“but as I customer, I always see a store worker as a human and engage respectfully, and at least most people I know do the same”

Yeah, that’s a HUGE problem in US culture, people are fucking awful to anyone in customer service. They look down on you like there’s some class system and they are the lords and service people are the lowest peasant. I developed a nasty habit working in service of ‘‘never falling for their bullshit’’. Never show weakness, never give them an opportunity to fuck with you. It’s actually a terrible approch to social interactions, most of normal social interactions are built on mutual trust or understanding, if you never allow either to manifest, it’s a big communication breakdown.

Yeah that’s not on you. New systems sometimes never really come online and customers just wise up and stop trying. It’s frustrating for workers too, because the only thing worse than a terrible customer, is losing a sale over nothing.

Actually in that specific situation, the store is closed and you have to come back when they’re opened. It’s not closed for fun. It’s closed because the store closes, and there’s 45mins of tasks that have to be done and many of them require the registers to be closed and the doors to be locked and if you unlock the door you have to reset the timer and start over. It’s not a game, your bullshit isn’t worth 10-15 people working an extra 45min at a time when the store isn’t making money. I gotta tell you when your a specialist or manager and you have to close and open, getting to bed in time to sleep enough to not die is a bigger problem than your lost item. Literally everyone else knows you don’t get special treatment for losing something, Come back in the morning you spoiled little shit.

Nope, you never engage. Never ever engage. That flaming asshole who’s too self centered and ignorant to read the hours posed on the door they’re banging on and refuses to accept that the store is closed for EVERYONE including them, isn’t going to be polite, honest, or responsible. If you engage, they will immediately punish you for it. Don’t ever make that mistake.

You don’t work for the customer, you work for the store. It’s not always a crime to go along with a customer, but it’s always a negative when they want to push you to violate policy, change prices, complain about Mike in sporting goods for having a mustache, or ‘‘I’ll be real quick I sware’’ shopping when the store is closed. They will always punish you.

I eventually figured out that when a customer gets shitty, more than half the time if I say ''I work for the store and I’m responsible for [the dumbass shit you want me to do], if I violate store policy I’ll be fired" they suddenly realize this isn’t a game, and stop acting like a can of smashed assholes.

There’s also a lot of stores with a policy that tills can’t be counted or processed unless everyone is accounted for and all doors locked, if you have to reset that process it can be an extra hour of work.

Air BnB makes short term rentals profitable, a lot of people own property on debt and pay it with airbnb profits, if that dries up, they will sell. They’ll have to. Hotels are one of the most significant sources of tax revenue in tourist locations, airbnb offer lower prices because they circumvent the tax system and don’t pay a tax rate similar to hotels, the government wants the tourist at hotels. Period.

The archives aren’t newspapers, they are pictures of the newspapers on film that’s ment to be read from the film and not developed.

You don’t like deciding which person who will be the oldest president we’ve ever had for president is interesting?

They still had newspapers in the 90s. And some pictures you can only find on old newspaper micro film. So they’re in black and white. Even color printed newspapers would catalog their back issues in black and white.