AM on February 12, 2023
In my own experience, one effect of anxiety and depression can be a constant, unfocused anger, which latches on to anything that crosses its path that can be interpreted as a pretext for expression - it not only releases the pent up anger, but also acts as a justification (especially if one recognises the anger and is ashamed of it, as it shifts the blame to someone else).
posted by Grangousier at 9:36 AM on February 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Grangousier at 9:36 AM on February 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Speaking of public rudeness and the pandemic, when the h*** did people stop covering their mouths when they cough? Is that part of the "diseases are a hoax/ I don't give a s*** about other people" mentality? Yes, I'm looking at you, people in stores, people walking down the street toward me.
But my take is aggressive entitlement has always been around. I've certainly experienced that among neighbors, other drivers and customers, family members pre pandemic.
And as to how people treat anyone serving them, Playbill had a recent article on what ushers and other audience members have to endure. The author and interviewees assigned the blame as a "post pandemic" issue. For some reason, the article isnt available, but when I googled it, I was reminded there've been numerous articles about bad audience behavior going back years. Loud talking in theaters has been blamed for decades on first TV and then cell phones.
The incidences that go beyond that, to obnoxious verbal confrontations and physical altercations could well have increased in recent years. But again, maybe it's partly something people are more focused on.
I was ushering at a community theater last weekend when a woman walked up and asked why the water fountains were cordoned off. "If it's a covid thing, It wouldn't spread by water fountains. I brought this up the last time I was here." I said I didn't know, and suggested she contact the theater business office.
She then added that *last time* ushers had given her a free bottle of water. It only occurred to me later she was hinting for that again. In a community theater where the concessions are donation based, and she could have tossed a nickel in the collection plate, or brought her own water bottle.
Entitlement.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:25 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
But my take is aggressive entitlement has always been around. I've certainly experienced that among neighbors, other drivers and customers, family members pre pandemic.
And as to how people treat anyone serving them, Playbill had a recent article on what ushers and other audience members have to endure. The author and interviewees assigned the blame as a "post pandemic" issue. For some reason, the article isnt available, but when I googled it, I was reminded there've been numerous articles about bad audience behavior going back years. Loud talking in theaters has been blamed for decades on first TV and then cell phones.
The incidences that go beyond that, to obnoxious verbal confrontations and physical altercations could well have increased in recent years. But again, maybe it's partly something people are more focused on.
I was ushering at a community theater last weekend when a woman walked up and asked why the water fountains were cordoned off. "If it's a covid thing, It wouldn't spread by water fountains. I brought this up the last time I was here." I said I didn't know, and suggested she contact the theater business office.
She then added that *last time* ushers had given her a free bottle of water. It only occurred to me later she was hinting for that again. In a community theater where the concessions are donation based, and she could have tossed a nickel in the collection plate, or brought her own water bottle.
Entitlement.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:25 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Man, I swear if I ever see the phrase your political gom jabbar test again, I am going to go all Anton Chigurh meets Danny Trejo as Machete on your America's Dad ass.
posted by y2karl at 12:39 PM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 12:39 PM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Speaking of public rudeness and the pandemic, when the h*** did people stop covering their mouths when they cough? Is that part of the "diseases are a hoax/ I don't give a s*** about other people" mentality? Yes, I'm looking at you, people in stores, people walking down the street toward me.
People are coughing so much now that they don't even realize they are coughing anymore.
posted by srboisvert at 2:18 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
People are coughing so much now that they don't even realize they are coughing anymore.
posted by srboisvert at 2:18 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
People are coughing so much now that they don't even realize they are coughing anymore.
That, and like, you've never been surprised by a cough? You're always aware it's going to happen in time to get your hand* to your mouth? You're never carrying shopping or anything, leaving your hands full?
There's all kinds of reasons for it that aren't just "well fuck you".
*(also, don't use your hand, you use that to touch stuff and other people. Cough into your elbow.)
posted by Dysk at 2:39 PM on February 14, 2023
That, and like, you've never been surprised by a cough? You're always aware it's going to happen in time to get your hand* to your mouth? You're never carrying shopping or anything, leaving your hands full?
There's all kinds of reasons for it that aren't just "well fuck you".
*(also, don't use your hand, you use that to touch stuff and other people. Cough into your elbow.)
posted by Dysk at 2:39 PM on February 14, 2023
That, and like, you've never been surprised by a cough? You're always aware it's going to happen in time to get your hand* to your mouth? You're never carrying shopping or anything, leaving your hands full?
