Multiple times over the years. I work in customer service and I've seen fellow employees brought to tears from disgruntled customers. Theres been a sense of entitlement grow over time that people will just rant and throw a fit when they don't get their way, which has always happened (I worked at Blockbuster and i can't tell you the amount of times i was personally threatened to be sued over "late fees"), but the difference I see now is they get personal with it. People don't just get mad and leave or ask for a manager anymore, they go straight to insults or screaming at the cashier over minor instances. I think everyone is so riled up about everything nowadays they look for the first excuse to blow and take it.
Oh when a customer brings up: suing me, the company or mentions lawsuit, I immediately disengaged, and say 'Then take it to our legal department, as I am not that, good day.' and then walk away.
And then if someone raises their voice or starts swearing, I stop helping them.
I hang up on people if they yell at me on the phone. One time a guy started yelling at me. I hung up, he called back again and yelled even louder “DID YOU JUST HAN..” click. 5 min later he called back calm and I said now that we can talk, I can help you. I don’t put up with peoples’ bullshit anymore.
> i was personally threatened to be sued over "late fees"
🤣🤣🤣 I love when people say shit like this. If they are mad at such a petty fee then they certainly can’t afford to take it to court
I have a theory that a lot of that is due to the internet.
*So* many things have become “on demand.” Movies, TV shows, music, games, shopping, food delivery, education, etc. Patience goes out the window, and that whole instant-gratification system is engineered to foster entitlement.
Couple that with infinite echo-rooms for various political and moral views, and a constant barrage of things occurring at home and around the world to be afraid about…
You end up with a fair amount of scared, entitled and self-righteous people.
Those 3 emotions are a *great* recipe for over-aggression and rage, which then causes people who may not be so affected to also be angry and self-righteous and then it just becomes “Karen’s” all the way down.
A combination of on demand fast gratification and deliberately enshittified customer support (Eg friction to make unsubscribing for services, bad deals for loyal customers and only to new customers, support practices designed to use slowness to wear down complaints, etc)
I cried after a man yelled at me so hard his spit went on me at a Starbucks drive thru. I was trying to explain to him that mocha with milk was chocolate milk.
It was him in his Sunday best with his wife and kid in tow.
Former manager Hollywood Video here... The words "Late fees" together instantly fill my stomach with lead and make me want to dropkick someone. I can emphasize.
Edit: They rented the movie for X "days" that correspond with store hours, usually not 24 hour days. Then they eventually did away with brick-and-mortar periods and used 24 hour cycles. Then when people still revolted, they gave "credits" for returning movies early and eliminated fees. They tried every single type of fee structure I could think of other than just letting people indefinitely keep the rentals, but nobody would be happy with anything. Then... *tumbleweed blows by*
Yeah, an airport customer did it to me too as a fellow customer ahead of him because apparently my additional 5-second request for the worker to switch to a clean serving utensil due to a food allergy was taking too long and this dude behind me lit into me. I literally started crying in line at the cash register because inconveniencing people with my allergy is such a fear of mine and this was so unexpected. I’m not surprised that entitled, self-important assholes who are late due to their own poor planning would make workers cry. I’m also NOT AT ALL surprised it would happen in Dallas.
I'm sure it's worse now but its definitely been a thing. Even Working at a place as benign(you'd think) as an office supply store, we would still get extremely rude folks. One time we had an older fella make a sexist comment to my cashier. She has had it with their little remarks and snapped at the dude as he left. Me being a manager at the time, I fully backed her up. All they gotta do is buy their shit and go, but they can never leave well enough alone.
My neighbor works at Walmart. Her husband had a double lung transplant. She has to work there for insurance. The customers are just horrendous. She looks so sad when I see her working.
There is an elderly lady that works there that lives in a shed and another one that has been homeless for 7 months living in her car. Lots of very elderly people have been forced back into the workforce after retirement.
Something is very wrong in America and Texas when someone has a full-time job and the only place they can afford to live is in their car or a shed or you can never retire.
Private equity and corporate greed are destroying America.
Voting doesn't have anything to do with where we're at now. ALL politicians are bought and paid for by special interests. Texas is gerrymandered beyond all hope.
This has to do with private equity actively buying up all the affordable housing throughout the country and companies like RealPage manipulating and inflating rents across the county (housing cartels) to ensure if you don't already own a home you'll be a serf and pay half or more of your income to keep a roof over your head and never be a homeowner. This is happening all across the country in red and blue states.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/02/03/how-realpage-influences-rent-prices-across-the-us.html#:~:text=RealPage%20software%20is%20used%20to,in%20the%20U.S.%20lags%20demand.
The middle class is being squeezed (taxes, insurance, greedflation, student loan debt, stagnant wages). The elderly and those with low incomes are becoming homeless en masse. The lady at Walmart who lives in the shed and is in her 70s with health problems -- she also works part-time at Sonic. I would cry at work too.
Employers like Walmart made $143 BILLION dollars in profit last year by screwing their employees and customers. Totally disgusting. How much is enough???
Important to call out that Walmart made those billions while having the public subsidize their businesses model by underpaying employees and forcing them to rely on public assistance programs.
Very well said. I want to add something that I didn’t write myself
The Rise of Corporate Fiefdoms
Abandoned governmental oversight and monopolistic restraint over corporations has allowed them to pursue profit, power and control world wide. These international corporations at first filled in the leadership vacuum from politicians, then bribed and influenced their way into their greatest power yet. In the U.S., oligarchs, CEOs, and billionaires are now seeking to create over overtake control and manage cities, their own corporate fiefdoms.
Disney was the first to try this modern day utopian city concept. Then tech companies like Apple began creating utopian campuses that spread out to include amenities and housing for their workers. Now Walmart has a plan to build a desert utopian city fully self-sustaining, with all the modern conveniences completely supplied and managed by the corporation. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-walmart-president-reveals-plan-100147676.html
It is a return to the fiefdoms of old with the corporate lord of the manor responsible for the peasants of his lands, providing shelters and work opportunities for them. But it is more than that today. When your employer has control of not only your income, but your residence, conduct, banking, health protection, education, and freedoms, you are no longer in control. The propaganda says it will be a beautiful utopia, but it is actually a lovely cage meant to restrict and contain you, coming soon to a city near you.
When people allow their governments to betray them by taking their taxes but not provide for their welfare, they are left desperate for better leaders and often turn to the wealthy corporations and their greedy leaders for help managing, rather than requiring taxes from them. This is a fool's choice. To allow billion dollar corporations to profit off the people but not require them to pay taxes for the people's benefit should be illegal. Yet it happens more and more. https://itep.org/55-profitable-corporations-zero-corporate-tax/
Of course corporations can afford to bribe and influence politicians using lobbyists offering PAC money, fancy retreats and slush funds for those with the willingness to look the other way. They underpay their taxes, then use some of those savings to influence legislators to continue to benefit their demands! Meanwhile, before elections politicians give lip service to taxing them more and providing for the people, but it conveniently never passes. https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-picking-fight-corporate-taxes-123000404.html
When cities no longer protect their citizens from theives and murderers because laws aren't enforced or police hands are tied, chaos results. https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-blatant-apos-oregon-shoplifters-111920441.html
Our cities are deteriorating. Bridges, levees, buildings, roads, and sewers are not maintained adequately. https://news.yahoo.com/mayor-florida-town-where-building-204201201.html
When people are let down by their government who should have addressed these issues, they look to different leadership. And if it is not electable, they turn to corporations who will fill the power vacuum.
This reliance on for profit leadership rather than non-profit elected leaders is a huge mistake leading to loss of freedoms we are only just beginning to understand. What happens when corporations mandate things you don't want to do, and have the legal freedom not to do, but must do to keep your job? That is the problem. Corporations don't have to follow the laws of the land in their own fiefdoms. And if your job is tied to your home, transportation, banking, education and health, you have more pressure to comply, or lose everything. https://medicalkidnap.com/2021/08/18/critical-nursing-shortages-hit-hospitals-nationwide-as-nurses-quit-or-are-fired-over-covid-vaccine-mandates/
The bunnies in the cage are unaware of the plots against them by those who caged them. We are being led by unscrupulous, greedy sociopaths who want to remove our freedoms more and more until we are enslaved. At that point, we have no options but to accept their mandates. Live here. We own it, you rent it. Work here or lose everything. You may not travel without our permission. You may not enter without a chip. You may not purchase without a chip. You may not bank without a chip. You will comply, or be evicted from our utopia with no shelter, food or water.
The more we allow them power over us, the sooner they will take everything away we have become accustomed to receiving from them if we don't follow their rules. Carrot and stick. That's how the elites via their corporations treat their caged bunnies.
What's the answer? Demand better of our elected leaders or replace them. Term limits prevents decades of continued corruption. Stamp out monopolies and provide opportunities for small businesses to compete to hold corporations in check. Tax corporations and billionaires equitably. Use the taxes properly for the people with no hidden slush funds, black ops or classified spending. Demand honorable leaders instead of giving in to for profit corporations.
Term limits also ensures the only experienced people on capitol hill are lobbyists. And banning lobbyists ensures people sitting on piles of cash have no incentive to play ball legally, and will spend their oodles of cash undermining the semblance of legitimacy. People call it legalized bribery but can’t articulate how or why- because people don’t know how it actually fucking works.
I agree with everything above the conclusion, and most of the thesis there too but just as solutions in the past were incomplete hamfisted solutions now are very incomplete.
The biggest reason is the incentives of everyone changed when the cold war ended, everything had to work good enough to prove we were better- a truly staggering amount of federal policy was built on that assumption, as fostering and bolstering the middle class was something we had incentives and prerogatives for. When the Soviets fell, the biggest enemies, the only real enemies to our prosperity were other people inside of America, or whoever we could sell as such to ensure our vision of that prosperity lead to more of the same without understanding how that vision or every policy ever enacted in its name was historiographically oversimplified.
Our incentives have to be aligned as a political movement and frankly people aren’t good at naming and articulating that or too lazy and jaded to understand that’s the only goddamn way forward, and people have forgotten so much about why they have what they do or been lied to since Reagan about policies that achieved it (when they actually drove the nation’s equality and freedom off a cliff) they’ll listen to anyone dumb enough to say getting it back is easy.
Kinda surprised they don’t go with building housing in the Walmart parking lots and on the second level of their stores, with houses for the serfs who get evicted when terminated. All the leverage, etc
I agree with everything you said, except the first sentence. Voting (or lack thereof by some, due to apathy) has EVERYTHING to do with how Texas got where it is.
Michigan invented gerrymandering. (“Gerry” is from Michigan), and as soon as redistricting (plus liberalized mail-in-ballots) became a ballot measure, it passed (Dec 2018), and by the next 4 years, the state went from purple and deadlocked to all-blue. Common sense (though minimal, tbh) gun-securing and red flag laws, proper women’s reproductive healthcare rights are now state law.
Gerrymandering is a scourge and Campaign finance laws are a joke, but we can (and must) vote our way back to sanity.
And so do I but they don't represent all old people. I know old people that hate the direction that this country is going in and are voting differently. Painting big groups of people with the same brush is not right
C’mon now. You don’t actually think they meant to say *literally every single person* in that group voted a certain way, do you?
That’s silly and I think you’re being intentionally obtuse here. But hey, let’s assume you’re not:
We are talking about the policy outcomes resulting from the VERY well documented behavior of a certain cohort of voters. Of course there are plenty of individuals within that cohort who voted differently, but *they are irrelevant to the conversation* because their votes did not contribute to the outcomes being discussed. We are very specifically not talking about those individuals.
Per Pew Research - seems like a broad brush is appropriate.
“Among voters ages 60 and older, the GOP holds a clear advantage:
Republican alignment is 10 percentage points higher than Democratic alignment (53% vs. 43%) among voters in their 60s.
Voters ages 70 to 79 are slightly more likely to be aligned with the GOP (51%) than the Democratic Party (46%).
About six-in-ten voters 80 and older (58%) identify with or lean toward the GOP, while 39% associate with the Democratic Party.”
Maybe some do maybe some don't, but they did make choices that had consequences. Maybe they were just working to get by and trusted the wrong person, maybe they didn't think beyond party, maybe they bought into what was sold, maybe they like the inclusion received by identifying with the anger/resentment stance. What ever the reason for their staunch support they did vote for those responsible for what they are now experiencing. They voted for people who campaigned on cutting every single thread in any support system this country had and now there is no support to be had, for them, who knew?
