Waiter Rant on Oprah

I mentioned that I took Wednesday afternoon off and happened to catch the last half hour of Oprah. I love her show (usually) and just never get to see it. Anyway, her show was on rudeness. What a great topic. I could go on for hours but I'm sure you would stop reading in a few seconds. So. . . I won't.

Her guest was the guy who wrote "Waiter Rant". Very interesting for anyone that has worked in the service industry. His blog is http://www.waiterrant.net/. I liked it so much that I have been trying to catch up on all his old entries. Both of my daughters work in restaurants as bartenders and servers so I hear these stories all the time. He has written a book that has been on the bestseller list for a while. I highly recommend the blog if you aren't too busy.

We as a nation are rude. We treat servers and clerks and health care workers like slaves. We tip poorly mainly through ignorance and we don't care. When I moved to Michigan I was quite surprised how rude the natives were. We promote tourism and tell people we are friendly. We are not. Today at Walgreen's I saw a cart of clearance items and I said to the two ladies searching through the cart, "Anything good in there?" They continued looking and ignored me. Ok, so I remembered that the other day in Costco, a man behind me in line stated, "Gee this place is nuts. And people are so rude!" He proceeded to tell me how he tried to be nice to someone and let them go ahead of him and someone else just butted in front of him too. You can't be nice to some people.

Mitch Albom's column in the Detroit Free Press last Sunday told how we need to be nicer to each other to get through these tough times. People got through the Great Depression by helping each other and showing kindness and understanding. I keep thinking about that article and hope I can make things better for the people I come into contact with.

And check out the new blog. Pretty entertaining.