'Unbearable': Restaurant customers are being nightmares lately | Hacker News Reader

'Unbearable': Restaurant customers are being nightmares lately

sfgate.com

21 pointsthrowkeep28 comments

Thing about an article like this, it might be completely fake. Made up for clicks. Nothing to it at all, just selling a narrative.

I'm fresh back in SF and have been indulging in a lot of restaurant dining. Luxuriating, even, the food here is really good.

I haven't seen any of this crap. Is it happening? Yes of course any journalist worth their mountain of student debt can call enough restaurants to put together a few anecdotes about bad behavior.

Doesn't mean we have to fall for it.

One more general point in favour of the narrative is the rate at which service industry workers have been leaving the industry in particular[1]. Of course that also can be a function of rising wages in warehouse work or better unemployment benefits so the phenomenon might not be solely recent, but I don't think the narrative is made up, retail work is pain.

And no offense but it might be your experience of luxurious SF dining that is a little bit unrepresentative.

[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/retail-workers-leaving-quit-...

None taken, but there's a difference between luxurious (I've had one meal at a nice restaurant) and luxuriating: I was living in the middle of the Pacific, so I've been dining out a lot at middle-of-the-road taquerias and Chinese/Thai restaurants.

Not sure why you mentioned retail but service work has never been fun. Linking me to another narrative of the same basic story is in fact less convincing, because our journalists are awful hacks who see one of their gang harvest sweet sweet clicks with a narrative, and churn out a copycat.

The labor shortage is unemployment benefits, plus mandatory lowered seating requirements and other pandemic belt-tightening leaving restauranteurs unable or unwilling to pay higher wages. Customers being shitty isn't new, and again, there's no evidence at all that it's gotten worse: and plenty that journalists cynically lie to harvest advertising money from bored social media users.

>Doesn't mean we have to fall for it

Thing about an comment like this, it might be completely fake.

It might be, but, having owned a restaurant (not in SF), it doesn't ring untrue; some people are complete dicks all the time anyway and think because they are on the paying side of the table they can get away with anything and, as far as I have seen (and talked to the new owners of my ex restaurant) in the past weeks when travelling for the first time in 1.5 years, their fuse became just a bit shorter. When before they wouldn't have been nice (let's say they were difficult) while waiters would bend over backwards to accommodate them and then get a 2* star review (with made up things often!) anyway, now they become visibly agitated up to downright violent. It is probably temporary (hopefully?), but it doesn't ring untrue to me.

It's quite shocking the first time you take a job in anything customer service and realize what a lot of people out there are really like.

Abolish tipping so people can be treated as they deserve. Put the cost of labor into the price of goods sold like every other industry.

I tend to over tip and be ignored by wait staff so that sounds great to me.

What’s your point? Some an anecdote means that people working in the service industry shouldn’t earn a viable minimum wage? That they have to resort to essentially begging to earn a living? Tip culture is dumb, they provide a service. If they did an amazing job maybe add it on top. If they did it awfully, well complain, and it can work like any other business where someone is not up to standard.

What is your job? Software engineer? Do you want to be tipped for lines committed to git? Alleged higher skilled jobs you aren’t treated like this. Good human interaction does actually require skill. It’s not like some glue programming job that can probably be replaced by a neural net.

Check please.

Tipping also has a troubling history with regard to former slaves

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/16/fac...

Absolutely. In most other areas of life, you only ever get to meet people who've passed the filter of your friends, families, acquaintances or even employer. Working in customer service basically means one gets a ~perfectly random sample of the population which is really not a great experience. It certainly builds character, though, and makes you forever appreciate other people working in customer service.

What if the people are just as terrible as they always were, but customer services staff have had a break?

It doesn’t take long observing most customer service operations to see poor behaviour.

The article is highly anecdotal, but what it claims is bad customers have gotten worse and nice customers have gotten nicer.

Near as I can tell from people in the industry - people are being 10x worse than they were before, and they were pretty bad before. In clearly objective ways, like starting fights with other customers, starting fights with staff, etc.

Covid tightened the screws on a lot of folks mentally, and it’s really clear which direction some people went.

When restaurants first opened in mid 2020 the filter effect was very clear. Most places were fairly empty and patrons were those who would score lowest in the trait of “conscientiouness” because they had to take a big health risk rather than cook a meal. Also they acted entitled as if they were doing the restaurant a favor by going. It seems to me this effect should be over in the vaccine era though.

Businesses should be more willing to 'fire' abusive and awful customers.

I don't think it's isolated to the service industries, I think they just feel it more. I see people every time I venture out that just don't seem to remember what it means to live in a world with others. Some people seem to think masks make/made them invisible and gavr them license to be the worst versions of themselves. Others see people still wearing masks (like us) and glare angrily while making mean comments under their breath. It seems many lost their manners during this period, either because of the pandemic or the general split in our country and I don't think we'll be getting back to normal for a while.

The Mask policy exacerbate it. It dehumanize person when you can't see their face.

Indoor dining in the Bay Area has been mask free for months (the SF Gate is a San Francisco publication).

Well, the picture in article showing the staff with mask and face shield!. In texas sadly most of the restaurant wait staff still wear mask.

I was in Texas a couple of months ago, and at least in that part of the state, that wasn’t my experience at all.

So what? The staff wearing masks are somehow Untermenschen? You get to be a dick to them with impunity? You see them wearing a mask and just can’t help it?

I'm not but many people will interact with people wearing mask differently (knowingly or unknowingly).

Besides, the staff hate the mask but they have to wear because of the policy.

It also contribute to shortage of worker: its already a hard job and now with added mask!

I don't think it's the mask doing the dehumanizing.

exacerbate [https://www.wordnik.com/words/exacerbate] is the word. No hate here, it’s just a weird word ;)

Maybe the opposite. People feel they can be extra rude because you can’t see their face?

On a related note, one thing I'd never thought about until actually being served by a masked waiter last month was that, pandemic aside, I kind of liked it as a general protection against having them accidentally breathe or spit on my food.

I could see the mask policy remaining popular for chefs and/or waiters indefinitely, just as a logical next step after hairnets and gloves.

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