In the e-mail today is a complaint, apparently mailed to everyone the sender knows, about a new clerk at a local convenience store who is obviously "Not from here. Not for us." The clerk, described as an obese White female with stringy colorless hair, addressed an older gentleman as "My Love." The man didn't seem to know her, and made a point of turning his back on her and greeting a bystander as an old friend!
It's been years since the New York Times, before it joined the censorship party, posted an article documenting that putting up with demeaning, cutesipating speech actually harms older people:
It probably doesn't do younger people any good, either, to allow inferiors to call them obnoxious names in public. (Cashiers who know how to watch what they're doing and say "Thank you, Ma'am/Sir" are only subordinates. Cashiers who call customers obnoxious names are inferior lifeforms.) The study focussed on patients in geriatric care but people who are still active and healthy feel the burn, too. Even if we ourselves don't feel any physical effects when minimum-wage workers try to compensate by spewing out the "Baby" and "Buddy" kind of hatespeech, we need to take a firm and united stand about this.
Maybe some portraits of the kind of people who let themselves be addressed in various ways might help the workers. (Read this post to them. They probably don't know how to read.)
SIR is not interested in chitchat from the kind of chit who get hired as holiday store clerks these days, but he probably doesn't hear it. If he does, he probably doesn't bother to complain.
MA'AM can hear that the clerk spoke first--she's ignoring it, as an act of charity. Say "Thank you, Ma'am." Then shut your mouth so she can forgive you for speaking before you were spoken to.
BABY is definitely not sitting on the toilet in that store. She may have concerns about spattering her own shoes, but she just knows all the other offended ladies who have been using the ladies' room all day have left baby messes.
BUDDY thinks it's hilarious to take out several more items than he's paid for, then come in the next day and make a big show of paying for one of them, blaming the clerk who failed to ring it up. (He doesn't think this is stealing, because it is so funny.)
DEAR thinks you are just too precious to be allowed outside without a parent or teacher to supervise you, and will make sure your employer understands this too.
HONEY will remember to visit your store the very next time she's been exposed to Norwalk Flu. She remembers which clerk to be sure to breathe on, and calculates the timing to maximize the chance that that clerk will be stricken on the job. She enjoys visualizing that clerk passing out and lying in the puddle. Too bad about everyone else at the store. Honey is nasty.
NEIGHBOR can't complain about the name you called person, so person will be sure to complain about your speaking out of turn, instead.
LUV does not remember having ever even shaken your hand, certainly wouldn't do it again if person did, and will be sure to complain--loudly, often, all over town--so that per spouse doesn't get any disgusting ideas about person ever considering cheating with the likes of you. Person will be sure to mention how repulsive you are in every way.
PAL thinks the clerk is on drugs, and since he didn't sell the drugs to the clerk he has a real business interest in making sure the clerk is, at best, sent in for the help person obviously needs.
SWEETIE thinks your family are much to blame for not having taught you better manners, and just might make the time to go after all of their jobs, too. She probably knows who and where they are.
Now, what can we customers do? Should we pre-empt this attempt by inferiors to invert one of the few real, valid social hierarchies that exist in a democratic society, by making an appropriate dominance display, loudly greeting every clerk with "HelLOOOO, you LITTLE STINKER! Now CAN you shut up and do your JOB?"
I hope not.
At least I hope we can give the clerks time to process orders, reservations, returns, payments, whatever they're being paid to process, like decent human beings who merely happen to be employed as clerks. I hope we can safely save the "Blue-Footed-Booby, Dingleberries, Betsy-Wetsy-Doll, Cuckoo-Clock, Diaper-Baby, Little-Nasty-Thing, Potty-Mouth, Princess-Poopy-Pants, Rug-Rat, Spoilt-Brat" terms of address for the ones who vent their hate through the cutesipating, disrespectful name-calling.
I do agree with those who feel that we're letting the side down if we fail to answer to any name other than "Sir" or "Ma'am" with something even more pejorative than whatever the inferior lifeform just spewed at us. I like "Child." As in, "Child, where is your mother? Does she know you're playing with the cash register?"
Here, once again, because I really do feel sympathy for decent human beings who have been hired as clerks (it's just that so many of the chains positively look for obnoxious extroverts), are the ways decent human beings in minimum-hourly-wage jobs make themselves recognized:
1. The customer speaks first. Nice, kind, courteous people usually don't speak to other people's employees when they have no questions or complaints. This is good. Enjoy the peace.
2. In the rare emergencies when it's necessary for an employee to speak first, the employee begins with a polite apology, as in "Excuse me, Ma'am, I think you dropped a billfold," or "I beg your pardon, Sir, is that your car that that other car just hit?"
3. If the employee knows any personal information about the customer, such as per name, the employee keeps that information absolutely silent.
4. If the customer continues to chatter while the employee is operating a computer or cash register, the employee may say, "Excuse me, please, I need to focus on my job." The only noises that come out of the employee's mouth while calculating, scheduling, etc., are reading off the information in the computer or record book.
5. The only words the employee normally needs to say, since the employee can simply show the customer what's in the computer or record book, are "Thank you." "Sir" and "Ma'am" are optional; we don't need to continue to call a person who is already there, but if there is a reason to "call" one person in a group, the employee calls all adults "Sir" or "Ma'am." "Miss" and "Mister" are acceptable if, and only if, the customer is obviously much younger than the employee. If people look old enough to vote, the default assumption should be that they look better preserved because they lead healthier lives.
6. People who apply for jobs that involve customer service need to be able to deal with the reality of those jobs: they are in a subordinate position from the day they start those jobs to the day they leave. If an employee feels a craving to "assert personhood" by speaking without due deference to customers, that employee should seek professional help.
7. Simple fatigue may cause an employee's body language to look defiant (person is defying the feeling of exhaustion). Customers will charitably overlook this if the employee's fully voluntary behavior, i.e. words, are appropriately deferential.
However, if an employee indulges in insolence, customers may penalize the employee not only for "standing up tall" when person is tired, but for happening to be physically larger than the customer. Large females who sound as if they're claiming familiarity with customers are especially subject to ridicule, and I know it's not fair, I understand it's not politically correct, but 250-pound females should be very sure to maintain a healthy distance such that they couldn't possibly fall onto anyone if they were to collapse, they should make sure they look at customers' chins rather than their eyes, and they should make sure they murmur their "Yes, Ma'am" and "Thank you, Sir," if they don't want to be described as horrorcows. Life is not fair to anyone. Horrorcows should consider that they might have been born into smaller, healthier, better preserved bodies and consequently gone through life feeling as if they were about to have to head-butt the paunches of big fat ugly bullies. "Horrorcow" is the way this web site spells a few different words in the local dialect that sound even uglier. Ugly words are appropriate for the ugly behavior of horrorcows.
Addco should be aware that it's all over town that the horrorcow from Chicago threw herself at someone's cringing and dodging husband, and I don't care which Addington she married, she should not be working inside the store.
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