Restaurant workers quit at record rate

One thing to consider is perhaps a bias: could there be some phenomenon that makes these "entitlement" events _appear_ to be more common than they previously have been? Or are they actually more common lately?

To that end, I saw an interesting statistic thrown around: "The Federal Aviation Administration said it had fielded 1,300 complaints of unruly passengers since February, the same number of enforcement actions it took against passengers in the past decade." (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/travel/faa-unruly-airline...)

That lends statistical credence to what you're saying: customers/people have gotten more entitled and, I'll interject my own phrasing, crazy. A 10x increase in "unruly passengers" is ... just hard to wrap my head around.

Of course, that 10x spike could be primarily attributed to masks and not necessarily an increase in broader entitlement or "freakouts". That's really what we're concerned with, because the mask rules will go away eventually. So what we're all really worried about is, are people getting "crazier" in general? Or is just the mask rules rubbing a lot of the population the wrong way?

That's harder to say. But I thought it important to at least address the bias question. I know myself I figured things couldn't be getting as bad as the internet makes them seem. I thought it may have been the "video camera in everyone's pocket" bias or something. But the stats point towards this possibly being a real shift.

As for why people might be getting out of hand? Well I don't have specific sources for this, but I've seen a few articles and quotes that suggest that isolation can cause permanent psychological damage. I know many people expected lock downs to have negative effects on our psychologies, but I think few are aware of just how damaging it's been. And it likely had a disproportionate effect on people with existing mental illness or mental "fault lines" as I like to call them. Combined with many society's lack of support structures for mental health and, well, it's perhaps no wonder that we're seeing a lot of public "freakouts". And as you've said, customer service workers bare the brunt of that.

>Also I have never been to a Restaurant where I got a different menu based on my W2

That's OPs point? Tipping allows for a degree of price discrimination since people that can't afford the full cost (menu price + tip) are allowed to pay less.

I'd quibble about the degree of that effect, but it makes sense directionally.

But in that example, Columbia made students big promises that it simply couldn’t deliver. It’s more like a deeply dishonest salesman than a hapless waiter who gets your order wrong. From James Stoteraux:

> Many of the students in my class who didn’t turn their degrees into industry success were insanely talented, but Columbia traded on its reputation to sell them big dreams that it could never deliver.

> During my 2nd year I suspected that the school wasn’t providing a launching pad to a career — most of the instructors were struggling to establish a career themselves & many weren’t even much more experienced than their students. A 4th yr student taught our cinematography class.

> The brass ring the program dangled was that your film could be chosen for the annual festival where, in theory, big-time agents would see it and maybe sign you. But it was cutthroat to even be selected for the festival. And tuition didn’t cover the cost to make those films.

…

> I slowly begin to realize this IS the deal. He made it pretty clear if I wanted my degree, I needed to help him sell his tv pilot. Yep, the Chair of Columbia’s prestigious graduate film program tried to shake me down in order to jump-start his own stalled out career.

The full thread is here: https://twitter.com/jstoteraux/status/1413326562821246978?s=....

Students definitely deserve some blame for signing onto these expensive programs without doing any meaningful research. But university admins can be corrupt, too, and it’s likely that they used their reputation as “Columbia” to sell students something they knew was fake.

Anyway, in response to the original point — I don’t think that’s a good example of entitlement since “scam” is a more appropriate word. I think they had stuff like “people being mean to waiters and flight attendants” in mind, which is a different sort of entitlement.

If you're taking about the UK, the obvious starting point would be ending subsidies for buy-to-let.

In a pandemic with vast spending deficits, the government is giving out mortgage holidays, 95% mortgage scheme, stamp duty holiday etc.

Thanks for the correction!