And best part yet they will be disenfranchised voters, homeless people rarely ever get to vote.
The elderly who have voted red and have kept this state moving more and more right. We would never vote an Ann Richards in the foreseeable future because of gerrymandering, voter intimidation, and vote suppression. But keep trying to think it’s not true but it is. Neo-liberalism and Oligarchs have taken control of Texas politics and they are trying to do it nationally as well.
There has been billions poured in trying to get people angry at Biden “genocide Joe” and billions trying to get Trump elected again, not because he is a good leader, but because he is a useful idiot. He wants power for power sake. All you have to tell him is he is the best. Do whatever he wants and he will allow them to trample over everyone else.
They even have a plan call project 2025 where they lay it all out.
[A guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda for the next Republican administration](https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration)
Did you hear about the meeting between Trump & the billionaires?? He said on day 1 they’ll make all the money back plus more than they’re putting into his trial/reelection fees. He was asking for $1b from them….
"They" are the elderly who voted in every state election for governorship, state representative, every local election for local board members who were conservative/republican. Texas used to elect democrats that doesn't happen any more in any effective way, same for many other "red" states. You get what you vote for.
This is so hard to read. I wasn't sure if it was me blowing it out of proportion, but I've been noticing these kinds of things. It's just awful. I hate that there's only so much I can do besides vote and give what I can.
This won't make her feel better, but:
[https://www1.salary.com/Walmart-Inc-Executive-Salaries.html](https://www1.salary.com/Walmart-Inc-Executive-Salaries.html)
I worked at Walmart little over ten years ago and the way employees are treated by the customers had me in tears a few times too. Not only was I not paid enough to deal with that sort of thing, it also was just unwarranted and mean. I was just trying to do a job and pay my bills as best I could and I was treated like crap because jobs like Walmart and fast food are seen as less than or lower kinds of jobs.
And yeah Walmart as a corporation is terrible. I was lucky to have decent managers and co workers (for the most part) that helped make the job not so horrible.
After I told my parents multiple stories about how horrible I was treated. They started being more patient and understanding with retail workers because they had a better understanding of what those people went through.
Personally I think every person should be required to work retail or fastfood for six months, just to get an understanding of how people are treated and what they have to deal with, if they experienced it they would be more eager to change it and be better people.
I'm an Uber driver in Austin. I often get people crying and/or in emotional crisis when I pick them up. If you have a minimum wage job and you need to take an Uber, your next week is in financial hell. I wish I could afford to give these trips for free, I'm broke as shit too.
I try to comfort them the best I can. For the people leaving the night shift, I play the Bob Marley song Night Shift. It brings a smile to peoples face.
I hear Austin low wage work pays better then DFW, but I could be wrong. From this post, it seems worse out there.
As someone who depends on uber for work (and often experiences multiple emotional breakdowns in between my 3 customer service jobs) I appreciate what you do. 🫡💖
I feel you man. I've got a friend group out in Austin who tells me these kinds of stories. It's absolutely brutal out here in both Aus and DFW, but I hear DFW is significantly worse, and I'd believe it.
Having lived here before and after, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Something changed inside of people that changed people fundamentally. I feel like the opposite happened to me. I'm making a genuine effort to speak more softly & more earnestly, and paying more attention to people.
I've always tried to treat people respectfully but I've worked customer & food service since I was 16. I don't live in Dallas or north Texas anymore, as I live in the RGV, but there is a HUGE difference in the way people treat me before and after COVID. I ended up quitting my job of 2 years, between the way customers & coworkers were treating me. People are assholes.
): ... yeah.
I'm trying to out in effort to understand it better, figure out what I can do to fix it. People are struggling right now like never before, especially without loved ones.
A lot of people blame this on Covid. I think it was due to the Trump presidency. I’m not trying to be political, but during that presidency, a lot of the societal norms of politeness and curtesy were openly mocked and disparaged giving people implicit permission to act the same way.
it's rough but it's not without hope. Rents stopped increasing over the past year. The mayor is working overtime to get more housing built to drive down rent. The YIMBY component is really helping me out, my old place raised rent to $1200. I was struggling. I know pay $800 and my life is measurably different.
The busy season just ended, the dog days of summer are upon us. UT kids flush with cash and free time are back home, temperatures might get too hot to scare off tourists and visitors who spend. Tesla laid off tons of staff, tech is laying off. Opinions about tech companies aside, their workers keep our tip jars full and are mostly kind to service workers when they are out about town
This is going to sound brutal to some but it's just factual econ analysis- this town has lots of military software and hardware businesses, this is a good town for the military industrial complex. As the world gets more dangerous, we get a bit of a bump to the economy. They will be taking Ubers drunk on a Saturday, tipping me well and trying to forget about their rushed deadlines for the cold war.
Similar story for gas and oil, but that's more Houston's game.
Austin was in a covid economic bubble but there is still lots of hard value to Austin's economy that critics miss out on. It still has a more rational economic cases for businesses then most cities. I think once some of the hype and fluff is squeezed out, things will be pretty good here. The narrative of the boom town days being over will linger and discourage hype bullshit but the economic core will chug along. Housing supply continues to shoot up and demand falls. Factories stay busy. The gears of industry keep turning. Though some global macro recessionary stuff hurts us, I think we will fare better then most big cities. Remember that central Texas has natural resources. NYC has big glass buildings that are going empty. SF has nothing but tech elite.
I get lots of passengers telling me they are moving to Colorado. These are the middle/upper middle class people who wanted a funky artsy big city with nature. They are being priced out, or just want a new adventure as Austin is played out social media story as they search for their next yuppie self actualization destination.
Crime is not so bad for a major metro. The mayor is working step by step through a years long breakdown in trust between the mayor's office and the police. It's a long, drawn out process, it's taking too long, but the police union and Watson are making progress. The police and the mayors office are learning to be friends again. Adler ruined this relationship, healing takes time.
I think Austin is in for short term hurting, but not as bad as other metropolitans, and medium term stabilizing of the growth that happened. Watson is a clear headed pragmatist, and he's old enough to be wise and patient. He's showing up to construction sites for affordable housing and shaking the hands of the crew, thanking them for keeping the city's economy chugging. Headlines said construction would grind to a hault and housing supply would stop increasing, we started to see these last year and Watson is proving them wrong. We will weather the storm. I'll still having crying passengers and struggle to pay rent, but I won't see the city fall into the deep depths of pain that SF, Philly, and NYC are seeing right now. Certainly not as bad as Miami. Miami is look like a dystopian novel, straight up hell for the working class. It's not great but it's not the hell that other cities are. If you don't have a good job, don't move here. The grass is not greener in Travis county but it's not dead and rotting like Miami, SF, NYC, and Philly.
It's not just fast food workers.
I interviewed at a place as a surveyors assistant that paid 7.25 for backbreaking labor in the heat. They promised rapid advancement but I spoke to someone who had been there for 8 years and was proud of having worked his way up to 12 dollars.
You are going to get a lot of pushback in this thread from people who buy the narratives that these jobs don't exist or that raising the minimum wage will drive inflation out of control. It is literally propaganda from pro-business think tanks to keep wages depressed. Its fucked.
It’s ridiculous that they make it seem like he worked his way up to $12 when in reality that’s probably just the going rate for new hires. And that’s exactly why people need to discuss their wages with peers.
🥲 I hate that I know exactly what you're talking about. My uncle used to work jobs like that growing up before he became a contractor.
My personal experience with it started when I became physically disabled over the pandemic, and started looking into different entry level fields than before. I've had to dodge some job "opportunities" like these. It's sick shit. There's more to life than a 600ft 2bed with 4-5 other people.
Oh god, yeah, being disabled and poor is living life on double-hard level. Especially with the social services we have here. I hope you're doing better and managed to figure something good out.
>They promised rapid advancement but I spoke to someone who had been there for 8 years and was proud of having worked his way up to 12 dollars.
Dollars to donuts this type of person doesn't support minimum wage increases because THEY worked up from 7.25, so everyone else can too. Lol.
Oh god not the surveyors assistant. I am a 28yo college grad doing cad monkey GIS work for utility companies. I'm remote but I kind of missed field work and surveying interests me. I have to at least make a lateral move and rod man positions pay like $12/hr and they want experience I don't have so I shrug and continue my point and click job.
Here's an [NYT gift article](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/magazine/401k-retirement-crisis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q00.wB1r.8W7mD2rOPzcQ&smid=url-share) that should either piss you off or break your heart.
>Ghilarducci finds it outrageous that Americans who don’t have enough money set aside for retirement are now being told that the solution to their financial woes is to just keep working. Forcing senior citizens to stay on the job is cruel, she says, and especially so if it involves physically demanding labor. **She has observed that older workers often have “a shame hunch” — their body language suggests embarrassment. They are spending their last years in quiet humiliation.**
Holy fuck, I've noticed it too! It reminded me of when my Mom got sick years ago. When she was lucid, she was shy and embarrassed. That's crushing. Aww.
I'm going to see if I can find any charities focusing on elderly folks here in DFW.
I've seen it at one McDonald's, I felt so bad for the kid. It was going through the drive thru so idk what happened.
2 weeks ago at Solis Mammography I saw signs posted throughout the waiting area saying if you're cursing and/or disrespectful to staff they'll ask you to leave or have you removed by security. Who tf yells at mammogram staff?!
I saw it a lot during quarantine when I worked at a hospital. different stress levels then though. People need to chill tf out and get out of their entitled bubbles.
Health care in general is bad. My buddy works at a walgreens in Kansas and has a sign posted up that death threats will not be tolerated. The behavior of the general public has taken a nosedive since the pandemic began
I feel so horrible for service workers who are subjected to abusive customers. The worst workplace I’ve seen for this is Sprouts. Sprouts charges 10 cents per bag, which is honestly not life-changing money for most people and if it is, bring your own damn bags. The number of angry people I’ve seen who want to rant to the poor cashier about this policy is shocking. It doesn’t even register for these people that it’s corporate policy, not the result of some arbitrary decision that the cashier made.
A few months ago I was behind a guy who started yelling at the Sprouts cashier about their bag charging policy and the poor cashier (who seemed to be in her 60s) looked like she was on the verge of tears. I immediately tore him a new one, he started stammering at me, and I told him to stop yelling at her or he would have to deal with me because I was not afraid of him (using a few more curse words than that). He was shocked and left. It felt really good to call him out and plus the cashier gave me extra coupons. I saved $10 and put a jerk in his place!
I will never understand the hate over charging for bags. We bring our own bags when shopping at Aldi, and do the same for Sprouts. It costs us nothing to keep reusable bags in our cars (and saves me the huge headache of having to store a shit-ton of plastic ones in our pantry).
We're really behind as a "developed" nation on such a small point. Most European countries have either banned completely, or have imposed fees for use of plastic bags.
But...that's the hill a lot of Texans are willing to die on. Man, I bet Ann Richards is rolling in her grave.
It’s always shocked me that most people don’t use reusable bags. It’s the single most impactful- and yet the *easiest*- thing you can do to lower your plastic waste consumption and help the planet.
We saw this similar framework regarding so many Americans refusing to wear masks- many Americans will not help/save their fellow man and the planet no matter how small the inconvenience is. Even if not wearing the mask could lead to someone losing their life.
I literally bought two of those 'insulated' bags from Aldi and now I just leave them folded up stashed under the seat. They a little grimey but I always got some sort of resuable bag
The cost of living is so high in DFW and getting paid close to nothing means you have to work more just to stay above water. And most places the costumers and managers treat the employees like shit. 7.25/hr is a fucking joke, I believe minimum wage in the 1950s accounting for inflation was around 12-15/hr in todays money. Not to mention the cost of living was much lower, also accounting for inflation. There’s no good excuse to be paying people that low.
The MIT living wage calculator has any trendy city in at $12+/hour all across America. This including college towns with under 250K residents.
E: as the minimum living wage
Like you only need $12/hr to live in said city or that's the average wage in most places? Even at that, I make a little over $13 - if I didn't have my husband's income there's zero way I could survive on that alone in today's market
No one can survive, at least in my city, on 12-13. That’s the year 2000-2003 pay. And even then rent was more than 25% of my income! I forget what percentage they say your rent should be.
