General public and the rise in aggressive behaviour towards people just doing a job - DH job as an example

[Picklemeyellow]

My dh has been working in the same job for over 30 years.

He is a road engineer and although he very much enjoys the job and has a great relationship with his colleagues he is finding the general public to be a complete pain in the arse.

He says the aggression towards them is becoming an almost daily occurrence. This never happened years ago and he says he has seen this steadily rising over the last 5+ years or so.

It is becoming such a problem that the company he works for is offering the employees who work on the road, the use of body cameras. They also attend regular safety training and learn how to diffuse confrontational situations.

Road closures appear to cause the biggest rise in aggression. These closures are planned in advanced and in most cases the local residents will have been notified via letter etc. It goes without saying these closures are done so to protect the public from harm, there could be exposed electrical cables and large holes left in the road etc.

However, there are always the few who will truly believe they are above the rules and regulations and feel they should be ‘let through just this once’ and when these people realise the rules can not be bent just for them they often go ballistic - shouting and swearing is the most common (they are often being called Fucking Cunts and Arseholes).

One guy went crazy, ran back to his car, produced his lunch box and proceeded to hurl his sandwich, sausage rolls and chocolate bar at them (what a knob!).

Another work colleague once had a bottle of urine thrown at him!

The best one was a woman who announced that she was going to drive through the road closure regardless of the fact DH had told her there was a massive hole in the road further down and she would absolutely not be able to get through. She totally ignored him, drove past him whilst swearing and muttering. She arrived at said hole and realising DH was in fact correct and she would not be able to get through she proceeded to drive up the adjacent grass embankment, failing to see the ditch on the other side, she drove straight down into the ditch ending up with her car on its side - what an absolute idiot.

They are the lighthearted stories though, what happens when it turns violent?

I just don’t understand why people are like this now. We hear constant stories of supermarket workers being verbally abused to the point they are also being offered body cameras.

People are just doing a job, trying to earn a living, they do not deserve to be abused whilst doing so.

I am 50 years old and worked many years in customer service but never have I recalled supermarket staff being abused at the rate they are now and I dare say the same goes for many areas of the public facing workforce.

What is happening to society, I personally find it concerning?

I don't think it's right that your dh is abused at all but there does seem to be never ending road works at the moment and half the time no one appears to be working on them

Yep. Motor trade and my friend who is also in the trade but a different section has commented the same thing

I would agree with the posts on people not coping well with modern life.

clearly they shouldn’t be taking it out on the poor people just trying to do their jobs, but modern life is fast paced and people are atomised. Instead of interacting with people we are often stuck in ‘computer says no’ doom loops. Add to that the general disintegration of a sense of community and what you get are stressed and angry people who don’t understand their surroundings, can’t get what they need and have no recourse.

if we want to change it it will take everyone changing what they do, how they approach others and it will also take companies recognising that a human touch matters even if the opposite is more cost efficient.

so we won’t be doing that.

I used to know someone who muttered that line under her breath. I never knew where it came from. Thank you.

I think there is more selfishness, the idea that it's ok to talk loudly through a film and eat and drink noisily. I don't know how we can stop it. Health care workers, transport workers, the police etc have always been abused. Now it seems that any publicfacing worker gets it too.

My fiancé works in traffic management and has been threatened when closing roads, driven at by cars full speed on the motorway when putting out road closures and gets sworn at regularly.

He’s been involved in some ULEZ work and whilst I know many people don’t agree, swearing and shouting and threatening my fiancé because he’s putting signs up really isn’t the way to go about it.

Yes and I think we are too overcrowded. Used to be so much nicer in UK

I’m going to go against the grain here and say that in all honesty, I see more vitriol online than I ever experience face-to-face. The real interactions I have are mostly positive, I see people smiling, expressing gratitude, consideration and kindness. Thanking staff, chatting to staff at the checkouts, stopping in the street to say hello to a baby! In real life that is. Of course you get dickheads every now and again but the majority of people conduct themselves in a far more amenable manner when they are in company.

