If you work in the service industry, in retail, or in anyway are continuously dealing with the general public in a serving fashion, you understand the story about Steven Slater, the flight attendant from Jet Blue who snapped.

I would give anything, in moments, for an emergency chute out the front door of where I work.

When I worked at the post office, people would open their boxes one minute before the hour when all mail was to be out, and actually holler at us to hurry up so they could get their mail. During the Christmas rush especially, where every card is over-sized and everyone wrote the addresses in metallic ink that was hard to read on green and red envelopes, I would be annoyed. It’s not like we were drinking tea back there.

In the past weeks at work, we had a customer send an email disparaging the staff, which I make up 50 percent of and was greatly hurt and insulted by, while mildly threatening to not come back. I was also lucky enough to witness the most outrageous, offensive, cruel verbal and emotional attack on a co-worker from a person who was, in all honesty, merely exercising a ploy to get a pile of money refunded for no good reason.

At what point do we get to pull a Steven Slater and throw it all back in their face, say F**k You, and slide out the door and not look back? (Um, never, even for a sloppy Christian like me, because that’s part of the whole servant-thing of following Christ.)

“The Soup Nazi!” I said in an email to a friend after trying to mentally process the email complaint. “The Soup Nazi had a valid, albeit unusual, business model.”

You give me any grief, any lip, any trouble? No soup for you!

It isn’t just flight attendants who are inwardly seething and plotting fantasies about getting back at the rude passengers whom they are meagerly paid to serve. It’s your waiter, the woman behind the checkout counter, the cook you keep returning the food to, and pretty much anyone who, at any given moment, comes face to face with a public that wants to be treated like royalty for next to nothing and expect rudeness and assumption to be rewarded with a smile. I can’t tell you of the fantasies I have, all while a tight smile is on my face while confronted with such instances, of how I’d like it to end.

I’d need a trust fund before I had that kind of fun.

Why is there such a proliferation of sites on the internet like Waiter Rant, Stained Apron, Not Always Right, Shameless Restaurants, Bitter Waitress — sites where fed up workers, who have no other recourse except be fired, express their frustration online – why?

Some of it is an attitude of not wanting to serve people, or taking delight in being cruel. Sometimes it’s evidence of a person who thinks they ought to be higher in the food chain and resent the job in general. Some employees are lazy, insulting, and rude; I’ve experience that as a customer myself. But a lot of it? A lot of it is stemming from the fact that decent people are working very hard and long for low wages while having to serve and deal with sometimes rude and patronizing people working less hard for lots of money, acting like there isn’t an inner Bolshevik boiling beneath the surface. It’s a constant building pressure of working face-to-face with the following:

1. I’m special. People that assume they deserve special privileges above the rest (“I know it says the bathrooms are closed to the public, but I’m sure it’s OK if I use them…”). Signs, policies, contracts — none of it applies to these people because they are special. At any given moment, they are emancipated from following the rules.
2. Dance, monkey. People that assume every employee should be in a constant state of perky and smiley happiness regardless of personality type, or physical or emotional state of exhaustion, because they have never worked retail or food service themselves. (“You didn’t make me feel welcome. I feel that this transaction or experience wasn’t as good as it should be and I am very dissatisfied.”) Whether the client is in a foul mood or not, the employee must be happy to each person’s preset standard, happily comply with absolutely every request lest a complaint be brought up against them. A standard, by the way, which the employee can’t possibly know.
3. I see you bought a 75-cent item, your majesty. People that assume they don’t have any responsibility to not make unnecessary messes, control their children, not be loud and obnoxious, make continual special requests, abuse available free services, and, in general, think any purchase grants them the rights of a king.
4. I can’t afford a psychiatrist; you’ll have to do. People that assume they will have their emotional needs of the given moment somehow met by a service person — who has nothing to do with these needs — whether it means off-loading a chip on their shoulder, the satisfaction of ruining another person’s day so it is as equally bad, the delight of feeling better than someone by getting them to attend to your needless special requests, or demeaning the work of someone else in order to feel accomplished and skilled and built up by tearing another down.
5. But what about me? People that assume that the thing they come to a business establishment for — a favorite food item, a particular beverage, or an appointment slot — must surely be there at any given moment that is convenient for them. If it isn’t, it is permissible to dress down the people who do the work to provide it for them, thinking this will spur them into action in the future so they will be provided for at any given moment. (“You’re a bakery. It’s 7:30. You just don’t have enough out. It’s slim pickings. Why don’t you get here at 3 a.m. so you have more things made by the time you open, and why aren’t you open six days a week? Because that would work well for me.”)

There is a great deal of frustration in me as I try to do good work, to work hard, and have it thrown back by a few complaining customers who don’t seem to have acquired the necessary perspective on what is really a travesty in life (hint: It doesn’t involve food, unless they’re referencing the huge number of starving people in the world that can only dream of what some people complain is unfit.) In the end, I have to work on myself. My attitude. I have to learn to deal because people are people and I can’t change anyone but myself.

But…

If you are a customer in a restaurant or a retail store, trust me, if you act like a douche, are rude and insulting, or mistreat otherwise hard-working people in any way, the employees are very aware of it and know who you are. They don’t forget.

Don’t forget + Google search = People in restaurants work with sharp knives AND the food you’re about to eat; do you really want to piss them off?

One busy lunch hour, as a man was walking away from the counter having ordered and paid, he turned around and looked at me.

“What’s your name?” he asked. I’d never been asked that while working the counter and helping hundreds of people, telling each one to have a nice day at the close of each transaction. Not once.

“Julie,” I said.

“Well, Julie, thanks for taking my order. You have a nice day.”

I was astounded. My face popped into a huge, dorky smile. I remember who he is. I’ll provide him with great service any time he comes in.

It’s that simple.