CUSTOMERS: Have a heart for workers

Hey you! That's right, you! You know who you are. You are that customer who thinks very highly of themselves, so high in fact that you are ever so eager to sacrifice a person's job because your butt wasn't kissed just perfectly. I believe you to be a senior citizen who becomes the stereotypical mean and cranky old person, or you, the person fortunate enough to have money in the bank but no compassion in your heart, or you, a transplant who brought your toxic way of life with you.

Whoever you are, stop it. Quit trying to get some retail clerk, or bank teller, or restaurant employee fired because you are dissatisfied with your service. Perhaps it is you and your unrealistic expectation and not the service.

Stop picking on employees who barely make minimum wage and will suffer terribly if they lose their job. Do you even know how hard it is to get a job? What hoops they have to jump through just to get an interview? And you are so calloused to report any perceived minor offense to management because you aren't happy! Get over yourself, find a heart and remove the plank from your eye before you remove a speck from your neighbor's eye.

These service employees are treated like second-class citizens by the public and perhaps even worse, their own company will not support or protect them from you! Shame on them! And shame on you!

JOHN HAYDEN

Athol