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I found that I could not do many of the jobs you talked about... but I began taking research surveys and am really glad I did. This was perfect for me... I wanted to be heard, I am frustrated with and fascinated by current societal events, and wound up learning a lot of stuff, especially about myself, because honesty is valued in this work. Does not feel like work most of the time to be honest, I hear studies referenced on political shows and recall taking them, but most valuable currently is training AI models. Plus make a decent amount if I want, if I don't feel up to it or want to go out for the day I do.
"Gig work" used to solely apply to ephemeral jobs like musicians and caterers. Now it's incorrectly applied to people who do the same work all day, every day, for the same employers. That's a JOB. If you go down to the Home Depot parking lot every day and hire the same dudes as day laborers, it's not a gig, it's a job that's being done illegally without any of the protections of regulated employment. All these digital platforms have done is create an electronic version of going down to the Home Depot parking lot.
The fact that so many places don't consider their employees to be... employees, is disgusting and nothing more than a loophole to not pay them decent wages or offer benefits. I'd never work for them unless, well, not even if I was desperate.
I read an interesting article about why customers are acting so terrible. Basically, they've lost all agency in their life due to capitalism, but they were promised power in the form of consumerism. So when reality doesn't meet expectations, people snap because they can't afford to live, work long hours, haven't taken a vacation in years, lost autonomy over their own bodies (women in many states), get decent healthcare, etc...and the tradeoff is their ability to buy stuff. So when you tell them it's out of stock or whatever, that ONE thing they thought they had control over in their life isn't there.
That's extremely good. I always try to figure out why people are being a-holes, and regular folks shouting at minimum wage workers never made sense to me, until now.
I work as a barista, yesterday I had a man yell at me for a drink I didn't even make since I had just started my shift. I could've easily remade it in a fraction of the time it took for him to make a scene about how much he pays everyday for his drink... like bro it's 8:30am... you made me cry. I truly wish I didn't have to work anymore
People like that have so much negativity in their life, and in their head, that they use others to dump some of their stress and negativity off on… it’s awful. But try to remember that, because then next time maybe you’ll think “I wonder what’s so f*** up in this person’s personal life”, and you’ll kind of take yourself out of the moment, realize they are trying to dump their negativity on you, and hopefully realize it’s not a you problem, but a them problem…
I hate when crap like that happens. People seem to think, you're here right now, you must have worked on this. I used to work at staples. I walked into a shift one day and this guy was SCREAMING at me about how I messed up his blueprint order and why can't I do it correctly. I told him: I have no idea who you are or what this order is about. I didn't mess anything up, I just got here and you need to relax.
Amazon factories are hell on earth! They time how long you take in the bathroom and how many times you go. I was "talked to" One day for taking four bathroom breaks in my 12-hour shift. I had spent approximately 7 minutes from my work area per bathroom break. That includes walking halfway across the factory to the nearest bathroom and back. In a matter of 4 months I developed carpal tunnel so bad I had to wear braces on my wrists 24 hours a day. They refused to move me to a non repetitive job. I quit at 4 months. Amazon is literally the vortex to hell
Thats grosd I hope you told your boss every graphic detail. Well boss my period is really heavy right now. I also had taco bell last night but I dont remember eating corn.
I'm a doordash driver in nyc and here there is a ranking tier that i never took the rating too seriously for until i dropped from platinum to unranked due to a single 1 star review dropping me below 4.8 out of 30 five star reviews, which cost me $400 in wages as the pay rate for platinum is almost double the base pay. From 1 petty customer who rated me that way due to missing utensils
Oh I have stories about working at Dollar General before and during the pandemic. One customer literally asked me if we sold disposable cameras one time and she was shocked when I said no. telling me that she heard a DG store in Ohio sold them and asked me to check the back because I might have missed them, saying that it's obviously I don't know how to do my job. There was another time someone stole couple of the candy trays from the front display of the register and a customer bad mouthed me asking me why I didnt chase the guy down. I replied "Because he had a gun" Which then the customer told me this is why the nation is in the crap because my generation lack morals and discipline to uphold the American way of life, to put down our lives to uphold the law and order. But then i asked the customer how come he didn't tackle the robber he replied "It ain't my damn job, I don't work here".
............ Sometimes, sometimes, I wish there was a tip jar that a service worker could shove in the face of anyone who is being an asshole. Not for the money per se. Just as passive aggressive way of pointing out how much the customer could please SFU
Fucking wow....ywah cause you're supposed to risk your life for a company that would replace you before your corpse turned cold. Mf xustomers bro i swear
A worker from Home Depot was literally shot and killed when he tried to stop someone from stealing. Never risk your life for something stupid like merchandise! I’m sorry that happened to you though.
on the topic of the depersonalization of delivery work: when taking pictures of packages, amazon drivers are strictly forbidden from appearing in the frame at all. that means no catching a shoe in the bottom of the frame and no shadows or reflections. amazon truly wants the customer to forget about the real life person who delivered their package entirely
The guy who drops off my gf's kidney treatment shipments got into a deep convo about how everything he does is monitored and timed. Then after about 5-7 minutes he goes "OH F**K WHAT AM I DOING I GOTTA GO"
Idk why, I skipped over the word 'treatment'. But that recontextualized yur comment into a multiverse where, vampires or zombies or Frankenstein monsters, Idk are the norm. But even in that multiverse, delivery workers are still forced to deal with all these same problems. Rereading it again & realizing my mistake brought me back to this reality
In General, every job, gig or otherwise, is timed. Often driven by machines in a manufacturing environment or by scripts in a call center. The less skilled your work, the greater the probability that you are a place holder for a machine performing ‘clockwork’. Timescales expand as work increases in complexity but even higher level projects involving entire groups of interdisciplinary experts also face a clock, it’s just less visible moment to moment.
When I was in 5th grade I got 3 days out-of-school suspension for sticking my tongue out behind a teacher's back one time. You will never get me to be sympathetic about how teachers are treated while at work. I might be sympathetic to their interactions with parents, administrators, or the law, but never with students. The people with all the power and no accountability don't deserve sympathy for how that power dynamic breaks down.
@@davidhoward4715 I was quiet, kept to myself, was constantly bullied by teachers, administrators, and other students, and was the top scoring student in the district every single year without trying. Yes, it was upsetting to the children around me that the kid not bothering anybody or participating was doing better than them. And they took it out on me with violence both physical and emotional, with help from the people who worked at the school. And then I'd go home to continue getting the shit beaten out of me by my parents and siblings, because it's easier to just have a punching bag than work through your own emotional issues. Yeah, I was a horror to those around me. What a selfish asshole I was, trying to constantly avoid attention because being noticed meant being harassed.
@@davidhoward4715 What a horrible thing to say that proves his point. Children need time, & guidance to grow. Their behaviour is only ever reflective of their environment or unmet needs. Shame on you! As someone who has worked with early years and primary schools, all children deserve compassion, and patience. I had a kid who was constantly disrupting class & ignoring the other staff members. I spent ONE DAY just one day actively giving him more attention, more help, checking in during play time when he was playing alone for almost the entire break. You know what he did the next day? He listened & engaged with class. He tried to do his work. Was everything fixed? No. But did it get better because I as a teacher saw behavioural issues not as a moral failing but as a symptom of inadequate support, YES! Teachers choose to make a living by interacting with some of the most vulnerable members of society with some of the least autonomy or accountability for their actions. We choose to work with ppl who don't know their own physical capabilities yet let alone the psychological impact they can have on others. I don't remember a single time I was hit by students, not because it hasn't happened but because it's just a something that happens like when a kid gets snot on your clothes. It can be a learning moment and might need reporting based on severity, but it's not moment where i think oh poor me I'm so abused. I'm there for the kids, not to have a spa day.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 as an ADHDer who was singled out by tons of teachers, I do feel this. but I was lucky enough to have one or two who advocated for me. I just feel like you weren't so lucky, and that makes sense, because the whole system is screwed from top to bottom. we have to have sympathy for all teachers even so, given the situation they are in right now with being paid so little they have to keep a second job, expected to possibly arm themselves and take out one of their own students in a mass casualty event, deal with the most entitled parents our country has ever seen through the generations AND deal with students that are even more mentally taxed and antisocial than anyone in generations previous. TL;DR I know things sucked for you... but if it leads you to blanket statement an entire group of people then were you bullied for being smart or for being dumb?
You forgot to point out that in retaliation for the "great resignation", companies decided the answer was to lay off 1/12 of all workers - so not only did they get to complain that they can't hire people (nobody wants to work), they're also adding shedding people who were fine with working for them.
I mean your comment is riddled with problems. Surely companies aren’t getting rid of productive, profit generating employees? And also if they’re getting rid of people doesn’t it follow that those are the less productive parts of a business, so perhaps aren’t working hard?
I worked in retail for 18 years and I can't even tell you how many times I was berated and called names, told I was stupid, etc. This was in a bookstore, so I can't even imagine what food service workers and delivery drivers have to go through. I was also pre-pandemic, so it has to be much worse now since everyone has gone feral.
I worked at bookstores for years as well and it’s hilarious how brutal people can be in a freaking bookstore 😂😂😂 I got called an affirmative action hire by a fully grown assed man when I was 16 because I have auditory processing disorder and he kept turning away when he spoke so I kept having to ask him repeat himself. I don’t even understand the comment at the time so I was like I don’t think so sir and another coworker who had overheard him went off on him and chased him out the store. I’m glad she did but I wished she hadn’t explained to me what he meant 😢😂. Dude I’m like 44, I can’t believe that crap still bothers me 😂😂
@@DaughterofDiogenes People apparently get very emotional in bookstores. There many insults that still live in my head. People don't think that store staff has emotional/mental health but are just punching bags instead.
The part of gig economy I'm most concerned by is the sheer volume workers i emcounter who are retirement age. Not entirely comfortable with the most exploitative work being performed by people who should be done working.
“Retirement is a privilege not a right. If you can’t afford to take care of yourself, you don’t deserve free handouts. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps like the rest of us” - some guy who was born and raised upper middle class and had a trust fund since he was 5
@@internalizedhappyness9774Chill. They’re just sharing their thoughts. Just because it wasn’t worded the way you would have written it or the most original comment (which isn’t the point of trying to start a discussion btw) doesn’t mean you get to be nasty to strangers…which is ironically the point of the video.
"Service work" is really just a shallow euphemism for "servant work". When the imaginary "middle" class was invented in the 20th century to appease an increasingly discontent and rebellious population, it accompanied the creation of a class of "servants" who would fill the roles of performing the servitude needed to make the "middle" class play at being part of the owning class. These new servants got a slightly different name and a slightly different treatment than their predecessors, but generally just reproduce the old structures we all know and love from feudal or slave systems. As the "middle" class disintegrates, we're seeing the emergence of the "Karen", or the working class individual desperately trying to hold onto their owning class lifestyles - or at least the theme park version of it they've grown accustomed to. Their increased discomfort is passed down onto "service" workers (which is really populated by members of their own class that they believe themselves to be above) in the "service industry". It's a pattern not unlike the division between the field slave and the house slave, or between the chattel slave and the indentured servant. I don't think it's a death of empathy, but instead, a revealing of the lack of empathy we've had all along that comes from the separation of people into different castes, and the reactionary rage that comes from the destruction of the illusion of the "middle class".
