Source: u/Portarossa on Reddit, April 7, 2020.
Transcription:
‘Unexpected item in bagging area.’
It’s not unexpected, you digital fuck. You literally just told me what it is. It’s right there on the screen. I did the wavy-wave, you did the bleepy-bleep; up until the point where you decided to have an electronic stroke, things were going exactly according to plan. What you mean is that you haven’t been programmed right. Don’t go putting this on me, like I’ve somehow gone out of my way to surprise you. I’ve got places to be, man. I can’t be playing hide-the-actual-salami with the Terminator’s younger, shittier cousin.
Oh, and now you’ve sent for backup. Well done. Now I have to deal with a human person who thinks I’m either an imbecile or a thief for not being able to work what’s effectively a bathroom scale with delusions of grandeur for the fourth time.
If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.
This infuriating quip summarizes the cultural perception of the laziness of the low wage worker. I also think it is somewhat culturally related to “Protestant work ethic” and the phrase “idle hands are the Devil’s playground.”
I worked a lot of shitty low wage jobs in college and I can still feel the unfairness of it all in my core. I bristle decades later when I think about being reprimanded by a manager for waiting to mop a lobby until we had locked up for the night. Their argument was that I was wasting time and no counter argument would be heard. They didn’t get it, I was insubordinate, I quit a month later. Rinse and repeat somewhere else. I’m sure the hours worked after close cut into their Christmas bonus or some shit.
But I digress. The point is, in the US, it’s common knowledge that businesses exist to abuse you. It’s just that a lot of people delude themselves into thinking that if they’re the customer then they’re better off than the employee. Then add in some “back in my day” and a “well, I never” with a twist of “I took advantage of a combination of luck and a commitment to unhealthy work-life balance to get promoted to assistant regional manager so now I empathize with your boss because I now realize that employees leaning against the counter or sitting at the register cuts into my productivity bonus and also looks bad to snotty customers like me and that’s how I rationalize working 60+ hours a week after signing a contract where I’ve waived my right to overtime pay because technically I’m salaried and should be able to do all of my work in 40-hour week.”