Cop asked to leave cafe because he made a customer "uncomfortable"

[Gregg]

I missed the part where Americans acknowledged the inalienable right to feel comfortable all the time in any situation. Cops, firefighters, cancer patients, whistle blowers, Republican professors.... There are countless brave people in this country, but for the most part our citizens need to grow a pair. We are slipping away from greatness for a lot of reasons, but the need to be mollycoddled at every turn certainly doesn't help. No, we don't need everyone to be John Wayne, but I mean really. If I own a cafe and you're uncomfortable eating there because a cop comes in you can get your milk toast somewhere else. Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

And then there's the difference between hard and stressful. Building cinder block walls is hard. Being an air traffic controller is stressful. Relatively speaking, most service jobs are neither. We owned a small restaurant years ago and did every job there, all day, every day. Getting busy during rush hour and dealing with the occasional jerk was about as bad as it got. The only source of real anxiety was when it came time to pay bills and meet payroll! Anyway, nothing there compared to the possibility of facing a life threatening situation even once, let alone daily. In the end everyone deserves respect as a human being and every job should afford the opportunity to carry it out with dignity. No one should argue that, but the volume of the whining in this country is deafening. Maybe instead of waiting in vein for a savior to rise from the streets (can't beat paraphrasing The Boss) its time for those of us that don't have infinite resources to start doing things a little differently.

[LDAHL]

I missed the part where Americans acknowledged the inalienable right to feel comfortable all the time in any situation. Cops, firefighters, cancer patients, whistle blowers, Republican professors.... There are countless brave people in this country, but for the most part our citizens need to grow a pair. We are slipping away from greatness for a lot of reasons, but the need to be mollycoddled at every turn certainly doesn't help. No, we don't need everyone to be John Wayne, but I mean really. If I own a cafe and you're uncomfortable eating there because a cop comes in you can get your milk toast somewhere else. Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

And then there's the difference between hard and stressful. Building cinder block walls is hard. Being an air traffic controller is stressful. Relatively speaking, most service jobs are neither. We owned a small restaurant years ago and did every job there, all day, every day. Getting busy during rush hour and dealing with the occasional jerk was about as bad as it got. The only source of real anxiety was when it came time to pay bills and meet payroll! Anyway, nothing there compared to the possibility of facing a life threatening situation even once, let alone daily. In the end everyone deserves respect as a human being and every job should afford the opportunity to carry it out with dignity. No one should argue that, but the volume of the whining in this country is deafening. Maybe instead of waiting in vein for a savior to rise from the streets (can't beat paraphrasing The Boss) its time for those of us that don't have infinite resources to start doing things a little differently.

I completely agree with you. Universities used to be a place to hear divergent opinions and have your assumptions challenged. Now students cower in "safe zones" to shield themselves from upsetting ideas. We've never been safer, but fret over all kinds of low-probability threats. We invent new classes of victim and villain constantly. Just the other day I read an article about the "social privilege" wielded by extroverts over introverts. Politicians portray themselves as the messiahs of the middle class, and large numbers of us lap it up.

I'm not sure of the cause. Maybe it's decades of victim-based identity politics coming home to roost. Maybe it's a terror of competition inculcated from childhood. Maybe it's a displacement of sterner, traditional belief systems by feel-good pop psychology. Maybe it's eliminating the draft or expanding litigation.

I'm not sure what the solution is.

[Yossarian]

Probably just another facet of hedonic adaptation.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Stressful is difficult because it's by definition a glitch. It's the primitive brain responding to 21st century conditions it was never wired for. Responding to the deadline like it's a tiger. So a lot can be stressful: deadlines, abusive bosses, not knowing how the rent will be paid etc..

I'm often very very glad to be female because support myself I do, but that's just holding a job, but because the social pressure to be John Wayne is less. I don't know if it's overall better to be female or male or anything (being either kind of sucks, but for different reasons, as far as I can see ) - but that part definitely is better to be female, don't have to be John Wayne.

[CathyA]

Flowerseverywhere..........I tried to send you a PM, but I guess you don't accept them. But my comment had absolutely nothing to do what with you've said.