The middle class has always been a thing, just not in those terms. It refers to the buffer the ruling class use to prevent the lower class from rising up. By selecting a large minority of the lower class and elevating them, you ingratiate them to the system that you represent.
'There is nothing more American than using a gun to threaten someone trying to give you a free handout' I cackled vigorously. What the hell have we become?
I bartend at a dive bar and I bartend weddings. The things I love about those places: 1) at a dive bar, I can tell someone to fuck off and there isn't really anyone to get mad at me about it, 2) at a wedding almost everyone is just in a good mood, plus I control the booze
It's not that we as hard workers were deemed essential to maintain the economy, but it was deemed essential for us to keep working to maintain the economy. The value is in the service or good & not the person, we're just the one following orders like good little flesh robots.
@@asdf242 Become too valuable to be tossed, or revolt against those who would dispose of you and simply refuse to be treated as garbage. Americans especially - particularly on the left, slobbering over ideals of pacifism magically solving all things - seem to adore complaining about this or that mistreatment while endlessly rolling over for it.
I was about to post that; to elaborate: the WORKER is expendable, but their labor is "essential". We don't care about the worker, but godsdammit, we need out lattes brought to us, chop chop...
Someone on a support chat thanked me for being polite the other day. No idea if that was part of a script but it didn't sound like it. Bit of an indictment if someone felt the need to thank me for just behaving like a human being.
as someone who has been working customer service her entire life, a simple "thank you" goes a long way. it makes me feel appreciated and that I'm doing something right. real stupid but sometimes it causes me to tear up
A couple years ago one of my kitties needed emergency vet care. I took to a good local animal hospital and they did a great job with her. I acted like what I thought was normal human behavior: being polite, etc. Later, when the bill came, the vet tech told me she wasn't charging me for several things because she really appreciated that I was treating them decently. It was a little shocking to think very basic manners are in such short supply.
I hope it's because I treat people with respect and try to be cheerful, but most people I have to talk to on the phone to get help for customer service leave the call seeming like I made them feel a little better that day. I worked a call center so I know that feeling. I always really hope that's what it is. I hate the idea of having to do their jobs so I do my best to make sure I don't ever make it worse. I actually have major social anxiety, but not because I'm bad with people, just bad childhood stuff lol
During the worst of the pandemic, pre-vaccine, I was on the phone with our company's IT, which was very clearly outsourced to India. The individual on the phone sounded terse and upset, and I finally interrupted them and asked if they were okay. To my utter shock, they actually broke down and started crying on the phone. It turns out they had just lost their Mother to Covid and were very much *not* okay. They needed to still come to work because they didn't feel secure enough in their job to take any time off. They were also terrified, because their job placed them in tight quarters with insufficient PPE and they questioned whether their job led directly to their Mother's death. And the worst part about it was being completely unable to help. We spoke for a while and they thanked me for asking about them, but they then pulled themselves together and explained their average call time was tracked and they needed to address my problem so they wouldn't get in trouble. I've rarely felt so powerless.
As a delivery driver in nyc and having to go to service entrances because the illusion of not seeing service workers is so important I approve this message
I remember my first job where a woman hurled death threats at me for accusing her son of stealing when I had never seen either of them before they came up to my register. Her evidence was that I looked at her son "too long". Meanwhile I still had to scan all their items while trying not to cry. By far the worst I'd ever been humiliated in my entire life.
You are awesome! (I would not have been so cool.🙄) I'm sorry for the negativity suffered in that moment. But you positively answered a very demanding moment without breaking. Yes. Some people are angry, all the time; and do not own a lock for it. (I wonder about the her kid... Does she talk to them that way too? Poor thing🙁) Anyway. You rock!🫡
Food delivery and online shopping have destroyed our empathy for service workers. We're further removed from how our things are made and who made them. It sucks watching our socioeconomic collapse happen day by day.
I like the addition of the rating that changes throughout the video that you react to. It adds a bit of humor while also giving people a glimpse of what it's like when service workers read their ratings on the apps.
I work at a grocery store and i have a few stories about some wild people but my favorite by far was this very polite suburban mom that i helped out with her groceries. We had some small talk and usual stuff and as I closed her trunk I saw this sticker on her window of a white rabbit. I had never seen it before so I asked what it was about, She confidently told me that it was a symbol to let the other followers of Q (Q-Anon) know she was one of them. She then also confidently shared the truth she had come to find on social media, including how US taxes were ultimately collected to pay for the English Monarchy and how when she went missing (and there was no doubt she would in her mind) she would be disappeared into the death camps run by FEMA for all the "pure" people, which meant the unvaccinated. I was so bewildered that I just wished her a good night and left as quickly as possible. I havent seen her again so hey, maybe FEMA is more nefarious then I thought?
Sounds like the schizo I have to do electrical work around. He's a broken record of the same conspiracy theories.he thinks if he repeats himself enough, they'll come true. F@ck Reagan for letting thr nutters out to breed...
My story about work is that I work for Amazon in what can be described as customer service role in a case by case basis. A lot of metrics are tracked, dir example case reopens. A case was reopened with the message "thank you for solving my problem, great job" and it was counted against my performance because reopens are negative. Also at a recent work function, I overheard the boss of my boss saying that he dislikes german work protections because he would sometimes like to get rid of the bottom quartile of workers and since that I can't get it out of my head that he was specifically talking about me.
I'm a person that runs a movie theatre. Indeed, Michael is right about how going to the theatre has changed in the last few years since the pandemic. People's aren't coming anymore and People's expectations have skyrocketed. Most of my negative reviews have more to do with amenities we've never had or simply blaming us for them not liking the film
the technopticon is far more than simply the algorithm. the algorithm itself isn't directly surveilling you, it is just a tool that is used in the process of doing so
@@msjkramey Oh you know, treating people like they're numbers, treating people like they aren't individual human beings, treating people like they should be punished for minor mistakes that inconveniences others slightly, stuff like that.
You do know credit scores are a thing right… I’m just gonna pretend like you actually don’t know about fact they exist. Or you’re just being obtuse on purpose! 🫵🏼🙂↕️
Funny how the dehumanization works both ways and always in favor of the capitalists. We need to constantly remind ourselves that there are people behind these algorithms who designed them an decided what is considered "good" and what is "bad" and what is valued.
Am all for the rights for the working class. But when you get shouted at and stepped on the heals by a toxic over bearing manager at a low paying service job, so much so that you gotta go to the freezer room to cry your eyes out - its super hard to maintain perspective. Recognizing that we are victims that nip at each other due to artificial scarcity created by the oppressive corporations is a very active mental process that requires both class consciousness raising and some self work. 'it is what it is' philosophy might help you get by today but actively destroys your soul and others like you.
I don't think I buy the whole 'artificial scarcity' line. It's a bit sociology 101. Granted consolidation and price-fixing do exist, like DeBeers or Oil cartels, it's generally frowned upon in a capitalist system. But I think more broadly you're saying that "there's enough to go round - everybody should be rich". And I think that comes from a position of privilege itself. There actually isn't enough for everybody to enjoy your standard of living - and you only have it because other people don't. If we did do some sort of 'great adjustment' - where everybody along the supply chain was paid a more humane wage, we'd all be taking home $10,000 a year and a phone would cost you $5000. Printing money wouldn't solve that problem - you'd have to ask somebody smarter than me to really explain why. But economics isn't the 'soft' science that people like to think - it's just abstract in a way that's difficult to get your head around. But basically 'yeah, money isn't real' or whatever - but it's a pretty accurate representation of something that is. It isn't often fair - but if it was - we'd both have to accept being a lot worse off.
At least in the US it should be possible to achieve full employment in better jobs. And the concentration of wealth creates inefficiencies of accumulation and non spending and an excessive use of resource on the private property of rich people.
@@frankcooke1692 I understand what you are saying. However I do believe that it is also in a certain way our inability to imagine a world not under capitalism that makes you feel ‘that economics is abstract in a way that is hard for us to wrap our head around’. Consolidation and vertical integration are both intrinsic to capitalism. I would recommend Lenin’s writing on capitalism and imperialism that illustrates it elegantly. Another central contradiction in capitalism is that profit can only be achieved through wage theft. Hence the accumulation of wealth by capitalists is essentially tied to economic oppression of the workers. Accumulation of wealth over generations by monopolies make them humingously wealthy , so much so that they can grow and seize markets in foreign lands too. the financialization of capital has made conventional market forces make even less sense , abstracting value from goods and services. These are all contradictions intrinsic to capitalism. I agree that a lot of re organization and leadership would be needed , but there definitely is enough for everyone’s consumption. The surplus produce every year that is wasted away (in order to drive prices lower to stay competitive) alone can be sufficient . It’s not a free market as advertised. It’s a rigged system that benefits a few players that gives you the illusion of scarcity, and both supply and demand are heavily controlled and influenced by these few players.
@@frankcooke1692income inequality is a huge portion of the problem though CEO's getting 500 million dollar bonuses could just as well have split that bonus up to a 1000 dollar bonus for 500000 employees. Or turned into a 100 dollar raise. The people at the very top of this world simply have too much compares to the rest of us
I did doordash for a bit during the peak lockdown era as a 19 year old who just got their license and thought it would be easy money. Got bored and fed up pretty quick. Only 1 in every 10 orders would be worth it. I spent nearly 20 minutes in a burger king drive thru plus another 20 minute drive just to pick up a smoothie for some 12 year old for the equivalent of $3. I dont know how people do it like a career tbh
I'm not even fifteen seconds in and I'm already detached. 'Picture your local restaurant'. I don't believe there are any restaurants near me that aren't chains.
Almost all chain restaurants are operated by local businesspeople. They're replacing small businesses in the most literal sense... the same people own them as who'd own a small business.
I was laid off from my job during lockdown in 2020 and I’ve been driving for a delivery app since 2021. Customers are generally pretty agreeable. Restaurant workers range from chill to occasionally unkind. The biggest pain points for me are the isolation and the precarity of the job. There’s little to no social interaction on most days. I rarely interact with customers, as I’m typically dropping off food and taking a picture. Picking up food often involves no more than a cursory greeting and then a handoff. You start to feel invisible, or even interchangeable after a while. The fear of getting bad ratings, never being quite sure how much money you’re going to make over the course of a working day and the seemingly arbitrary way orders are distributed all lead to a constant background level of anxiety. The irony is I genuinely enjoy driving around my city and bringing people their food. I’d love to have a delivery job for a nice, locally owned restaurant, but the app based economy has effectively eliminated those types of jobs.
