Thread by @tanejamainhoon

Regarding the #Indigo incident: I don't know both sides of the story and I completely condemn any violence for any reason. Having said that, I will use this occasion to talk about one thing that gets to me: our behaviour with customer support staff in India. #thread

I know we live in a time where capitalism is at its peak and we pay a lot of money to get the services we demand on time and in the best possible manner. But I've seen time and again that there's an incredible amount of entitlement in a lot of us because of this.

It's the service industry but it's also run by humans, and yes, sometimes, things go wrong for legit errors, but sometimes, they go wrong because of no reason, and that shouldn't give any of us the right to mistreat the service employees or customer reps.

And yet, I see that the behaviour of so many of us, who come from a place of money, towards these representatives (who may literally be that, and not be the reason for the error) is inhuman, to say the least. We shout, scream, belittle people who are not in our strata of society.

I have seen people scream at delivery boys because they were late by a few minutes, shame customer service execs on the phone, mistreat drives, abuse waiters. Why is this okay? When did this become 'normal'?

This regular display of class superiority or entitlement is the reason behind the anger of the working class. That manifests itself, many a times, in violence.
Again: I'm not saying violence is okay, I'm just putting out a perspective.

Perhaps, instead of blindly condemning such incidents, we should have larger discussions on our behaviour as well.. that leads to such incidents. This anger is not about *one* customer's misbehaviour, it's coming from how we behave as a society towards the working class.

Don't call people as 'abey', 'oye', 'waiter' or 'driver'.. they have names. Treat people with dignity and respect. Just because they don't earn as much as us, doesn't make them any less human than us. Be kind.. #TheEnd