All is not lost OP

There's only so much people will take and I worry soon there won't be any public services as no one will want to go to work due to the amount of abuse they risk getting.
I was at the bus stop today ,and yes I agree that the bus being late every day since the school went back = 13 days is poor ,but the driver didn't deserve to be screamed at by a bloke with threatening words and posture.

And the constant doom and gloom about being carbon neutral by 2030and feeling like it's a scam and another stick to beat you with

They're always experiencing higher than normal of call volumes

Funny that

I do find that the places with the "We do not tolerate abuse of staff" signs everywhere have a greater likelihood of being the most incompetent.

Rather than allow their customer-facing staff to take the abuse, do the boardroom bosses ever think Jeez, how can we improve our company beyond silly signs and bodycams?

As long as the directors can trouser a 6 figure salary why change things eh.

I work in retail, the same shoplifter has grabbed one staff member hard enough to leave bruises down her arm, thrown a punch at another's face, and hurled a bottle at our door hard enough to shatter the glass. We have 5-10 police incident report numbers for him...and the police have not actually come into store to speak to us or look at cctv once. People's behaviour is worse, and they know they can get away with it.

I also think there is a pettiness with driving and parking. You know if you accidentally go in a bus lane for instance

Yes it's so awful

Ours are teen secondary, one wants to go Canada one northern Europe.

We have convinced them the next 50 years in the UK, largely driven by the referendum, will be awful and if the UK loses the financial services from London which is a distinct possibility then we are all packing our bags!

I left my job (community pharmacy) because of this issue.

When I first qualified sure you got the odd unhappy patient but it was a perfectly manageable amount, once or twice per month. The pharmacy team were respected and treated well by the public.

During COVID the abuse was literally every day, even multiple times per day. In person, over the phone, nasty comments on social media. I hate that it forced me to dislike a job a used to love. It wears you down. I'm not the only one to have left the sector.

I think there are several reasons:

Cuts to public services, people are waiting longer and getting a much worse service. Leads to frustration.

Divisive media rhetoric and disinformation. People generally more riled up and argumentative.

Amazon style services making people less patient and more entitled.

Life being generally worse and more expensive with little hope of things better any time soon.

Fewer people willing to put up with being spoken to like shit so fewer staff in places in general (catch 22 there).

Problem is we're a Tory country. People vote for them for low taxes and other selfish reasons and then when they've been in for 10+ years wonder why public services are a wreck.

I work in customer services at a well known fast food restaurant

Just in the last 7 days I've had

A bloke tell me he was coming back after my shift and (his words) 'gonna rape your dead body' (all I said was 'would you like some sugar with your coffee?')

3 teenagers tell me they where going to have sex with me

A bloke grabbed my ponytail and swung for me-his burger had cheese on it-possibly because it was a cheeseburger-all my fault

Told I deserve to die because I couldn't find the crayons

I had a cup of coffee thrown at me-i still don't know what set her off-all I did was walk past the window

Told to 'fuck off' by a child of about 3/4-parents did nothing

I can't let anyone under 18 claim their prize on the monopoly due to the gambling laws-an adult can claim on their behalf

I had some woman go mental at me today because her 14 year old had tried to claim-i politely asked her to get her mum and was treated to the biggest rant from this teen

Minutes later,I went outside and was greeted by mum-who hurled at me that I'm a slag,slut and 'shouldn't be giving out prizes if I can't honour them,now you silly cow,get back in there and make my childs nuggets-ill be waiting' (as far as I know,she's still there)

All she had to do is walk the 10 yards from her car to the till (or claim on the app) and that would have been fine and she would have got her food

But no-its all my fault as not only am I personally responsible for the gambling laws,I own every restaurant and have come up with this rule all by myself and I singled out her brat just to show her up

I'm on the verge of giving up my job as I can't deal with the bad ones-even though 99% are lovely and can see I'm doing my best

It's odd though, we all have the world wide web at our fingertips, anyone can read learn about philosophy, science data, art, music, and to be fair many people do. But a lot of people look at stranger's holiday and gym work out snaps. It's insane.

Fake snaps a lot of the time.

The internet is not used to it's potential, it really isn't, I tried Instagram, I thought I would look at the books bit, oh my god that was an hour I would never get back. Lots of lavender sprigs but not a cracked spine between them. It was very surreal.

