Two minutes silence and refusing to serve customer

We are starting to miss the point. Everyone should be allowed to observe, or not observe, the two minute silence. What we shouldn't be able to do is tell anyone else whether they should or shouldn't observe it. So by all means carry on shopping quietly. But don't have a conversation on your mobile. Or force someone to serve you. That's all anyone is saying.

There are plenty of instances where we have silences to observe tragic events such as the Manchester bombing. They are held to show respect and remembrance for the dead. It would be horribly crass for someone to try to deliberately disrupt that by making noise. It's two minutes of your life, for goodness sake.

People do know there are other ways to respect people that made a sacrifice than just stay silent for 2 mins once a year?

This is why I hate mother's Day and valentine's Day.

And if you work in a retail outlet near a railway station, I think you need to assume that people will be in a rush to get a train

Oh come off it. Even if OP does work near a station anyone who is cutting things so fine that a 2 minute delay in a shop means they will miss their train is an idiot. If the timing was that critical the customer shouldn't have gone into the shop. Any number of things could have held her up.

She can't manage 2 minutes a year to respect the war dead and leaves her shopping two minutes before the train goes, what if all the tills had been full. Ridiculous.
You were quite right. people think they are so important now and their lives so busy they can't take 2 minutes out of their day.
Sorry I'd have done exactly the same at work unless it was an actual cardiac arrest.

ShmooBoo, spot on. People just don't seem to get it.

The customer was rude and selfish, but the customer is always right. If the OP did not want to serve during the two minute silence then they should have left the till for the duration.

Shop staff are there to serve the customer, not make moral judgements.

The thing is, it's not just about being silent...it's about a moment's reflection on the ultimate sacrifice of others. So, continuing to serve, even in silence, defeats the object really imho. You were right not to serve her. If two minutes was going to impact the customer's life so dramatically, perhaps she should have organised her time better... She could always have waited for another train. So many selfish people around these days.

OP herself said she might have served customer had she not been nattering on phone and whispered her request instead. So a potential willing to go against company policy was there, she just didn’t like the way the request was executed.

Can't seem to find the bit of the thread where she said this?

Your customer was unreasonable, Op, not you. The silence has happened every year for almost 100 years. Her lack of planning is her own problem, not yours, and 2 minutes should have made no difference at all.

No it has not Taniith, it did not happen from 1939 to 1996. I do, however, think the customer was unreasonable and rude and I doubt she genuinely had a train to catch.

StrangeLookingParasite your post is a perfect example of how emotion gets in the way of logical discussion around the entire subject. Nobody (no decent person) argues that people shouldn't think of and respect those who fought and died in war. It is the increasingly militant observance of an arbitrary two minutes in which we must all do it that people are questioning. Where people get told off simply for not wearing a poppy, or for not being silent at the right time, as if that means they don't respect what people went through.

StrangeIooking, i absolutely agree.

DiegoMadonna

I have quite a good idea. Don't judge me by your own ignorance

I am quiet happy to admit I can't read minds. I don't know what people are thinking. You are the one that is sure people are thinking about "what's for dinner". I choose to think people are showing respect. You, however, know they are not.

an idiot superstition or a bout of virtue signalling

This is so far off my own feelings it's not even on the same planet.
I observe it because it was all over my family. France, Gallipoli in the first, then my dad and uncle in the air force in the second.
No-one went because they were career military, or jingoists - that idea is actually funny if you knew my family - they were doing what they felt was their duty, however ill-qualified they were personally for it.
I just think of all those boys (and some girls) thrown into the first ever industrial scale war, not having the faintest idea what they were in fror, and the huge, unfixable hole it put in the populations of so many countries, Axis and Allies alike, in both wars.

Reading here, a lot of people seem to have a very shallow understanding of what happened, why, and who was involved.
All those sons, brothers, husbands, uncles, on both sides, killed or irreparably changed. The women who nursed and drove ambulances (and the few who fought), the same.

There are a great deal of people who had family that were deeply affected by war and continue to be to this day by conflict

Yes, there are. I do myself. I think about it regularly, just not especially at one time of one day when people tell me to.

I have quite a good idea. Don't judge me by your own ignorance.

Diego, not everyone worries about being castigated by others. There are a great deal of people who had family that were deeply affected by war and continue to be to this day by conflict. You miss the point of remembrance day totally, it is about all wars not just those 75 yrs ago!

DiegoMadonna

You have no idea what most people think. Don't judge everyone by your own low standards.

Jacques, it is also some peoples right to observe the silence

Of course it is. Nobody is arguing against that.

Jacques, it is also some peoples right to observe the silence and why would me quietly carrying on stop that?

if you really want to observe the silence do so, but surely in your quiet contemplation you wouldn't even notice me carrying on.

Jacques, it is also some peoples right to observe the silence. Today at the Cenotaph people stood still thinking in silence.

The whole thing is a bizarre study of human behaviour. Most people stop and stand in silence only because they know that they'll be castigated by others if they don't. Most people aren't thinking about or remembering people who died in a war 75 years ago while they do it. And there's really no logical reason why we have to militantly observe this forced show of "respect" at the same time and in unison anyway.

You must all be such wonderful multi taskers

What? Given I can, you know, think and put stuff in a basket at the same time?

If it's nothing to do with moral superiority why all the pearl clutching at people who choose - as is there irrevocable right - to not observe a silence

It is nothing to do wth moral superiority, just stoppng for two minutes. You must all be such wonderful multi taskers.

It is about stopping and giving two minutes thought to those who fought for us. What a disrespectful lot.

Whereas I think it's more important to actually DO something rather than just pat myself on the back for being morally superior because i am quiet for two mins

I can show respect without being silent/stopping what I'm doing for two minutes.

And most people who are "showing their respect" are simply sitting thinking about whats' for dinner tonight or something equally banal.