So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[ChiTownScion]

This is a perfect example of one of the elements in the discussion in your fragmentation of history thread. Good Lord, really? Just get out.
A local convenience store was busted after selling cigarettes to a 17 year old with a full beard. Regardless of what I think of that form of enforcement, the store instituted a policy of everyone gets asked for a state identification regardless of apparent age. If you're 90 you gotta show the card to buy your Camels. The reactions I have witnessed are ridiculous. Screaming, name calling, etc. The clerks have told me they have been threatened with being beaten. People that behave in such a way deserve to be tasered by the minimum wage clerk who just wants to go home.

I remember at age 42 being asked to show ID by a woman when buying a bottle of wine. Rather than be upset, I simply handed it to her and said, "You thing that I'm under 21? I think that I'm in love with you.." We both laughed.

Funny how one man's insult is another's flattery, isn't it?

 

[3fingers]

I remember at age 42 being asked to show ID by a woman when buying a bottle of wine. Rather than be upset, I simply handed it to her and said, "You thing that I'm under 21? I think that I'm in love with you.." We both laughed.

Funny how one man's insult is another's flattery, isn't it?

My usual response to the usually younger than me clerk is "oh bless you."
They always giggle.

 

[tonyb]

...

Is it not possible he simply wanted to support the police? Granted, an extreme discount, but I've seen the same treatment done for serving military without question. I totally understand why the police can't be seen to benefit from such treatment, but it's ashame that the world has come to a point where a restauranteur couldn't choose to show support for the police in case it gets assumed to be corruption. Totally see how that could be abused on both sides, though. In my academic practice in the UK, I am obliged to declare any gift with a value of £50 or over from a student even after they leave; Chinese bribery law, which affects the work I do out there, means we must refuse even so much as a cup of coffee from a student, and we are no longer permitted as staff to go for a nice dinner after the graduation ceremony with our partners out there. I totally understand the reasons behind this crackdown, but it nonetheless seems yet another case of us all being punished for the sake of the few who abused it.

Possible, but I seriously doubt it. My assessment of the proprietor’s character, based mostly on my own observations and those of a certain former employee, only lends more weight to that skepticism.

I’ve held jobs that had people wishing to be in my good graces. Whatever illusions of actual friendship I may have harbored regarding certain of those people were shattered when I no longer held those positions.

 

[ChiTownScion]

And it bugs the spit out of me when I see stuff on here from time to time where people brag about how they put some hapless clerk or waitress or other minor functionary in their place. You might think you are, but you ain't.

If one is really incapable of being nice just for the sake of being nice (or civil) to those trying to do a thankless job, why can they not at the very least consider doing so out of a sense of noblesse oblige? That doesn't imply condescension : it means remembering how damned fortunate you are to be able to be the shopper or the diner instead of the one employed (at a wage that can never justify the grief) to cater to every jackass who walks through the door.

In younger, newly married days, my wife and I would volunteer to work as dining car crew for a railroad club we belonged to. Day excursions, and we'd be dealing with folks who paid premium for full meals, and a nicer seat. And yes: many of them felt that doling out a few hundred bucks for the day entitled them to cop an attitude.

Ever wash dishes in a dining car galley on a fast moving train? Back breaking work, literally. Many of our passengers wouldn't even look me in the eye: I was the damn dishwasher, too low on the food chain for their time, I suppose. The fun part was when some of the kinder of the clientele would engage in conversation and find out that I was an attorney who was just volunteering ("They could never pay me ENOUGH to do this!!") because I loved to see people enjoying a train ride. Hell of a way to spend a weekend and assure that you'd go into work Monday morning exhausted.

But I got an ever so small taste of what the faceless proletariat have to deal with, I'd imagine. It didn't exactly keep me humble.. but it was a reality check that kept pomposity in check, more or less.

 

[vitanola]

Calling anyone who inconveniences you a "Nazi."

We had a customer yesterday who flew into a fit because the box-office person asked to see his member ID card in order to give him the fifty-cent member discount. Said customer stormed inside and excoriated us as Nazis for enforcing such a policy. Since we do not, in fact, enforce ticketing policies on the basis of "blood and soil" racial nationalism, and at a time when actual, genuine Nazis are recrudescing around the world, such a comment is hardly the appropriate response.