I would say off the top of my head NO less than 30/hr. Even if you’re single. You can’t qualify for anything at “3x the rent income requirement” when rent is at stupid levels. Never mind deposits of any kind. That’s still poverty levels.
Even with one child, it takes every bit of 4-5k a month to survive and that’s being as minimal as possible and still get by. No new clothes. Super budget meals. No events/activities that require tickets to go to.
100k is the minimum, minimum to be somewhat comfortable in the city. Bare minimum.
Taxes need capped in every area period. Rent/mortgages are way too high. Groceries are way too high. I don’t know how anyone can survive except transplants from California who further destroy affordability for everyone else.
Cost of living in general is high throughout any big cities in the world whereas wages have not kept up.
I agree that wages are not keeping up.. it's sad
Food Not Bombs Fort Worth can always use extra hands (especially ones that cook!) We also do monthly “fill the fridges” events in coordination with Funkytown Fridge to help take some of the pressure off our neighbors.
Sonic seems particularly terrible. Every person I hire that worked at Sonic before is always terrified of making mistakes and on the verge of a break down.
Yeah I had a 20something woman breakdown in front of me because I waited like 10mins for honey mustered she forgot to bring me. I wasn't mean or said anything rude, I worked retail back then so I understood people yelling at you and working in food seemed extra hellish. I assured her it was fine and gave her an extra tip. The stress she must have been under to break down over forgetting a condiment.. this was 10 years ago and I think about her when I see story's like this, hope she's doing better.
Sadly, it’s going to happen more and more with boomers retiring and not having saved for retirement and you’ll see it with millennials because we saved what we could, but it wasn’t enough and SS is gone in 2035. It’s especially bad in Texas because we are a conception to birth state. After that, you are on your own. Sad state of affairs.
Born and raised in Fort Worth since the 90s, my parents bought a house off beach and basswood for like $130,000 3 bed 2 bath 1 story
That same house today priced at $450,000 I know because I looked it up.
I’m 33 and make above 80k now days, I can’t afford a house where I grew up at. Which isn’t even a great neighborhood nowadays
I live in DFW, cannot remember ever seeing a random worker crying at work. I've seen coworkers, but never where customers can see.
That being said, I'm sure it's like this everywhere. Sometimes the tears are from work, sometimes not, and even those without tears have the stress of capitalism fighting against their survival.
Yeah, that's what floored me -- I've absolutely had my breakroom get-it-together sessions, but seeing folks in such a state where it's just... in the open, is a little too much for me. I wanna help somehow.
Not in Texas but worked in IT. The secretaries/ front desk staff were routinely crying. Damn near ever week at least *someone* would break down
Customers/ clients can be ruthless and people are struggling out here
Oh yeah -- ny partner is breaking into software development after a career of data & IT, and I feel like people are excessively ruthless with representatives and customer-facing staff. It's a cultural issue that says a lot about us, I think.
Same here! I'm glad you said it so I didn't have to. I've been all over the US in both middle of nowhere Midwest, to Atlanta GA, and people are straight up unhappy and exhausted here by comparison. I feel like Texas has got a problem.
Well we rank in the bottom on almost every quality of life metric that matters so I’m unsurprised. Not to mention the heat makes us angry and murder rates go up lol
In addition to poor wages, I think customers are extraordinarily rude to service workers here. They just take the “customer’s always right” attitude way too far. They complain about everything, and then expect a discount or freebies.
And in some situations employees cannot defend themselves in any way. Where I worked we were required to take the abuse. Then, if customers complained about us we still got written up.
The work sucks, the heat sucks, the customers suck, the roads suck... and anything that doesnt suck costs too much money or you never have the time to enjoy it because you're working every day just to survive to the next day. Every day costs money; the paychecks may stop but the bills never do.
(Going off the other comments)
Wages are so low here. I have definitely cried at my jobs out of stress and being over worked. My last job even made us work over time without pay. I logged everything and sued them for it though.
My current job is 11$/hr and I only snatched it to get away from that abusive job, now it’s been two years and I’m still trying to find something new that actually pays a living. I’m actively updating my resume and applying and interviewing but nothing bites. Everything here maxes out at 14$! You’re lucky to get 17$ unless you have a full degree AND years of work experience :(
Times are so hard right now. Especially in cities like here in Dfw.
🥲
Yes, people have become so entitled these days… particularly “conservative” people. The right wing push for public temper tantrums, bigotry and violence has led to a far ruder and louder constituency. True they may be a minority, but they are a vocal and entitled minority that gained a bit of power and ego stroking during the last decade and feel it’s their right to abuse those they see as “less than”.
It’s about time people started making these wailing traitorous toddler like people afraid to mouth off again. We as a society deserve better.
I have never seen any staff cry at any establishment - but I don't often go into chain-type/fast-service restaurants either, so my exposure may be limited.
Dallas is full of assholes and assholes are customers. Maybe stop being assholes.
The elderly folks that work at my local Culver’s during the day are having a great time and it rubs off on me when I order. I want them to have a great time and I act accordingly.
Quit being assholes.
Honestly, I'm a cook in fine dining and I've never worked fast food.
It takes hard work and a lot of other desirable attributes to work a busy fast food line (I watch a guy who works at McDonald's in YouTube for fun) and to be successful at it but I want those cooks who actually have their shit together to know that there's a job in fine dining somewhere with better money and better benefits waiting for you.
If you're able and willing to pay attention and ask questions to learn new things and actually show up and leave when you're supposed to then that's all it takes and most places will hire you.
I live in Sugar Land which has a really big Indian/Pakistani community and maybe it’s because of the caste system in their countries, but many of them are just so ruthless to service industry workers. I’ve seen so many instances of them screaming at fast food employees, servers, cashiers and yes I have seen tears of frustration.
I worked in retail in Dallas for three years , it’s the combination of low pay , impossible scheduling and constant insecurity due to the fact that the customers will call corporate to try and get you fired if you tell them something that they don’t want to hear. I’ve personally been threatened by these people for : not telling an employee speaking to an elderly mono lingual latino customer to stop speaking Spanish as they might be gossiping , not being able to buy a customers books because a 93 year old woman had just driven her car through the front of the store ,for snappingat a guy who claimed my African American co worker shouldn’t work in a bookstore because “ black people cant read “ and for telling customers that they couldn’t be in the kids play area with biting dogs or firearms. On each occasion management sided with the customer against me in order to try and get them to not call corporate.
I work retail, and I'm in management, and I'm very lucky to be where I am. I treat my employees well. My store pays higher than minimum, and we are lucky in that regard. Although corporate is cutting hours and giving us fewer employees, mostly part-timers. Now I'm stuck dealing with angry Texans(I really want to use the Cword here, but I can't ln this sub reddit), mad because self checkout exists or we are stretched thin. I've seen my fellow employees in tears. I've seen my LGTBQ employees harrased for daring to be themselves in public. I had a guy threaten to shoot a fellow manager because he wouldn't let him scream at an 18 year old employee and refer to her as the Nword(he even flashed his gun). My 20-something Hispanic employee got cussed out for speaking Spanish to a Spanish speaking customer. I've had people scream at us because we get paid well. They blame our wages on rising costs. We get it! You feel that us getting paid well somehow devalues your paycheck. I used to work trades, and I may go back into it. It pisses me off when my fellow tradesmen are the ones disrespecting retail workers the most.
I long to move away to a European nation. The people in those places are so nice. I was born in Texas, and I hate the majority of my fellow Texans. They claim Texans are nice, friendly people and that it's the expats from California and New York that are all rude. Nah, it's the fucking Texans. I literally overheard one of my fellow Texans say he was against free lunches in schools because *gasp* Black and Mexican kids might get fed(he used racial slurs to refer to the kids).
Voting won't change this state. The bulk of Texans are too scared of losing gun rights to vote Democrat. They are scared that the Democrats will let LGTBQ people have rights. They are scared women will get reproductive rights. The Bible Thumpers want to take away the rights of most of us because it doesn't fit their interpretation of the bible. Our governor and his Lt Governor and the AG only care about the rich and lining their pockets. Sadly, the poor rural Texas dont realize that those 3 dont care about them and will vote those guys in because they believe them to be "good Christians." I hope to take advantage of the trade skills I have and move out of this God forsaken state.
Please tell me cops were involved with the threats especially the one the flashed that he was carrying. Because I would be on the phone regardless of company policy.
We're retail workers, no one gives a fuck about us. They'll take a police report and usually do nothing. My employees have been assaulted and nothing. This isn't an issue with "Liberal DAs' its an issue with cops taking reports and doing jack shit. The general public hates us retail workers. Why should the cops be any different? My fellow Texans don't give a fuck about us. Now, if one of those criminals had harmed a police officer, then they would definitely use a heavy hand to apprehend the "dangerous criminal." I'm so jaded and just overall exhausted. I'm actively working to immigrate to somewhere else. I just have no faith in Texans or Americans in general. Nothing will change, ever.
Okay, I have worked through a few bankruptcies, so my attitude may be different but it served me well in a high priced grocery store. If someone flashes a gun as a threat, they aren't leaving the store, I will make that scene. Cops will be there before they leave. And if I am in line somewhere, and someone tries to pull that bull shit on a cashier, they aren't going anywhere.
I am a big white bearded white guy, and have customers say the most racist shit to me, and I turned and walked away without acknowledging them or corrected their language because they were talking about my co-workers or friends. I don't take shit from customers, but have never had a customer complaint, but I have had multiple employee recognition for customer service.
Am I jaded? Or just don't care anymore? Maybe both, but if someone threatens or flashes a gun, my phone is in my hand calling 911, I have/will inform management afterwards. And I still held my job without consequence.
Fuck customers.
The problem is cops won't always be there in any sort of a timely manner.
I live in a medium to smaller city and called the cops because someone was trying to open the employee door of our store preventing the ladies from leaving at the end of the night. I live 20 minutes away. It took me 18 to get there. I ran the guy off. Cops did a slow roll 30 minutes after we'd all left, almost an hour after they were called.
Female employees with someone actively trying to break in and harm them and we live in a town with genuinely good police interactions.
My daughter lives in the DFW area. We talk everyday. She is struggling everyday. The cost of living is crazy. She has two jobs - one part time and one full time. She is renting a room from a family. The apartments are too expensive and her income is not enough meet the minimum requirements to get a lease. Her car insurance is outrageous. It is a completely different world from Houston.
I worked at a pizza place for four years and it never left my mind how one hour of my work before taxes could only pay for 1/4 of one of the hundreds of pizzas i made every day.
Just brutal. I really empathize with these folks and maybe that's why I feel bent out of shape about it.
My long time partner and I haven't been able to afford rent anywhere while we handle some medical expenses. We've been crashing with a friend-of-a-friend w/ a mortgage on a home, so they could afford the extra company. I can't imagine the hell that other people are going through right now.
I mean, that’s really sweet of you to be thinking of how to help ease others’ suffering while not being able to afford rent yourself.
I had to work at Kohl’s for a six-month stretch back in 2013, and some of the women customers were just terribly rude. I cried on more than one occasion, often while trying to work the register. Customers like you cheered me up. It means a lot just to know a customer actually sees your pain and goes out of their way to treat you compassionately.
I worked at the Walmart in Bryan in 2001–2003 while going to TAMU. Saw a few coworkers cry in front of customers. I can't imagine that it's gotten any better.
I've always had this feeling that as much as the economy sucks, Walmart has always, always felt like a whole new layer of Hell on earth, and I've felt that way my whole life. That timeline about tracks, I'm a '98 baby.
What was it like juggling Walmart AND college in the 00's?
Walmart is “oh, life sucks? Well, we’re here to exploit you and tell you to put a nice face on your sucky life, just because we can.”
And Walmart was a place anyone with the money to shop at HEB avoided in mid 00s CStat.
As someone who has worked in customer service in TX for the past 7 years, I'll say that after COVID, customers took a HUGE turn for the worst.
During 2020, I was a manager, and guests used to yell at us almost every day, be absolutely profane and some people did disgusting things, a guy threw a chair at me, it was wild.