If we readdressed the balance on what a fulfilling life can be perhaps some people wouldn't be so cross they don't have a private jet in their 20s.

For average folk, and many not so average, life has never been easy, or happy or fulfilling or soblessed, ever.

Snapping at someone because you need to go to another chemist to pick up some quite frankly magical modern medical, I mean please take a hard look at yourself in the mirror.

You see it on here as well. The way some posters speak to others is terrible. So aggressive.

There’s a few things at play as far as I can see.
in no particular order:

1. no consequences from police etc shitty law system which allows people to roam free while waiting for court dates for beating the shit out of their wives etc

2. profits over pride - companies have gradually reduced everything to crap to save money - think trains and planes (ugly, cheap, no leg room, hard seats, standing, no staff, no food service, etc), cars (cheap plasticy crap), housing (won’t bother buying and doing up old buildings, rather they’ll trash green belt to build cheap poor quality identikit blocks), etc etc

2.5) which leads to people not giving a shit because standards across the board just get lower.

3. leads to lower level of staff. Walk in to a department store these days (if you can find one) and there won’t be any staff. Maybe a couple per floor. No service. No standards. Lower expectations.

4. owners/shareholders/management just think about cost cutting. And are usually only there because they’ve either been born to it/are cronies - so staff have lowered standards because they know there’s no real route up for them/reward system if they aren’t part of the cronie-ism/they just haven’t had good service for such a long time it’s not easy to replicate. Also not worth replicating because we still get treated like crap by customers…..

5. customers also have no standards because standards have slipped so far. AND companies are shit. Poorly run. As per OPs post, there are roadworks everywhere poorly executed and no work done for weeks, months or (in some cases) years. And yes I mean years, there were roadworks near me left up for two years and no one worked on them. (True story)

6. people have started to believe that profits exclusively = success. And therefore they need to act like a big cat to appear successful. Aka a dick.

anyway, it is shit. And it makes us all angry. People NEED pride. And while profits come first people are going to continue to get more and more aggressive.

i personally Worked hospitality for a long time and can attest to the OPs belief that people are becoming more and more rude and aggressive.

greengreengrass25 that’s because, sadly, no one is applying for these type of jobs anymore.
Few young people wish to do physically hard work. The company have had several young people apply but they last no more than a month or two. They either physically can not put the effort in, or are constantly calling in sick or just stand there on their phones all day.
Dh is 51 and one of the youngest!
Today, they have had to abandon the job (another road closure) which should have been finished tomorrow but they now have an unexpected emergency job (sink hole) to complete. This will result in todays job sitting there with no one working on it because there is no one available to work on it.
Now the local people in the area will become irate because it will now appear as an abandoned job.
And that is another casualty of Brexit, all those hard working Eastern Europeans who work like trojans are no longer here and no one wants to do the job.
This country has been discouraging young people to enter manual/physical jobs for quite some time and it’s now biting us in the arse.

Agree people are much ruder generally.
What shocks me is the fact they 9need signs everywhere along they don't condone rudeness to staff in places like coffee shops.

In regards to road workers maybe that is due to the sheer amount at the moment not that is any excuse for being rude to the workers them selves but it does get very annoying. I swear the same places are dug up almost monthly round here.
The other day I had to go through 3 sets of temporary traffic lights in one a 4 mile trip including 2 in the same road ( less than 1/4 mile apart) and if I went another way to avoid them there was another set. Or the ones that caused a 25 minute queue for a tiny hole less than a meter square.

Everyone is just grumpy
I queue jumped today having my covid/flu vaccine and the tutting was audible. Was being brought through by a steward so obviously legitimately doing it

Then on the way home I blocked the road for around 30 seconds to scoop up an injured cat just hit by a car and got a horn blasted at me. The traffic lights were on red so they couldn't have moved anyway! The lovely bus driver however waved and mouthed thanks

@dontbenastyhaveapasty sorry if this is a little off topic but do you possibly have any reading recommendations about the increased antisocial behaviour post-WW2? I’m fascinated by that period and I love reading articles/books about it, and this is something I’ve never heard much about before