There's all kinds of reasons for it that aren't just "well fuck you".
*(also, don't use your hand, you use that to touch stuff and other people. Cough into your elbow.)
You'll never guess what simple and affordable hands free technology solves your problems.
posted by srboisvert at 6:46 PM on February 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
There's all kinds of reasons for it that aren't just "well fuck you".
*(also, don't use your hand, you use that to touch stuff and other people. Cough into your elbow.)
You'll never guess what simple and affordable hands free technology solves your problems.
posted by srboisvert at 6:46 PM on February 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Even with pneumonia, I've never had a cough come on so suddenly that there wasn't time to at least turn my face away from the person opposite me. But it's entirely possible I've just been lucky.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:03 PM on February 14, 2023
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:03 PM on February 14, 2023
And for a nightcap, check out the 16 acre 'cop city' being built in a formerly protected forest just outside of Atlanta where the police just executed a protestor, and tell me you don’t think that’s an extremely ominous development which looks for all the world as if it were designed to pacify a city largely controlled by black politicians from an impregnable fortress in case of the kind of unrest that might result from, oh I don’t know—a successful coup?
Man, what are you even talking about? Who is doing a coup in Atlanta? The black politicians? Are they doing a coup against the two Democratic senators the state elected? The governor who defied Trump’s demands to find him votes? This stuff is no different than the “black helicopters” and “posse comitatus” nonsense on right wing websites. I’m pretty sure this isn’t why people are a little ruder in restaurants these days!
To a very uncomfortable degree, the situation in the US right now parallels the state of affairs which prevailed in Rwanda right before the Hutu killed all those Tutsi.
Some people are mean to waiters and other people kill 500,000 people in the streets with machetes; pretty much the same thing. In reality, the situation in the US right now does not parallel the state of affairs in a small country in Africa with a population of around 10 million mostly rural people with centuries of ethnic strife and clan-based oppression enabled by colonial powers, including recurring mass violence episodes across two different countries for decades. Pretty much not the same as people being mean on Fox or some backbench representative wearing a gun lapel pin.
posted by Mid at 7:32 PM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Man, what are you even talking about? Who is doing a coup in Atlanta? The black politicians? Are they doing a coup against the two Democratic senators the state elected? The governor who defied Trump’s demands to find him votes? This stuff is no different than the “black helicopters” and “posse comitatus” nonsense on right wing websites. I’m pretty sure this isn’t why people are a little ruder in restaurants these days!
To a very uncomfortable degree, the situation in the US right now parallels the state of affairs which prevailed in Rwanda right before the Hutu killed all those Tutsi.
Some people are mean to waiters and other people kill 500,000 people in the streets with machetes; pretty much the same thing. In reality, the situation in the US right now does not parallel the state of affairs in a small country in Africa with a population of around 10 million mostly rural people with centuries of ethnic strife and clan-based oppression enabled by colonial powers, including recurring mass violence episodes across two different countries for decades. Pretty much not the same as people being mean on Fox or some backbench representative wearing a gun lapel pin.
posted by Mid at 7:32 PM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
You'll never guess what simple and afford
Hard to eat with a mask on, for example. Besides, I was explaining, not suggesting that I regularly cough in people's faces. But thanks.
posted by Dysk at 10:44 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hard to eat with a mask on, for example. Besides, I was explaining, not suggesting that I regularly cough in people's faces. But thanks.
posted by Dysk at 10:44 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Even with pneumonia, I've never had a cough come on so suddenly that there wasn't time to at least turn my face away from the person opposite me.
Maybe it's my allergies, the ways I'm not neurotypical, or a hundred other possibilities. But both coughs and sneezes can come on without any kind of warning for me. I've fallen off bikes, dropped shit I've been carrying, blasted half a cup of hot tea up into my face...
posted by Dysk at 10:50 PM on February 14, 2023
Maybe it's my allergies, the ways I'm not neurotypical, or a hundred other possibilities. But both coughs and sneezes can come on without any kind of warning for me. I've fallen off bikes, dropped shit I've been carrying, blasted half a cup of hot tea up into my face...
posted by Dysk at 10:50 PM on February 14, 2023
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Protip for NYT readers: Olive Garden will welcome you with open arms. And open baskets of breadsticks.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:31 PM on February 10, 2023 [25 favorites]