I have worked food service, retail, and customer service. We need to be nicer to each other. We really do. Like, holy shit. Management and CEOs see you as a $ they have to pay out. Customers see you as an obstacle in the way of what they want or taking up their time. They don't see you as a human person. Your fellow workers are too stressed and over worked and underpaid to help you out, cuz they are in the same boat as you. It is hell. It's been hell probably well before the modern day, but like we don't need to keep it hell. We can be nicer to each other. We need to be at least basically decent to each other, nothing special, just not a dick. Please. I am not looking forward to a world where everyone is in the 'gig economy'. If they put biometrics in there to get people to be more empathetic to workers people are going to begin ignoring the metrics because they aren't in a headspace to be able to care about another person when they too are stuck in the 'gig economy'. This is some absolute bullshit.
I noticed something people did to *me* during Covid...I'm a short little woman. Several times when I'd go get groceries, tall people leaned over me a lot, like I wasn't even there. Literally putting their armpit on top of my head. Once I said, "excuse me" in a very sarcastic way and the man looked at me and said "oh you're ok" like he really thought I was the one doing something wrong 😂
You being in someone else's way kinda is something you did wrong. Yeah, the more socially acceptable thing for these people to do would be to loudly pretend to be patiently waiting for the assholes to get out of the way and pay attention to their surroundings until you get the hint, but lets not pretend your story is a one-sided thing of people being rude to you.
That is insanity. Getting somewhere first isn't that person doing something wrong. The pandemic really showed how on the line people's sanity was. I am agoraphobic, and the rest of you got locked inside a few months and forgot what it takes for society to function. There's never an excuse to reach over a short person/person in a wheelchair/ANYONE, even the polite rude way to get that grocery is to come from the side, in front of them, while saying excuse me, which is still voided by the current health risk. What do you not understand about that? Why did a few months inside make you forget the polite way to be rude?
Well done. This is very validating for me as someone who thought after the pandemic lockdowns eased and people returned to restaurants and such, where they could once again sit and have a nice meal while others served them with hospitality, that people would be grateful. ON the contrary, they were even more entitled, impatient and as a result, unbearably rude. I have long thought that the catering to peoples every whim and desire through fulfillment apps like door dash, amazon and uber eats, etc, contributed to peoples inflated sense of entitlement. They could have anything they wanted delivered to their front door and never have to interact with a human. And when people went back out into restaurants and stores, they thought they could be shitty to real humans when things didn't go exactly as they would like. I feel like the level of narcissism (not a psychologist BTW) has risen to a level that will become self perpetuating given the continuation of these conditions and nothing short of a catastrophe will bring things back to a place where people appreciate one another. Sebastian Junger describes this in his book TRIBE. Fuckin' bleak man. Total bummer. I just try to not be like that and keep good people around me. I have no time for people who treat service workers like shit and who never even consider the mail delivery person or amazon worker.
Nah, this gig economy sucks. But being a butler would have been TERRIBLE. That's like 16+ hour days every day, having to live with your employer so you would be on call and your housing was tied to your employment, being lucky to get a single day off in a month, having to deal directly with entitled people basically 24/7, all the weird inescapable social/professional/economic heirarchies, intense & weird etiquette rules, no unemployment insurance, risking getting sent to "the poor house" if you got fired and your reputation was ruined
Almost all of this is perfectly descriptive of the service industry. The literal only thing that MIGHT not be is "having to live with your employer". Sometimes that's not the case, but sometimes it is. 16+ hour days, always on call, being lucky to get a single day off in a month, having to deal directly with entitled people 24/7, the weird inescapable hierarchies, the strange etiquette rules, no unemployment insurance, housing tied to employment, risking permanent damage to your reputation resulting in death if your employer just decides to be an asshole.
I feel like it is the hyper individualism and materialism that has made so many people toxic. I’ve lived in a bigger city in South America and people were so chill and kind (outside car traffic of course lol)
I've never behaved rudely to strangers in my life (although I have been curt at times without being aware of it) Some people just go through life behaving like utter jackholes without consequence and they should face more repercussions for bad behavior before they are allowed out in public, frankly.
Whenever my Instacart shopper screws something up, I call the company to try and get them fired. If they can't do their job right, then they don't deserve their job.
My former company, Atomic provisions/Fat Sullys/Denver Biscuit Company, was forcing employees to work for the sub-minimum wage even when they were doing un-tipped labor. Some employees asked to receive minimum wage for those hours and were denied. Meanwhile the company just opened its 8th store with plans for two more in the next year. Service workers are being paid LESS than MINIMUM WAGE because of corporate greed.
My wife has worked for [unnamed Canadian drugstore chain] for almost a decade, and if their system is indicative of a broader trend, the Review system in the service industry is fundamentally broken. I don't know off-hand how the "math" that Corporate came up with shakes out, but basically if someone fills out a customer review that isn't as positive as can be ("Strongly Agree" in every field), it's treated as a Negative review. If fewer than 75-80% of the reviews that come in don't meet that steep threshold of being Positive, the head manager in charge of the whole store could be fired and replaced by Corporate. So we occasionally spend some of our off time filling out bogus glowing reviews, to keep the numbers up. It sucks.
I was surprised when working at a retail place that they required a perfect 10 scores across the board on any reviews, or it got the managers b*tched at by corporate. I rarely review places, and when I do it's almost always positive, but perfection is not something I would usually do, ever. So that sucks to think that possibly even the best intentions and reviews I left still may have hurt instead of helped due to completely insane expectations of corporate.
yep, worked directtv and att intall and service. if the review i got, witch was mandatory to get the customer to fill out, was less than all fives, i had to go to the office on moday at six in the morning an hour and a half from my area and do a class on customer service. and my pay rate lowered.every week id get a bad rating from someone who didnt like not being able to choose their channels, the price, the number of days it took to come. things that had nothing to do with me. top quility installer. lowest paid because i took longer doing it right. when i quit they harrassed me for a year. not once budging on paying more or hourly or even getting rid of these stupid meetings.
Exactly. So many places have an "All or Nothing" approach to reviews. If you're being rated in multiple areas, and you get 5 stars in all of them except for one 4.5 rating, then the whole thing is treated as if you'd gotten a 0. It's insane. Perfect is the enemy of Good.
I did dispatch for Amazon and although it depends on what you’re ordering, honestly I think it doesnt make that much of a difference. Maybe only for things like groceries. Their algorithms are crazy fast that orders get instantly rerouted to another driver.
My theory is that it makes zero difference for any actual worker, whether delivery driver or warehouse worker. But it may make a difference for CO2 emissions, if their fulfillment algorithm can actually put more into one box and ship it all out in one day, rather than in some worst-case scenario like four boxes in four days. If everyone chose the option, Amazon would just cut back on warehouse staff and drivers, so each worker would still be exactly as stressed as before - but total pollution and greenhouse gases would likely drop. (In theory.)
This is what want to know! And was hoping for more responses here! But I guess that knowledge requires access to a _lot_ of levels of a complex supply chain management that a limited group of people have
"Eat these bullets breakfast communism!" - This might be the most American thing that I have ever heard. And I want it on a t-shirt. A t-shirt made in China by virtual slaves, so it can be sold in a tourist trap in Miami, managed by a Cuban immigrant family. Ya know, so it's even MORE American.
I work with a guy who does Uber on the side. He delivered a car part that was a 30 minute drive. He only earned $3 for the delivery and the customer was not allowed to tip because tipping only works with food.
Customer service work has sucked for decades and decades. Amazon takes the cake on corporate making every aspect of work worse and worse whether you interface with the public or not. Then they create huge garbage dumps where they put all the “desperately needed in two days!” returned items and all the others.
I worked in a movie theatre 20 years ago - people have always been emotionally unhinged or ready to blow when it’s time to sit in the dark and watch something enjoyable with some snacks. 50% more if they have groceries that are perishable that they would rather grip in their greasy fingers for 2 hours than let teens store for them in industrial freezers so no one trips and dies from falling down many, many stairs.
As a middle-aged someone who has been forced into gig work after dealing with Long-Covid for the past 2 years, I am actually grateful that 90% of the time I don’t have to physically deal with the upper 10% income earners that I serve as a Door Dash and Instacart driver. Yes, I know that the gig economy is a racket and that these companies are fucking evil and ultimately bad for most of us. But for now, I don’t have to look into the eyes of these people and see their pity. And I feel that most of these wealthy folks don’t want to awkwardly pretend that I exist in the same world that they do. Because I don’t
this was s pretty cool and dynamic long video, I think the idea of putting the "rating points" Michael was winning and losing in the video was pretty cool as it was an example of concepts discussed in the video, a critic to the system and also a way to make the video more interesting! I encourage you guys keep it going! love you!
This reminds me so much of Superstore. It’s actually quite impressive how most series simply ignore the pandemic, but a series about service workers not only acknowledges it, but shows what a big deal it was for their day to day (considering it’s still a sitcom ofc)
Any time someone rated me negatively I always replied with a review of what kind of customer they were along with a 0-5 out of 5 stars as a response and for really hardass problem asshats I would post to their social media with links to their reviews so their friends and family could see exactly how they treated service people. I was fired from 2 delivery jobs and kept at one for far longer then I planned because my boss loved my up front honesty, work ethic and not allowing myself to get pushed around by customers.
McDonalds famously chose to open up teh barrier between kitchen and serving food to build trust and safety. By showing people how their food was prepared in a passive way, the customers trusted the food more, and the restaurant received better retention.
Worked in the restaurant industry for close to 18 years. Quit after mandates started lifting. Upon return I was nearly in 3 physical altercations. One involving a customer throwing his take away box at me. Also had an old lady ask me how far my apron went down and went to physically grab my junk. People became unhinged for sure, everyday there was something crazy going on. Not to mention my coworkers that suddenly decided to buy into qAnon conspiracy theories. Was happy to leave and have never looked back since.
i worked at a bestbuy in ottawa canada during the trucker antivax convoy if you remember that. The best buy i worked at was right next to a big hotel where many of the folks from out of town stayed. I had a number of people complain about wearing masks (boring) but 1 in particular had a sweater with justin trudeau being taken from behind by fauci and suprisingly this customer wore his mask properly but made sure to let me know that he wished the employees werent forced to wear them. I told him I didnt mind
In customer service you not only have to be "happy" with customers, but you have to be "happy" at every moment of the day with co-workers. "Lift up the team, show your support, be fun!" is the new bullshit emotional labor.
Blake seems fun to hang out with. I'm of the opinion that we all need to have at least one friend in our circle that's agreeable and kind, but also really really dumb.
I worked at Walgreens during the later half of the pandemic. We had people getting vaccinated in the back, including vulnerable elderly folks. The amount of people who came in without a mask despite our mask mandate was infuriating. People would get mad and cause scenes; some people even loitered around the front of the warning everyone not to get the vaccine due to [insert conspiracy theory here]. One person I checked out admitted they had tested positive for Covid that morning, then insisted it was fine because they were only buying a few things(after coughing through every aisle in the store)…😣
Really, if you ever needed proof that empathy in America is dead look no further than the pandemic. Thousands were dying every day, yet people lost their shit for the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask, and insist that everything is okay because "I just have a little cough"
Women under the age of forty see the majority of men that way, and then they get older and discover that their social status flowed from their and youth and beauty. They thought they had a moral wisdom that others perceived, but they were wrong. A woman who has not acquired lasting wealth and status in her youth discovers she’s now the least part of the blob she held in disdain 😅
Service worker here. We use to have to kiss everyone's butts, but now we are generally allowed to tell people where to shove it and at what angle. So that's improvement I suppose.