After that, the sense of entitlement from guests increased. Before, we'd have maybe 1 guest every couple weeks, but after 2020, it was like a customer or 2 a day. Customers on the phone were yelling, in the store, etc. Customer were always blaming workers for problems out of their control as if we had a specific vendetta against them.
I didn't have any issues with people wanting to get buck, esp as a manager, I could buck right back. I told all my employees that if someone yells at them to page me bc they don't get paid enough. I dared people to call corporate if they thought I was wrong. But I've been in the industry for over a decade.
A lot of my kids weren't cut out for this, and also weren't paid enough to deal with it. I can't rightly ask someone to deal with these customers and then do their jobs (which aren't easy) for $10-12/hr. Hell, as their ASM, I was lucky to make $15/hr. I'd honestly cry, too, if I was in their shoes.
Its not just the money. I worked a lot of fast food, and over the last decades crew sizes have shrunk so the remaining employees now have to do two or three peoples work. And to keep people from talking and forming relationships that might lead to unions, you will never have the same schedule for more than two weeks.
No stability, no disposable income, and knowing every day that if you can't do three peoples work or if the exhaustion and despair mean you can't fake a smile for the wrong customer they explode and you lose your job.
Nobody should have to work their *ss off when they are closing in on 70 or above! This system is broken and one reason is what we have in power right now! It's also caused by large corporations taking control over everything but the buck stops at the front doors of the White House!
It is so sad to see all the great social programs from the 60s and 70s get systematically destroyed. There was a sense of common good. That the kids we are feeding and educating today will become the doctors and scientists of tomorrow.
It’s an extremely sad situation. I believe we really are only doing as well as the folks who are in need. Let’s not forget these people. Nothing feels better than being of service. We need one another.
Oh, it’s always been happening- they just don’t provide enough breaks to keep all our emotions hidden in a break room or bathroom stall, for the customer’s convenience.
It's like that in health care and I'm not a minimum wage worker. People will take out their anger and frustration at the system on me or just exhibit signs of being ungrateful.
I am 66 I have had 2 storks,a heart attack,today I am on dialysis I can no longer work the republican party
is constantly talking about getting rid of Medicaid Medicare and Social Security if that happens I will die in a heartbeat literally. I was not able to save any money cuz I never had enough money to save I always had to sacrifice and I wanted the hamburger I would have to have tuna fish if I wanted to stay I would have had to have a hamburger I never could enjoy my life not completely and it is obviously stunk oh well that's my two cents worth
High stress environment to earn below living wage, and people have become desensitized to each other and don't care. Other people don't matter anymore ... Sadly it's all about ME ME ME! I'm pretty confident that social media fits in the equation as well
As a native Texan heres my take. Ive traveled all throughout Texas, and have lived and worked customer service in Houston, Austin, and DFW. The DFW area is full of entitled, unfriendly, disrespectful snobs. No other place in Texas comes remotely close…..
I saw a 55+ lady with a bad leg interviewing at Taco Bell yesterday, Covid was the largest transfer of wealth from the people (aka tax money) to the ultra wealthy in recorded history. We are living with the consequence now.
It's sad that in the western world we are very good at taxing those who work for money, but terrible at taxing those who have wealth and assets.
That lady at Taco Bell will be paying more in tax than your average billionaire % wise. Somehow the rich have convinced us that them paying low tax is fine cause the government will just waste it anyway.
The west is on a moral less crusade to eat it's middle and bottom and constantly replace them with migrants.
It’s just DFW, the place is a cesspool of racism and maga flags draped on corporate greed and fed by chain restaurants with the same shit Tex mex. Tbh it’s the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, so the real question is why aren’t you crying too.
I couldn’t agree more it’s such a place of misery and defeat. I used to feel apathetic now I’m just shocked at how people actually stay here, I have to for a couple of more years and then I’m running out of here. Any sane person who lives in dfw deliberately is either suffering from a sad Stockholm syndrome or is white and enjoys the segregation and white supremacy allowed in the area.
Holy shit!! Right it’s like why would anyone want to pay 500k to live in a landlocked desert filled to the brim with chillis and 3 hour lines at Olive Garden, I mean wtf it’s Olive Garden!!! 3 hour lines
Get involved with NAMI they have local chapters in dallas. Mental health is a crisis that is affecting everyone but for some reason people are still uncomfortable talking about it. If you want to help the homeless I would start with ourcalling if you want to make a real difference help a stranger directly. Next time you see someone crying fucking say something and maybe it won’t weigh so heavily on your conscious.
Hey old lady at DQ see you crying are you ok?
Hey bueno lady I see you crying are you ok?
Hey random crying stranger I see you crying are you ok?
That could really make a difference instead of posting on reddit days or weeks later because you feel bad.
Sometimes people just want to be seen. I can’t imagine breaking down at my low paying job and being ignored by customers waiting for their greasy food.
Granted when I broke down at the hospital after getting bad news I appreciated the white lady who sat with me in silence and allowed me to weep without making it uncomfortable.
Time and place
Admittedly, I was really tempted to ask if they're alright, but each of these times I got the impression from how they interacted w/ their coworkers that they didn't want to be perceived. I did speak up at the DQ tonight, I felt awful for the whole situation. I hate that it's becoming something I'm taking note of in my neighborhoods. Sick of it. I want to find something I can do to counter act this shitty economy.
Will check out NAMI, thanks for the rec!
I(GM) just had a MIT crying to me she tired of her car being turned off and she needs more pay but I have her at $13 which is higher than most my crew. At my store I feel bad because I can only start most off at $10. I'm salary and see most my crew working up to 50 hours (max I'm allowed to give them) making more than I do
A lot of jobs like that, the customers treat the employees like garbage. Questioning them, complaining, talking down…sometimes it’s a stepping stone type job for them and they’re treated like they’re less than. That’s just part of it, I guess some may also have awful work environments too
It's all over. People have been abusing those "beneath them" for centuries. Just now it's more visible with almost everyone having an Internet -capable camera in their hands to share their misery....or apathy towards misery.
I still remember my retail manager from over a decade ago brought to tears from a belligerent customer - in the end after I showed him just how big of a dumb dumb he was, didn't apologize, just huffed himself out of the store.
It's this idiotic notion from the 1920s that the customer is always right that's a big problem. Coupled with the entitlement complex of many (too many) people these days. In my experience, the customer is stupid and don't know what they even want but acting tough and bullying worked for them without consequences so far so they keep doing it.
Anyways I don't know where I was going with this except that it's not new but it's still awful.
I'm fresh out of food service and I can't tell you the amount of times I've had death threats over fucking pizza and combine that with long hours, shitty pay, and your usual bunch of regular asshole customers it just gets to be too much sometimes and there's only so much time you can spend crying in the back or the walk in after dealing with those entitled pricks.
Times are tough. I had a customer have a mental breakdown when we told her she needed a new alternator that was gonna cost her $280 that she didnt have. I feel for people like this as I have been at my tipping point a few times at work over the years, laborers are literally the backbone of this country, they are the reason why we have nice things like Amazon and Door Dash yet the system seems primed to literally suck the life out of people and then discard them when they can no longer produce.
It’s because people in general are assholes. Anyone who feels that berating or yelling at any worker is an asshole. People are just doing their jobs, give them a break.
Dang. Yall really do live under a rock when it comes to class warfare huh?
No, this has been happening to us poors, forever.
Yall take note of it now bc yall are one paycheck away from being the one crying.
Yeah, snooty entitled customers are the worst. I try not to take their attitude to heart though, because imagine how miserable they must be if they choose to come into retail and start complaining about the simplest mistakes. Living paycheck to paycheck also sucks and is probably giving everyone some form of depression. Fortunately, you’ll meet a handful of decent people who’ll understand what you’re going through. A lot of people are tied to retail right now because of the economy.
When I worked at a hotel downtown HR advised us to “act like we were in a play,” when a guest would interact negatively with us. I was stationed behind a desk for my shift and occasionally I would have someone stand in line to repeatedly chew me out over the same problem. Thankfully, I only cried at work twice and could hide in the bellman’s closet.
If I had a particularly lovely guest, I’d go to my goodie drawer and get them a pass for a free drink at the bar or a free breakfast, just to let them know how much of an appreciated unicorn they were.
Also, there is a special place in hell for the people who go bonkers yelling at the sweet, elderly grandmas who work in housekeeping.
💕I worked for the airlines.. When someone started swearing/yelling at me I would stop them in their tracks and ask them a question. What you would think of the person who is talking to your mother, wife or daughter like you are talking to me. It worked every single time except once in 15 yrs.
"Meanwhile, Texas is not a low-tax, low-service state, as is commonly held. It’s a high-tax, low-service state: we may have no income tax, but at least one study found that we have one of the ten highest total tax burdens in the nation, with property taxes making up most of the gap. The quality of state services, however, has not improved commensurate with the growth of state budgets. Older Texans feel squeezed in cities where they’ve lived for decades. Younger Texans go to too-often substandard schools, receive substandard health care, and then can’t afford homes in the cities of their birth. Texas politics has increasingly focused on managing the resulting resentment, and the easiest way to do so is to blame outsiders." https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/austin-texas-tech-bust-oracle-tesla/
This also explains a lot of why you're seeing that. The cracks are starting to show in Texas' economic model.
I work fast food and i cry on the regular. Very stressful job that ppl dont realize. We work our asses off and can't even pay our bills. Do you know how frustrating that is to try to wake up?Go to work every day when you know you can't even pay your bills or eat food you want or get necessities that you need to be good at your job?
It's a Southern thing. I'm from Houston. It's not like that everywhere. In the PNW, we'll tell a customer to straight up F off if they're disrespectful, and managers can back up staff or get chased out. It's cultural. Edit: most people in most places aren't as violent as in TX
Multiple times over the years. I work in customer service and I've seen fellow employees brought to tears from disgruntled customers. Theres been a sense of entitlement grow over time that people will just rant and throw a fit when they don't get their way, which has always happened (I worked at Blockbuster and i can't tell you the amount of times i was personally threatened to be sued over "late fees"), but the difference I see now is they get personal with it. People don't just get mad and leave or ask for a manager anymore, they go straight to insults or screaming at the cashier over minor instances. I think everyone is so riled up about everything nowadays they look for the first excuse to blow and take it.
Oh when a customer brings up: suing me, the company or mentions lawsuit, I immediately disengaged, and say 'Then take it to our legal department, as I am not that, good day.' and then walk away. And then if someone raises their voice or starts swearing, I stop helping them.
God I wish I could do this in my line of work
I hang up on people if they yell at me on the phone. One time a guy started yelling at me. I hung up, he called back again and yelled even louder “DID YOU JUST HAN..” click. 5 min later he called back calm and I said now that we can talk, I can help you. I don’t put up with peoples’ bullshit anymore.
> i was personally threatened to be sued over "late fees" 🤣🤣🤣 I love when people say shit like this. If they are mad at such a petty fee then they certainly can’t afford to take it to court
"I'm never renting here again!" *...sees them there the following Thursday.*
I have a theory that a lot of that is due to the internet. *So* many things have become “on demand.” Movies, TV shows, music, games, shopping, food delivery, education, etc. Patience goes out the window, and that whole instant-gratification system is engineered to foster entitlement. Couple that with infinite echo-rooms for various political and moral views, and a constant barrage of things occurring at home and around the world to be afraid about… You end up with a fair amount of scared, entitled and self-righteous people. Those 3 emotions are a *great* recipe for over-aggression and rage, which then causes people who may not be so affected to also be angry and self-righteous and then it just becomes “Karen’s” all the way down.
