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Re:Ted Kennedy has died by rms on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @05:11AM (#786878)
I have experienced shockingly mean service in the quasi-private sector. Like idlewords said, it was something where I didn't have a choice.

At the University of Pittsburgh, Sodexho is the exclusive provider of on-campus food. The food and service have since gotten better, but my freshman year, Sodexho had a policy of hiring many ex-convicts for their food service positions. I ate at the sub place on campus a lot because it was close to my dorm and decent enough. The full-time workers there were two men 70+ in age, though maybe the hard living had aged them beyond their years. They had faded ink tattoos visible on their arms and had clearly recently been released from prison after near-lifetime sentences.

I cannot express how much these men hated their jobs. They hated their customers. Every time I ate there and made the mistake of looking them in the eye, I could tell that they wished death upon me and everyone that ever ate a sub made by their hands.

Since then, I have eaten in the private sector, and while every worker is not happy, they are usually at worst indifferent. Never has an employee wished death upon me with malice and hatred like those two sub shop workers.

Re:Ted Kennedy has died by hughprime on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @10:25AM (#787206)
Sodexho seems to have an exclusive contract to provide lousy, overpriced food at just about every US university I've been to. I've never understood how they keep getting these contracts. But this is, of course, the problem with the quasi-private sector... they don't have to please their customers, they just have to please the university administration once every N years so they get an exclusive monopoly on every outlet within walking distance.