Ans whats funny is that it starts to solve the rude customer provlem. One day working at walgreens like....something snapped and i had enouvh. Anx i sfarted telling people to shove it. Not only did those customefs either stop or just not come.back, i ended yp telling people off lesz and lesz cause they were acting right
the daily show effect. comedy is the only way social issues can be exposed without it being chewed to shreds by traditional media, which sold its soul to the corporatocracy decades ago.
But we can't have workers thinking they're people! If they do, they'll think they're entitled to things like decent pay or dignity, and that would just be absurd.
I’ve never used food delivery because I’m not so lazy I pay 2x to not leave the house, but this year I have not spent any money at Amazon or Starbucks. I’m sick of these shit corporations.
What's really heartbreaking is Pizza Hut outsourcing to Doordash for their deliveries. Costs went up significantly. Large pepperoni pizza will be around $40 when it was advertised for $19.99
All chain pizza is disgusting. I can't believe I ever used to like Pizza Hut or Domino's etc as a kid. Always order local. There are two pizza places near me that I frequent instead, so much better.
reminder the person who delivers it on doordash specifically only gets 1 to 2$ base pay before tip with no mileage pay if outside cali, before any tip assuming there is one. yes you read that right. And funfact its 1$ if its a stack (2 orders at same time to two locations), which is if anything twice as much work and puts the driver at much higher risk for bad reviews, all because they are forced to take orders or earn almost nothing ("acceptance rate".) all those fees and upcharging you payed just go into the ether
I’m an Amazon DSP driver. When people see me show up at their door when they happen to be home, they look at me like some kind of alien or something. There’s the nice person that will talk to me here and there but it is funny to me that people think their packages “magically materialize” on their doorstep, lol
These apps are very destructive. I am pretty happy that they have basically made no progress in Germany. People almost always just go get their food and usually just sit down and eat it and talk for hours. The apps mostly look like a good way to make your life even worse.
@@perfectallycromulent I agree on that and I think in that case it is perfectly fine. However, I see many people use it constantly where that is not the case and it ends up costing them a lot of money and makes their life much worse.
@@perfectallycromulentI was about to to say I’m disabled and unable to drive, there is no mass transit in my area and stores are too far away with no sidewalks to access them. These apps are the only thing that allow me any measure of independence. That being said because I am aware of how valuable they are for me I tip as much as I'm able and thank the delivery drivers. Granted it's not always a good interaction from the customer side either, once I had to listen to a 15 min lecture on how ‘coming to Jesus’ would ‘heal me and let me walk again’ before getting my food.... So it’s a mixed bag.
@@ookamiblade6318 This kind of thing makes me sad. Part of the reason I like Germany is that markets are close to where people live. Most can walk to a bakery or market within 5 minutes. I understand how much these apps help you but we have made the places we live into car infested hellscapes and that is a large part of the reason for why you need these apps.
I think it has alot ot do with entitles drivers. I have done 215 deliveries over the past 2 weeks resulting in 34 positive customer reviews and 3 positive reviews from the stores. I earn on average $110-150 for a 4 hour dinner rush and $90-110 during my 3 hours breakfast rush. I have also found 100% of the other drivers I talk to are extreamly rude, entitled, dont handle the food with care and I refuse to order food from the app Ia drive for due to meeting the other drivers who would be delivering my food. Its no wonder I keep having customers thanking me like I just saved their life as they tell me they wish they could request to have me each time as they are sick of the other drivers unprofessionalism.
Seems like this is more of a US problem than anywhere else and I think it is largely down to the tipping culture that makes service employees totally dependent on customer satisfaction - even when it is unreasonable.
As someone who drove for Uber for a while between jobs, over 1200 rides, and who is considering doing it again, this time just for fun, this talk of treating each other with empathy versus as mindless robots is really interesting because I actually prefer the latter. I'm driving with Uber because I love driving. Sure, sometimes it's great with riders who want to have an interesting discussion, which I oblige and enjoy, but other times it feels like they are expecting me as the driver to "force cheerfulness" which I really despise. It's definitely a hard to navigate balance at times between just wanting to do my job professionally and efficiently, which is always the case, and being expected of or wanted to engage in empathetic connection. I do my best to oblige, but I know I'm not always good at knowing who wants what. I guess the best idea might be to start cheerfully, and then take their lead from there. Either a nice, silent (or some music) drive, or discuss what's on their mind.
Here are so many bicycle delivery persons just loitering and waiting for orders near the food places that in many locations they're no longer allowed to wait inside, which looks pretty miserable when it rains and they desperately huddle under every nearby cover. I can't really blame the business owners because some of the drivers are really rude and entitled to the staff and regular customers.
Add to that that Uber incentivized car delivery over bikes about 2 years ago. I went from being overbooked and busy to getting maybe 1 order an hour so I just stopped doing it
in march of 2020 a guy threw a patio chair at me and my coworkers for not letting him into the restaurant while we were doing takeout only and not taking cash
As an Amazon delivery associate, we’re graded weekly in my DSP based on a few things but the part that matters is customer feedback. You like if we are nice or are mindful not to tear up their grass, follow the instructions that set notes a year ago and never changed, but the best one is handled with care even though for me atleast I always treat the packages with respect and care, but at the warehouse they get jostled and beat up and we just deliver but the customer doesn’t know any of that, and we the drivers take the hit.
Hey Michael, just wanna say, I'd have given you 5 stars, but there weren't enough references to Baudrillard, so I had to dock you a point. Also, perfect service is impossible, and I only ever rate at most a 4.9, so it's a 3.9 today.
"Don't be an asshole and tip better" is a depressingly low bar for a call to action. We must classify these workers as workers, specifically employees. Until that happens things will simply keep getting worse.
I used Uber for the first time a few months ago in San Jose, its insane that I was able to get 10ish dollar rides that include my brother in busy traffic and nice cars. In the evening it was like 20ish. I tipped 10 each time and reviewed well but was made clear they aren't paid enough. After some research apparently people online complain about the cars they are driven in, for example, a Nissan Versa. So drivers are also incentivised to get nicer cars to make less than minimum wage on.
Great video Michael. I appreciate you bringing up how the lack of empathy we have towards service workers is such a serious problem. That said, your “friction of intimacy” joke was truly terrible and I hope you’ve learned your lesson.
Its strange. And maybe it's because of my retail work. But I'm hyper aware of the weather and general conditions. I've not ordered food because of bad weather. And I even will call Amazon to delay delivery of my packages so I can at least pretend I'm trying to keep one of their drivers safe, from bad weather. Much to the shock of their phone reps
I feel it shows just how precarious we all feel life is (I'm assuming no one here is a 1%er). That everyone is a lukewarm burger away from an assault charge is probably something Governments should be paying attention to rather than actively making it worse.
Yeah...as a chef who has seen how other cooks react to app orders, and the things they do to them (without going into too much incriminating detail) I strongly advise people not to order food using delivery apps.
I worked in a call center in a capaign for an online bank and almost all employees not only hated their job but was scared of it. As a matter of fact I got to the email team and taking calls was a common threat of the supervisor whenever something was not as they wanted. Everyone taking calls had from axiety to depression even suicidal thoughts.
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I found that I could not do many of the jobs you talked about... but I began taking research surveys and am really glad I did. This was perfect for me... I wanted to be heard, I am frustrated with and fascinated by current societal events, and wound up learning a lot of stuff, especially about myself, because honesty is valued in this work. Does not feel like work most of the time to be honest, I hear studies referenced on political shows and recall taking them, but most valuable currently is training AI models. Plus make a decent amount if I want, if I don't feel up to it or want to go out for the day I do.
My film will release at 1:30pm, you asked to link it to you
the way to speak danish properly is: be german, be drunk, speak norwegian.
source: im swedish
Would love to use babel, but they do not offer Greek... as soon as that is a thing, then I will look into it...
*Your Marxist message never disappoints.* 🤣🤣🤣
"Gig work" used to solely apply to ephemeral jobs like musicians and caterers. Now it's incorrectly applied to people who do the same work all day, every day, for the same employers. That's a JOB. If you go down to the Home Depot parking lot every day and hire the same dudes as day laborers, it's not a gig, it's a job that's being done illegally without any of the protections of regulated employment. All these digital platforms have done is create an electronic version of going down to the Home Depot parking lot.
Very well put.
Fax.
job protection is woke and communist, sorry can't have that.
The fact that so many places don't consider their employees to be... employees, is disgusting and nothing more than a loophole to not pay them decent wages or offer benefits.
I'd never work for them unless, well, not even if I was desperate.
@@HylianFox3 You should start a business and hire people as full time employees, then.
I read an interesting article about why customers are acting so terrible. Basically, they've lost all agency in their life due to capitalism, but they were promised power in the form of consumerism. So when reality doesn't meet expectations, people snap because they can't afford to live, work long hours, haven't taken a vacation in years, lost autonomy over their own bodies (women in many states), get decent healthcare, etc...and the tradeoff is their ability to buy stuff.
So when you tell them it's out of stock or whatever, that ONE thing they thought they had control over in their life isn't there.
They need to grow up and deal with it their perceived worthlessness isn't someone else's problem
That's actually some really good analysis.
That's extremely good. I always try to figure out why people are being a-holes, and regular folks shouting at minimum wage workers never made sense to me, until now.
@@flailingweasel8541 They do, but this is about control over one's life, not self-worth.
Pretty well summed up
I work as a barista, yesterday I had a man yell at me for a drink I didn't even make since I had just started my shift. I could've easily remade it in a fraction of the time it took for him to make a scene about how much he pays everyday for his drink... like bro it's 8:30am... you made me cry. I truly wish I didn't have to work anymore
People like that have so much negativity in their life, and in their head, that they use others to dump some of their stress and negativity off on… it’s awful.
But try to remember that, because then next time maybe you’ll think “I wonder what’s so f*** up in this person’s personal life”, and you’ll kind of take yourself out of the moment, realize they are trying to dump their negativity on you, and hopefully realize it’s not a you problem, but a them problem…
I hate when crap like that happens. People seem to think, you're here right now, you must have worked on this. I used to work at staples. I walked into a shift one day and this guy was SCREAMING at me about how I messed up his blueprint order and why can't I do it correctly. I told him: I have no idea who you are or what this order is about. I didn't mess anything up, I just got here and you need to relax.
You cried over someone yelling at you? 😭
@@pastelpurpledeathbed yes
@@thebeastoffeasterparkGood that you stood up for yourself. Sometimes I feel I need to be more like that
Amazon factories are hell on earth! They time how long you take in the bathroom and how many times you go. I was "talked to" One day for taking four bathroom breaks in my 12-hour shift. I had spent approximately 7 minutes from my work area per bathroom break. That includes walking halfway across the factory to the nearest bathroom and back. In a matter of 4 months I developed carpal tunnel so bad I had to wear braces on my wrists 24 hours a day. They refused to move me to a non repetitive job. I quit at 4 months. Amazon is literally the vortex to hell
the only way things are going to change is if we establish boundaries to being taken advantage of
Do I hear the word union?
