There are several countries with a Mandatory Military Service. Some of the terms are fairly short with a requirement of only 6 months.
Take that concept and apply it to service industry work.
Imagine if everyone in society had to have at least one retail or food service job before they were issued a driver’s license or allowed to be employed in another job. Even wealthy people would be required to do this with no loopholes or ways to buy their way out of it.
I think this would teach empathy for many. Of course, there would always be some who would not learn anything but it would definitely change some people.
Also, some judges are already doing this as punishment for bad behavior.
Alternative opinion: any service jobs that can be automated should be, and the companies that benefit from it should be forced to pay taxes on their automation to fund UBI.
Ooh, another solid unpopular opinion post. I think this sub is actually starting to get somewhere.
This probably wouldn’t actually fully address the problem, but it would likely help. Personally I think they should just be paid better, so they get some reasonable compensation for basically being treated as a lower caste.
Obviously better pay would be great, but speaking as someone who worked retail for fifteen years I’d just be happy if my store management team had my back.
Too often they’ll take the customer side to keep them happy, then come around to you and admit that they know the customer is being an ass, but still give you a telling off anyway because the ‘customer is watching’.
If the customer is the issue, tell them so. If they don’t like it, they’re welcome to get the fuck out of the shop.
I fully agree. I’ve worked retail, warehouses, fast food.
I’m now a tech shitlord, but am grounded enough to know how lucky I am. Meanwhile, I see 20 year olds enter the field with 0 years of work experience in the real world, just internships at Facebook. They make 6 figures out the door and have no idea how the real world works.
Put em in a warehouse for six months.
While I don’t necessarily hate the idea, I prefer businesses took stronger stances against blacklisting troublesome customers. If all businesses in town communicated and banned people that were problematic then these people would have no place to go. Obviously this will never happen.
Banning customers is against the goals of any capitalist.
I had to work in retail as a teenager for a few months.
My respect for retailers, and brick and mortar clients facing jobs overall, increased tremendously.
Yeah, no. Fuck mandatory military service. This is only somewhat better.
Besides, I doubt it would work at all. People go through life being treated like shit. They obviously keep treating everyone like shit.
OR, places that subject employees to the general public for degradation should all be shut down.
My personal take is those jobs shouldn’t exist. Any job where nobody would work were it not for the money is not a job a thriving society should strive to have as an integral part of it.
These are the jobs we should be working towards having AI replace, not creative artistic jobs. Replace the jobs that detract from your humanity, not those that define it.
All that said, i do agree there shouod be required “character building” community contributing activites enforced and necessary for every able young person to participate in for at least a couple years. This would give people a sense of being connected to their local community and teach social skills that are sorely lacking in our increasingly individualized society. I just want it to be run by local governments and/or nonprofits and not associated with religious groups.
Only if there’s the people’s macca’s or something. I don’t want fast food companies profiting form conscripted labour.
Or, y’know, you could try paying service workers better before immediately jumping to authoritarian forced labor. I could easily deal with karens all day if I was actually making decent money for doing so.
why? our tech level is almost to the point where we really wont need fast food or retail workers - not in the numbers that exist now, anyway. at best, you might have such a program for maybe 10 years - and it’d be seen as violating intrinsic rights. mandatory military service in 1st world nations is largely unneeded anyway, they have a lot of volunteers - mostly from the same lower economic bracket that retail workers come from, curiously enough.
for the fast food chains it’ll be AI running the drive through and maybe one person loading various pre-cooked/flash-frozen items into the machines that will do the cooking/re-heating - and perhaps a manager but they’ll be more of a district manager overseeing many stores in their area, and honestly even that sort of thing is easily replaceable by software.
clothing stores are already on their way out, have you been to a mall recently? online shopping is far easier to maintain and to participate in, only higher-end clothiers and bespoke tailoring establishments will still have in-person retail workers, but only because old money folks are slower to adopt changes (they can afford to wait, you see).
What is kind of funny that during my voluntary military service everyone was required to do at least 3 months of food service. I was deployed with the navy and it was called mess crank duty.
Yeah, I did a messy crank earlier today too.
No it won’t. Insufferable people will absolutely do the bare minimum then once they are out will be twice as insufferable because “I know how to do your job, so that’s why (unreasonable request) should be easy for you!”
True! God that was the worst kind of customer. Still think OP is onto something. There’s gotta be a way to keep people humble, teach them humility
“I had to do my time and take the abuse, so you can take my abuse, one day you’ll be able to dish it out yourself. Or just come in on your day off.”
It would be better if stores just stopped enabling the abusive assholes by kicking them out instead of giving them what they want.
You do the bare minimum? Jail. You do too much work? Straight to jail. You do the right amount, but take breaks? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
Not everyone is rude to service workers and not everyone would be a good fit for the service industry but might excel at other jobs. Is it fair to deny someone’s employment for other jobs or a driver’s license simply because they aren’t a good service worker? Would it be fair to other service workers that their coworkers are only there out of some obligation to gain other employment or a driver’s license? What if you live somewhere that has few or no service jobs? If you had to travel and your only means was to drive but you didn’t yet qualify for a driver’s license because you hadn’t worked a service job how would you get there. Also it seems like we would all be at the mercy of one industry, is that really what you want? Should the service industry be the ultimate judge of who gets to be employable or is allowed to operate motor vehicles?
Yeah let’s give the government the power to dictate where we work. Let’s also give massive corporations more opportunities to underpay under the guise of “doing your duty” for the country. Even better - let’s staff every store and restaurant with even more people who dont want to be there.
This is a truly awful idea lol
