There are several countries with a Mandatory Military Service. Some of the terms are fairly short with a requirement of only 6 months.
Take that concept and apply it to service industry work.
Imagine if everyone in society had to have at least one retail or food service job before they were issued a driver’s license or allowed to be employed in another job. Even wealthy people would be required to do this with no loopholes or ways to buy their way out of it.
I think this would teach empathy for many. Of course, there would always be some who would not learn anything but it would definitely change some people.
Also, some judges are already doing this as punishment for bad behavior.
Ooh, another solid unpopular opinion post. I think this sub is actually starting to get somewhere.
This probably wouldn’t actually fully address the problem, but it would likely help. Personally I think they should just be paid better, so they get some reasonable compensation for basically being treated as a lower caste.
Obviously better pay would be great, but speaking as someone who worked retail for fifteen years I’d just be happy if my store management team had my back.
Too often they’ll take the customer side to keep them happy, then come around to you and admit that they know the customer is being an ass, but still give you a telling off anyway because the ‘customer is watching’.
If the customer is the issue, tell them so. If they don’t like it, they’re welcome to get the fuck out of the shop.
What is kind of funny that during my voluntary military service everyone was required to do at least 3 months of food service. I was deployed with the navy and it was called mess crank duty.
Yeah, I did a messy crank earlier today too.
While I don’t necessarily hate the idea, I prefer businesses took stronger stances against blacklisting troublesome customers. If all businesses in town communicated and banned people that were problematic then these people would have no place to go. Obviously this will never happen.
Banning customers is against the goals of any capitalist.
Yeah let’s give the government the power to dictate where we work. Let’s also give massive corporations more opportunities to underpay under the guise of “doing your duty” for the country. Even better - let’s staff every store and restaurant with even more people who dont want to be there.
This is a truly awful idea lol
Service Guarantees Citizenship! 🦅🦅
I had to work in retail as a teenager for a few months.
My respect for retailers, and brick and mortar clients facing jobs overall, increased tremendously.
No it won’t. Insufferable people will absolutely do the bare minimum then once they are out will be twice as insufferable because “I know how to do your job, so that’s why (unreasonable request) should be easy for you!”
You do the bare minimum? Jail. You do too much work? Straight to jail. You do the right amount, but take breaks? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
True! God that was the worst kind of customer. Still think OP is onto something. There’s gotta be a way to keep people humble, teach them humility
“I had to do my time and take the abuse, so you can take my abuse, one day you’ll be able to dish it out yourself. Or just come in on your day off.”
It would be better if stores just stopped enabling the abusive assholes by kicking them out instead of giving them what they want.
I’ve known plenty of people who worked retail that are shitty people and treat others like shit too. It’s just a personality type.
I fully agree. I’ve worked retail, warehouses, fast food.
I’m now a tech shitlord, but am grounded enough to know how lucky I am. Meanwhile, I see 20 year olds enter the field with 0 years of work experience in the real world, just internships at Facebook. They make 6 figures out the door and have no idea how the real world works.
Put em in a warehouse for six months.
Alternative opinion: any service jobs that can be automated should be, and the companies that benefit from it should be forced to pay taxes on their automation to fund UBI.
No. The fallacy is believing that the stories of military service will straighten people right up is flawed. Certainly it has the potential to do that, but you ignore:
- Most people already know empathy before joining.
- The worst of the worst get kicked out.
- Lessons will stick after the fact.
What you get is survivorship bias. Of course the people who aren’t getting entry level discharged or dishonorable discharge have the qualities needed to have or learn empathy, following orders and working as a team.
Fact is, military isn’t a perfect fit for everyone, and forcing people to do so runs against cohesiveness, morale and effectiveness. It should only be used in the most dire of situations.
Mirroring this onto service industries wouldn’t be effective at all for the people that need it. I would argue it would make it worse, as these people would see it more of a punishment than a lesson, and only serve to drag down and consume resources for the vast majority of individuals who don’t need the lessons.
Only if there’s the people’s macca’s or something. I don’t want fast food companies profiting from conscripted labour.
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Or, y’know, you could try paying service workers better before immediately jumping to authoritarian forced labor. I could easily deal with karens all day if I was actually making decent money for doing so.
Funny how the human mind works, isn’t it. Rather than think of ways to make a bad job better, the mind naturally goes to making everyone do the shit job instead.
I’m not trashing you op, just saying how interesting, how human it is to do so.
Anyway, if we’re gonna go pie-in-the-sky-ideas, why not dream of bettering things for everyone instead?
Service work should be a proper fully paid one, with benefits just like any other job.
