The way we treat service staff says much about who we are

25 July 2024

Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:

I suspect restaurant and cafe customers have little idea of the profound, quiet stigma directed towards service workers. There is an assumption in this country that wait staff above a certain age are where they are because they lack the skills or gumption to “get a proper job”.

There’s an old aphorism that goes something along the lines of “watch the way the person you’re on a date with treats the staff of the restaurant you’re dining at.”

The general idea being that if someone looks down on, or treats hospitality staff poorly, you might want to think twice about having a romantic relationship with them. The way they treat someone — in this case, likely a complete stranger — says a lot how they treat everyone else. Including you.

But it seems to me this wisdom can be applied more widely. Anyone — anyone at all — treating hospitality staff poorly, or other service workers for that matter, doesn’t seem to be worth the time of day. Unless, that is, a server threw hot soup in their face, or something, for no good reason.