to wonder why people are such jobsworths?

[Achildlessperson]

For people that don’t have a genuine stake in the game (ie partners of an LLP, business owners), why do they care SO much about things to the point it doesn’t genuinely advantage them?

Partly fuelled by another thread I’ve seen about catching out someone with a doctor’s note, I have to ask - why do you care? I understand if it puts more workload on to you, then FINE. But again, that’s a top management problem. Workers are paid in exchange for their labour. I completely get high earning jobs where you know what you’re going into before. However, sometimes I really do wonder why people go out their way to be such jobsworths when the advantage to them is 0.

For example, there’s a pub where we live that also has its own takeaway style bar - fish and chips, ice cream etc. One day DH and I bought fish and chips (£14) and then sat in the outside bit (not the height of summer and not busy) and ordered two drinks from the bar. A waitress told us we couldn’t eat THEIR OWN FOOD in their beer garden. We had already paid for our drinks so got given two plastic cups to put them in and go 1 meter away, behind the wall to eat. What was the point? Why would you care? The young girl didn’t own the pub, is paid under 21 wage.

I feel employers, the ones making the 0.1%, really take advantage of this. They’re fine breaking moral and ethical conduct rules, avoiding tax to the highest, but expecting their employees on minimum wage to go above their pay / job role. If everyone just said no, compensate me fairly for this, then the labour market may actually improve.

Everyone refers to high earning tech jobs and how they’re overpaid etc but these companies just get it right. They pay highly, improve morale, in exchange workers are happy to go above and beyond. The company improves, profits increase, efficiency and productivity improves = win win.

so, why do people care SO much? Especially as by “caring” isn’t actually always the most ethical/moral action?

I offer two thoughts- fear of losing their job (many bosses are not nice), and given how entitled and unpleasant too many customers are, a sense of being able to have a kind of petty revenge.

There were 100+ applicants for my part time retail job, staff are disposable and we know it. It's cheeky of you to expect staff to bend the rules for you when it's putting food on thier table and a roof over thier heads. Simply put, the staff care more about themselves and thier families then some random customer.

For the fish and chips takeaway question, I think this has to do with VAT (it's due for eat-in food but not for takeaway). So business owners have to be pretty strict on enforcing where you sit.

In general, if I have a choice of who to annoy (the customer who I may never see again and whose worst sanction is being arsey with me, or the employer who told me what the rules are and can fire me if I don't enforce them) - I know what I'd choose to do.

She’s not a jobsworth. It’s not the waitress’ fault there are rules that you don’t agree with. She’s just doing her job and if she doesn’t enforce those rules then she will be the one who gets in to trouble.

Why should she put her job on the line for YOU? If she just lets people do as they please then she might end up getting sacked. Not really worth risking her livelihood for some randomers.

For example, there’s a pub where we live that also has its own takeaway style bar - fish and chips, ice cream etc. One day DH and I bought fish and chips (£14) and then sat in the outside bit (not the height of summer and not busy) and ordered two drinks from the bar. A waitress told us we couldn’t eat THEIR OWN FOOD in their beer garden.

She is absolutely right - if you have bought something to take away and then you start 'eating in' you haven't paid the correct tax on the meal and so she can't allow you to do that. VAT is applicable to eat in, and not on Takeaway.

I once worked with a woman. She was about 15 years older than her boss. She would do ANYTHING to get praise from him. Famously didn't like dogs but agreed to dogsit for him as he was too stinge to pay for doggy daycare.

She was one of those women who'd go running to the boss at any slightest bit of gossip, tiniest and most fixable errors and she even enjoyed stirring the pot so the boss would look unfavourably on others. She was (is!) a nasty piece of work who clearly hated women.

I didn't get it. She was being paid a low salary and was horribly overworked. She could easily walk out the door into a better paying role. But she wouldn't- I think she liked the power she had.

E.g if she didn't like someone new - they wouldn't pass their probation because she would twist things and make up stories.

She's one of those people who was surrounded by staff who needed to focus on their work (intricate details) & she'd be there, on speaker phone with her annoying shrill daughter every single day on max volume. But at the same time declaring she's been in work since 7am because she's SO busy!

Maybe she wouldn't have to come in at 7am if she didn't spend the day waddling about and spreading lies. Like I say, her brown nosing hasn't really paid off, bless her.

I'm really surprised that the OP, so apparently up on "rules" and "jobsworths" doesn't know the actual law. It's been the law for years.

I always think "Jobsworth" is an odd term dripping with entitlement

It's a shortened version of "It's more than my jobs worth" which is short for- "If I do that it could result in me being fired"

So OPs example is quite apt "I wanted to eat my fish and chips there. It's against the rules, which the staff enforced so they won’t be reprimanded, BUT I WANTED TO!"

Society would crumble without rules 🤷‍♀️

Often workers, especially junior ones, are not allowed to exercise judgement because they risk making a wrong or unfair decision.

@ThatWriterInTheCorner

For the fish and chips takeaway question, I think this has to do with VAT (it's due for eat-in food but not for takeaway). So business owners have to be pretty strict on enforcing where you sit.

Nope, hot food/drink is VATable whether it's eaten in or taken away. Fish & chips will be VATable at standard rate wherever it's eaten.

It's cold food that can be zero rated if eaten off the premises, but VATable if eaten on the premises. Hence why if you buy a cold sandwich at a counter, they'll ask if you're eating in (vatable) or takeaway (zero rated).

@QforCucumber

She is absolutely right - if you have bought something to take away and then you start 'eating in' you haven't paid the correct tax on the meal and so she can't allow you to do that. VAT is applicable to eat in, and not on Takeaway.

Nope, that's wrong. There's VAT on takeaway hot foot such as fish & chips.