Are you quite certain that the beknighted soul did not call your ticket agent a "NUTZI"?

 

[The Jackal]

If one is really incapable of being nice just for the sake of being nice (or civil) to those trying to do a thankless job, why can they not at the very least consider doing so out of a sense of noblesse oblige?

One of the most important things I've tried to teach my children is to be polite and courteous regardless of the situation. Assume everyone is deserving of your respect.

 

[ChiTownScion]

One of the most important things I've tried to teach my children is to be polite and courteous regardless of the situation. Assume everyone is deserving of your respect.

And that is a lesson well taught. Not only in terms of common courtesy, but as an exercise in self control.

To cite the recent example discussed here, going ballistic on Miss Lizzie or one of her theater kids is bad form, not only in the obvious terms of abusing others, but it displays the temperament of one who cannot maintain their bearing in the heat of conflict. If you can't keep a clear head under such minor stress as a membership discount dispute (and no one is flawless in this regard: we all have our boiling point), where will your head be when others may be relying on you when it's really critical?

 

[3fingers]

And that is a lesson well taught. Not only in terms of common courtesy, but as an exercise in self control.

To cite the recent example discussed here, going ballistic on Miss Lizzie or one of her theater kids is bad form, not only in the obvious terms of abusing others, but it displays the temperament of one who cannot maintain their bearing in the heat of conflict. If you can't keep a clear head under such minor stress as a membership discount dispute (and no one is flawless in this regard: we all have our boiling point), where will your head be when others may be relying on you when it's really critical?

I agree but I think that it indicates a life where an individual has never been put in a situation where anything important has been critical, or if it was somebody else took care of it for you. If you lose your manure over a 50 cent discount or a bad latte how can you expect to be taken seriously as an adult?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Perspective is everything. Some of these people will scream over half a buck like they were fighting over a scrap of rotten meat in a post-apocalyptic alley. I don't want to be around them when It All Goes Down.

Then too, there are a great many people in the world today who've never been told "no" in their lives. And they aren't all kids.

 

[tonyb]

Hell, we often reward outright boorishness. We could point to one glaringly obvious example, but discussion of current political matters is forbidden in this place.

 

[tonyb]

It does nothing to discount the value of good manners to observe that the superficially polite are capable of great harm.

I’d rather deal with people who know themselves well enough to know they will never be beatified over the company of the self-satisfied, self-congratulatory sorts who know what words never to use.

Among the issues getting attention locally is “gentrification.” I’m not unsympathetic, having witnessed it in Seattle over the course of a few decades. (Greater Denver is a few years behind. Set your watches back.) But it seems that those wailing the loudest fail to recognize their own contributions to this state of affairs. They want the galleries and the artists’ lofts and the artisanal bakeries and all that but not the high housing costs that inevitably follow. They profess to treasure the (disappearing) “diversity” of their district but fail to recognize how their own presence there makes it all the less diverse.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd give up all the art galleries and bourgie restaurants and high-end decor establishments in my town for a good newsstand.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Same problem in old Germany. Much too much art-galleries all around. So, no one can really visit all of them. Curious oversupply.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'd give up all the art galleries and bourgie restaurants and high-end decor establishments in my town for a good newsstand.

Heck, those are disappearing form this city which has everything.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's come to this: the highlight of any visit to NYC for me is a stop at the nearest Hudson News. Sad.

 

[tonyb]

I'd give up all the art galleries and bourgie restaurants and high-end decor establishments in my town for a good newsstand.

Those days are gone forever, I fear. I just can't foresee any set of circumstances to bring back print as we knew it. (Although a totalitarian seizure of the 'net could conceivably prompt the rebirth of the basement pamphleteer. Maybe we should snap up those idle presses before they're all sold for scrap, eh?)

Are the galleries around there commercially viable enterprises? Or are they rich peoples' hobbies, a la the gentleman's ranches we get out West?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think most of them are money-laundering operations of one kind or another. How many wanna-be Edward Hoppers can one town absorb?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah, that's the ticket. The new Ballyhoo is out. I'm there.

 

[vitanola]

View attachment 166650
Yeah, that's the ticket. The new Ballyhoo is out. I'm there.

Ballyhoo? Why, that's the only MAGAZINE with a theme song!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Elmer Zilch for President!