I worked at Amazon for about a month, and on my literal second day of work they were telling me my rates were low and that I needed to pick it up.
One job that I can't wait for AI to overtake
Thats grosd I hope you told your boss every graphic detail. Well boss my period is really heavy right now. I also had taco bell last night but I dont remember eating corn.
I'm a doordash driver in nyc and here there is a ranking tier that i never took the rating too seriously for until i dropped from platinum to unranked due to a single 1 star review dropping me below 4.8 out of 30 five star reviews, which cost me $400 in wages as the pay rate for platinum is almost double the base pay. From 1 petty customer who rated me that way due to missing utensils
Oh I have stories about working at Dollar General before and during the pandemic. One customer literally asked me if we sold disposable cameras one time and she was shocked when I said no. telling me that she heard a DG store in Ohio sold them and asked me to check the back because I might have missed them, saying that it's obviously I don't know how to do my job. There was another time someone stole couple of the candy trays from the front display of the register and a customer bad mouthed me asking me why I didnt chase the guy down. I replied "Because he had a gun" Which then the customer told me this is why the nation is in the crap because my generation lack morals and discipline to uphold the American way of life, to put down our lives to uphold the law and order. But then i asked the customer how come he didn't tackle the robber he replied "It ain't my damn job, I don't work here".
Should have told him the CEO can tackle the thieve he has more to lose.
............ Sometimes, sometimes, I wish there was a tip jar that a service worker could shove in the face of anyone who is being an asshole. Not for the money per se. Just as passive aggressive way of pointing out how much the customer could please SFU
Fucking wow....ywah cause you're supposed to risk your life for a company that would replace you before your corpse turned cold. Mf xustomers bro i swear
A worker from Home Depot was literally shot and killed when he tried to stop someone from stealing. Never risk your life for something stupid like merchandise! I’m sorry that happened to you though.
on the topic of the depersonalization of delivery work: when taking pictures of packages, amazon drivers are strictly forbidden from appearing in the frame at all. that means no catching a shoe in the bottom of the frame and no shadows or reflections. amazon truly wants the customer to forget about the real life person who delivered their package entirely
The guy who drops off my gf's kidney treatment shipments got into a deep convo about how everything he does is monitored and timed. Then after about 5-7 minutes he goes "OH F**K WHAT AM I DOING I GOTTA GO"
Idk why, I skipped over the word 'treatment'. But that recontextualized yur comment into a multiverse where, vampires or zombies or Frankenstein monsters, Idk are the norm. But even in that multiverse, delivery workers are still forced to deal with all these same problems. Rereading it again & realizing my mistake brought me back to this reality
@@reallue I'm glad you had an experience 😂
omg i also had to have kidney treatments!!
In General, every job, gig or otherwise, is timed. Often driven by machines in a manufacturing environment or by scripts in a call center. The less skilled your work, the greater the probability that you are a place holder for a machine performing ‘clockwork’. Timescales expand as work increases in complexity but even higher level projects involving entire groups of interdisciplinary experts also face a clock, it’s just less visible moment to moment.
@@Dehmigaahd well said friend
Getting punched as a fight attendant: national news.
Getting punched as a teacher: Tuesday
When I was in 5th grade I got 3 days out-of-school suspension for sticking my tongue out behind a teacher's back one time. You will never get me to be sympathetic about how teachers are treated while at work. I might be sympathetic to their interactions with parents, administrators, or the law, but never with students. The people with all the power and no accountability don't deserve sympathy for how that power dynamic breaks down.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I bet you were an absolute horror for the children around you who just wanted to get an education.
@@davidhoward4715 I was quiet, kept to myself, was constantly bullied by teachers, administrators, and other students, and was the top scoring student in the district every single year without trying.
Yes, it was upsetting to the children around me that the kid not bothering anybody or participating was doing better than them. And they took it out on me with violence both physical and emotional, with help from the people who worked at the school. And then I'd go home to continue getting the shit beaten out of me by my parents and siblings, because it's easier to just have a punching bag than work through your own emotional issues.
Yeah, I was a horror to those around me. What a selfish asshole I was, trying to constantly avoid attention because being noticed meant being harassed.
@@davidhoward4715 What a horrible thing to say that proves his point. Children need time, & guidance to grow. Their behaviour is only ever reflective of their environment or unmet needs. Shame on you! As someone who has worked with early years and primary schools, all children deserve compassion, and patience. I had a kid who was constantly disrupting class & ignoring the other staff members. I spent ONE DAY just one day actively giving him more attention, more help, checking in during play time when he was playing alone for almost the entire break. You know what he did the next day? He listened & engaged with class. He tried to do his work. Was everything fixed? No. But did it get better because I as a teacher saw behavioural issues not as a moral failing but as a symptom of inadequate support, YES! Teachers choose to make a living by interacting with some of the most vulnerable members of society with some of the least autonomy or accountability for their actions. We choose to work with ppl who don't know their own physical capabilities yet let alone the psychological impact they can have on others.
I don't remember a single time I was hit by students, not because it hasn't happened but because it's just a something that happens like when a kid gets snot on your clothes. It can be a learning moment and might need reporting based on severity, but it's not moment where i think oh poor me I'm so abused. I'm there for the kids, not to have a spa day.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 as an ADHDer who was singled out by tons of teachers, I do feel this. but I was lucky enough to have one or two who advocated for me. I just feel like you weren't so lucky, and that makes sense, because the whole system is screwed from top to bottom.
we have to have sympathy for all teachers even so, given the situation they are in right now with being paid so little they have to keep a second job, expected to possibly arm themselves and take out one of their own students in a mass casualty event, deal with the most entitled parents our country has ever seen through the generations AND deal with students that are even more mentally taxed and antisocial than anyone in generations previous.
TL;DR I know things sucked for you... but if it leads you to blanket statement an entire group of people then were you bullied for being smart or for being dumb?
You forgot to point out that in retaliation for the "great resignation", companies decided the answer was to lay off 1/12 of all workers - so not only did they get to complain that they can't hire people (nobody wants to work), they're also adding shedding people who were fine with working for them.
They also have continued that by refusing to staff anything adequately anymore and placing all the blame on workers, while gaslighting the public
Because they're literally lying when they say they can't find people to hire.
And for Part Time jobs, they don't give you a set schedule, preventing people from getting other jobs.
I mean your comment is riddled with problems. Surely companies aren’t getting rid of productive, profit generating employees? And also if they’re getting rid of people doesn’t it follow that those are the less productive parts of a business, so perhaps aren’t working hard?
@@menzies09er No, actually. The idea was spelled out clearly on business news channels. Layoffs are how you take power away from workers.
I worked in retail for 18 years and I can't even tell you how many times I was berated and called names, told I was stupid, etc. This was in a bookstore, so I can't even imagine what food service workers and delivery drivers have to go through. I was also pre-pandemic, so it has to be much worse now since everyone has gone feral.
A. Book. Store....😢
Banks and Hospitals are a nightmare.
I wish I could work in a bookstore
I worked at bookstores for years as well and it’s hilarious how brutal people can be in a freaking bookstore 😂😂😂
I got called an affirmative action hire by a fully grown assed man when I was 16 because I have auditory processing disorder and he kept turning away when he spoke so I kept having to ask him repeat himself.
I don’t even understand the comment at the time so I was like I don’t think so sir and another coworker who had overheard him went off on him and chased him out the store. I’m glad she did but I wished she hadn’t explained to me what he meant 😢😂. Dude I’m like 44, I can’t believe that crap still bothers me 😂😂
@@DaughterofDiogenes People apparently get very emotional in bookstores. There many insults that still live in my head. People don't think that store staff has emotional/mental health but are just punching bags instead.
The part of gig economy I'm most concerned by is the sheer volume workers i emcounter who are retirement age. Not entirely comfortable with the most exploitative work being performed by people who should be done working.
“Retirement is a privilege not a right. If you can’t afford to take care of yourself, you don’t deserve free handouts. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps like the rest of us” - some guy who was born and raised upper middle class and had a trust fund since he was 5
“Not entirely comfortable” dang dude we almost got you to say you hate something basic! wow, what a great take no one’s ever thought of this before…
@@internalizedhappyness9774Chill. They’re just sharing their thoughts. Just because it wasn’t worded the way you would have written it or the most original comment (which isn’t the point of trying to start a discussion btw) doesn’t mean you get to be nasty to strangers…which is ironically the point of the video.
@@Window4503 chill I’m just sharing my thoughts! 😠
@@internalizedhappyness9774 ???
Who else has been commenting about old folks doing these jobs?
"Service work" is really just a shallow euphemism for "servant work".
When the imaginary "middle" class was invented in the 20th century to appease an increasingly discontent and rebellious population, it accompanied the creation of a class of "servants" who would fill the roles of performing the servitude needed to make the "middle" class play at being part of the owning class. These new servants got a slightly different name and a slightly different treatment than their predecessors, but generally just reproduce the old structures we all know and love from feudal or slave systems.
As the "middle" class disintegrates, we're seeing the emergence of the "Karen", or the working class individual desperately trying to hold onto their owning class lifestyles - or at least the theme park version of it they've grown accustomed to. Their increased discomfort is passed down onto "service" workers (which is really populated by members of their own class that they believe themselves to be above) in the "service industry". It's a pattern not unlike the division between the field slave and the house slave, or between the chattel slave and the indentured servant.
I don't think it's a death of empathy, but instead, a revealing of the lack of empathy we've had all along that comes from the separation of people into different castes, and the reactionary rage that comes from the destruction of the illusion of the "middle class".
Well said! We've always been this way, and modern conditions expose the facade that was the middle class.
The middle class has always been a thing, just not in those terms. It refers to the buffer the ruling class use to prevent the lower class from rising up. By selecting a large minority of the lower class and elevating them, you ingratiate them to the system that you represent.
Very well said Thank you
Adding yet more appreciation for this wonderfully written essay. Thank you.
Excellent! Thank you.
'There is nothing more American than using a gun to threaten someone trying to give you a free handout'
I cackled vigorously. What the hell have we become?
A country of a-holes who lost the fear of acting out.
I mean given we got here through the disgusting idea of "Manifest Destiny" it kind of makes sense we're this hateful and delusional
The gallows- hence the humor.
"kids these days are so lazy, they don't want to work"
The jobs they offer at a fraction of the salary:
With NONE of the benefits.
I bartend at a dive bar and I bartend weddings. The things I love about those places: 1) at a dive bar, I can tell someone to fuck off and there isn't really anyone to get mad at me about it, 2) at a wedding almost everyone is just in a good mood, plus I control the booze
Same! Best part of the job honestly.
"Essential" worker = Expendable worker
It's not that we as hard workers were deemed essential to maintain the economy, but it was deemed essential for us to keep working to maintain the economy.
The value is in the service or good & not the person, we're just the one following orders like good little flesh robots.
Workers are expendable because they allow themselves to be.
