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In the US, when I go to a restaurant, I am being 'served', but after the waiter gets off work he's a full and equal neighbor of mine under both law and custom.

That's definitely true. An interesting cultural difference even further in that direction, that I noticed as an American who moved to Denmark, is that in Scandinavia the equality extends even into the restaurant. I'm not really being "served" at a restaurant, but rather the expectation is that we're interacting in a professional setting as equals. Perhaps partly due to culture, partly due to the lack of tipping, and partly due to the fact that the waiter likely has the same socioeconomic position as their customers, there isn't really an obsequious service-oriented relationship, and it's definitely not the case that the customer is always right. It's more like, their job is to take care of business at the restaurant, and they'll aim to do it well but expect respectful treatment in return, like any other professional employee in any other job.

(It's possible things are different at really high-end places that aim to impress international customers, like the $200/plate restaurants and $500/night hotels, but I don't have any personal experience patronizing such establishments.)

Heh...as a Danish person, I think part of that distinction also is that Denmark has a really bad service culture compared to the US. It does seem to be changing. But I feel like Danes are a pretty proud (and/or headstrong) folk with very strong (and sometimes misguided, see Janteloven) notions around class and equality.

I feel like many Danes who work in the service sector project this attitude that they're really above the work and that the customers are a complete imposition on their time and energy. That's why I'm always so impressed when I get a really nice waiter in CPH or just shopping at a grocery store like Irma.

I think you're right about the high-end places -- I've only been to one fancy place one (cause, yikes! the prices) and they did act very differently because it was so expensive. But by and large, yes, I agree, they tend to see it more as a "job" than "service."

It could just be because I tend to find American customers really over-bearing and unreasonable (the "customer is always right" thing makes some people feel entitled to be jerks towards staff), but to me the Danish non-service feels refreshing, though I've definitely heard other people describe it as "bad service". I don't feel it's particularly bad service myself; stuff generally gets done fine, and it's not like I'm waiting hours for my food or they're dumping things on me or anything. They treat me the same way I'd treat someone at work at my own job: well and professionally, but not as if I'm their servant and must please them at all costs.

Under Janteloven:

The ten rules state:

  You're not to think you are anything special.
  You're not to think you are as good as us.
  You're not to think you are smarter than us.
  You're not to convince yourself that you are better than
  us.
  You're not to think you know more than us.
  You're not to think you are better than us.
  You're not to think you are good at anything.
  You're not to laugh at us.
  You're not to think anyone cares about you.
  You're not to think you can teach us anything.*

Wow. Just wow. Needless to say, a lot of American go-getters and super-achievers would find that bitterly stultifying.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante#Definition

Do keep in mind that those were never written down as rules to be followed, but postulated in a work that criticized such social norms.

They don't even seem that strange as an American. It's just (a parody of) typical conservative Protestant small-town mentality. Much of Scandinavia at the time was made up of religious, Protestant small towns, with most of the population engaged in farming or fishing (and the novel in question was set in such a town). People in small-town and rural America don't like big-city, degree-and-money-having people who "think they're better", either. Sinclair Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street, about small-town American attitudes, has some loose parallels.

I think the same is true even today in the US. Some of the people who're lionized in Palo Alto or NYC would be shunned in much of the "heartland", if they flaunted their wealth or education and came across as thinking they were a "super-achiever". You're allowed to be rich, but you're expected to act somewhat humble and "down-to-earth" about it and not see yourself as better than other kinds of people (especially farmers, who have their own mythos). Warren Buffet, a lifelong midwesterner, is an example of being rich but still sort of pulling that off.

Hope you understand that this is not an actual law, but a piece of satire describing social norms in a smaller provincial town in the beginning of the twentieth century. This was a very different and much more traditional and hierarchical society, and the attitudes bitops describe more stem from the reaction against these norms which happened in the 60ies and 70ies.

Nonetheless, these statutes even if only adhered by a small population of Denmark and Scandinavia are repulsive and eminently worthy of disparage.

This is not what a technologically progressive society would want more of.

Totally agree! Interesting though that Denmark has better social mobility than the US, even though Denmark has historical attitudes like the Law of Jante, while the US have "The American Dream."

