This Christmas, try a little empathy
I'm sorry, but I just will never understand weaponized tips
I work for a movie theater but I don’t work at a movie theater - if that makes sense. Most of my job is spent behind a desk working with Excel spreadsheets. I write movie schedules and create budgets and put together marketing campaigns and all kinds of other moderately important stuff - but that work is nothing compared to the men and women who work at the actual theater - servers, runners, kitchen crew, concierge, projectionists, etc.
I have worked in the periphery of the service industry long enough, though, that I know that it is one of the hardest jobs you could imagine - backbreaking work where the pay is never enough, the challenges are always just slightly too much, and the guests … well, let’s just say that some guests can be real monsters.
Even before COVID created a service industry challenge and stretched the folks working on the frontline of your favorite restaurants too thin, I could never, ever understand people who weaponized their tips against their servers. True story - I once had a man who attended a free preview screening of a movie come up to me after the show and brag about how he had not left a tip for his server because of the service at he had experienced. In the words of Shania Twain, that don’t impress me much.
Don’t get me wrong - I sympathize with people who receive bad service. Whether it’s because of a mistake or the server simply not carrying about the job at hand, it’s entirely possible for a waiter to deliver a substandard experience. And money doesn’t grow on trees. We all earn our paychecks at our own jobs and nobody likes to spend their money and not receive what we expected. But a meal is not a life or death situation and a cold hamburger or being brought a Coca-Cola when you wanted a Diet Coke is not worth being a jerk.
Don’t forget empathy. It’s OK to be disappointed by bad service - it’s ok to let your server know about your disappointment, or lodge a (polite) complaint with management, or - most appropriately - to vote with your wallet and just not come back to the places that disappoint you. But don’t be an asshole about it. Don’t stiff your server, don’t leave a pointedly bad tip as a “lesson”, don’t yell at people in the customer service industry, don’t take out your anger on people who barely want to be there, don’t pass on your anger like an STD with the intent purpose to ruin somebody else’s day.
Because that’s the thing - people in the service industry don’t make enough money to deal with your abuse. They are doing their job because they need to - for whatever reason. We all do things to make a living that aren’t our favorite things to do, but few of us have jobs where we get to get treated like garbage by people - people who are able to look at another person in the eyes and ignore the fact that they are also a human being.
And I do empathize with those people too. I’ve been there - that white-blinding heat of anger and the need to release it towards the first person in your path, whether or not they are actually the person to blame. Anger is like having to take a piss but being trapped in an elevator so you think you’re going to just let a little bit out, just to release the pressure, but once you start to let it out a little, you can’t pull back. Pretty soon you’ve wet your pants and you are the one looking like a jackaass. Just as you shouldn’t take a piss in an elevator despite how much you may need to go - anger has its time and place and it’s not being launched at somebody paid barely above minimum wage.
So, this holiday season, whether you’re at a restaurant, shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts, or on the phone with somebody trying to track a missing package - just practice a bit of empathy. Treat others like you would like to be treated. Unless you’re into being yelled at until the point where you cry. I do realize there are people whose kink it is to be verbally abused. If that’s the case, might I suggest a telemarketing job?