Food service wastes resources. Instead, have them work in mines or on farms.
You misunderstand. The waste means less wealth to go around. Service jobs do not make wealth, they consume it.
You may wish to read Value, Price, and Profit.
Food service sucks because it’s mostly young people that haven’t learned to work over a dickhead customer. Been there, done that.
First tech-support/customer-service job learned me quick. Always bullied as a kid, and I mean ass-beating kinda bullied, not mean names of FB bullied. Learned to walk tall and bow up late in high school. That mostly solved it.
Got my first real job getting the occasional ass chewing. Fuck me, I’m just trying to help! Found some knowledge in a hurry:
- Customers are like dogs, they smell fear. Never come off apologetic or subservient.
- Treat customers like an acquaintance that just called or walked in for help. Treat them like equals.
- “Yes sir!”, “No sir!”, “Immediately sir!”, shit gets you eaten.
- Polite and firm, that’s the ticket.
- They got screwed over? If you did it, apologize sincerely. If someone else did it? Apologize for the hassle. But don’t take the responsibility on yourself.
I could go on for ages, but those are the highlights. Sometimes you have to stand up.
Had a dude start in on me, wasn’t my fault but it certainly looked like my company could have done better. Stopped him mid-rant, “Wait. Wait. Are you mad at me personally?” Cut off like a light switch. “Well… no… of course not… but…” “I get it. This is a hell of a frustrating situation, but my job is to help you. Let’s get to the bottom of this thing. fix it.”
When I worked customer service, our policy was to always apologize for any issue that lead to the call. One day I read some HBR article about a study where problem-solving focused language, v. the standard apologetic approach, lead to higher reported levels of customer satisfaction even if the issue ultimately wasn’t resolved.
Tried it - it really did seem to work. Had a few discussions with the call quality person about it and made my arguments - they didn’t agree, but couldn’t help noticing I was the one getting positive feedback v/ms left with management and service quality surveys about.
YMMV, could easily see an environment where you’d get written up for just 100% ignoring the policy and doing something more effective. At the time I had a “I’m going to do exactly what I think is right, until I get fired over it” mentality, and and in many respects was very lucky I didn’t.
Wage Labor and Capital is an excellent, shorter introduction to Marxist critique of Capitalism. I highly recommend it!
I actually really like the idea of a “shitty job draft” like the military draft but for jobs everyone hates to do.
Because maybe if everyone had a lottery chance of ending up having to do it for a few shifts, those jobs would quickly become less terrible to do.
With how people behave? Fuck it, front line infantry. People are shitty, it doesn’t matter age, socio-economic status or anything else, you will get shitty people, constantly. At least the infantry is allowed to shoot the fuckers.
Oh, and I was in my country’s Navy.
At least the infantry is allowed to shoot the fuckers.
Which is exactly why nobody callous enough to become and remain a billionaire should be sent there.
They’re less likely to value the life and well-being of other humans over any kind of advantage for themselves, so maybe don’t give them military grade weaponry when forcing them to mingle with poor people and foreigners…
After a couple hours, they’d be like “uh could I be eaten instead?”