@@asdf242 Become too valuable to be tossed, or revolt against those who would dispose of you and simply refuse to be treated as garbage. Americans especially - particularly on the left, slobbering over ideals of pacifism magically solving all things - seem to adore complaining about this or that mistreatment while endlessly rolling over for it.
@@asdf242 Figure it out.
I was about to post that; to elaborate: the WORKER is expendable, but their labor is "essential". We don't care about the worker, but godsdammit, we need out lattes brought to us, chop chop...
Someone on a support chat thanked me for being polite the other day. No idea if that was part of a script but it didn't sound like it. Bit of an indictment if someone felt the need to thank me for just behaving like a human being.
as someone who has been working customer service her entire life, a simple "thank you" goes a long way. it makes me feel appreciated and that I'm doing something right. real stupid but sometimes it causes me to tear up
A couple years ago one of my kitties needed emergency vet care. I took to a good local animal hospital and they did a great job with her. I acted like what I thought was normal human behavior: being polite, etc. Later, when the bill came, the vet tech told me she wasn't charging me for several things because she really appreciated that I was treating them decently. It was a little shocking to think very basic manners are in such short supply.
I hope it's because I treat people with respect and try to be cheerful, but most people I have to talk to on the phone to get help for customer service leave the call seeming like I made them feel a little better that day. I worked a call center so I know that feeling. I always really hope that's what it is. I hate the idea of having to do their jobs so I do my best to make sure I don't ever make it worse.
I actually have major social anxiety, but not because I'm bad with people, just bad childhood stuff lol
During the worst of the pandemic, pre-vaccine, I was on the phone with our company's IT, which was very clearly outsourced to India. The individual on the phone sounded terse and upset, and I finally interrupted them and asked if they were okay. To my utter shock, they actually broke down and started crying on the phone. It turns out they had just lost their Mother to Covid and were very much *not* okay. They needed to still come to work because they didn't feel secure enough in their job to take any time off. They were also terrified, because their job placed them in tight quarters with insufficient PPE and they questioned whether their job led directly to their Mother's death. And the worst part about it was being completely unable to help. We spoke for a while and they thanked me for asking about them, but they then pulled themselves together and explained their average call time was tracked and they needed to address my problem so they wouldn't get in trouble. I've rarely felt so powerless.
As a delivery driver in nyc and having to go to service entrances because the illusion of not seeing service workers is so important I approve this message
I remember my first job where a woman hurled death threats at me for accusing her son of stealing when I had never seen either of them before they came up to my register. Her evidence was that I looked at her son "too long". Meanwhile I still had to scan all their items while trying not to cry. By far the worst I'd ever been humiliated in my entire life.
You are awesome!
(I would not have been so cool.🙄)
I'm sorry for the negativity suffered in that moment.
But you positively answered a very demanding moment without breaking.
Yes. Some people are angry, all the time; and do not own a lock for it.
(I wonder about the her kid... Does she talk to them that way too? Poor thing🙁)
Anyway.
You rock!🫡
Food delivery and online shopping have destroyed our empathy for service workers. We're further removed from how our things are made and who made them. It sucks watching our socioeconomic collapse happen day by day.
I like the addition of the rating that changes throughout the video that you react to. It adds a bit of humor while also giving people a glimpse of what it's like when service workers read their ratings on the apps.
I work at a grocery store and i have a few stories about some wild people but my favorite by far was this very polite suburban mom that i helped out with her groceries. We had some small talk and usual stuff and as I closed her trunk I saw this sticker on her window of a white rabbit. I had never seen it before so I asked what it was about, She confidently told me that it was a symbol to let the other followers of Q (Q-Anon) know she was one of them. She then also confidently shared the truth she had come to find on social media, including how US taxes were ultimately collected to pay for the English Monarchy and how when she went missing (and there was no doubt she would in her mind) she would be disappeared into the death camps run by FEMA for all the "pure" people, which meant the unvaccinated. I was so bewildered that I just wished her a good night and left as quickly as possible. I havent seen her again so hey, maybe FEMA is more nefarious then I thought?
If FEMA did remove her from the general public, that's an indication they're LESS nefarious
Sounds like the schizo I have to do electrical work around. He's a broken record of the same conspiracy theories.he thinks if he repeats himself enough, they'll come true. F@ck Reagan for letting thr nutters out to breed...
She's a good person towards you
My story about work is that I work for Amazon in what can be described as customer service role in a case by case basis. A lot of metrics are tracked, dir example case reopens. A case was reopened with the message "thank you for solving my problem, great job" and it was counted against my performance because reopens are negative.
Also at a recent work function, I overheard the boss of my boss saying that he dislikes german work protections because he would sometimes like to get rid of the bottom quartile of workers and since that I can't get it out of my head that he was specifically talking about me.
Simpsons predicted Wealth Work back in 'Homer's Enemy'
"As a young boy, Frank Grimes got a job delivering toys to more privileged children."
I'm a person that runs a movie theatre. Indeed, Michael is right about how going to the theatre has changed in the last few years since the pandemic. People's aren't coming anymore and People's expectations have skyrocketed. Most of my negative reviews have more to do with amenities we've never had or simply blaming us for them not liking the film
We just call our social credit score: "algorithm"
Same lyrics different beat.
the technopticon is far more than simply the algorithm. the algorithm itself isn't directly surveilling you, it is just a tool that is used in the process of doing so
In what does the algorithm act like a social credit score....?
@@msjkramey Oh you know, treating people like they're numbers, treating people like they aren't individual human beings, treating people like they should be punished for minor mistakes that inconveniences others slightly, stuff like that.
You do know credit scores are a thing right… I’m just gonna pretend like you actually don’t know about fact they exist.
Or you’re just being obtuse on purpose! 🫵🏼🙂↕️
Funny how the dehumanization works both ways and always in favor of the capitalists. We need to constantly remind ourselves that there are people behind these algorithms who designed them an decided what is considered "good" and what is "bad" and what is valued.
Am all for the rights for the working class. But when you get shouted at and stepped on the heals by a toxic over bearing manager at a low paying service job, so much so that you gotta go to the freezer room to cry your eyes out - its super hard to maintain perspective. Recognizing that we are victims that nip at each other due to artificial scarcity created by the oppressive corporations is a very active mental process that requires both class consciousness raising and some self work. 'it is what it is' philosophy might help you get by today but actively destroys your soul and others like you.
I don't think I buy the whole 'artificial scarcity' line. It's a bit sociology 101. Granted consolidation and price-fixing do exist, like DeBeers or Oil cartels, it's generally frowned upon in a capitalist system. But I think more broadly you're saying that "there's enough to go round - everybody should be rich". And I think that comes from a position of privilege itself. There actually isn't enough for everybody to enjoy your standard of living - and you only have it because other people don't. If we did do some sort of 'great adjustment' - where everybody along the supply chain was paid a more humane wage, we'd all be taking home $10,000 a year and a phone would cost you $5000. Printing money wouldn't solve that problem - you'd have to ask somebody smarter than me to really explain why. But economics isn't the 'soft' science that people like to think - it's just abstract in a way that's difficult to get your head around. But basically 'yeah, money isn't real' or whatever - but it's a pretty accurate representation of something that is. It isn't often fair - but if it was - we'd both have to accept being a lot worse off.
At least in the US it should be possible to achieve full employment in better jobs. And the concentration of wealth creates inefficiencies of accumulation and non spending and an excessive use of resource on the private property of rich people.
@@frankcooke1692 I understand what you are saying. However I do believe that it is also in a certain way our inability to imagine a world not under capitalism that makes you feel ‘that economics is abstract in a way that is hard for us to wrap our head around’.
Consolidation and vertical integration are both intrinsic to capitalism. I would recommend Lenin’s writing on capitalism and imperialism that illustrates it elegantly.
Another central contradiction in capitalism is that profit can only be achieved through wage theft. Hence the accumulation of wealth by capitalists is essentially tied to economic oppression of the workers.
Accumulation of wealth over generations by monopolies make them humingously wealthy , so much so that they can grow and seize markets in foreign lands too. the financialization of capital has made conventional market forces make even less sense , abstracting value from goods and services. These are all contradictions intrinsic to capitalism.
I agree that a lot of re organization and leadership would be needed , but there definitely is enough for everyone’s consumption. The surplus produce every year that is wasted away (in order to drive prices lower to stay competitive) alone can be sufficient .
It’s not a free market as advertised. It’s a rigged system that benefits a few players that gives you the illusion of scarcity, and both supply and demand are heavily controlled and influenced by these few players.
@@frankcooke1692income inequality is a huge portion of the problem though CEO's getting 500 million dollar bonuses could just as well have split that bonus up to a 1000 dollar bonus for 500000 employees. Or turned into a 100 dollar raise. The people at the very top of this world simply have too much compares to the rest of us
I did doordash for a bit during the peak lockdown era as a 19 year old who just got their license and thought it would be easy money. Got bored and fed up pretty quick. Only 1 in every 10 orders would be worth it. I spent nearly 20 minutes in a burger king drive thru plus another 20 minute drive just to pick up a smoothie for some 12 year old for the equivalent of $3. I dont know how people do it like a career tbh
I'm not even fifteen seconds in and I'm already detached. 'Picture your local restaurant'. I don't believe there are any restaurants near me that aren't chains.
Almost all chain restaurants are operated by local businesspeople. They're replacing small businesses in the most literal sense... the same people own them as who'd own a small business.
I was laid off from my job during lockdown in 2020 and I’ve been driving for a delivery app since 2021.
Customers are generally pretty agreeable. Restaurant workers range from chill to occasionally unkind. The biggest pain points for me are the isolation and the precarity of the job.
There’s little to no social interaction on most days. I rarely interact with customers, as I’m typically dropping off food and taking a picture. Picking up food often involves no more than a cursory greeting and then a handoff. You start to feel invisible, or even interchangeable after a while. The fear of getting bad ratings, never being quite sure how much money you’re going to make over the course of a working day and the seemingly arbitrary way orders are distributed all lead to a constant background level of anxiety.
The irony is I genuinely enjoy driving around my city and bringing people their food. I’d love to have a delivery job for a nice, locally owned restaurant, but the app based economy has effectively eliminated those types of jobs.
I have worked food service, retail, and customer service. We need to be nicer to each other. We really do. Like, holy shit. Management and CEOs see you as a $ they have to pay out. Customers see you as an obstacle in the way of what they want or taking up their time. They don't see you as a human person. Your fellow workers are too stressed and over worked and underpaid to help you out, cuz they are in the same boat as you. It is hell. It's been hell probably well before the modern day, but like we don't need to keep it hell. We can be nicer to each other. We need to be at least basically decent to each other, nothing special, just not a dick. Please.
I am not looking forward to a world where everyone is in the 'gig economy'. If they put biometrics in there to get people to be more empathetic to workers people are going to begin ignoring the metrics because they aren't in a headspace to be able to care about another person when they too are stuck in the 'gig economy'. This is some absolute bullshit.