We came across a jobsworth at Newcastle university offer holders' day. There were two lectures/sessions happening in adjacent lecture theatres for different subjects. Outside in the corridor, there were two "refreshment" tables, one outside each lecture theatre door. They were offering tea/coffee, cakes, biscuits, etc., but each was different, run by students wearing different coloured T shirts with the names of their departments on them, i.e. one said "Maths", the other said "Physics). When we were waiting to go in at the Maths lecture theatre, we had cake and coffee from the Maths table. When we came out, and we were virtually the last out because we'd stayed behind to talk to some of the staff, both tables were packing up, putting the uneaten food in bin bags. There were still some paper cups of cold orange juice on the Physics stand, so we went over and asked if we could have a couple - girl behind the counter said, no, only for Physics offer holders, not Maths offer holders, and then promptly poured the remaining ones into the sink! The other couple of guys stood at the stand looked at her in amazement at what she'd just done! There's classic jobsworth behaviour, doing something and imposing a rule that really, really, doesn't matter!

If the waitress let you eat there she’d not be able to argue against other customers wanting to do the same. You have to nip it in the bud quickly.

Inclined to agree OP - a farm shop I've used for over a decade has a huge stack of fruit and veg cardboard boxes for customers to use. I popped in and bought some seeds and compost (came to about £20) and grabbed a couple of boxes. A young lad on the tills stopped me and told me I hadn't bought the "right things" to entitle me to a free box and made me put them back. (ffs)

And that was me lost as a loyal customer.

The tables are there for people who have bought food from the eat in section of the menu, not the takeaway section. If takeaway customers use the tables and there's no where for eat in customers to sit, then they are going to complain that there's no where to sit and that staff aren't enforcing the rules...... Yet people like you are determined to slate those doing the enforcement because it doesn't suit you.

I would bet if you wanted to order from the eat in section and there was no where to sit for you because of takeaway customers then you'd be moaning that she's not doing her job properly by enforcing the rules.

Either way the staff end up in the wrong and either called useless or jobsworths.

If you wanted to sit there, why buy from the takeaway and not the eat in? Was it cheaper from the takeaway bit because they don't provide somewhere to sit and charge more when they do and you've decided that you're going to try and force the service you want by complaining but not actually pay for or ask for it?
You got what you ordered and paid for, yet you still feel like you have grounds to complain, because you........ Got what you ordered and paid for?

@Maverickess

The tables are there for people who have bought food from the eat in section of the menu, not the takeaway section. If takeaway customers use the tables and there's no where for eat in customers to sit, then they are going to complain that there's no where to sit and that staff aren't enforcing the rules......

Context is everything. If the place is busy, yes, obviously priority should be given to the "eat in" customers, but if it's otherwise pretty empty, then it really doesn't matter whether someone sits there having bought from the takeaway. That's where the "jobsworth" comes into it! I.e. the inability to apply discretion at times when it really doesn't matter!

It will be those folks who react the most when they get made redundant etc - they do not realise that ultimately the company does not care about them.

Not busy at that moment in time, absolutely no guarantee it will stay that way while takeaway customers use the tables, that more takeaway customers won't see OP using the tables and demand the same (because it's not fair if they're not allowed as well, even if the tables are filling up) that eat in customers won't walk in and want to use the tables too.

Of course it may not happen, but then hospitality is unpredictable because people like to be spontaneous, and that's what things like this are based on, the fact you can (and where I work frequently do!) Go from 5 customers to 50 in a short space of time.

But hey, let's not think like that because it doesn't give the opportunity to bash service workers and have a little bit of superiority over someone else by calling them a jobsworth does it?

Agree with this

Did you miss the bit where they bought drinks from the pub? If they hadn't bought fish & chips from the takeaway, they'd have been allowed to sit and drink the drinks they'd bought, so they'd have occupied those tables anyway, even if just for a drink. It was a beer garden after all.

I'm not clear what point you are trying to make, taxguru.

It is standard policy not to allow food or drink that is bought elsewhere to be consumed on a second premises. For example, a cafe would take a pretty dim view of a customer ordering a cup of tea to accompany a packed lunch. A restaurant with a licence would not allow customers to bring in a bottle of wine to drink with their meal (unless there was such an arrangement in place in advance).

Then why, if they bought drinks from the bar, couldn't they buy the fish and chips from there too and thus sit at the tables as a dining customer?
The tables aren't for takeaway customers, clearly whether they buy a drink or not - if the fish and chips had been wrapped and stayed that way while OP had her drink, then I'd say absolutely, but it's clear the OP ordered from the takeaway part (clue is in the name, it's to take away) and then demanded the facilities of the seated part to eat them. That's not what she bought, she bought takeaway, to well, take away.
I'm inclined to think that she did it that way to try and strong arm the person serving into allowing her to use dine in facilities for the takeaway she bought, probably because the takeaway prices are cheaper than the dine in and she didn't want to pay the higher price but benefit from the facilities of it.
And then call the person who said no a jobsworth because it didn't work and she didn't get her own way, and further say that it shouldn't matter to that person because OP doesn't think it affects them.
Not doing what your employer tells you to affects you when they notice and then reprimand you for it, it can ultimately cost you your job, but then seemingly that's what people are increasingly expecting of people in customer facing jobs, for them to put themselves in the firing line with the employer and sometimes the law too, so that they can have something they want, and then personally insult when it doesn't happen.

@Florissante

I have read it that the pub has a takeaway section, so part of the pub. But, as it's takeaway there shouldn't be an expectation that you then dine in because well, you've bought take away and they do offer dine in too, so there's a choice to be had.
OP chose, ordered and paid for takeaway and then is pissed off that she couldn't dine in, and wants to blame someone else for that.