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?

Yes. I agree with you.

When I was a waitress I had a few similar rules I had to ask people to stick to, I wasn't a "jobsworth" as you claim, I was doing my job. If I didn't, I'd get it in the neck from my manager who owned the restaurant and made the rules. It was a minimum wage job and I was a 17 year old who personally couldn't have given less of a shit about the rules but as an employee, I didn't ask people to follow them and my boss saw that I was constantly slacking in this area, I was disposable and I'd soon be out of a job.

Now I'm in a professional career, I have the ability and voice to question rules, work with my managers, develop my own ways of working but back then I had no option. I either did what my boss told me or I'd be without a job, I didn't like it anymore than you clearly don't but if you have an issue in future, take it up with the manager or owner of the establishment as they're the ones making the rules, not the waiting staff - gone are the days where waitresses can be asked to do something by their boss and reply "no, I don't want customers to think I'm a jobsworth so I'm not going to do that", that's a very quick way to be dismissed.

I hate the term jobsworth. It’s always used by people who want special treatment and who think your job isn’t important

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 had not read it properly and do agree that it was a stupid rule in that particular scenario, especially if the beer garden wasn't busy and if they had bought drinks. They would be there anyway. But then if there's a dine-in section, why not just sit there? because it is more expensive

I also think it's a bit silly when you buy a drink for you and your child in a coffee shop and they complain that you give your child a cereal bar because you didn't buy it there. Yes but I bought the drinks, so I would be sitting here anyway. But staff are constantly asked to make allowances for people and I guess it gets a bit wearing.

Now I'm in a professional career, I have the ability and voice to question rules, work with my managers, develop my own ways of working but back then I had no option. I either did what my boss told me or I'd be without a job

Indeed. But that actually shows that there is a different, and wider, problem here - one that has been mentioned in other contexts too - that poorly paid staff are not allowed to have opinions. For example, how many times do retailers come up with stupid policies that their staff have to follow, without asking staff what they think, given that they are actually doing the job day in day our and not sitting in an ivory tower office somewhere.

I also blame head offices for the lack of staff and the lack of properly trained staff.

But then if there's a dine-in section, why not just sit there? because it is more expensive

Yes, but the dine-in usually comes with waitress service, proper crockery, knives & forks, etc., hence the higher price, whereas takeaway is just the food, a container and maybe some plastic cutlery. So they weren't getting the "dining in" experience by eating a takeaway to try to save money!

You are conflating opinions with the ability to make policy.

From the vantage point of a customer trying to buck a part of the system of somewhere, things like this can seem like they're harmless little exceptions that can't really matter to the people working at the faceless organisations and the customer is always right.

From the vantage point of a member of service staff who spends many hours in that work space - mostly ignored at best by customers, but neither blind nor deficient in intelligence, nor indifferent to what they get paid and what shifts they have - these attempted 'one-offs' happen SOO frequently. You are so not special. That is something that can grind you down. A real staff churn, if resulting from this, is a downhill slope.

Have a look at some of the online reviews for hotel chains. There are a few that comment on places that do have most of their teams pulling together, and hopefully with some agency and satisfaction in their jobs. I can think of at least one, which struggles across the chain to get many reviews around the average mark. I suspect that this is how the lack of control and 'grinding down' plays out.

Because it’s not worth it for someone on minimum wage to flex the rules for you.

My mum kept complaining to a waiter that she wasn’t allowed to order a club sandwich from the lunch menu at 7pm. She kept telling him that if she couldn’t have the club sandwich the restaurant would make less money because she would just share my dad’s pizza instead. He doesn’t care!!! He gets paid £10.50 an hour to follow the rules, he does not give a shit whether they make an extra £7 in turnover or not because he doesn’t see any of it.

I feel like people who complain about this stuff have not worked a service job recently enough (or ever)

Restaurant owner won't care either. There are reasons they stop serving certain dishes at certain times. If it were cost effective and profitable to serve the club sandwich at 7pm, they'd do it.

It might not be about whether they care or not/have any personal investment, it may simply be the ONLY way they can wield any kind of power in their lives.

I got called a jobsworth because I have to ask someone if they've got the app every time
Exploding at me and ranting that we keep asking doesn't change anything
I have to ask it. I tell my manager customers are annoyed by it, he has been told by his manager and so on
I get it's annoying but I l can't do anything at all about it and I'll keep asking because... I have to!

I have a question which I'm genuinely asking in good faith to those who feel that retail/hospitality staff are jobsworth for abiding by the rules and instructions set by their managers:
If someone posted on Mumsnet saying "I think I've been unfairly dismissed because I refused, on multiple occasions, to do what my manager said as I didn't like their policy", would you agree with them? As this is, essentially, what you're asking of the member of staff: to override the policy set by their management and essentially ignore what they've been told to accommodate the customer's request. If they then lost their job for doing this for every customer who asked, would you be on their side and think it was unfair that they lost their job?

I've very often wondered this too and would be interested to hear honest replies too.

I think there should always be a "common sense" over-ride.

