The minimum wage, part-time job is almost unavoidable in the lives of the young and/or poor. It occupies the similar milestone position in one’s maturation as losing your first tooth, starting high school or getting into a relationship. In fact, when I meet people who have never worked in the service industry, I’m quite jarred. How could you avoid something that was so ubiquitous? When I was sixteen it felt like all my friends were being conscripted into their mandatory KFC service. Since I turned eighteen, I’ve had a bunch of different service jobs—two times in Starbucks, once in Gails, I was a weird graduation ceremony helper for a while, I was a waiter in a pancake restaurant for about three shifts, and most recently a bartender in a hotel. The longest I’ve stayed in one place was five months before dramatically quitting (except I didn’t know you had to send a formal letter of resignation, so they made me do like two more shifts after that). The cycle goes like this: you need the job, you get the job, you like the job for a while, the job makes you go crazy, you quit the job, you regret quitting the job because you’re broke, rinse and repeat. Or maybe that’s just me… In any case, we all need the money so most of us need the stupid minimum wage, part-time job. We’re stuck here, surrounded by the enemy: the customer.

When I worked in the airport (one of my barista stints) I would seethe from jealousy every shift. Seeing the departure screen list off all these amazing destinations while I restocked the fridges, covered in milk I just spilled all over myself, surrounded by about a hundred people with neck pillows was a demoralising experience. Most public spaces are fundamentally different for those who enjoy them as intended and those who work to make them functional. To use my situation as an example, the airport is a gateway for international travel, most of which I would assume to be touristic. It’s your holiday precursor, it can be fun, cute, exciting, etc. However, for me and my coworkers, the space loses that meaning completely: it’s our workplace where we make coffee all day and take out the bins. Similarly, a bar for its customers can be a social environment, somewhere to cut loose after a long day. For the employees, it is their long day. This is physically manifested through the stark differences between the forward-facing areas of business versus the staff-only zones. The restaurant may be sleek and modern, but the staff room is sure to be the opposite. This incongruence of meaning between employees and the greater public is alienating and leads to great hostility.

If you’ve ever wondered if the workers somewhere talk shit about you when you do something stupid, the answer is a resounding yes! I’ve always experienced a strong ‘us versus them’ mentality with my coworkers and the customers; it helps build camaraderie in the team. At my first job there was this diva that would complain the second anybody came into the café—which was funny since most of the time the place was completely desolate. Moaning together about how we didn’t want to be there was a fun respite from our boredom. The customers became the perfect target for our frustrations.

Terribly, the employee eventually clocks out and becomes the customer. In civilian life, I can be an annoying customer too. I ask for weird modifications on my food, I come into places right before closing, and I don’t like tipping (I’m poor!!! I just want to pay the advertised price!!!). I was annoyed when the bar I was at closed earlier than it said on Google, but I’m always jumping for joy when my supervisor lets us close early. There is nothing inherently wrong with going out in your free time to the bar or café or cinema. There’s nothing wrong with being a little annoying sometimes, if you’re respectful about it. You could have purely innocent intentions but by your existence as a customer, you contribute to the anguish of the employee. Like my old coworker, you could be the first person to walk into the shop in hours, and the employee will still want you to go away. The employee is essentially being held hostage since they need the paycheck. They would not be standing there for nine hours straight of their own volition.By no fault of their own, the customer must take advantage of the employee’s predicament to get whatever it is they want. This contradiction in desire further alienates the groups: the employees don’t want to be there, but the customers do.

When I was out recently and my friend went home early, I decided to try and strike up conversation with the bartender. I was painfully aware of this unfair dynamic between us. Despite my best efforts, I could only manage to get the customer service responses out of him, and I felt guilty for imposing my conversation on him while he was cleaning (although he said it was completely fine). He couldn’t exactly tell me to fuck off if he didn’t want to talk since I was a paying customer. So, we were stuck in this weird, veiled situation where it’s impossible for it to not be at least a little coercive. I soon decided to leave him alone and let him get on with his work.

Customers and employees seem to be irreparably opposed to each other. Through work, the employee is alienated from the rest of society, a contrast most strongly felt with the customers they work for. However, these roles are continuously changing as people go in and out of work. The employee is doomed to become the customer on their days off. Can these two sides somehow be joined in perfect harmony? Or is it impossible under the system we live in?