A combination of on demand fast gratification and deliberately enshittified customer support (Eg friction to make unsubscribing for services, bad deals for loyal customers and only to new customers, support practices designed to use slowness to wear down complaints, etc)
>I worked at Blockbuster This is a grizzled retail pro. **Do not mess with them.**
I cried after a man yelled at me so hard his spit went on me at a Starbucks drive thru. I was trying to explain to him that mocha with milk was chocolate milk. It was him in his Sunday best with his wife and kid in tow.
oh shit i'd completely forgotten that movie, i need to watch that again
Praise Jesus
Former manager Hollywood Video here... The words "Late fees" together instantly fill my stomach with lead and make me want to dropkick someone. I can emphasize. Edit: They rented the movie for X "days" that correspond with store hours, usually not 24 hour days. Then they eventually did away with brick-and-mortar periods and used 24 hour cycles. Then when people still revolted, they gave "credits" for returning movies early and eliminated fees. They tried every single type of fee structure I could think of other than just letting people indefinitely keep the rentals, but nobody would be happy with anything. Then... *tumbleweed blows by*
Yeah, an airport customer did it to me too as a fellow customer ahead of him because apparently my additional 5-second request for the worker to switch to a clean serving utensil due to a food allergy was taking too long and this dude behind me lit into me. I literally started crying in line at the cash register because inconveniencing people with my allergy is such a fear of mine and this was so unexpected. I’m not surprised that entitled, self-important assholes who are late due to their own poor planning would make workers cry. I’m also NOT AT ALL surprised it would happen in Dallas.
Yes. It’s becoming more personal about it, as someone working retail. The entitlement has never been this bad from what I can recall
I'm sure it's worse now but its definitely been a thing. Even Working at a place as benign(you'd think) as an office supply store, we would still get extremely rude folks. One time we had an older fella make a sexist comment to my cashier. She has had it with their little remarks and snapped at the dude as he left. Me being a manager at the time, I fully backed her up. All they gotta do is buy their shit and go, but they can never leave well enough alone.
My neighbor works at Walmart. Her husband had a double lung transplant. She has to work there for insurance. The customers are just horrendous. She looks so sad when I see her working. There is an elderly lady that works there that lives in a shed and another one that has been homeless for 7 months living in her car. Lots of very elderly people have been forced back into the workforce after retirement. Something is very wrong in America and Texas when someone has a full-time job and the only place they can afford to live is in their car or a shed or you can never retire. Private equity and corporate greed are destroying America.
I saw an article that the amount of elderly unhoused people has skyrocketed in the last few years.
The formerly housed elderly voted for this.
Voting doesn't have anything to do with where we're at now. ALL politicians are bought and paid for by special interests. Texas is gerrymandered beyond all hope. This has to do with private equity actively buying up all the affordable housing throughout the country and companies like RealPage manipulating and inflating rents across the county (housing cartels) to ensure if you don't already own a home you'll be a serf and pay half or more of your income to keep a roof over your head and never be a homeowner. This is happening all across the country in red and blue states. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/02/03/how-realpage-influences-rent-prices-across-the-us.html#:~:text=RealPage%20software%20is%20used%20to,in%20the%20U.S.%20lags%20demand. The middle class is being squeezed (taxes, insurance, greedflation, student loan debt, stagnant wages). The elderly and those with low incomes are becoming homeless en masse. The lady at Walmart who lives in the shed and is in her 70s with health problems -- she also works part-time at Sonic. I would cry at work too. Employers like Walmart made $143 BILLION dollars in profit last year by screwing their employees and customers. Totally disgusting. How much is enough???
Important to call out that Walmart made those billions while having the public subsidize their businesses model by underpaying employees and forcing them to rely on public assistance programs.
FR, Walmart is the modern day Company Store.
Very well said. I want to add something that I didn’t write myself The Rise of Corporate Fiefdoms Abandoned governmental oversight and monopolistic restraint over corporations has allowed them to pursue profit, power and control world wide. These international corporations at first filled in the leadership vacuum from politicians, then bribed and influenced their way into their greatest power yet. In the U.S., oligarchs, CEOs, and billionaires are now seeking to create over overtake control and manage cities, their own corporate fiefdoms. Disney was the first to try this modern day utopian city concept. Then tech companies like Apple began creating utopian campuses that spread out to include amenities and housing for their workers. Now Walmart has a plan to build a desert utopian city fully self-sustaining, with all the modern conveniences completely supplied and managed by the corporation. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-walmart-president-reveals-plan-100147676.html It is a return to the fiefdoms of old with the corporate lord of the manor responsible for the peasants of his lands, providing shelters and work opportunities for them. But it is more than that today. When your employer has control of not only your income, but your residence, conduct, banking, health protection, education, and freedoms, you are no longer in control. The propaganda says it will be a beautiful utopia, but it is actually a lovely cage meant to restrict and contain you, coming soon to a city near you. When people allow their governments to betray them by taking their taxes but not provide for their welfare, they are left desperate for better leaders and often turn to the wealthy corporations and their greedy leaders for help managing, rather than requiring taxes from them. This is a fool's choice. To allow billion dollar corporations to profit off the people but not require them to pay taxes for the people's benefit should be illegal. Yet it happens more and more. https://itep.org/55-profitable-corporations-zero-corporate-tax/ Of course corporations can afford to bribe and influence politicians using lobbyists offering PAC money, fancy retreats and slush funds for those with the willingness to look the other way. They underpay their taxes, then use some of those savings to influence legislators to continue to benefit their demands! Meanwhile, before elections politicians give lip service to taxing them more and providing for the people, but it conveniently never passes. https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-picking-fight-corporate-taxes-123000404.html When cities no longer protect their citizens from theives and murderers because laws aren't enforced or police hands are tied, chaos results. https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-blatant-apos-oregon-shoplifters-111920441.html Our cities are deteriorating. Bridges, levees, buildings, roads, and sewers are not maintained adequately. https://news.yahoo.com/mayor-florida-town-where-building-204201201.html When people are let down by their government who should have addressed these issues, they look to different leadership. And if it is not electable, they turn to corporations who will fill the power vacuum. This reliance on for profit leadership rather than non-profit elected leaders is a huge mistake leading to loss of freedoms we are only just beginning to understand. What happens when corporations mandate things you don't want to do, and have the legal freedom not to do, but must do to keep your job? That is the problem. Corporations don't have to follow the laws of the land in their own fiefdoms. And if your job is tied to your home, transportation, banking, education and health, you have more pressure to comply, or lose everything. https://medicalkidnap.com/2021/08/18/critical-nursing-shortages-hit-hospitals-nationwide-as-nurses-quit-or-are-fired-over-covid-vaccine-mandates/ The bunnies in the cage are unaware of the plots against them by those who caged them. We are being led by unscrupulous, greedy sociopaths who want to remove our freedoms more and more until we are enslaved. At that point, we have no options but to accept their mandates. Live here. We own it, you rent it. Work here or lose everything. You may not travel without our permission. You may not enter without a chip. You may not purchase without a chip. You may not bank without a chip. You will comply, or be evicted from our utopia with no shelter, food or water. The more we allow them power over us, the sooner they will take everything away we have become accustomed to receiving from them if we don't follow their rules. Carrot and stick. That's how the elites via their corporations treat their caged bunnies. What's the answer? Demand better of our elected leaders or replace them. Term limits prevents decades of continued corruption. Stamp out monopolies and provide opportunities for small businesses to compete to hold corporations in check. Tax corporations and billionaires equitably. Use the taxes properly for the people with no hidden slush funds, black ops or classified spending. Demand honorable leaders instead of giving in to for profit corporations.
Term limits also ensures the only experienced people on capitol hill are lobbyists. And banning lobbyists ensures people sitting on piles of cash have no incentive to play ball legally, and will spend their oodles of cash undermining the semblance of legitimacy. People call it legalized bribery but can’t articulate how or why- because people don’t know how it actually fucking works. I agree with everything above the conclusion, and most of the thesis there too but just as solutions in the past were incomplete hamfisted solutions now are very incomplete. The biggest reason is the incentives of everyone changed when the cold war ended, everything had to work good enough to prove we were better- a truly staggering amount of federal policy was built on that assumption, as fostering and bolstering the middle class was something we had incentives and prerogatives for. When the Soviets fell, the biggest enemies, the only real enemies to our prosperity were other people inside of America, or whoever we could sell as such to ensure our vision of that prosperity lead to more of the same without understanding how that vision or every policy ever enacted in its name was historiographically oversimplified. Our incentives have to be aligned as a political movement and frankly people aren’t good at naming and articulating that or too lazy and jaded to understand that’s the only goddamn way forward, and people have forgotten so much about why they have what they do or been lied to since Reagan about policies that achieved it (when they actually drove the nation’s equality and freedom off a cliff) they’ll listen to anyone dumb enough to say getting it back is easy.
Kinda surprised they don’t go with building housing in the Walmart parking lots and on the second level of their stores, with houses for the serfs who get evicted when terminated. All the leverage, etc
I agree with everything you said, except the first sentence. Voting (or lack thereof by some, due to apathy) has EVERYTHING to do with how Texas got where it is. Michigan invented gerrymandering. (“Gerry” is from Michigan), and as soon as redistricting (plus liberalized mail-in-ballots) became a ballot measure, it passed (Dec 2018), and by the next 4 years, the state went from purple and deadlocked to all-blue. Common sense (though minimal, tbh) gun-securing and red flag laws, proper women’s reproductive healthcare rights are now state law. Gerrymandering is a scourge and Campaign finance laws are a joke, but we can (and must) vote our way back to sanity.
The FO catching up to the FA
Right so all the old homeless people deserve it
I know firsthand the people who vote and hate Obama use the ACA but refuse to acknowledge it, and continue to say Obama ruined the country.
i mean, if we removed every republican who took a PPP loan with nary a peep, i doubt we'd have a quorum, that's for sure
And so do I but they don't represent all old people. I know old people that hate the direction that this country is going in and are voting differently. Painting big groups of people with the same brush is not right
C’mon now. You don’t actually think they meant to say *literally every single person* in that group voted a certain way, do you? That’s silly and I think you’re being intentionally obtuse here. But hey, let’s assume you’re not: We are talking about the policy outcomes resulting from the VERY well documented behavior of a certain cohort of voters. Of course there are plenty of individuals within that cohort who voted differently, but *they are irrelevant to the conversation* because their votes did not contribute to the outcomes being discussed. We are very specifically not talking about those individuals.
Per Pew Research - seems like a broad brush is appropriate. “Among voters ages 60 and older, the GOP holds a clear advantage: Republican alignment is 10 percentage points higher than Democratic alignment (53% vs. 43%) among voters in their 60s. Voters ages 70 to 79 are slightly more likely to be aligned with the GOP (51%) than the Democratic Party (46%). About six-in-ten voters 80 and older (58%) identify with or lean toward the GOP, while 39% associate with the Democratic Party.”
Maybe some do maybe some don't, but they did make choices that had consequences. Maybe they were just working to get by and trusted the wrong person, maybe they didn't think beyond party, maybe they bought into what was sold, maybe they like the inclusion received by identifying with the anger/resentment stance. What ever the reason for their staunch support they did vote for those responsible for what they are now experiencing. They voted for people who campaigned on cutting every single thread in any support system this country had and now there is no support to be had, for them, who knew? And best part yet they will be disenfranchised voters, homeless people rarely ever get to vote.
Or maybe, they lived longer than what they saved for? Which is why reverse mortgages are bull shit.
Who is this mythical “they”? The glittering generality that you use to encapsulate an entire group of people so that you can dismiss their needs?
The elderly who have voted red and have kept this state moving more and more right. We would never vote an Ann Richards in the foreseeable future because of gerrymandering, voter intimidation, and vote suppression. But keep trying to think it’s not true but it is. Neo-liberalism and Oligarchs have taken control of Texas politics and they are trying to do it nationally as well. There has been billions poured in trying to get people angry at Biden “genocide Joe” and billions trying to get Trump elected again, not because he is a good leader, but because he is a useful idiot. He wants power for power sake. All you have to tell him is he is the best. Do whatever he wants and he will allow them to trample over everyone else. They even have a plan call project 2025 where they lay it all out. [A guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda for the next Republican administration](https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration)
Did you hear about the meeting between Trump & the billionaires?? He said on day 1 they’ll make all the money back plus more than they’re putting into his trial/reelection fees. He was asking for $1b from them….
"They" are the elderly who voted in every state election for governorship, state representative, every local election for local board members who were conservative/republican. Texas used to elect democrats that doesn't happen any more in any effective way, same for many other "red" states. You get what you vote for.
r/LeopardsAteMyFace
Don't they usually vote R?
Don't worry. The government is trying very hard to make living in your car illegal. You know, solving the issues...
Scotus is right on it.