I once went with my very young son to a Tesco cafe (a long time ago) - one of those "canteen" style with food in trays on a counter. He was a bit of a fussy eater. It was just coming up to 11am, so they still had the breakfasts out on the counter, but there wasn't much left, just a couple of sausages which DS wanted, but other than that, nothing else . We asked for the 2 sausages to be told we couldn't have them as you had to buy 4 breakfast items, so couldn't buy them. I noticed the board mentioned beans and sausages, so I asked if we could have beans and sausages, only to be told, no, because they'd run out of beans. I asked if she could put them through as a beans/sausage, and we were happy not to have the beans, but she wouldn't do that either.

Come 11am, she just cleared the counter and threw it all away!

It's that kind of stupidity that gives the "jobsworth" title.

There are some seemingly small, very annoying, things that more or less only the 'shop floor' people have to see through, that also have potential for some much bigger financial consequences. Policy will lap at the edges of statutory points sometimes. Some policies and laws as they stand actively pull in 2 different directions.

Some examples are:
Retail and online sales for the same company are sometimes separate and the high street till systems have no connection with the online function. If you have paid via a 3rd party, such as paypal, and want a refund in store to your card, it's not possible to prove enough of a link to be able to do it, because of the 'intervention' of the 3rd party rather than the transaction being within your retailer's sights, from end to end. The price or discount code you paid may also, regularly, not be the same online as what is in store.
It's not the till operator's fault and we get your anger (if anything, those high earners in the tech jobs whose 'companies just get it right' have more to do with it...)

If the pre-work checks and your IR35 tax status isn't checked before we can confirm you as a supplier to give you a date and a contract for whatever short-term engagement you are doing, Mr. large employer accepting public funds may be fined up to £10K (has happened). I'd definitely be sacked if I was behind that. You're right, it's a bad fit for the circumstances of the sector we both work in. Again, I can't change this, I can just absorb your ranting if that's what you choose to do.

Agree Op.
I’m inFrance. Literally watched an older couple eating food they had bought in a market in a cafe. They ordered drinks and none of the waiters gave a stuff. We have also been let on buses free when we got lost in Italy and not paid for big bags on trains. Guard just shrugged it off and waved us through.
Way less rules is rules and much nicer for it.

No, that isn’t the correct definition in full. A jobsworth is someone who uses their authority at the expense of efficiency or helpfulness and is obstructive.

I agree that the waitress was doing what she was told in general. But at some point you learn to be smarter with application of rules. For example, don’t allow an order of drinks to be made and THEN say that you can’t eat their own food at their own tables. The issue isn’t cleaning related because they sell the same food at the restaurant in the pub and the fish and chips is the same price. The reason we chose to order it at their takeaway window rather than from the restaurant inside is purely because it takes longer.

I understand my example has confused people. I am sorry.

The reason I felt it applied was because she wasn’t doing her job, the rule wasn’t applicable because the food was from their restaurant. She was not doing the correct thing. (You are not allowed to eat food from other places though, which is fair)

Because I had bought them there. I even capitalised it was their food I bought.

I paid VAT.

I can just imagine the shrieking when a MN sees someone waved through but are then told that they have to pay.

My specific scenario is really clogging up this thread rather than the general point.

it’s hard for people who don’t live where I do for me to explain it.

where we live there is a section of pubs and it is very busy in the summer. One pub has a glass hutch in the kitchen to the outside that they serve their food out of, the prices are the same. The difference is that the pub is usually busy and it’s by the sea, so lots like to take their food away. We chose to get a “takeaway” as we were starving and there was no queue at the window. However, we also wanted alcohol so went to the outside tables of the pub. Of course there are many take out vendors near by so I understand the no outside food policy, but the waitress didn’t care that we bought it from their restaurant (allowed). Hence, jobsworth. Power misuse.

*You clearly haven't.

The rigid thinking, and the tunnel-visioned view of asking for permission for every little thing is very much an English thing.

Completely unable to think outside the box*

Arts/culture is a big industry/export in the UK and makes the UK a ton of money. I'd wager there's a fair amount of thinking outside the box involved there.

Also, cringing for you OP 😳 waitress sounds more mature than you.

What is the actual policy on it? In that pub?

I know the type of place you mean because we have a few here and a couple actually don't let people sit at their outside tables with takeaway from their hatch because they keep them for diners who 'dine in' so to speak - they don't want to turn away those customers who create higher revenue by dining in because takeaway customers are using the tables, or have done so and left a mess behind.

But then, of course, she could also be a member of HARPMW (hospitality and retail power mad workers) organisation that seek to piss off customers for the power trip. They're planning on taking over the world one pissed off customer at a time. 🙄

Honestly, saying no to customers is the last thing you want to do because it gets you shouted at, personally insulted, spoken down to and talked about and at in the way that is being done here, not to mention scathing online reviews that will mention you by name without your permission that you'll get a bollocking for because they can trash a business.

And you get enough of that just being customer facing in general, without actively courting it.

You do it because the alternative of letting it happen has worse concequences (being reprimanded for not doing as you're told) so this whole 'misuse of power' is pretty much a total bollocks argument.