Two minutes silence and refusing to serve customer

My supermarket had announcements at 10 and 5 to 11. All colleagues stood at the front of the store, checkout operators included. Self scan machines were in silent but still worked if anyone wanted to use them.

YANBU op.

The way idiots treat the November silences these days is the best indication that the ceremony has become tainted and should be ignored. Pro-'Our Heroes' nonsense and the dimwitted malice displayed to those who aren't interested or have conscientous objections is pretty worrying, particularly given the tossers in power or with too much influence at present. The likes of Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg and Paul Dacre would come in their pants if they could get the UK involved in another war, wouldn't they? (Might get rid of some of those ghastly benefit scroungers, as well.) It wouldn't put them at any risk of being hurt or killed, but they could indulge their unhealthy fantasies about 'old fashioned values' to the max.
Look at the fucking language being used regarding Brexit - 'traitors' and 'enemies of the people' and ask yourself if you're not seeing some of the same very unhealthy attitude being expressed towards people who don't ostentatiously display their 'respect' for the military.

Yes, if you lost friends or relatives in combat and you feel that it's important to participate in the November ceremonies, fair enough (bearing in mind that many service personnel and their families despise the whole thing.) But other people have every right to be unaware, uninterested or to find the whole thing distasteful.

.people died serving for their country I believe the least we can do is give them 2 minutes once a year

Twice - yesterday and today.

And apparently nowaways we're supposed to stop driving and stop walking as well.

The fact that WW2 servicemen and women died so that we would retain our freedom to make choices about these things seems to be lost on a lot of people.

YANBU

Yanbu 2 minutes out of a year to show respect to the fallen is really not too much to ask. I witnessed people yesterday at a motorway services talking loudly and still shopping while others stopped to pay their respects. It made me so sad that they could not spare 2 minutes of their day.

if [Army] allowed people to leave freely, [the soldiers] probably would do so when told they were being shipped off to Basra.

That is quite an ignorant post.
You don't get it.
The soldiers are proud of what they do and want to serve.
They want to protect the innocent & defeat the bad guy & be brave enough to save each other's lives & restore peace.

I can't say there aren't naive soldiers who don't understand what they are signing up for, but they are a minority & tend not to last long. UK has a pretty generous welfare state, there are plenty of other options for disadvantaged youth.

Thanks, daisypond for voicing my misgivings better than I could. I think the fact that I was already in my forties when it started has something to do with it. And the poppy wearing has also gone to extremes; in the old days you bought one and wore it on the lapel of your coat; now everyone on TV wears one on whatever outfit. The oddest example was Strictly where a contestant had one on the leotard they were practicing their dance in during the week!

Fuck off Daily Mail - you are not honouring my wish.

You are a bunch of lazy, scumbags who leech of other people.

Do not print my words. Do not use my ideas.

This is now on the DM

You have to wonder if this is really how their “journos” pictured their lives turning out when they were 12.

This is now on the DM
Of course it is and they won't care if its genuine or just a load of made up seasonal nonsense.

Sentimentallentil

See I would always be quiet and honour people’s wishes

A rather beautiful phrase - honouring other peoples wishes.

It's about honouring other peoples wishes. There are lots of arguments about different ways of remembering you might agree you might not. There are good arguments on both sides.

If we all honoured other peoples wishes in a quiet respectful way society may improve significantly.

This is now on the DM

Good for you OP. The customer needed a lesson in respect and manners.

See I would always be quiet and honour people’s wishes to be silent if I was in public and fwiw I actually think the OP was in the right and if she wanted to be be silent for the two minutes as her employer had said it was store policy to observe the silence then she was more than entitled to do so.

However I really do get quite pissed off when people say that people who don’t want to do the silence are ‘scum’. Seriously take your head out your arse and give it a wobble.

For example it means much more to me to read the ages of the 'men' who died. Many of them barely out of childhood. Yet when you think of soldiers you think of someone at their physical and mental peak, brave etc. I bet they were terrified.

YANBU. We were told at work not to serve anyone and if anyone came up to the counter to point to the sign about the silence.

She was being exceptionally rude and selfish.

"we make a big show of remembrance but I wonder how much we have really learnt from the past."
Good point. I do observe the silence generally but find it very hard to think avbout something on command (I do though). I do think our respects could be paid in a much more meaningful way that shows we are learning lessons and won't repeat mistakes.

I'm a bit ambivalent about armistice day, because I think we make a big show of remembrance but I wonder how much we have really learnt from the past.

However, people have so many different reasons for observing the two minutes' silence, and for some, those reasons may be deeply personal. They should absolutely have their wish to observe the silence respected, whether they are at work or not. And I'm usually the first to complain about poor customer service!

I was in town this morning and everyone did observe the silence. I found it really moving, despite my misgivings about some of the remembrance day stuff. So many innocent lives lost....

I’m afraid the 2 minute silence rather reminds me of FB, with people who post if you care about children with cancer you will repost this to your timeline

I was going to say the same thing Butchy! It reminds me of those stupid FB statuses like 'I like it on the stairs' to 'raise awareness for breast cancer' or makeup free selfies. Just makes people feel they are doing something great when they are doing nothing. Those who have lived through it see it for what it is and find it insulting. Instead we have people laying into others for daring to speak during a specific time or for not wearing a red paper flower on TV. If every November, we had a public world commitment to peace and peaceful resolution of conflict, that would actually be learning something from WW1

Wouldn't it be more respectful to have five minutes where we actually talk about the dead, discuss their sacrifices?

Better yet, five minutes where people didn’t kill each other.

I’m afraid the 2 minute silence rather reminds me of FB, with people who post if you care about children with cancer you will repost this to your timeline.

Why? What will spamming my timeline with that kind of thing achieve?

It doesn't matter why the OP wanted to do it. She might have been the smuggest most self satisfied person on the planet - it doesn't matter.

The OP wanted to observe the silence and that should be respected. Just because she works in a shop doesn't mean she gives up all her rights!

Wouldn't it be more respectful to have five minutes where we actually talk about the dead, discuss their sacrifices?
I do think there's a lot of virtue signalling goes on about this. A pp talked about "revelling in my smugness"

The Armistice Day silence is a relatively new thing - 1997. It wasn't around when I was young - I'm 50. Remembrance Sunday was the big event with the silence. My dad was in the army and we always had to go to Remembrance Sunday events (there was nothing for Armistice Day). We certainly didn't stop what we were doing at school or work for a silence for Armistice Day, etc. I find two days with two silences slightly peculiar (yes, they are memorials for slightly different things). The idea of people stopping what they are doing on a random day of the week (not a Sunday) seems odd to me, and I can't quite get used to it. But I've spent some of the last few years abroad, so maybe I'm out of touch.

larrygrylls

Hilarious that pseudo lawyers keep saying the silence ‘isn’t a legal requirenent’. Nor is serving someone a legal requirement, especially not within a set period of time.

^^ This
The shop announced they were going to honour the silence and did. The woman didn't want to - fine. It basically boils down to lack of respect for a shop assistant because she's a shop assistant, the customer and a lot on this thread seem to think that the shop owner/manager and the people working in the shop are lesser somehow and their decision to respect the silence is null and void because they are in that industry. That's the root of the issue.