How to make the world kinder

When my boys were teens, they each wanted a car.

Great, their dad and I said. Get a job, save up your money — enough for a car, insurance and repairs — and you’ll have what you want.

And that’s just what they did, one at an organic gelato shop and the other at a restaurant.

While the paychecks that led to the cars were the “reward” for their hard work, there was a much-bigger reward — an understanding of what it’s like to work face-to-face with people for minimum wage. An understanding of human psychology without having to pay for a pricey college textbook or take a class.

You cannot work with the public and come away without loving people. … You also cannot work with the public and come away without hating people.

Let’s just say it was an enlightening if not exactly an always happy experience.

Oh, they enjoyed their bosses and their coworkers, and they loved their paychecks and what it allowed them to buy.

But dealing with the public? That was hard, and that was many years before the coronavirus pandemic, when everyone is stressed and eager to have a sense of normalcy, and thus losing their patience, often refusing to wear masks and screaming at minimum-wage workers who ever-so-politely have to remind them that it’s store policy and, I dunno, a general kindness.

It’s not hard, really, to think about others and not just yourself as we all try to make our way through the biggest health and economic crisis this generation has ever experienced. We’re all in this together, right? Evidently not.

And so I recently found myself thinking about their experiences in the service industry as well as my own somany years ago for a few reasons.

When I wrote about dining out during a pandemic, I went to Bunglaow 44 in Mill Valley, a restaurant I frequented before the pandemic and one that I saw was doing all the right things when it came to the early days of outside dining. I dined incognito until it was time to pay the check, when I told my server why I was there and asked her how it’s been for her.

Challenging, she said, which is what my kids said and what I knew firsthand when it comes to working with the public. And for minimum wage, which is not

enough to afford to rent an room— let alone an apartment — anywhere in Marin.

It was her boss, Bungalow’s co- owner Peter Schumacher, who posted a quote from the late Anthony Bourdain on Facebook that gave me pause:

“You can always tell when a person has worked in a restaurant. There’s an empathy that can only be cultivated by those who’ve stood between a hungry mouth and a $28 pork chop, a special understanding of the way a bunch of motley misfits can be a family. Service industry work develops the ‘soft skills’ recruiters talk about on LinkedIn — discipline, promptness, the ability to absorb criticism, and most important, how to read people like a book. The work is thankless and fun and messy, and the world would be a kinder place if more people tried it. With all due respect to my former professors, I’ve long believed I gained more knowledge in kitchens, bars, and dining rooms than any college could even hold.”

That was true for me when I dropped out of college to follow a boyfriend to Colorado, and worked a string of minimum-wage service industry jobs. I was treated poorly, as if I were ignorant — I was not — and not worthy of any sort of dignity, which I am. All of us are.

My kids experienced the same.

You cannot work with the public and come away without loving people — the ones you work with, that is, who are indeed like family and who work hard for not much. You learn that some of them work two or three jobs just to survive, but don’t complain.

You also cannot work with the public and come away without hating people. It’s where you see the worst of people, the entitlement and rudeness, and experience being treated poorly by the very people who depend on us. Isn’t that ironic?

What this pandemic has revealed is that the people we often think so little of, the ones who stock the shelves and ring up our groceries or deliver them or wait on us and clean up after us, the ones most likely to get COVID-19 and die from it, are essential workers, as much as the health- care workers and firefighters and others who work hard to keep us safe and healthy, but for a heck of a lot lessmoney and benefits.

They may not have gone to college or finished college, but they are doing work we actually need done. How can we not treat them kindly?

As Jeff Burkhart, aka Barfly, recently wrote, we might be at a time when those who provide service finally have the upper hand.

They can demand things, like customers wear masks, and perhaps even respect. Anyone who is putting their life and the lives of their loved ones on the line so the public can live comfortably deserves that.

If Marin parents are looking for ways to teach their kids to be empathetic adults, maybe they should stop worrying so much about college and help themfind a minimum-wage job servicing the public. As Bourdain wrote, “the world would be a kinder place if more people tried it.”

And if there’s anything the world needs more of right now, it’s kindness.

What this pandemic has revealed is that the peoplewe often think so little of, the oneswho stock the shelves and ring up our groceries or deliver them orwait on us and clean up after us, the ones most likely togetCOVID-19anddie from it, are essentialworkers.