>At what income level does one need to start treating the customer, that is enabling one to have a job, like a real human being?

At a sufficient enough and above. Below that the Clerks (as in the Kevin Smith movie) treatment is good enough.

In any case, "treating like a real human being" and putting on a show of smiles and friendliness US-style, is not even close to being the same thing.

In "real" human interaction, we understand the other as a person with their own feelings and mood, and we don't demand from anybody to exhibit a certain cheerful mood for us.

But of course this isn't about real human connection. It's more about "When I pay I demand those serving me to entertain me with smiles and pleasantries". The customer could not care less about the person serving them, or their condition, otherwise. "Real person" my ass.

Exactly. There’s something fundamentally sadistic about American culture, I expect inherited from its legacy of slavery, where customers demand that workers perform a frightened but also “joyful” subservience to them as evidence that they’re getting their money’s worth.

This is an unbelievable take that I suspect if fueled by an over extrapolation of online culture and the news. Get a grip.

It’s fueled by my working in restaurants for ~7 years in my 20s. If you’d experienced people throwing food at you because they didn’t like how it was made, sexually harassing and hurling racist insults at your coworkers, among other, myriad abuses, you’d probably feel the same. And that’s just describing the customers, not even addressing how management behaved.

Not all of us have had the luxury to spend our lives musing about trivial things like RuneScape, in between posting on white-collar tech forums.

I've worked plenty of food service in my life. You're making the mistake of overrepresenting the worst behavior. All of those things are out of line in American society.

I don't think you should read so much into my hobby either.

I don’t think you should be telling others to “get a grip,” because their experience differs from your own, but here we are. Perhaps don’t make such obnoxious assumptions if you don’t want to be treated that way in kind.

I’m also skeptical of the extent of your actual experience if you think this behavior is “out of line” in American society. It was quite routine in mine. The first time I saw someone throw food at the head of a cashier I was shocked, but quite quickly became inured.

> I don’t think you should be telling others to “get a grip,” because their experience differs from your own, but here we are.

You tried to attached the American cultural norm of manners and courtesy to their history of black slavery.

"Get a grip" is a pretty mild response to something so absurd, hyperbolic, and flat out insulting.

No, I tied our history of slavery to the widespread abuse of service workers, and working class people more generally. This is not in anyway hyperbolic. Go read W.E. Dubois on wage labor. Or look at the distribution of service vs. professional-class jobs among minorities prior to and after the Civil Rights Movement. I likewise witnessed plenty of anti-black racism directed at my coworkers in these settings, both from customers and management. But that has no prior context in American history and was invented solely in the wickedness of individual hearts. Sure, okay.

Economic hardships cause emotional distress, and you can't rationalize feelings. Your civil expectations probably match your income level, but not that below you.

E.g. Not getting enough sleep because your poor neighborhood is a ruckus provokes bad mood, chronically.

You are asking the poor to have sympathy while not showing them empathy

The better question is at what level customers start treating service employees like real human beings.