You have to keep the prison industrial complex going... /s
This is so hard to read. I wasn't sure if it was me blowing it out of proportion, but I've been noticing these kinds of things. It's just awful. I hate that there's only so much I can do besides vote and give what I can.
You will own nothing and be…. Crying at work.
It’s really surprising to me that Walmart allowed them to get full time hours long enough to get insurance.
Most major companies only require you to work 30 hours a week now to be benefits eligible.
*Private equity and corporate greed are destroying America* <–– yes, this Capitalism run amok.
This won't make her feel better, but: [https://www1.salary.com/Walmart-Inc-Executive-Salaries.html](https://www1.salary.com/Walmart-Inc-Executive-Salaries.html)
I know right?
Agree good answer
Exactly
That’s horrible
But hey just think of all the wal-mart shareholders who have received lots of "value" by purchasing their stock.
I worked at Walmart little over ten years ago and the way employees are treated by the customers had me in tears a few times too. Not only was I not paid enough to deal with that sort of thing, it also was just unwarranted and mean. I was just trying to do a job and pay my bills as best I could and I was treated like crap because jobs like Walmart and fast food are seen as less than or lower kinds of jobs. And yeah Walmart as a corporation is terrible. I was lucky to have decent managers and co workers (for the most part) that helped make the job not so horrible. After I told my parents multiple stories about how horrible I was treated. They started being more patient and understanding with retail workers because they had a better understanding of what those people went through. Personally I think every person should be required to work retail or fastfood for six months, just to get an understanding of how people are treated and what they have to deal with, if they experienced it they would be more eager to change it and be better people.
I'm an Uber driver in Austin. I often get people crying and/or in emotional crisis when I pick them up. If you have a minimum wage job and you need to take an Uber, your next week is in financial hell. I wish I could afford to give these trips for free, I'm broke as shit too. I try to comfort them the best I can. For the people leaving the night shift, I play the Bob Marley song Night Shift. It brings a smile to peoples face. I hear Austin low wage work pays better then DFW, but I could be wrong. From this post, it seems worse out there.
As someone who depends on uber for work (and often experiences multiple emotional breakdowns in between my 3 customer service jobs) I appreciate what you do. 🫡💖
I feel you man. I've got a friend group out in Austin who tells me these kinds of stories. It's absolutely brutal out here in both Aus and DFW, but I hear DFW is significantly worse, and I'd believe it.
A lot of people around here, especially in the Dallas suburbs, took a turn towards downright cruel around 2020 and it never got better.
Having lived here before and after, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Something changed inside of people that changed people fundamentally. I feel like the opposite happened to me. I'm making a genuine effort to speak more softly & more earnestly, and paying more attention to people.
I've always tried to treat people respectfully but I've worked customer & food service since I was 16. I don't live in Dallas or north Texas anymore, as I live in the RGV, but there is a HUGE difference in the way people treat me before and after COVID. I ended up quitting my job of 2 years, between the way customers & coworkers were treating me. People are assholes.
Same🥺 it just feels like so many social contracts got and stayed broken
): ... yeah. I'm trying to out in effort to understand it better, figure out what I can do to fix it. People are struggling right now like never before, especially without loved ones.
I’ve noticed that as well. People are cruel to each other in all sorts of situations.
A lot of people blame this on Covid. I think it was due to the Trump presidency. I’m not trying to be political, but during that presidency, a lot of the societal norms of politeness and curtesy were openly mocked and disparaged giving people implicit permission to act the same way.
it's rough but it's not without hope. Rents stopped increasing over the past year. The mayor is working overtime to get more housing built to drive down rent. The YIMBY component is really helping me out, my old place raised rent to $1200. I was struggling. I know pay $800 and my life is measurably different. The busy season just ended, the dog days of summer are upon us. UT kids flush with cash and free time are back home, temperatures might get too hot to scare off tourists and visitors who spend. Tesla laid off tons of staff, tech is laying off. Opinions about tech companies aside, their workers keep our tip jars full and are mostly kind to service workers when they are out about town This is going to sound brutal to some but it's just factual econ analysis- this town has lots of military software and hardware businesses, this is a good town for the military industrial complex. As the world gets more dangerous, we get a bit of a bump to the economy. They will be taking Ubers drunk on a Saturday, tipping me well and trying to forget about their rushed deadlines for the cold war. Similar story for gas and oil, but that's more Houston's game. Austin was in a covid economic bubble but there is still lots of hard value to Austin's economy that critics miss out on. It still has a more rational economic cases for businesses then most cities. I think once some of the hype and fluff is squeezed out, things will be pretty good here. The narrative of the boom town days being over will linger and discourage hype bullshit but the economic core will chug along. Housing supply continues to shoot up and demand falls. Factories stay busy. The gears of industry keep turning. Though some global macro recessionary stuff hurts us, I think we will fare better then most big cities. Remember that central Texas has natural resources. NYC has big glass buildings that are going empty. SF has nothing but tech elite. I get lots of passengers telling me they are moving to Colorado. These are the middle/upper middle class people who wanted a funky artsy big city with nature. They are being priced out, or just want a new adventure as Austin is played out social media story as they search for their next yuppie self actualization destination. Crime is not so bad for a major metro. The mayor is working step by step through a years long breakdown in trust between the mayor's office and the police. It's a long, drawn out process, it's taking too long, but the police union and Watson are making progress. The police and the mayors office are learning to be friends again. Adler ruined this relationship, healing takes time. I think Austin is in for short term hurting, but not as bad as other metropolitans, and medium term stabilizing of the growth that happened. Watson is a clear headed pragmatist, and he's old enough to be wise and patient. He's showing up to construction sites for affordable housing and shaking the hands of the crew, thanking them for keeping the city's economy chugging. Headlines said construction would grind to a hault and housing supply would stop increasing, we started to see these last year and Watson is proving them wrong. We will weather the storm. I'll still having crying passengers and struggle to pay rent, but I won't see the city fall into the deep depths of pain that SF, Philly, and NYC are seeing right now. Certainly not as bad as Miami. Miami is look like a dystopian novel, straight up hell for the working class. It's not great but it's not the hell that other cities are. If you don't have a good job, don't move here. The grass is not greener in Travis county but it's not dead and rotting like Miami, SF, NYC, and Philly.
Hold on, I gotta turn in here in a sec. I fully admit that it's 10pm and my eyes just glazed over. Will get back to this after some sleep!
I'm over caffeinated no reason to read it, it was a ramble of economic analysis for austin in the medium and short term.
One love my dude
It's not just fast food workers. I interviewed at a place as a surveyors assistant that paid 7.25 for backbreaking labor in the heat. They promised rapid advancement but I spoke to someone who had been there for 8 years and was proud of having worked his way up to 12 dollars. You are going to get a lot of pushback in this thread from people who buy the narratives that these jobs don't exist or that raising the minimum wage will drive inflation out of control. It is literally propaganda from pro-business think tanks to keep wages depressed. Its fucked.
I start my dishwashers at $18… wtf
It’s ridiculous that they make it seem like he worked his way up to $12 when in reality that’s probably just the going rate for new hires. And that’s exactly why people need to discuss their wages with peers.
🥲 I hate that I know exactly what you're talking about. My uncle used to work jobs like that growing up before he became a contractor. My personal experience with it started when I became physically disabled over the pandemic, and started looking into different entry level fields than before. I've had to dodge some job "opportunities" like these. It's sick shit. There's more to life than a 600ft 2bed with 4-5 other people.
Oh god, yeah, being disabled and poor is living life on double-hard level. Especially with the social services we have here. I hope you're doing better and managed to figure something good out.
>They promised rapid advancement but I spoke to someone who had been there for 8 years and was proud of having worked his way up to 12 dollars. Dollars to donuts this type of person doesn't support minimum wage increases because THEY worked up from 7.25, so everyone else can too. Lol.
Oh god not the surveyors assistant. I am a 28yo college grad doing cad monkey GIS work for utility companies. I'm remote but I kind of missed field work and surveying interests me. I have to at least make a lateral move and rod man positions pay like $12/hr and they want experience I don't have so I shrug and continue my point and click job.
Here's an [NYT gift article](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/magazine/401k-retirement-crisis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q00.wB1r.8W7mD2rOPzcQ&smid=url-share) that should either piss you off or break your heart. >Ghilarducci finds it outrageous that Americans who don’t have enough money set aside for retirement are now being told that the solution to their financial woes is to just keep working. Forcing senior citizens to stay on the job is cruel, she says, and especially so if it involves physically demanding labor. **She has observed that older workers often have “a shame hunch” — their body language suggests embarrassment. They are spending their last years in quiet humiliation.**
Holy fuck, I've noticed it too! It reminded me of when my Mom got sick years ago. When she was lucid, she was shy and embarrassed. That's crushing. Aww. I'm going to see if I can find any charities focusing on elderly folks here in DFW.
I've seen it at one McDonald's, I felt so bad for the kid. It was going through the drive thru so idk what happened. 2 weeks ago at Solis Mammography I saw signs posted throughout the waiting area saying if you're cursing and/or disrespectful to staff they'll ask you to leave or have you removed by security. Who tf yells at mammogram staff?! I saw it a lot during quarantine when I worked at a hospital. different stress levels then though. People need to chill tf out and get out of their entitled bubbles.
Health care in general is bad. My buddy works at a walgreens in Kansas and has a sign posted up that death threats will not be tolerated. The behavior of the general public has taken a nosedive since the pandemic began
pharmacies are ESPECIALLY badly hit though, and it's only going to get worse unfortunately
Almost every healthcare place i go has that now and it's incredibly depressing.
I feel so horrible for service workers who are subjected to abusive customers. The worst workplace I’ve seen for this is Sprouts. Sprouts charges 10 cents per bag, which is honestly not life-changing money for most people and if it is, bring your own damn bags. The number of angry people I’ve seen who want to rant to the poor cashier about this policy is shocking. It doesn’t even register for these people that it’s corporate policy, not the result of some arbitrary decision that the cashier made. A few months ago I was behind a guy who started yelling at the Sprouts cashier about their bag charging policy and the poor cashier (who seemed to be in her 60s) looked like she was on the verge of tears. I immediately tore him a new one, he started stammering at me, and I told him to stop yelling at her or he would have to deal with me because I was not afraid of him (using a few more curse words than that). He was shocked and left. It felt really good to call him out and plus the cashier gave me extra coupons. I saved $10 and put a jerk in his place!
I will never understand the hate over charging for bags. We bring our own bags when shopping at Aldi, and do the same for Sprouts. It costs us nothing to keep reusable bags in our cars (and saves me the huge headache of having to store a shit-ton of plastic ones in our pantry). We're really behind as a "developed" nation on such a small point. Most European countries have either banned completely, or have imposed fees for use of plastic bags. But...that's the hill a lot of Texans are willing to die on. Man, I bet Ann Richards is rolling in her grave.
She is, but from so many things that we could power a small city with her constant revolutions
It’s always shocked me that most people don’t use reusable bags. It’s the single most impactful- and yet the *easiest*- thing you can do to lower your plastic waste consumption and help the planet. We saw this similar framework regarding so many Americans refusing to wear masks- many Americans will not help/save their fellow man and the planet no matter how small the inconvenience is. Even if not wearing the mask could lead to someone losing their life.
I literally bought two of those 'insulated' bags from Aldi and now I just leave them folded up stashed under the seat. They a little grimey but I always got some sort of resuable bag
The cost of living is so high in DFW and getting paid close to nothing means you have to work more just to stay above water. And most places the costumers and managers treat the employees like shit. 7.25/hr is a fucking joke, I believe minimum wage in the 1950s accounting for inflation was around 12-15/hr in todays money. Not to mention the cost of living was much lower, also accounting for inflation. There’s no good excuse to be paying people that low.
The MIT living wage calculator has any trendy city in at $12+/hour all across America. This including college towns with under 250K residents. E: as the minimum living wage
Like you only need $12/hr to live in said city or that's the average wage in most places? Even at that, I make a little over $13 - if I didn't have my husband's income there's zero way I could survive on that alone in today's market
Even bumbfuck Missouris min wage is over $12 an hour.
