One of my children works at a fast food outlet. Often they are short staffed. She tells me someone is aggressive and rude to servers every shift.
Years ago, a young person of my acquaintance said that someone they knew was “only” a waitress. When I asked this person why they described the waitress in that way, they said, “She’s not changing the world for the better, like an activist. She’s only serving people food.”
I should make it very clear that I’m not criticising this young person. At a similar age, I made grandiose political statements too. With time, I learned to think through the deeper ramifications of what I said. It’s all part of the learning process.
I simply note that I think the person’s attitude reflected something deeper, something they’d been taught at school or by society. As a result, this conversation has stayed with me. If this mindset is prevalent, people who “only” serve food are not worthy of respect. Only people who “change the world for the better” by campaigning vocally are worthy of respect.
At the time when this conversation occurred, I’d just heard that a young man called Andy had died. Andy had worked at the café under the Law School for several years. I got to know him, and I learned that he was a commerce student, working at the café to make ends meet while he studied. Andy was invariably cheerful and kind. He knew my kids, and would give them chocolate frogs when they came to work, so they called him “Mr Chocolate Frog.” He told me he was leaving his job at the café to begin full time work, but first he was having a holiday. While he was on holiday, Andy fell from a balcony and was killed.
I cried when I heard of Andy’s death, and so did my kids. Sometimes he made my day better, and turned it around, with his cheerful attitude. We’d made him a farewell present. In his short life, he made a difference simply by being a decent human being, and doing his job well.
I explained to the young person that a guy who worked at a café had far more impact on my life than (say) someone like Greta Thunberg. I still feel sad about Andy’s death. He made my world a better place, in an immediate way.
I honestly don’t know why people would snap at a server at a fast food restaurant. Maybe they think it’s “only” a server, and that it’s fine to take out their frustration on a kid. Maybe they don’t even see the server as a person, or think about what they’re doing. I don’t know. People don’t see the fact that outlet is short staffed behind the counter, and that’s not the kid’s fault: someone is sick, someone is away.
When my kid told me of the rude customers, I thought back to that long-ago conversation about Andy and the waitress, and wondered if our society has come to teach young people that some services don’t “matter”, only loud campaigns for social change have value. If so, this is short-sighted.
When I was in Japan recently, I was struck by the prevalence of good manners. Oh, I’m sure they have rude customers, just as in Australia, and I am also sure that there are ways to be rude in a “polite” way, but in general, people were vastly more polite. I was also struck by the way in which, generally, even small shops put immense care into the service and presentation of their food.
I wonder if this reflects the zen of doing things well. Even small things are worthy of effort and care. We should show gratitude for small things, not just for big showy things where a person is saying to the world, “Look how good I am, look at the good I do for others.”

Another friend told me of a company where the final hurdle involved an interaction between the applicant and a junior employee. It was apparently astonishing how many people had fantastic interviews with senior staff, but treated the junior abominably, and let slip all kinds of details because the junior employee “didn’t matter”. In fact, the “junior employee” was a senior employee with a youthful manner and appearance, and it was a test of almost fairytale proportions.
How we treat people matters. Yes, we all have bad days, and we all have times when we snap at others. I’m no exception.
Ultimately, however, we can change the world for the better simply by treating other people with respect and decency when they are doing us a service. I don’t think anything I do or say will influence global politics, or change the path of any wars, or save the world.
I do think that through my actions, I might be able to value the small ways in which others make my life happier and easier. The true test of my character lies not in how I treat the great and the good, or in what causes I promote. It lies in how I treat those whom others might think “don’t matter.”
I agree with this so much. Including how much of an impact one person can make just through day to day interactions. I had a rebbe in yeshiva who used to give a regular speech about how smiling at someone can change their lives. This speech really stuck with me and I started trying to smile at everyone when I said hello. A few months later someone told me that the fact that I smiled at them every day made yeshiva bareable for them (at the time I had no idea this person was unhappy, he hid it well).
Just one more story for me to pontificate in your comments section ;). When I visited Russia with my parents we went to a restaurant and ordered food, and afterwards we met with my parents’ friends and told them that the service was amazing. They said that it’s very unusual in Moscow and they’d like to go see it. When we went back with them they were rude to the waiters (one woman actually called someone “boy” who looked around the same age as my dad) and the service was shocking. The people we went with told us they were surprised and disappointed after the review we had given...
The "only a waitress" comments by the young person are the sort of thing it would never have occurred to me to say when I was a young activist. I may have had the good fortune to come into the kind of left-wing political milieu in which it was instilled in us that if we were serious about our politics we had to respect and care about people like the cleaners and the catering workers in the student union. Then again, perhaps there really has been a more general decline in interest in class politics in younger activist milieux over the past 45 years.