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Comment by apercu | Hacker News Reader

I did all the hard, crappy jobs through late teens and early 20s (demolition, roofing, house painting, pottery production, fast food, factory, grocery distribution warehouse). There is so little respect shown for workers in any of these that I imagine a lot of "cleaning" people work pretty hard. If you are self-employed in the profession it's probably a lot easier, but if you are being exploited, you're probably working pretty hard.

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Who are these people that don't show respect? I hear this stated often 2nd hand, but never directly.

In my experience (from working shitty jobs) is that it's people who are abused by all day by people they can't stand up to (boss, husband, wife, etc.) and they end up unleashing their rage on the minimum wage powerless employee just because they don't have other option

That makes sense. Sounds more like some people are just assholes more than a systemic issue with lack of understanding or respect for the difficulty of certain jobs.

That's been my experience, but also I think you're probably just missing the lack of respect thing. The average middle class parent has no respect for these roles when it comes to one of their children doing it

What does respect mean in this context? We started with understanding the amount of effort, but I don't think that's what you're talking about.

I don't want my kids to become janitors or work fast food either, but it's not because I think the jobs are too easy.

I think it's possible to treat people working these jobs with some basic dignity, while realizing that there are practical differences

I still think there should be pocket-parks with pullup bars and punching bags, so worked-up people can work out their aggressions on something else.

Has this been tried anywhere?

I am pretty sure a lack of exercise opportunity is not the limiting factor for aggro people

This is assuming that violence is a given. It’s not.

I personally think people should care better about agressive people, rather than the current “block him!” attitude, which leads to pent up aggressivity. A bit of love goes a long way.

I worked a service job for several years. People not showing respect was a daily occurrence. A better way to phrase it is people walking over you. It might be 5% under normal circumstances. If you make a mistake to the wrong person they’ll blowup, make a huge scene, yell for the manager, and ultimately get what they would’ve gotten regardless. One of those 2 hours into an 8 hour shift and it gets exhausting putting on a fake smile for 6 hours.

How much of that do you think is because of some abstract understanding of the difficulty of service jobs. I don't think it's a matter of comprehension or professional respect. Some people are just assholes and know they can get away with it

My mother cleans schools for a living, and she once remarked to me that most of the teaching staff in the grammar schools[1] she cleaned would avoid making conversation with the cleaners, and some would even avoid making eye contact, which was contrary to non-selective schools, where most of the teaching staff would make conversation with the cleaners.

[1] Grammar schools are academically-selective, state-funded schools in the UK and elsewhere—staff and students alike are generally of a higher socioeconomic milieu than in non-selective, state-funded schools.

Is that what people mean by lack or respect?

Seems more like disinterest or a lack of friendliness.

Not initiating conversation could be down to disinterest, yes.

But I think consistently refusing eye contact does constitute a lack of respect, if the person refusing to return eye contact has no problem returning it to the upper echelons of staff. And, having attended one of those grammar schools, I know that some of the teachers who refused to return eye contact had no issue with faux friendliness.

Seems like what is more offensive here is the power imbalance, where one group can ignore the pretense or lie of friendliness.

I could see that expectation being a form of respect.

Like most things, it's nuanced and I made an off the cuff comment. I think there are varying degrees of dignity and respect that all people need to be shown. At the minimum wage/manual job side of things, a lot of cultures have decided these people don't deserve (as much) dignity and respect as other professions. I disagree, working people are my people, and as a certain insecure tech CEO of multiple companies has made obvious for many people, being a CEO of a company past a certain size might - in many ways - be easier than being a cleaner.

As I mentioned in my previous comment, I've worked all (ok, most) of the shitty jobs. I've also been president of a software company and have been paid to play golf.

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