It blows my mind sometimes the way people treat those in the service industries, especially the front of the house staff, be it in a restaurant, hotel, or any place that demands customer service.

Speaking from a lifetime of experience working with the public….98% of customers are friendly or at least neutral towards those in service jobs, but that 2% can be absolutely horrendous.

The veterinary field is especially bad this way. My wife works in this field and the people who work in it are generally very kind sensitive, empathetic people, but a lot of customers treat them very poorly. The pay is not great in this field and they deal with a lot of emotional stress because the animals they see are usually not doing well. They are involved with life and death decisions, especially in the Emergency Room services and customers can be absolutely horrific.

My own experience as a restauranteur certainly opened my eyes to this phenomenon. Again….99% of people, very cordial, very nice, appreciative, etc….but every shift every server would have some story or another of a crazy customer demanding blood for some perceived slight of service. Sometimes the complaints were valid, but often times, just utter nonsense or people trying to get free food. The corporate restaurants would always pander to these people. All they had to do was say they weren’t happy with the service and boom ….magical discounted bill.

Managers were usually understanding of these things, but at the same time it was always kind of humiliating. I went through so much bullshit that anytime I would go out for anything, I made a point of being exceptionally nice/understanding to anyone in a customer service position. To this day I rarely leave less than a 20% tip for anything. I tip takeout people, uber drivers, and pretty much anyone that I know makes a living on tips because I get it.

What does this have to do with my proposed holiday? I think anyone who has worked in customer service understands this mentality pretty well. There are those who have never had to work in a customer service job for whatever reason and they overwhelmingly tended to be the ones who would abuse waitstaff in my experience.

We could almost always tell when we were taking the order of customers who was going to be a “Karen/Ken” type of customer. It became very predictive.

I think if everyone had a chance to work a demanding customer service job it would make the world a better place. We have too much compartmentalization in our society in my view. Having people be a little more well rounded would be a plus! We could start this in high school by having more private/public partnerships and shop classes.

In the U.S. a lot of people have the mentality that one person’s work is more important than another’s because of the dollar amount assigned to that work. If you work a job that is in the service industry, some see you as “the help” and their personal rented slaves. The truth is, the people that work the hardest, doing the most physically demanding jobs are often the least rewarded when it comes to wages. Their role in the economy is vital to our overall success and indeed the success of the entire republic. How can the computer science genius focus on their task if no one will take their garbage out, cook their food, or make them feel that the sacrifices they make for the greater good are in vain and unappreciated by society?

What do you think? Have you had experiences similar to this? What do you think could be done to improve awareness around this issue?

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