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[leka_moya]

You know what really ticks me off? People who act like waiters - and people in other service jobs - are untermensch. Who the hell do they think they are, acting like that, as if this is still the eighteen hundreds and there's still a class society? News call, fattie: just because you have the money to stuff yourself at a restaurant, you are NOT

Comments

[loki_of_aesir]

No, I don't object to that.

However, regarding your first point, I do object to your "blahblah"'ing my comment. And more importantly, I do object to you insinuating that I wrote that any humans deserved being treated like dirt. I wrote that it is logically inconsistent to consider someone doing a servant's job being unfairly treated if they are treated in a way you expect a servant to be treated. And you did, as you objected to the very notion that a waitress could be a servant. I tried to point out that that is, in essence, what a waitress is. That's not saying they, or any other people working as servants to other people, should be treated poorly.
To use a simple (and probably horribly offensive, but nevermind) parallell:
Getting offended because an individual treats his dog badly is quite okay. Getting offended because an individual treats his dog like a dog, that is something quite different. And saying that "THAT MAN TREATS HIS DOG LIKE A DOG!" is, common idioms aside, roughly the same thing as saying "THAT MAN TREATS HIS WAITRESS AS HIS SERVANT!" It is inconsistant, it is denying reality, and it lends nothing but seemingly rash and impulsive emotional baggage to your other, far more reasonable and understandable, statement concerning the specifics of the treatment of people working as servants. It is not wrong to treat a servant like a servant, any more than it is wrong to treat a postal worker like a postal worker or a teacher like a teacher. It is, however, wrong to treat a servant badly.

My point, as I've now stated and for clarity's sake will state yet again, is that you're in danger of being intrepreted as as bigoty and horrible as the man treating the waitress poorly when your reaction is built on a class-society-assumption that "because he treated her badly, he treated her like a servant" which combined with your ethic values - "no-one should be treated badly" - results in an elitist conclusion: servants are treated badly, by the nature of their jobs. Being offended because a servant is treated like a servant is, in essence, looking down on people choosing a profession where they serve others, as you obviously consider being "a servant" a lowly state which nobody should be treated as being in.

Hopefully, I managed to explain my point more carefully now, but I probably haven't. I'm just trying to weed out what could be read as very elitist assumptions from a critique of people being elitist and mean, to your benefit

[leka_moya]

I didn't mean to insuinate that you think it's okat that people be treated like dirt, I'm really sorry about that. Nothing I've written to you is meant to be accusing in any way.

I'm sorry about the "blahblah" too.

The word servant holds bad connotations with me, personally. I never use the word servant to describe today's maitre'd's, waiters, waitresses or bartenders, and I don't associate them with servants.
The word servant makes me think of times when people in service-jobs were thought of as lesser than their employers. That's why I use it in the negative.

And this man treated this waitress badly. He used a very unpleasant tone of voice and bossed her around.

[loki_of_aesir]

I'm sure he did. There are always one or two such throughout a day.

And I understand why you use the word as a negative word, but that doesn't make your "she is not your servant"-statement factually true. :P She was. It was her job to be.

But nevermind, I'm blowing this all out of proportion anyway, as usual.