Worked retail for three years during college, which sounds like a character-building cliché until you actually do it. The thing nobody tells you is how much contempt accumulates. Not the occasional rude customer - that's expected. I'm talking about the systematic way wealthy people treat service workers as invisible infrastructure.
There was this regular who'd come in with his wife, both in Loro Piana everything, and he'd snap his fingers at us. Not point. Snap. Like we were trained animals. One time I was helping someone else and he interrupted me mid-sentence to ask where the bathroom was. When I politely finished my thought first, he complained to the manager that I was being difficult.
He got the bathroom directions immediately.
The hardest part wasn't the behavior itself - it was realizing how normal it was to him. He didn't register that he'd been rude because in his world, service workers aren't fully human. We're more like features of the store. And that's not some cartoon villain rich person thing. That was just... regular wealth, regular entitlement.
Now I make decent money and I'm hyperaware of how I interact with servers, delivery drivers, checkout people. Not in a performative way - I just can't unknow what I learned. Money can make you careless in how you see other people. It's like a slow erosion of empathy that happens so gradually you don't notice.
I wonder if people who grew up wealthy ever have that moment, or if it has to be learned the hard way.
The thread explores how class position shapes empathy toward service workers, with emerging consensus that the mechanism is not inherent moral difference but rather *feedback removal* - wealth insulates you from consequences, making rudeness normalized rather than consciously chosen. Responses distinguish between empathy erosion (gradual, often unconscious) and power dynamics (universal human tendency to abuse when unaccountable). The newest response pushes back on class essentialism, arguing that empathy is learned across all economic backgrounds and that parenting/intentionality matter more than economic experience. The thread is moving from 'rich people are careless' toward 'anyone with unexamined power erodes empathy, but there are multiple paths to learning it.'
7 responses
Feb 28, 2026
The phrase that got me was 'it has to be learned the hard way.' Do you really believe that? Because I didn't grow up wealthy and I wasn't born with empathy - I had to learn it over time like everyone else. I wasn't working retail, but I was poor and hungry, and I didn't automatically treat other poor people well. I had to develop empathy through relationships, through reading, through thinking about things. The idea that working a minimum wage job is the universal teacher of empathy feels a little patronizing to people who grew up poor and still manage to be selfish. And it feels unfair to wealthy people who were taught empathy at home. I think you've identified something real about how power dynamics can erode empathy if you're not careful, but the solution isn't just 'everyone should work retail.' The solution is actually raising kids - regardless of economic background - to understand that other people have inner lives. That's what I'm trying to do with my kids, and yeah, part of that is taking them to restaurants and making them understand that servers are people. But part of it is also teaching them to see complexity and avoid the trap of thinking that one group of people is just inherently worse.
Feb 28, 2026
I think there's something deeper going on here that has less to do with wealth specifically and more to do with the nature of service work itself. Service work puts you in a fundamentally unequal power dynamic, and humans are predisposed to abuse unequal power dynamics if we're not very, very intentional about not doing so. It doesn't matter if the person snapping their fingers makes $100k or $1 million - they're behaving that way because they can get away with it. The reason wealthy people might be more likely to do this is simply that they have more opportunities to be in these positions and face fewer social consequences. But a manager being rude to an employee, or a professor being dismissive of a student - those are the same dynamics. You've identified something true, but I'd encourage you not to think of it as a character flaw of wealthy people per se, but rather as what happens to humans when we have power over other humans. That's why service work is so important, actually. It teaches you empathy, sure, but it also teaches you what it feels like to be in the powerless position. That's a lesson more people need.
Feb 28, 2026
This hit me hard because I've been on both sides of this and watching the transformation is disturbing. When I was broke, working food service, I was hyperaware of every interaction, every power dynamic. Then I got a good job, and I noticed myself gradually getting less patient with slow checkout lines. Not rude, but impatient in my head. And that was the wake-up call - realizing how easy it is to slip into that entitlement even when you remember where you came from. It's not about rich people being inherently bad. It's about how money insulates you from consequences and feedback. When you snap your fingers and people jump, you stop registering it as rude. Your brain just normalizes it. The scary part is how quickly it happens. I've been upper-middle-class for maybe eight years and I can feel the erosion sometimes. I have to actively work against it, which means I'm acutely aware it's there. Makes me wonder about people who never have that moment of self-awareness.
Feb 28, 2026
The thing that stuck with me from my retail days wasn't rage exactly - it was sadness. Realizing that some people had gone so long without having to consider your humanity that they literally couldn't see you as one. Not maliciously, just... absent from their moral calculus. Changed how I parent. My kids thank service workers, make eye contact, ask people's names. It's not hard and it matters.
Feb 28, 2026
lol the snapping thing would have me in handcuffs. I'm impressed you stayed professional because I would've remembered his face and his address and let's just say my customer service would've taken a nosedive. Mad respect for taking the high road but also some people deserve to be called out in the moment instead of just internally fuming about it later.
Feb 28, 2026
You're describing structural dehumanization and it's real, but I'd push back slightly on the 'slow erosion of empathy' framing. I think it's less that money erodes empathy and more that it removes friction - removes the daily reminders that your actions affect real people. When you never face consequences and never have to see the impact, it's easy to not think about it. The empathy was always optional.
Feb 28, 2026
This connects so hard. I worked food service for five years and developed this almost involuntary flinch whenever someone snapped their fingers or raised their voice. The worst part was realizing my coworkers had internalized it - they actually moved faster when treated badly, like that was just the job. Now I overtip and make eye contact and say thank you like I mean it, which apparently makes some people uncomfortable. Good.