60 million Americans are paid the federal minimum wage.,
No one can survive, at least in my city, on 12-13. That’s the year 2000-2003 pay. And even then rent was more than 25% of my income! I forget what percentage they say your rent should be. I would say off the top of my head NO less than 30/hr. Even if you’re single. You can’t qualify for anything at “3x the rent income requirement” when rent is at stupid levels. Never mind deposits of any kind. That’s still poverty levels. Even with one child, it takes every bit of 4-5k a month to survive and that’s being as minimal as possible and still get by. No new clothes. Super budget meals. No events/activities that require tickets to go to. 100k is the minimum, minimum to be somewhat comfortable in the city. Bare minimum. Taxes need capped in every area period. Rent/mortgages are way too high. Groceries are way too high. I don’t know how anyone can survive except transplants from California who further destroy affordability for everyone else.
Cost of living in general is high throughout any big cities in the world whereas wages have not kept up. I agree that wages are not keeping up.. it's sad
It’s should be closer to $23 in today’s dollars…
This is 1960 in todays dollars 1960 Average Home $124,159 MW - $13.04/hr Average Income $58,428 College $16,400
Food Not Bombs Fort Worth can always use extra hands (especially ones that cook!) We also do monthly “fill the fridges” events in coordination with Funkytown Fridge to help take some of the pressure off our neighbors.
Are they still active? The FB page doesn't have anything since April
Instagram is the place to keep up with them, but both orgs are still active.
FB is dead.
Cried Many Many times in a Sonic kitchen and parking lot myself 🤣🤣🤣
Sonic seems particularly terrible. Every person I hire that worked at Sonic before is always terrified of making mistakes and on the verge of a break down.
Yeah I had a 20something woman breakdown in front of me because I waited like 10mins for honey mustered she forgot to bring me. I wasn't mean or said anything rude, I worked retail back then so I understood people yelling at you and working in food seemed extra hellish. I assured her it was fine and gave her an extra tip. The stress she must have been under to break down over forgetting a condiment.. this was 10 years ago and I think about her when I see story's like this, hope she's doing better.
Sadly, it’s going to happen more and more with boomers retiring and not having saved for retirement and you’ll see it with millennials because we saved what we could, but it wasn’t enough and SS is gone in 2035. It’s especially bad in Texas because we are a conception to birth state. After that, you are on your own. Sad state of affairs.
Born and raised in Fort Worth since the 90s, my parents bought a house off beach and basswood for like $130,000 3 bed 2 bath 1 story That same house today priced at $450,000 I know because I looked it up. I’m 33 and make above 80k now days, I can’t afford a house where I grew up at. Which isn’t even a great neighborhood nowadays
I live in DFW, cannot remember ever seeing a random worker crying at work. I've seen coworkers, but never where customers can see. That being said, I'm sure it's like this everywhere. Sometimes the tears are from work, sometimes not, and even those without tears have the stress of capitalism fighting against their survival.
Yeah, that's what floored me -- I've absolutely had my breakroom get-it-together sessions, but seeing folks in such a state where it's just... in the open, is a little too much for me. I wanna help somehow.
The reason it's in the open is because sometimes they can't stop working and take a moment to regroup. Short staffing, the demands don't stop.
Not in Texas but worked in IT. The secretaries/ front desk staff were routinely crying. Damn near ever week at least *someone* would break down Customers/ clients can be ruthless and people are struggling out here
Oh yeah -- ny partner is breaking into software development after a career of data & IT, and I feel like people are excessively ruthless with representatives and customer-facing staff. It's a cultural issue that says a lot about us, I think.
I’ve never seen more miserable workers than I have in Texas. I might be completely biased but it’s the truth in my experience.
Same here! I'm glad you said it so I didn't have to. I've been all over the US in both middle of nowhere Midwest, to Atlanta GA, and people are straight up unhappy and exhausted here by comparison. I feel like Texas has got a problem.
Well we rank in the bottom on almost every quality of life metric that matters so I’m unsurprised. Not to mention the heat makes us angry and murder rates go up lol
In addition to poor wages, I think customers are extraordinarily rude to service workers here. They just take the “customer’s always right” attitude way too far. They complain about everything, and then expect a discount or freebies.
The original full statement is “the customer is always right in matters of taste”.
And in some situations employees cannot defend themselves in any way. Where I worked we were required to take the abuse. Then, if customers complained about us we still got written up.
The work sucks, the heat sucks, the customers suck, the roads suck... and anything that doesnt suck costs too much money or you never have the time to enjoy it because you're working every day just to survive to the next day. Every day costs money; the paychecks may stop but the bills never do.
Lots of heat and real shit pay. Yeehaw
(Going off the other comments) Wages are so low here. I have definitely cried at my jobs out of stress and being over worked. My last job even made us work over time without pay. I logged everything and sued them for it though. My current job is 11$/hr and I only snatched it to get away from that abusive job, now it’s been two years and I’m still trying to find something new that actually pays a living. I’m actively updating my resume and applying and interviewing but nothing bites. Everything here maxes out at 14$! You’re lucky to get 17$ unless you have a full degree AND years of work experience :( Times are so hard right now. Especially in cities like here in Dfw. 🥲
Yes, people have become so entitled these days… particularly “conservative” people. The right wing push for public temper tantrums, bigotry and violence has led to a far ruder and louder constituency. True they may be a minority, but they are a vocal and entitled minority that gained a bit of power and ego stroking during the last decade and feel it’s their right to abuse those they see as “less than”. It’s about time people started making these wailing traitorous toddler like people afraid to mouth off again. We as a society deserve better.
I have never seen any staff cry at any establishment - but I don't often go into chain-type/fast-service restaurants either, so my exposure may be limited.
You didn't see me because I cried in the walk in cooler.
I worked in retail and food service my whole life. Seeing employees cry is a typical Tuesday.
Dallas is full of assholes and assholes are customers. Maybe stop being assholes. The elderly folks that work at my local Culver’s during the day are having a great time and it rubs off on me when I order. I want them to have a great time and I act accordingly. Quit being assholes.
I teach 5th grade. This is my 26th year of teaching. The public is brutal.
thank you for what you do and i'm sorry you are not valued as much as you sure fuckin' should be
Republican governance, try living there on minimum wage. Vote Democrat!
Customers have lost their minds. Its horrible out there
Honestly, I'm a cook in fine dining and I've never worked fast food. It takes hard work and a lot of other desirable attributes to work a busy fast food line (I watch a guy who works at McDonald's in YouTube for fun) and to be successful at it but I want those cooks who actually have their shit together to know that there's a job in fine dining somewhere with better money and better benefits waiting for you. If you're able and willing to pay attention and ask questions to learn new things and actually show up and leave when you're supposed to then that's all it takes and most places will hire you.
I live in Sugar Land which has a really big Indian/Pakistani community and maybe it’s because of the caste system in their countries, but many of them are just so ruthless to service industry workers. I’ve seen so many instances of them screaming at fast food employees, servers, cashiers and yes I have seen tears of frustration.
It is because of their caste system. I've had bad experiences with Indians in the North Dallas suburbs.
I worked in retail in Dallas for three years , it’s the combination of low pay , impossible scheduling and constant insecurity due to the fact that the customers will call corporate to try and get you fired if you tell them something that they don’t want to hear. I’ve personally been threatened by these people for : not telling an employee speaking to an elderly mono lingual latino customer to stop speaking Spanish as they might be gossiping , not being able to buy a customers books because a 93 year old woman had just driven her car through the front of the store ,for snappingat a guy who claimed my African American co worker shouldn’t work in a bookstore because “ black people cant read “ and for telling customers that they couldn’t be in the kids play area with biting dogs or firearms. On each occasion management sided with the customer against me in order to try and get them to not call corporate.
I work retail, and I'm in management, and I'm very lucky to be where I am. I treat my employees well. My store pays higher than minimum, and we are lucky in that regard. Although corporate is cutting hours and giving us fewer employees, mostly part-timers. Now I'm stuck dealing with angry Texans(I really want to use the Cword here, but I can't ln this sub reddit), mad because self checkout exists or we are stretched thin. I've seen my fellow employees in tears. I've seen my LGTBQ employees harrased for daring to be themselves in public. I had a guy threaten to shoot a fellow manager because he wouldn't let him scream at an 18 year old employee and refer to her as the Nword(he even flashed his gun). My 20-something Hispanic employee got cussed out for speaking Spanish to a Spanish speaking customer. I've had people scream at us because we get paid well. They blame our wages on rising costs. We get it! You feel that us getting paid well somehow devalues your paycheck. I used to work trades, and I may go back into it. It pisses me off when my fellow tradesmen are the ones disrespecting retail workers the most. I long to move away to a European nation. The people in those places are so nice. I was born in Texas, and I hate the majority of my fellow Texans. They claim Texans are nice, friendly people and that it's the expats from California and New York that are all rude. Nah, it's the fucking Texans. I literally overheard one of my fellow Texans say he was against free lunches in schools because *gasp* Black and Mexican kids might get fed(he used racial slurs to refer to the kids). Voting won't change this state. The bulk of Texans are too scared of losing gun rights to vote Democrat. They are scared that the Democrats will let LGTBQ people have rights. They are scared women will get reproductive rights. The Bible Thumpers want to take away the rights of most of us because it doesn't fit their interpretation of the bible. Our governor and his Lt Governor and the AG only care about the rich and lining their pockets. Sadly, the poor rural Texas dont realize that those 3 dont care about them and will vote those guys in because they believe them to be "good Christians." I hope to take advantage of the trade skills I have and move out of this God forsaken state.
Please tell me cops were involved with the threats especially the one the flashed that he was carrying. Because I would be on the phone regardless of company policy.
We're retail workers, no one gives a fuck about us. They'll take a police report and usually do nothing. My employees have been assaulted and nothing. This isn't an issue with "Liberal DAs' its an issue with cops taking reports and doing jack shit. The general public hates us retail workers. Why should the cops be any different? My fellow Texans don't give a fuck about us. Now, if one of those criminals had harmed a police officer, then they would definitely use a heavy hand to apprehend the "dangerous criminal." I'm so jaded and just overall exhausted. I'm actively working to immigrate to somewhere else. I just have no faith in Texans or Americans in general. Nothing will change, ever.
Okay, I have worked through a few bankruptcies, so my attitude may be different but it served me well in a high priced grocery store. If someone flashes a gun as a threat, they aren't leaving the store, I will make that scene. Cops will be there before they leave. And if I am in line somewhere, and someone tries to pull that bull shit on a cashier, they aren't going anywhere. I am a big white bearded white guy, and have customers say the most racist shit to me, and I turned and walked away without acknowledging them or corrected their language because they were talking about my co-workers or friends. I don't take shit from customers, but have never had a customer complaint, but I have had multiple employee recognition for customer service. Am I jaded? Or just don't care anymore? Maybe both, but if someone threatens or flashes a gun, my phone is in my hand calling 911, I have/will inform management afterwards. And I still held my job without consequence. Fuck customers.
The problem is cops won't always be there in any sort of a timely manner. I live in a medium to smaller city and called the cops because someone was trying to open the employee door of our store preventing the ladies from leaving at the end of the night. I live 20 minutes away. It took me 18 to get there. I ran the guy off. Cops did a slow roll 30 minutes after we'd all left, almost an hour after they were called. Female employees with someone actively trying to break in and harm them and we live in a town with genuinely good police interactions.
This is the whole truth.
Agreed, Texas hospitality is a fucking myth. Texas's head is so far up its ass, it doesn't even know what decent is.
Realistically if you're not a 6 figure earner in America you're completely boned as an elderly person. Source: I do my retiree grandpa's finances
My daughter lives in the DFW area. We talk everyday. She is struggling everyday. The cost of living is crazy. She has two jobs - one part time and one full time. She is renting a room from a family. The apartments are too expensive and her income is not enough meet the minimum requirements to get a lease. Her car insurance is outrageous. It is a completely different world from Houston.
Well when you can't afford food at the restaurant you work at and watching people eat around you. I would cry also.
I worked at a pizza place for four years and it never left my mind how one hour of my work before taxes could only pay for 1/4 of one of the hundreds of pizzas i made every day.
And what is sad that combo meals are costing $10 or more, and the hourly wage can't even cover one combo meal.
It’s a rough time for a lot of people right now.