Very similar to tall poppy syndrome in Australia. As an American it's always bewildering to see these attitudes play out.

Though I think it is widely regarded as unseemly to treat people differently according to a ranking of professions or wealth, the US is not actually a classless society, and in many social settings certain amounts of deference are expected as the default even when people are off the clock. With the number of parties this time of year, if you look for it it can be a little ugly.

Another example that readily comes to mind is the comments in response to Mario Batali suggesting bankers as Time man of the year in the vein of Hitler and Mussolini a couple years ago. Many of those comments, rather than focusing on the quip being offensive or stupid, primarily complained that he should be more deferential to a great portion of his restaurant customers.

Throughout history many artists have criticized their patrons, and today there's the widely claimed ideal of not penalizing everyone from unskilled workers to professionals and business owners for their political beliefs that are independent of their employers and customers, yet the reality is different even if sometimes manifests itself subtly.

You cannot figure out the "servant" business in India without considering the caste system. We get the income inequality side pretty well, it makes sense. But until the caste crap gets replaced by a different currency, being/having a servant is a different concept from a westerner's.

India doesn't have much income inequality. Their Gini is 33, same ballpark as France, Bangladesh and the UK. (For comparison, Denmark is at 25 and the US is at 45.)

> India doesn't have much income inequality

This[1] page shows India's Gini coefficient at 36.8 in 2004. India suffers from very high income inequality

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

33 by the World Bank, 36.8 by the CIA. Using the CIA's numbers rather than the world Bank, India is comparable to New Zealand or Japan. It's still well below the US (45) or the world as a whole (39).

India's problem is poverty, not inequality. Much as first world hipsters try to conflate the two, they are not the same thing.

>India's problem is poverty, not inequality.

I would agree, but life in a city like Kolkata is very different from a place like tribal Odisha. Sheer numbers (as opposed to percentages) are more important when you get in the hundreds of millions.

Thanks for that info, like many people I had always assumed that India was especially unequal, and this was the cause of many of its social problems. The more you know...

Bear in mind that "income" is a loose concept in India. A lot of the economy is 'under the table'. So while someone may report an "income" of $1000/month, their actual take may be 10x or more. Most Indians outside the salaried sector don't pay income taxes. And there are tax loopholes (agricultural income comes to mind) which allow people to shield massive amounts of income.

And? Unless that means it's all unicorns and rainbows out there I can't see your point.

the "caste crap" has increasingly less to do with people being "servants" - its more an income and education thing. In fact - being from a "lower caste" in India - actually makes getting into the IITs (best engg. colleges) & IIMs ( best management colleges) and pretty much everywhere else a cake walk due to flawed affirmative action programs.

I've never been to the US. But I recently watched a series of YouTube videos on Floyd Mayweather's personal life. He lives with a retinue of about a dozen very attractive female "personal assistants", ranging from the masseuse to the cook and the secretary. It was very clear from the videos that these people were on call 24/7, and their functions included sexual services. If this doesn't fit the definition of servant, then what does? The US seems to have an aversion to the concept of servant, not to the reality.

Yeah, Floyd Mayweather is a pretty good example of typical American life.

Admittedly I haven't seen that video and I'm not very familiar with Floyd Mayweather but you should take anything you see on American light-entertainment television with a healthy dose of skepticism. It's likely the women were friends or actresses hired by either Mayweather or the production to act as staff during filming, to raise his apparent status. This is extremely common in "reality" television.

Not saying there's nobody in the US with a staff of 12 but it strains credulity- and the "sexual services" is definitely not true or he'd be up on charges.

If you post the videos someone can probably attest to the reputation of the program that produced it. Was it MTV Cribs?

>"The US seems to have an aversion to the concept of servant, not to the reality."

I hope this is deadpan sarcasm.

You're drawing an analogy between sub-living wage housemaids to the for-television version of an exceptionally flamboyant professional athletes entourage.

Worse, you're extrapolating the latter - the promotional image of a singular talent, the elite prizefighter of a generation, who earns the U.S. median yearly income every 1.5 seconds in a 12 round fight - to be somehow representative of "the US".