In the fast food place this evening...

[F4lconF16]

158. Speakig as a member of the younger generation

This OP kinda pisses me off.

First off, that kid is working for shit wages, at a shit job, with little to no hope for anything better. Turnover is high and in those jobs, you're never really sure if you're going to be around long. He knows he'll never get a raise without being promoted and the chances of that are not high. To top that, if he does get promoted, he's now making only slightly less shitty wages (possibly--he may not even get that) and still working a pretty shitty job. His employer (Taco Bell, not necessarily the manager) doesn't care if it's him or any other of thousands of people that are desparate for any source of income, no matter how crappy. So he has no motivation to be polite in the first place, even if he should be. So yeah, it sucks that he didn't give you a proper thank you. You know what? Life sucks a lot worse for him, and there's very little he can do about it. When he's making $15 an hour, then maybe your displeasure will be more than just complaining.

Second, you have no idea what his day has been like. Maybe he's stressed because despite working two jobs, he can't make rent this month. Maybe he's about to be laid off. Maybe he just broke up with his partner. Maybe the customer before you was a complete jerk, and got chewed out by his manager despite doing what he could. Customer service jobs suck. Think about all the right-wing assholes who like to bully people who they have any sort of power over. Now imagine having to deal with them, all day every day, and getting blamed for anything that goes wrong because of them. As another poster said, keep going after someone who's below the poverty line, working a crappy job dealing with crappy people because he didn't respond quite politely enough for your liking. It reflects really well on you.

Third, this is ridiculous. He said "That's okay" when you said thank you, and you feel compelled to go "wtf?" and then complain about him. Yes, a "you're welcome" would have been more polite. Maybe he just heard you wrong--I know I've done it in my job working the front desk at a hotel. It's easy to be paying attention to what you're doing at the register or computer and miss what the customer said, or simply make a mistake and say the wrong thing. It's not a big deal. I gotta say, I wish my life was easy enough that this is what I would find to complain about.

Fourth, as many other posters have mentioned, language changes. Yeah, I agree, "That's okay" is a weird response to a "thank you". But it's in the same vein as "No problem", which is exceedingly common now. I hear it all the time, and it seems to have replaced "You're welcome". Though I try to avoid it, I find myself saying it occasionally. It's part of the way my generation talks. To go after the guy because he didn't respond just the way you wanted him to, again, is ridiculous.

I would like to say that my response here might seem a little over the top per your OP. But it's also your responses that show that you feel entitled to excellent service with little to no thought about or empathy towards the worker. It's something I expect from conservatives--it's a very self-centered worldview. Sad, really.