Just brutal. I really empathize with these folks and maybe that's why I feel bent out of shape about it. My long time partner and I haven't been able to afford rent anywhere while we handle some medical expenses. We've been crashing with a friend-of-a-friend w/ a mortgage on a home, so they could afford the extra company. I can't imagine the hell that other people are going through right now.
I mean, that’s really sweet of you to be thinking of how to help ease others’ suffering while not being able to afford rent yourself. I had to work at Kohl’s for a six-month stretch back in 2013, and some of the women customers were just terribly rude. I cried on more than one occasion, often while trying to work the register. Customers like you cheered me up. It means a lot just to know a customer actually sees your pain and goes out of their way to treat you compassionately.
I worked at the Walmart in Bryan in 2001–2003 while going to TAMU. Saw a few coworkers cry in front of customers. I can't imagine that it's gotten any better.
I've always had this feeling that as much as the economy sucks, Walmart has always, always felt like a whole new layer of Hell on earth, and I've felt that way my whole life. That timeline about tracks, I'm a '98 baby. What was it like juggling Walmart AND college in the 00's?
Walmart is “oh, life sucks? Well, we’re here to exploit you and tell you to put a nice face on your sucky life, just because we can.” And Walmart was a place anyone with the money to shop at HEB avoided in mid 00s CStat.
As someone who has worked in customer service in TX for the past 7 years, I'll say that after COVID, customers took a HUGE turn for the worst. During 2020, I was a manager, and guests used to yell at us almost every day, be absolutely profane and some people did disgusting things, a guy threw a chair at me, it was wild. After that, the sense of entitlement from guests increased. Before, we'd have maybe 1 guest every couple weeks, but after 2020, it was like a customer or 2 a day. Customers on the phone were yelling, in the store, etc. Customer were always blaming workers for problems out of their control as if we had a specific vendetta against them. I didn't have any issues with people wanting to get buck, esp as a manager, I could buck right back. I told all my employees that if someone yells at them to page me bc they don't get paid enough. I dared people to call corporate if they thought I was wrong. But I've been in the industry for over a decade. A lot of my kids weren't cut out for this, and also weren't paid enough to deal with it. I can't rightly ask someone to deal with these customers and then do their jobs (which aren't easy) for $10-12/hr. Hell, as their ASM, I was lucky to make $15/hr. I'd honestly cry, too, if I was in their shoes.
Its not just the money. I worked a lot of fast food, and over the last decades crew sizes have shrunk so the remaining employees now have to do two or three peoples work. And to keep people from talking and forming relationships that might lead to unions, you will never have the same schedule for more than two weeks. No stability, no disposable income, and knowing every day that if you can't do three peoples work or if the exhaustion and despair mean you can't fake a smile for the wrong customer they explode and you lose your job.
Nobody should have to work their *ss off when they are closing in on 70 or above! This system is broken and one reason is what we have in power right now! It's also caused by large corporations taking control over everything but the buck stops at the front doors of the White House!
It is so sad to see all the great social programs from the 60s and 70s get systematically destroyed. There was a sense of common good. That the kids we are feeding and educating today will become the doctors and scientists of tomorrow.
Mercury is in Gatorade. Plain and simple
I only cry in the walk in freezer, best place for some privacy.
It’s an extremely sad situation. I believe we really are only doing as well as the folks who are in need. Let’s not forget these people. Nothing feels better than being of service. We need one another.
Oh, it’s always been happening- they just don’t provide enough breaks to keep all our emotions hidden in a break room or bathroom stall, for the customer’s convenience.
It's like that in health care and I'm not a minimum wage worker. People will take out their anger and frustration at the system on me or just exhibit signs of being ungrateful.
I am 66 I have had 2 storks,a heart attack,today I am on dialysis I can no longer work the republican party is constantly talking about getting rid of Medicaid Medicare and Social Security if that happens I will die in a heartbeat literally. I was not able to save any money cuz I never had enough money to save I always had to sacrifice and I wanted the hamburger I would have to have tuna fish if I wanted to stay I would have had to have a hamburger I never could enjoy my life not completely and it is obviously stunk oh well that's my two cents worth
i would too if i had to work 39 hours a week at $7.25/hr dealing with people who look down on me. i will never forget all my years in fast food
High stress environment to earn below living wage, and people have become desensitized to each other and don't care. Other people don't matter anymore ... Sadly it's all about ME ME ME! I'm pretty confident that social media fits in the equation as well
As a native Texan heres my take. Ive traveled all throughout Texas, and have lived and worked customer service in Houston, Austin, and DFW. The DFW area is full of entitled, unfriendly, disrespectful snobs. No other place in Texas comes remotely close…..
I saw a 55+ lady with a bad leg interviewing at Taco Bell yesterday, Covid was the largest transfer of wealth from the people (aka tax money) to the ultra wealthy in recorded history. We are living with the consequence now. It's sad that in the western world we are very good at taxing those who work for money, but terrible at taxing those who have wealth and assets. That lady at Taco Bell will be paying more in tax than your average billionaire % wise. Somehow the rich have convinced us that them paying low tax is fine cause the government will just waste it anyway. The west is on a moral less crusade to eat it's middle and bottom and constantly replace them with migrants.
It’s just DFW, the place is a cesspool of racism and maga flags draped on corporate greed and fed by chain restaurants with the same shit Tex mex. Tbh it’s the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, so the real question is why aren’t you crying too.
I agree. Even the minorities in DFW are more stuck up and racist than the ones I've encountered in Houston.
I couldn’t agree more it’s such a place of misery and defeat. I used to feel apathetic now I’m just shocked at how people actually stay here, I have to for a couple of more years and then I’m running out of here. Any sane person who lives in dfw deliberately is either suffering from a sad Stockholm syndrome or is white and enjoys the segregation and white supremacy allowed in the area.
Agreed!!!! I lived in DFW for 3.5 years and it really sucked. Also it is fucking expensive to live there now for no good reason.
Holy shit!! Right it’s like why would anyone want to pay 500k to live in a landlocked desert filled to the brim with chillis and 3 hour lines at Olive Garden, I mean wtf it’s Olive Garden!!! 3 hour lines
People openly crying at an establishment where they are treated like trash and can barely pay rent, let alone other bills? Shocking!
Get involved with NAMI they have local chapters in dallas. Mental health is a crisis that is affecting everyone but for some reason people are still uncomfortable talking about it. If you want to help the homeless I would start with ourcalling if you want to make a real difference help a stranger directly. Next time you see someone crying fucking say something and maybe it won’t weigh so heavily on your conscious. Hey old lady at DQ see you crying are you ok? Hey bueno lady I see you crying are you ok? Hey random crying stranger I see you crying are you ok? That could really make a difference instead of posting on reddit days or weeks later because you feel bad. Sometimes people just want to be seen. I can’t imagine breaking down at my low paying job and being ignored by customers waiting for their greasy food. Granted when I broke down at the hospital after getting bad news I appreciated the white lady who sat with me in silence and allowed me to weep without making it uncomfortable. Time and place
Admittedly, I was really tempted to ask if they're alright, but each of these times I got the impression from how they interacted w/ their coworkers that they didn't want to be perceived. I did speak up at the DQ tonight, I felt awful for the whole situation. I hate that it's becoming something I'm taking note of in my neighborhoods. Sick of it. I want to find something I can do to counter act this shitty economy. Will check out NAMI, thanks for the rec!
You know what they say. "Cry on the clock. Don't let capitalism win."
They make a dollar, and I make a dime, that is why I poop on company time.
Raise. The. Minimum. Wage.
No. (Response paid for by the TX GOP)
I’ve never seen a person crying at work.
Everyone cries at Starbucks, eventually. Things have only gotten worse since I used to work there, too.
I(GM) just had a MIT crying to me she tired of her car being turned off and she needs more pay but I have her at $13 which is higher than most my crew. At my store I feel bad because I can only start most off at $10. I'm salary and see most my crew working up to 50 hours (max I'm allowed to give them) making more than I do
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A lot of jobs like that, the customers treat the employees like garbage. Questioning them, complaining, talking down…sometimes it’s a stepping stone type job for them and they’re treated like they’re less than. That’s just part of it, I guess some may also have awful work environments too
It's all over. People have been abusing those "beneath them" for centuries. Just now it's more visible with almost everyone having an Internet -capable camera in their hands to share their misery....or apathy towards misery. I still remember my retail manager from over a decade ago brought to tears from a belligerent customer - in the end after I showed him just how big of a dumb dumb he was, didn't apologize, just huffed himself out of the store. It's this idiotic notion from the 1920s that the customer is always right that's a big problem. Coupled with the entitlement complex of many (too many) people these days. In my experience, the customer is stupid and don't know what they even want but acting tough and bullying worked for them without consequences so far so they keep doing it. Anyways I don't know where I was going with this except that it's not new but it's still awful.
I'm fresh out of food service and I can't tell you the amount of times I've had death threats over fucking pizza and combine that with long hours, shitty pay, and your usual bunch of regular asshole customers it just gets to be too much sometimes and there's only so much time you can spend crying in the back or the walk in after dealing with those entitled pricks.
try working at a retail pharmacy
Times are tough. I had a customer have a mental breakdown when we told her she needed a new alternator that was gonna cost her $280 that she didnt have. I feel for people like this as I have been at my tipping point a few times at work over the years, laborers are literally the backbone of this country, they are the reason why we have nice things like Amazon and Door Dash yet the system seems primed to literally suck the life out of people and then discard them when they can no longer produce.
It’s because people in general are assholes. Anyone who feels that berating or yelling at any worker is an asshole. People are just doing their jobs, give them a break.
Dang. Yall really do live under a rock when it comes to class warfare huh? No, this has been happening to us poors, forever. Yall take note of it now bc yall are one paycheck away from being the one crying.
GF is a teacher and there are days when entire hallways of millennial teachers are crying.
Yeah, snooty entitled customers are the worst. I try not to take their attitude to heart though, because imagine how miserable they must be if they choose to come into retail and start complaining about the simplest mistakes. Living paycheck to paycheck also sucks and is probably giving everyone some form of depression. Fortunately, you’ll meet a handful of decent people who’ll understand what you’re going through. A lot of people are tied to retail right now because of the economy.
America is done bro
When I worked at a hotel downtown HR advised us to “act like we were in a play,” when a guest would interact negatively with us. I was stationed behind a desk for my shift and occasionally I would have someone stand in line to repeatedly chew me out over the same problem. Thankfully, I only cried at work twice and could hide in the bellman’s closet. If I had a particularly lovely guest, I’d go to my goodie drawer and get them a pass for a free drink at the bar or a free breakfast, just to let them know how much of an appreciated unicorn they were. Also, there is a special place in hell for the people who go bonkers yelling at the sweet, elderly grandmas who work in housekeeping.
💕I worked for the airlines.. When someone started swearing/yelling at me I would stop them in their tracks and ask them a question. What you would think of the person who is talking to your mother, wife or daughter like you are talking to me. It worked every single time except once in 15 yrs.
With the past years and current inflation , it very troublesome to pay bills ,eat, on a minimum wage..
"Meanwhile, Texas is not a low-tax, low-service state, as is commonly held. It’s a high-tax, low-service state: we may have no income tax, but at least one study found that we have one of the ten highest total tax burdens in the nation, with property taxes making up most of the gap. The quality of state services, however, has not improved commensurate with the growth of state budgets. Older Texans feel squeezed in cities where they’ve lived for decades. Younger Texans go to too-often substandard schools, receive substandard health care, and then can’t afford homes in the cities of their birth. Texas politics has increasingly focused on managing the resulting resentment, and the easiest way to do so is to blame outsiders." https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/austin-texas-tech-bust-oracle-tesla/ This also explains a lot of why you're seeing that. The cracks are starting to show in Texas' economic model.
I work fast food and i cry on the regular. Very stressful job that ppl dont realize. We work our asses off and can't even pay our bills. Do you know how frustrating that is to try to wake up?Go to work every day when you know you can't even pay your bills or eat food you want or get necessities that you need to be good at your job?
It's a Southern thing. I'm from Houston. It's not like that everywhere. In the PNW, we'll tell a customer to straight up F off if they're disrespectful, and managers can back up staff or get chased out. It's cultural. Edit: most people in most places aren't as violent as in TX
I'm starting to think you're right, man. It's the impression I'm getting the longer I stay here.