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    Ravenous SophovoreHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:21pm

    I'm not sure quantity of skills needed is the way to measure how skilled a job is or isn't. A skill that takes you a day to learn is not really equivalent to one that takes months or years.

    But I generally agree that there is a distressing tendency to look down on the people who hold lower paying jobs as though our society could even remotely function without them.

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      newsratRavenous Sophovore
      3/11/14 3:27pm

      being able to suffer jerks all day, everyday, is a skill that we undervalue to a depressing extent.

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      stacyinbeanRavenous Sophovore
      3/11/14 3:36pm

      From the sound of it you're skipping over an entire skill set though. Most people in the service industry not only have to be good at the thing they are doing, they also have to be able to interface with consumers all day, everyday, in a manner most people in office settings will never, ever have to deal with.

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    stacyinbeanHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:24pm

    I've never understood how people can treat people who are serving them with such little respect. These people are doing shit for you that you're too lazy to do, whether it's feeding you or driving you somewhere or making you something, they are literally serving you because you can't be bothered or can't do it for yourself. If these people didn't exist how the fuck would you get a cup of coffee or clean your clothes? That means you treat them well AND pay them well.

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      dwaynewillholdyoutightstacyinbean
      3/11/14 3:34pm

      Because sometimes those people act like fucking pricks who are so way kooler than everyone else on planet Earth.

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      stacyinbeandwaynewillholdyoutight
      3/11/14 3:37pm

      The lady at the dry cleaner, since when? So some people being shitheads means you get to treat everyone like shit? You must be a great guy.

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    Cherith CutestoryHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:30pm

    Fuck, yes. This drives me insane. Those coveted factory jobs were a step above slave labor before people made them respectable. And made the employers treat them right.

    They weren't inherently superior to waiting tables. The people who had them demanded respect. And all people deserve some respect (which includes a living wage). Unless they are on my list of people who you should spit at.

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      festivusaziliCherith Cutestory
      3/11/14 3:36pm

      Is this a published list of spit targets, or are we supposed to use our own judgment?

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      Cherith Cutestoryfestivusazili
      3/11/14 3:40pm

      My list is too large to post here (it would shit down kinja). I'll send you the three hundred page .pdf.

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    coconutshrimpHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:48pm

    I remember way back when I was still a kid and worked as a barista in now-yuppified Greenpoint, there was ONE Corporate Lawyer Douche (as I lovingly referred to him) who owned a nearby brownstone. He was a TOTAL DICK. Everyone hated him Just a miserable person. We started doing table service, but he, despite ordering prepared food and coming in everyday, refused to be waited on so he could avoid a tip. He NEVER LEFT A TIP. He was also friends with the owners. One day, I lost it (probably hungover and/or heartbroken, and, duh, broke), and I said, "You know, you've never left a tip here!". He got me fired the next day (which was 4th of July). I took a bunch of alcohol from the place and went to a rooftop party... :D

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      AP Bearcoconutshrimp
      3/11/14 4:38pm

      I am glad you were fired, that was so rude. Granted he wasn't gracious and was a cheapskate, but a tip wasn't required on his part, and shouldn't have been expected on yours.

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      DiceyAP Bear
      3/11/14 5:11pm

      Can I fire you from commenting for being *way, way* more rude? Yes, a tip is required. No, it's not justifiable to have a barista fired for objecting to the way you want to *opt out* of paying them wages they count on receiving for subjecting themselves to your entitled ass.

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    raincoasterHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 7:52pm

    Well, no. It's because it is literally service to another person, and there's a power dynamic there, and the money gravitates to the more powerful end of that dynamic.

    Miss Manners had a great column where she said that she considered dentists and doctors part of the service industry too, and that they got their backs up over that, because they were rich! They were professionals!

    John Molloy, the guy who wrote Dress for Success, mentioned a story relating to toll booth money takers. They unionized, and the union wanted more money. They were told that any monkey could sit in a booth and take money, so the answer was No. The next year they got a union exec in who worked to get them uniforms that looked like cop uniforms. Then he got them powers to enforce certain bylaws. Then he argued successfully that they should be considered law enforcement, and deserved a huge raise, which they got.

    Meanwhile, librarians, who generally have Master's Degrees or above, are paid the same as toll booth collectors used to be, because people do not perceive them as powerful. They confuse them with library clerks, and think anyone who works in a library is a librarian. And that is why librarians don't get paid decently: they are perceived as servant class. Service level.

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      wankedinraincoaster
      3/11/14 10:09pm

      As usual the star system is glitching out on me so I can't express a quick thumbs up sort of thingie, but yes, yes, yes. I absolutely agree, so long as one person is serving the other, that is a job in the service industry. It's nothing to be ashamed of in itself. Like all industries, jobs in service can be underpaid or overpaid, (not) commensurate with skill, lucrative but worthless or massively important while paying untenably low wages. There is no shortage of despicable, vampiric jobs across all industries whose holders should be literally shackled and lashed for doing what they do, but are instead deified (usually because of the money). This is in danger of veering off into a multi-tentacled rant, but anyway: yes. What we need is a change of semantics to erode the shell of what people think a job should be worth, but that change may require all sorts of other changes before it translates into the bottom line, like you note with unionized toll collectors and librarians: better pay.