I noticed something people did to *me* during Covid...I'm a short little woman. Several times when I'd go get groceries, tall people leaned over me a lot, like I wasn't even there. Literally putting their armpit on top of my head. Once I said, "excuse me" in a very sarcastic way and the man looked at me and said "oh you're ok" like he really thought I was the one doing something wrong 😂
That's awful! People are stuck in their own little worlds. It'd be better if we were Aardvarks tbh
You being in someone else's way kinda is something you did wrong. Yeah, the more socially acceptable thing for these people to do would be to loudly pretend to be patiently waiting for the assholes to get out of the way and pay attention to their surroundings until you get the hint, but lets not pretend your story is a one-sided thing of people being rude to you.
I guess it depends on if you were just standing there lolly gagging around or not
That is insanity. Getting somewhere first isn't that person doing something wrong. The pandemic really showed how on the line people's sanity was. I am agoraphobic, and the rest of you got locked inside a few months and forgot what it takes for society to function. There's never an excuse to reach over a short person/person in a wheelchair/ANYONE, even the polite rude way to get that grocery is to come from the side, in front of them, while saying excuse me, which is still voided by the current health risk. What do you not understand about that? Why did a few months inside make you forget the polite way to be rude?
Next time pick an armpit hair out 😂
Well done. This is very validating for me as someone who thought after the pandemic lockdowns eased and people returned to restaurants and such, where they could once again sit and have a nice meal while others served them with hospitality, that people would be grateful. ON the contrary, they were even more entitled, impatient and as a result, unbearably rude. I have long thought that the catering to peoples every whim and desire through fulfillment apps like door dash, amazon and uber eats, etc, contributed to peoples inflated sense of entitlement. They could have anything they wanted delivered to their front door and never have to interact with a human. And when people went back out into restaurants and stores, they thought they could be shitty to real humans when things didn't go exactly as they would like. I feel like the level of narcissism (not a psychologist BTW) has risen to a level that will become self perpetuating given the continuation of these conditions and nothing short of a catastrophe will bring things back to a place where people appreciate one another. Sebastian Junger describes this in his book TRIBE. Fuckin' bleak man. Total bummer. I just try to not be like that and keep good people around me. I have no time for people who treat service workers like shit and who never even consider the mail delivery person or amazon worker.
Nah, this gig economy sucks. But being a butler would have been TERRIBLE. That's like 16+ hour days every day, having to live with your employer so you would be on call and your housing was tied to your employment, being lucky to get a single day off in a month, having to deal directly with entitled people basically 24/7, all the weird inescapable social/professional/economic heirarchies, intense & weird etiquette rules, no unemployment insurance, risking getting sent to "the poor house" if you got fired and your reputation was ruined
Almost all of this is perfectly descriptive of the service industry. The literal only thing that MIGHT not be is "having to live with your employer". Sometimes that's not the case, but sometimes it is. 16+ hour days, always on call, being lucky to get a single day off in a month, having to deal directly with entitled people 24/7, the weird inescapable hierarchies, the strange etiquette rules, no unemployment insurance, housing tied to employment, risking permanent damage to your reputation resulting in death if your employer just decides to be an asshole.
“The public sucks, fuck hope.”
- George Carlin
I drive a large truck for a living and was thinking the same thing. People are hell.
I feel like it is the hyper individualism and materialism that has made so many people toxic. I’ve lived in a bigger city in South America and people were so chill and kind (outside car traffic of course lol)
real words of wisdom there
I've never behaved rudely to strangers in my life (although I have been curt at times without being aware of it)
Some people just go through life behaving like utter jackholes without consequence and they should face more repercussions for bad behavior before they are allowed out in public, frankly.
Whenever my Instacart shopper screws something up, I call the company to try and get them fired. If they can't do their job right, then they don't deserve their job.
My former company, Atomic provisions/Fat Sullys/Denver Biscuit Company, was forcing employees to work for the sub-minimum wage even when they were doing un-tipped labor. Some employees asked to receive minimum wage for those hours and were denied. Meanwhile the company just opened its 8th store with plans for two more in the next year.
Service workers are being paid LESS than MINIMUM WAGE because of corporate greed.
"The friction of intimacy" is a great album title
My wife has worked for [unnamed Canadian drugstore chain] for almost a decade, and if their system is indicative of a broader trend, the Review system in the service industry is fundamentally broken.
I don't know off-hand how the "math" that Corporate came up with shakes out, but basically if someone fills out a customer review that isn't as positive as can be ("Strongly Agree" in every field), it's treated as a Negative review. If fewer than 75-80% of the reviews that come in don't meet that steep threshold of being Positive, the head manager in charge of the whole store could be fired and replaced by Corporate.
So we occasionally spend some of our off time filling out bogus glowing reviews, to keep the numbers up. It sucks.
I was surprised when working at a retail place that they required a perfect 10 scores across the board on any reviews, or it got the managers b*tched at by corporate. I rarely review places, and when I do it's almost always positive, but perfection is not something I would usually do, ever. So that sucks to think that possibly even the best intentions and reviews I left still may have hurt instead of helped due to completely insane expectations of corporate.
No review > 4.9/5 review.
yep, worked directtv and att intall and service. if the review i got, witch was mandatory to get the customer to fill out, was less than all fives, i had to go to the office on moday at six in the morning an hour and a half from my area and do a class on customer service. and my pay rate lowered.every week id get a bad rating from someone who didnt like not being able to choose their channels, the price, the number of days it took to come. things that had nothing to do with me. top quility installer. lowest paid because i took longer doing it right. when i quit they harrassed me for a year. not once budging on paying more or hourly or even getting rid of these stupid meetings.
Exactly. So many places have an "All or Nothing" approach to reviews. If you're being rated in multiple areas, and you get 5 stars in all of them except for one 4.5 rating, then the whole thing is treated as if you'd gotten a 0. It's insane.
Perfect is the enemy of Good.
The founding fathers didnt think corporations should exist. They knee a fee things about human nature…… and all without the internet.
Dammit, no one answered the Amazon delivery question. I usually do the latest delivery, while my wife thinks it doesn't make a difference.
I'm curious too.
I did dispatch for Amazon and although it depends on what you’re ordering, honestly I think it doesnt make that much of a difference. Maybe only for things like groceries. Their algorithms are crazy fast that orders get instantly rerouted to another driver.
@@hexmaniac 🙏 thank you for the insight.
My theory is that it makes zero difference for any actual worker, whether delivery driver or warehouse worker. But it may make a difference for CO2 emissions, if their fulfillment algorithm can actually put more into one box and ship it all out in one day, rather than in some worst-case scenario like four boxes in four days. If everyone chose the option, Amazon would just cut back on warehouse staff and drivers, so each worker would still be exactly as stressed as before - but total pollution and greenhouse gases would likely drop. (In theory.)
This is what want to know! And was hoping for more responses here! But I guess that knowledge requires access to a _lot_ of levels of a complex supply chain management that a limited group of people have
"Eat these bullets breakfast communism!" - This might be the most American thing that I have ever heard. And I want it on a t-shirt. A t-shirt made in China by virtual slaves, so it can be sold in a tourist trap in Miami, managed by a Cuban immigrant family. Ya know, so it's even MORE American.
Thank you shybard for for just quadrupling down on that. Awesome.
That same Cuban immigrant family that unironically votes Republican. Ah, America!
''The death of empathy'' that's a good one
I work with a guy who does Uber on the side. He delivered a car part that was a 30 minute drive. He only earned $3 for the delivery and the customer was not allowed to tip because tipping only works with food.
So why did he do it? Is he dumb or something?
@@benjamindover4337 i think he was just unaware of the rule at the time.
What, the customer couldn't give him a cash tip? Jerk.
Customer service work has sucked for decades and decades.
Amazon takes the cake on corporate making every aspect of work worse and worse whether you interface with the public or not. Then they create huge garbage dumps where they put all the “desperately needed in two days!” returned items and all the others.
I worked in a movie theatre 20 years ago - people have always been emotionally unhinged or ready to blow when it’s time to sit in the dark and watch something enjoyable with some snacks. 50% more if they have groceries that are perishable that they would rather grip in their greasy fingers for 2 hours than let teens store for them in industrial freezers so no one trips and dies from falling down many, many stairs.
As a middle-aged someone who has been forced into gig work after dealing with Long-Covid for the past 2 years, I am actually grateful that 90% of the time I don’t have to physically deal with the upper 10% income earners that I serve as a Door Dash and Instacart driver.
Yes, I know that the gig economy is a racket and that these companies are fucking evil and ultimately bad for most of us.
But for now, I don’t have to look into the eyes of these people and see their pity. And I feel that most of these wealthy folks don’t want to awkwardly pretend that I exist in the same world that they do.
Because I don’t
If they add heart rate people would just use it as a way to judge delivery quality.
"Heart rate dropped below 100, must be slacking, 2/5 stars."
Sad part is, thats not even an exaggeration
this was s pretty cool and dynamic long video, I think the idea of putting the "rating points" Michael was winning and losing in the video was pretty cool as it was an example of concepts discussed in the video, a critic to the system and also a way to make the video more interesting!
I encourage you guys keep it going! love you!
This reminds me so much of Superstore. It’s actually quite impressive how most series simply ignore the pandemic, but a series about service workers not only acknowledges it, but shows what a big deal it was for their day to day (considering it’s still a sitcom ofc)
Any time someone rated me negatively I always replied with a review of what kind of customer they were along with a 0-5 out of 5 stars as a response and for really hardass problem asshats I would post to their social media with links to their reviews so their friends and family could see exactly how they treated service people. I was fired from 2 delivery jobs and kept at one for far longer then I planned because my boss loved my up front honesty, work ethic and not allowing myself to get pushed around by customers.
McDonalds famously chose to open up teh barrier between kitchen and serving food to build trust and safety. By showing people how their food was prepared in a passive way, the customers trusted the food more, and the restaurant received better retention.
Worked in the restaurant industry for close to 18 years. Quit after mandates started lifting.
Upon return I was nearly in 3 physical altercations. One involving a customer throwing his take away box at me. Also had an old lady ask me how far my apron went down and went to physically grab my junk.
People became unhinged for sure, everyday there was something crazy going on. Not to mention my coworkers that suddenly decided to buy into qAnon conspiracy theories. Was happy to leave and have never looked back since.
People who complain about being broke and then using Uber eats piss me off to no end.
i worked at a bestbuy in ottawa canada during the trucker antivax convoy if you remember that. The best buy i worked at was right next to a big hotel where many of the folks from out of town stayed. I had a number of people complain about wearing masks (boring) but 1 in particular had a sweater with justin trudeau being taken from behind by fauci and suprisingly this customer wore his mask properly but made sure to let me know that he wished the employees werent forced to wear them. I told him I didnt mind
In customer service you not only have to be "happy" with customers, but you have to be "happy" at every moment of the day with co-workers. "Lift up the team, show your support, be fun!" is the new bullshit emotional labor.
Blake seems fun to hang out with. I'm of the opinion that we all need to have at least one friend in our circle that's agreeable and kind, but also really really dumb.
