The Abuse of Service Workers is Nothing New

The song that is as old as time itself.

Terry L. Cooper
5 min readJul 17, 2021
Picryl Public Domain

The title Bullying and Bad Conditions: The Reality For New Workers (written by Jacqueline Eager) caught my eye. I’ve worked in retail off and on my entire life. Let’s face it. When it’s tough to find a job, you can always find one in retail or food service to tide you over and until your next career move comes into play.

The abuse of service workers has been going on for what seems like forever. I know growing up in the 70s it was, in the area I grew up in, like Mayberry. Everyone treated employees of which ever establishment they were in with respect and a lot of friendliness. You had to. More than likely the person who was waiting on you was either a family member, someone you went to school with, or someone you knew from church.

And people in small towns talk.

So unless you wanted your parents or pastor to know that you had been less than 100% on your A game, you smiled and said please and thank you. But the rudeness of people today, well, it isn’t an age thing. It’s just a thing-thing.

First example. Customers were literally pressed up against the glass doors of the store waiting for us to open, and they had only one thing on their radar.

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Terry L. Cooper
Terry L. Cooper

Written by Terry L. Cooper

Writer for this platform since June 2020. See my pinned post for links to locate me all over the WWW.