There's another side of this which is that you and the janitor have very little common ground so while you can say hi to each other anything beyond the most basic small-talk is going to get very uncomfortable for both parties very fast.

I'm not going to post my credentials on HN but I have it on good authority that these jobs suck enough without having to pretend to relate to your customer. Hello is fine but beyond that and the janitor probably has their shields up lest they say something stupid the same way a white collar professional would be very careful talking to Bill Gates.

I'm not following your argument.

You share the same space. How distant are you with other people that you can't just say hi? Does it matter if you don't discuss politics after it?

When i was a kid, i had to take the bus and i forgot my bus ticket (a pupil, on one bus stop, everyday, the same bus stop the same bus driver on a school route...) and he put a lot of energy into telling me off.

A few days/weeks later i thought about it and i also thought about why i'm not greeting my bus driver when i enter. I started to say hi. I liked it. I liked saying hi to my bus driver.

I forgot my bus ticket again. No issues no worries. there was mutual respect and that mutual respect came to acknowleding him.

I like greeting my neigbhours as well. Somehow it makes a small connection between us.

and yes i read the part with the shield: The first step is a hi. Every other step is easier not harder. Finding out their names, a little bit of talking about family and friends etc.

If i would have worked close enough to Bill Gates i probably would have talked to him sooner or later. Why not? He is a human, not like Mark Zuckerburg.

The janitor knows that if he pisses you off in any way, you might complain and he would lose his job, which he probably can't afford to. Why risk it?

People are always quite open to me, never had the issue that they didn't take the risk.

I say hi only and came from a fairly well-off family.

Every additional complaints about my life or happenings in my life that I would have would be unrelatable to the maids and the drivers at our house and it might make them feel uncomfortable.

And have you thought about finding out who your maids and drivers are? Talking to them about their lives?

No interest in learning who they are? What they like? When they have birthday?

If you have a bad day, for whatever reason, you think they couldn't relate to having a bad day?

I know who they are, of course. And birthday and their sons and daughters birthdays. That's how we give gifts. We know who they are and where they are as well - we wouldn't hire them without knowing that.

They couldn't relate - my bad day would be related to losing a few points on a foreign exam or if my favorite restaurant was overbooked.

I can't relate to your examples as well :D

Okay. So that's the reason I didn't want to burden more of the people that work at our homes.

They shouldn't have to share our burden in addition to the work they are doing and potentially feel bad.

This could be easily remedied by paying everyone who works in a given building similarly.

The startup I worked for had Spanish speaking cleaning staff. I even brushed up my Spanish to greet them - the smiles on their faces are with me to this day. It wasn't what I was going for but I'm happy that it had this effect.

Socially dominant cultures' mistreatment of others is always more visible to the others. You're one data point. People on the other side of the divide have many more data points from which to judge.

I worked in an Ivy League university while poor— and continued doing so for quite some time. I assure you that treating people in lower socioeconomic classes either as invisible or a mildly concerning presence, depending on the context, and coming from a wealthy, white background is closely correlated. Many of the wealthier students, faculty, and professional staff treated the cleaners, landscapers, catering staff and cafeteria workers like furniture. Of course, there were exceptions.

I saw a similar juxtaposition in tech, though the ratio of wealthy to non-wealthy wasn't as extreme as it was in an elite university.

We have cleaning during work hours, so the idea that someone wouldn't talk to the cleaning staff is absurd to me. Why wouldn't I talk to someone who moves around the office for most of the day.

There’s a strong correlation, however, which I think comes down to whether you have either done or know someone in that kind of job. People who ignore the staff may not be intentionally mean about it - it’s just outside of their normal frame of reference and they haven’t been introspective about that.

Shitty behaviour can be out of ignorance or carelessness, but for follks on the other side of it, thats not much better

>That's not a sign of being poor, it's a sign of not being an ass.

Seriously, why wouldn't you talk to the janitor or anyone else? They're the reason you have a clean place to work. I never got the "nothing in common" routine either. They're people, with lives and families and wants and needs. Yeah, they're not spending their day banging their heads against their desks solving reference counting bugs, but they're working to support their lives as best they can.