Driving on the highway late at night, suddenly you feel that inexplicable pang of hunger in your stomach. Luckily, you spot those glorious Golden Arches, only 10 miles away. You nudge up your speedometer until you finally pull up and hear the magic words, “Hi, Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?” You order food and pull out of the parking lot, only to find your hamburger is missing the four extra pickle slices you requested. Do you, A: accept this as an easy mistake and move on, B: politely go back in the store and get your pickles, or C: storm back into the restaurant and yell at the poor cashier for five minutes. If you answered C, this article is for you.

I see it all over social media, people getting overly upset about mistakes in the service industry. This stems largely from a lack of respect  people have for these jobs. When someone lacks respect for a job it’s much easier to give an employee your angry, pickle-induced rant. Customers laugh from their self-imposed thrones forgetting they know virtually nothing about this person. They don’t see the high-school kid struggling to help his family pay the bills or the mom with three kids working a double shift; they only see what they expect. That high-school kid turns into a lazy worker who didn’t get their order right, and the mom turns into someone who should have gone to college.

While these jobs don’t require a college degree, it doesn’t mean they’re any easier than other jobs out there. Juggling fast-paced orders, trying to be as accurate as possible and dealing with an endless line of customers, food service is as hard as it sounds. However, people still seem to translate the lower pay of these jobs to them being easier.

One might say that these over-critical customers are rare, only one in a hundred, but when you serve hundreds of people a day those few are a few too many. Even if you aren’t one of these people just remember that everyone, including myself, should show more respect, whether it be to your neighbor, your grandpa, your teacher, or the good ol’ worker down at the local McDonald’s.