A good friend of mine recently commented on the terrible service that she had received at a well known restaurant. She described that upon entrance she and her dining partner could not determine the gender of the hostess nor of the wait staff. This was followed by a long wait in and empty section and very poor service that seemed designed to take their money as quickly as possible and usher them out the door. She then told me that a day or two later the same scenario played out at a different but equally well known establishment in another city. She was very irritated with the service and wondered why it was not better.
I asked her if I might wax cynical for a moment and told her the following. If you lower your standards for what it is to be a human being how can you expect to maintain high standards for service. Being unable to determine the gender of those waiting on you or noticing the runway model level of makeup on your male waiter is a pretty sure sign that the bar has been lowered.
In the interest of clarity my family and I have been in a public service business for over 50 years. That being said when it comes to what constitutes good service I know of what I speak. We too have noticed the decline not only in the standards of service in restaurants but also in hotels, stores, and even banks. I suspect that as society at large has become tolerant of a dehumanizing culture on public display many have also decided that tastes are all the same.
I will be honest here, I am by and large disgusted by and disdainful of the human race. Yet I have enough pride in what I do to forget about what I think about these vermin and do my job and treat them according to standards that are higher than I really think they deserve. It is this ability to put aside self to accomplish something as it should be done that I think is increasingly lacking. You don’t have to like people to realize that to treat them and yourself like animals betters nothing.
If this article has a point (sometimes they don’t) it is that we seemed to have reached a cultural critical mass. We have become so over civilized that the only thing left to desire is barbarism. We see evidences of this all around. It manifests itself as gender bending transsexuals and self mutilating goths. It shows up as negligent single parent homes and on college campuses where students dive into a four year orgy of over consumption of just about everything. Moderation is not in these people’s vocabulary. The popularity of extremely violent video games and a nihilistic attitude toward the world that we see in the rising generation are very disturbing.
Do not think thought that I am picking only on those of generation Y (born 1982-2001) it is just as true for those of my generation X (1961-1981) and even many of the baby boomers (1943-1960). Perhaps most of what we are now witnessing is directly attributable to the awful 1960’s and the “counterculture” movement that ripped down much of what was good and decent. Make no mistake, I am no prude. Every day I personally fall short of the standards and ideals that I hold to. It is the fact though that the standards don’t change that I believe makes my view different. Just because someone does not like the game does not mean we alter the rules to soothe their ego. Human beings are basically bad and cannot be good on their own. This being true we must hold ourselves to higher standards if we are to maintain civilization. If we cannot be good we can at least behave.
If you enter a nice restaurant only to be seated by a purple haired Marilyn Manson lookalike and are waited on by a set of junkyard chains wearing a human being and wonder about our future you wonder correctly. It has often been stated of young people that these things were passing fads. Perhaps once but no more. No more and more we see the same lack of regard for self and culture in people in their late 20’s through their 30’s in increasingly into their 40’s. Many older baby boomers at least outgrew their ways if not their opinions. I am not sure if that is going to be the case for the generations we see now.
von Rum
The Daily Rum 