Would you like fries with that?

Would you like fries with that?

Would you like to see the dessert menu?

Paper or plastic?

May I help you out to your car with those groceries?

Everyone should recognize those questions, I’m sure within the last month you have heard at least one if not all of those.

What kind of moron can’t cook a steak?

How can you screw up such an easy order?

How can you charge such high prices?

How about those questions, any of them sound familiar? Maybe you’ve been asked them, maybe (in a moment of not thinking clearly, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt) you have asked them.

I’m going to share a theory with you that I have had for a long time. I think before a person graduates from high school they should have to work fast food, wait tables, be a cashier, and clean a toilet that does not belong to them. I have often thought that would make people nicer and perhaps make the world a little better. I have thought more and more about my theory and I believe it is flawed. I think most people probably had one or more of those jobs in high school. As a whole society has a short memory, thus the flaw in my theory. I propose that every single person should have to spend one month of every year working these jobs, and trying to manage a household on the income those jobs provide.

I will be the first to admit that it irritates me when my order is messed up, or my internet connection stops working, and any other number things go wrong. I just want people to think for a minute, that the person they are talking to is in fact a person. That’s right the people working these jobs are people just like you, they laugh, cry, and bleed just like you. When you ask that question “What kind of moron can’t cook a steak?” you are choosing to care more about a dead piece of meat, than a living breathing person. Pretty frickin’ sick if you ask me. More often than not the person you are abusing, bullying and basically being an ass to, had nothing to do with your problem. “How can you charge such high prices?” unless you are talking to the CEO, the manufacturer and the dude in Washington that sets the taxes, you’re asking a pretty stupid question. I’ll end with a story, it was told to me by a call center trainer. There was an employee who was great at his job, was happy and fun to work with. He had one regret, and that was not going to college. That was his button, we all have one, and some people like to find it and push it. He worked for the company for 3 years, and then one day a lady found and pushed his button. This customer told him he was stupid, told him he was working there because he could not do anything else. She also said that he would always work there and never amount to anything. He finished the call, got up, told his coworkers good bye, and left. I like to think he found another job and was fine, but I don’t know what happened to him. This lady chose a phone, an electronic device, an inanimate object over a fellow human being.

Be nice to people, and celebrate your small victories!