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    jesuslovesanalHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:33pm

    For whatever reason, the service industry people in Portland tend to be way friendlier than those in NYC. And as a result, I tip better. I used to never tip on takeouts but I now almost always tip on foodcarts/takeout.

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      burningthemidnightoiljesuslovesanal
      3/11/14 3:38pm

      Portland seems to treat service industry folks better, too.

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      jesuslovesanalburningthemidnightoil
      3/11/14 3:43pm

      As gross generalization, people are friendlier in Portland. Also, I believe people working in service industry can still have decent standard of living unlike in NYC or SF.

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    Indeed123Hamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:56pm

    I had always thought that people demeaned service work because they at one time did service work, then went on to something else that was more lucrative, stable, intellectually engaging, etc. I don't think that's an excuse for demeaning service workers, but it pretty natural for folks to think that what they choose to do now is better than what they chose to do in the past, no?

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      RunningOutOfBurnJokesIndeed123
      3/11/14 4:31pm

      A good litmus test for a potential partner is seeing how they treat people in the service industry. The nicest people I know who used to work as servers or bartenders treat them well now because they remember how it felt.

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      Indeed123RunningOutOfBurnJokes
      3/11/14 4:39pm

      I would agree. I think it is better to acknowledge that some folks have worse jobs than I do and still treat them with equal respect than to pretend that I believe we have equal occupations (especially when I used to have their job and left it because I wanted a better one).

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    Bitch PuddingHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:36pm

    Well put, eloquent, but still nonsense.

    Service is seen as "lesser" professional because, well, it is a lesser profession (and I say this as a barista/library help desk attendant for all 4 years of college).

    The skills required are specific but limited; the salary (method by which we often assess worth in careers) is minimal, and emphasis is on keeping status quo (no complaints) rather than impressing. Bully for you, if you take pride in it, but that's really not the end-goal here. That's all you.

    You'll get some who delude themselves by heightening their knowledge (this goes out to my former Sarbucks co-worker who insisted on calling himself an "infusion specialist") but at the end of the day, you're just making a drink that is supposed to taste exactly like all the other Starbucks drinks and what defines you as a good service worker, is first and foremost standardization and speed.

    The age of Downton Abbey pride-in-servitude is long gone. Let's not delude ourselves by going all Thought Catalog on it.

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      Indeed123Bitch Pudding
      3/11/14 4:37pm

      Seems like the problem is two-fold:

      1. Is job A better than job B, and

      2. Are people valued based on the job they have

      I think that the answer to 1. is "yes." While the evaluation is subjective, people generally believe that certain jobs are more valuable to have than others and there is a plurality of folks who think that service jobs are not near the top of the list. I think the answer to 2. is "yes" from a positive standpoint and "absolutely not" if the question is framed normatively. Although people are valued by others based on their job, they should not be; we are all entitled to equal dignity regardless of occupation. It seems as though the article is written from a perspective that is very invested in individual value being tied to occupation, and therefore has to argue that occupations are equal in esteem because people should be equal in dignity. I don't think that's correct, however. Perhaps a better tack to take is "people should not be valued by other people (outside the employment marketplace) based on their occupation."

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      lickOramaBitch Pudding
      3/11/14 9:35pm

      intelligence and understanding is a beautiful spectrum that most of us never care to walk around on— your ex coworker and "infusion specialist" who brought a level of excitement and true enthusiasm to a job where you could muster little if any probably takes pride in mostly everything he does because he understands his journey in life - whereas you maybe not so much- some people get caught up in the social barometer and are constantly judging themselves against others because they're self conscious — a lot of factors in this life— you sound like you still don't understand the concept of just being proud of yourself in whatever your doing as long as it's propelling you down your path-

      next-

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    thuggyBearHamilton Nolan
    3/11/14 3:51pm

    Didn't read the article- was unable muster more than zero fucks for hipsters in ridiculous mustaches taking 20 minutes to 'curate' a $7 cup of coffee.

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      PeroxyacidHamilton Nolan
      3/11/14 3:58pm

      Service jobs shouldn't be considered lesser. Someone who works a physically taxing job for low pay is at least as deserving of respect as someone who works a physically easier job for higher pay. But on the skills front, low-pay jobs tend also to be low-skill jobs. When white-collar jobs disappear, a lot of people who otherwise would have been doing those jobs start doing service jobs and displace those workers. There's really no analogue in the other direction - when a retail chain goes out of business, accountants aren't put out of work because of new competition for their jobs. That doesn't mean service work is any less taxing. In many ways, it's more taxing. But that's not the same as skilled.

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        DiceyPeroxyacid
        3/11/14 4:25pm

        But the ability to deliver endless caring to strangers, or to project oneself in the way the article describes — aren't those skills? Is the concept of skills just a cover-up for a constructed set of class assumptions about what kind of work is a) challenging and b) valuable?

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        PeroxyacidDicey
        3/11/14 4:37pm

        Absolutely those are skills. But many people in non-service jobs have or could develop those skills to the degree necessary to do many service jobs. (A lot of us did do service jobs while in school.) Some service jobs require really above-average amounts of those skills, but I don't think those are the norm. But just because something is less-skilled doesn't mean it's less challenging or less valuable, and to the extent those things are used as synonyms, that's a problem.

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