I worked at Walgreens during the later half of the pandemic. We had people getting vaccinated in the back, including vulnerable elderly folks. The amount of people who came in without a mask despite our mask mandate was infuriating. People would get mad and cause scenes; some people even loitered around the front of the warning everyone not to get the vaccine due to [insert conspiracy theory here]. One person I checked out admitted they had tested positive for Covid that morning, then insisted it was fine because they were only buying a few things(after coughing through every aisle in the store)…😣
Really, if you ever needed proof that empathy in America is dead look no further than the pandemic.
Thousands were dying every day, yet people lost their shit for the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask, and insist that everything is okay because "I just have a little cough"
🐑
@@somedude1901 🤡
Such entitlement can’t they just put on a simple cloth if they don’t have a mask at least
@@somedude1901 🤡
I refuse to use these apps until delivery companies start paying their drivers a livable wage instead of relying on customer tips.
This video was BRUTAL to your social credit score. I recommend doing some unpaid volunteer work to help get those numbers up!
I wholeheartedly support Michael in making a video teaching these strange creatures known as humans about movie attendance etiquette! 🙋🏻♀️
We don't see people as people anymore we only see eachother as amorphous blobs
The methodology is thus: If you're not of immediate use to me, then why are you here?
Not blobs, just a means to get what we want, or an obstacle in the way of what we want. It's some bullshit. I really is.
Women under the age of forty see the majority of men that way, and then they get older and discover that their social status flowed from their and youth and beauty. They thought they had a moral wisdom that others perceived, but they were wrong. A woman who has not acquired lasting wealth and status in her youth discovers she’s now the least part of the blob she held in disdain 😅
We are still just animals...
Way to generalize 50% of the global population 😂@@emanym
Unusual way to do a Black Mirror videos essay, but it's good.
Service worker here. We use to have to kiss everyone's butts, but now we are generally allowed to tell people where to shove it and at what angle. So that's improvement I suppose.
yeah most places where you aren't allowed to establish boundaries with customers lead to the business going out of business
Ans whats funny is that it starts to solve the rude customer provlem. One day working at walgreens like....something snapped and i had enouvh. Anx i sfarted telling people to shove it. Not only did those customefs either stop or just not come.back, i ended yp telling people off lesz and lesz cause they were acting right
+1 for the idea of making the series "Micheal teaches you how to go to the movies like a human" I'm still having difficulty with that :(
Wisecrack ten years ago: wacky videos analyzing books and movies.
Wisecrack today: most depressing channel on RUclips
the daily show effect. comedy is the only way social issues can be exposed without it being chewed to shreds by traditional media, which sold its soul to the corporatocracy decades ago.
Welcome to getting older.
But we can't have workers thinking they're people!
If they do, they'll think they're entitled to things like decent pay or dignity, and that would just be absurd.
Thanks a lot Blake...
I’ve never used food delivery because I’m not so lazy I pay 2x to not leave the house, but this year I have not spent any money at Amazon or Starbucks. I’m sick of these shit corporations.
What's really heartbreaking is Pizza Hut outsourcing to Doordash for their deliveries. Costs went up significantly. Large pepperoni pizza will be around $40 when it was advertised for $19.99
Pizza Hut turns really good ingredients into mediocre pizza. Raise your standards, get good pizza instead.
We need to go back to the 80s
They also used to have buffet style restaurants, but they got rid of that too😒
All chain pizza is disgusting. I can't believe I ever used to like Pizza Hut or Domino's etc as a kid.
Always order local. There are two pizza places near me that I frequent instead, so much better.
reminder the person who delivers it on doordash specifically only gets 1 to 2$ base pay before tip with no mileage pay if outside cali, before any tip assuming there is one. yes you read that right. And funfact its 1$ if its a stack (2 orders at same time to two locations), which is if anything twice as much work and puts the driver at much higher risk for bad reviews, all because they are forced to take orders or earn almost nothing ("acceptance rate".) all those fees and upcharging you payed just go into the ether
My mom tried working as a waitress and she quit after two weeks because she wanted to strangle one of the customers to death. Service jobs be tough.
"but then you're in your 30s, and you have basically the same body." - I wish I had the same body I had in my teens and 20s.
I’m an Amazon DSP driver. When people see me show up at their door when they happen to be home, they look at me like some kind of alien or something. There’s the nice person that will talk to me here and there but it is funny to me that people think their packages “magically materialize” on their doorstep, lol
These apps are very destructive. I am pretty happy that they have basically made no progress in Germany. People almost always just go get their food and usually just sit down and eat it and talk for hours. The apps mostly look like a good way to make your life even worse.
If you're disabled and can't go out to get your food and other things, they are life changing in a postive way.
@@perfectallycromulent I agree on that and I think in that case it is perfectly fine. However, I see many people use it constantly where that is not the case and it ends up costing them a lot of money and makes their life much worse.
@@perfectallycromulentI was about to to say I’m disabled and unable to drive, there is no mass transit in my area and stores are too far away with no sidewalks to access them. These apps are the only thing that allow me any measure of independence. That being said because I am aware of how valuable they are for me I tip as much as I'm able and thank the delivery drivers. Granted it's not always a good interaction from the customer side either, once I had to listen to a 15 min lecture on how ‘coming to Jesus’ would ‘heal me and let me walk again’ before getting my food.... So it’s a mixed bag.
Germany is very destructive
@@ookamiblade6318 This kind of thing makes me sad. Part of the reason I like Germany is that markets are close to where people live. Most can walk to a bakery or market within 5 minutes.
I understand how much these apps help you but we have made the places we live into car infested hellscapes and that is a large part of the reason for why you need these apps.
Thanks!
It's pretty hilarious hearing him complain about his task rabbit contractors while also distressing about leaving a negative review
I was working at starbucks during masked mandate, and a customer ordered a cup that said President Trump. She was upset no one was upset.
Good video, have a 5-star review! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I think it has alot ot do with entitles drivers.
I have done 215 deliveries over the past 2 weeks resulting in 34 positive customer reviews and 3 positive reviews from the stores.
I earn on average $110-150 for a 4 hour dinner rush and $90-110 during my 3 hours breakfast rush.
I have also found 100% of the other drivers I talk to are extreamly rude, entitled, dont handle the food with care and I refuse to order food from the app Ia drive for due to meeting the other drivers who would be delivering my food.
Its no wonder I keep having customers thanking me like I just saved their life as they tell me they wish they could request to have me each time as they are sick of the other drivers unprofessionalism.
2 weeks? Try 2 years. You will developed a thousand yard stare and questions your life choices.
Seems like this is more of a US problem than anywhere else and I think it is largely down to the tipping culture that makes service employees totally dependent on customer satisfaction - even when it is unreasonable.
As someone who drove for Uber for a while between jobs, over 1200 rides, and who is considering doing it again, this time just for fun, this talk of treating each other with empathy versus as mindless robots is really interesting because I actually prefer the latter. I'm driving with Uber because I love driving. Sure, sometimes it's great with riders who want to have an interesting discussion, which I oblige and enjoy, but other times it feels like they are expecting me as the driver to "force cheerfulness" which I really despise. It's definitely a hard to navigate balance at times between just wanting to do my job professionally and efficiently, which is always the case, and being expected of or wanted to engage in empathetic connection. I do my best to oblige, but I know I'm not always good at knowing who wants what. I guess the best idea might be to start cheerfully, and then take their lead from there. Either a nice, silent (or some music) drive, or discuss what's on their mind.
Here are so many bicycle delivery persons just loitering and waiting for orders near the food places that in many locations they're no longer allowed to wait inside, which looks pretty miserable when it rains and they desperately huddle under every nearby cover. I can't really blame the business owners because some of the drivers are really rude and entitled to the staff and regular customers.
Umm, just a suggestion for someone that feels inclined, a good picture of that sad rainy scenario could be a good poignant art thing.
Add to that that Uber incentivized car delivery over bikes about 2 years ago. I went from being overbooked and busy to getting maybe 1 order an hour so I just stopped doing it
recently a uber driver was killed because she was used by scammers to pickup ransom from an old man who thought she was one of the scammers
I just looked that up, that is tragic all around.
in march of 2020 a guy threw a patio chair at me and my coworkers for not letting him into the restaurant while we were doing takeout only and not taking cash
Instead of everyone pleading we tip servers, why don't we just elect someone who will demand they are paid more? This is silly.
You won't elect that person that's why they "beg" you to tip.
Trump vs Biden- how much choice did you have in picking the two options available the rerun?
Bernie was too woke, he was perhaps their only hope
As an Amazon delivery associate, we’re graded weekly in my DSP based on a few things but the part that matters is customer feedback. You like if we are nice or are mindful not to tear up their grass, follow the instructions that set notes a year ago and never changed, but the best one is handled with care even though for me atleast I always treat the packages with respect and care, but at the warehouse they get jostled and beat up and we just deliver but the customer doesn’t know any of that, and we the drivers take the hit.
Hey Michael, just wanna say, I'd have given you 5 stars, but there weren't enough references to Baudrillard, so I had to dock you a point. Also, perfect service is impossible, and I only ever rate at most a 4.9, so it's a 3.9 today.
Zero mention of Producer Henry, 1 star.
As a fellow Henry who can’t bear to see another Henry feel slighted, I’ll also rate this 1 star.
"Don't be an asshole and tip better" is a depressingly low bar for a call to action. We must classify these workers as workers, specifically employees. Until that happens things will simply keep getting worse.
I used Uber for the first time a few months ago in San Jose, its insane that I was able to get 10ish dollar rides that include my brother in busy traffic and nice cars. In the evening it was like 20ish. I tipped 10 each time and reviewed well but was made clear they aren't paid enough. After some research apparently people online complain about the cars they are driven in, for example, a Nissan Versa. So drivers are also incentivised to get nicer cars to make less than minimum wage on.
Great video Michael. I appreciate you bringing up how the lack of empathy we have towards service workers is such a serious problem. That said, your “friction of intimacy” joke was truly terrible and I hope you’ve learned your lesson.
I'm realizing I am slowly but surely becoming the trucker in that black mirror episode.
I'm from Denmark, and hearing you speak Danish made my day! Good job, Michael 😊🤜
we are the real monsters
Like in Scooby Doo, the monster is always a person
Its strange. And maybe it's because of my retail work. But I'm hyper aware of the weather and general conditions.
I've not ordered food because of bad weather. And I even will call Amazon to delay delivery of my packages so I can at least pretend I'm trying to keep one of their drivers safe, from bad weather. Much to the shock of their phone reps
I feel it shows just how precarious we all feel life is (I'm assuming no one here is a 1%er). That everyone is a lukewarm burger away from an assault charge is probably something Governments should be paying attention to rather than actively making it worse.
Yeah...as a chef who has seen how other cooks react to app orders, and the things they do to them (without going into too much incriminating detail) I strongly advise people not to order food using delivery apps.
The inevitable result of a society which gleefully segregates human beings into "The Deserving" & "The Disposable."
When I was in grad school, my emotional labor was not stabbing my advisor with a micropipette.
I worked in a call center in a capaign for an online bank and almost all employees not only hated their job but was scared of it. As a matter of fact I got to the email team and taking calls was a common threat of the supervisor whenever something was not as they wanted. Everyone taking calls had from axiety to depression even suicidal thoughts.