One of AOC’s major blind spots is she doesn’t understand how many blue collar workers look down on workers like waitresses. They don’t see them as brothers and sisters to stand with, but as servants who exist to get them coffee and afford them to experience being superior to… https://t.co/aDLcSps0xF
— Nicky Frank (@NickyFrank30) March 20, 2025
That’s right. She doesn’t understand it because it makes no sense. But people always want to feel that they’re better than someone else, even if the average contractor or construction worker should have more solidarity with the waitress in the café than the billionaire being a clown on TV.
But everyone in America sees themselves as a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire so class solidarity isn’t much of a thing.
More to it than that. I’m basically a prole, and a thing I noticed is how deep and involved the left’s culture around service workers and waitresses specifically is, and how often they are their primary example when in calls for lefty revolution. The same people who are 100% comfortable calling for the public execution and ritual humiliation of their amazon delivery guy if their package arrives slightly rattled will also go on for tens minutes about the ins and outs of appropriate tipping and what it is or isn’t appropriate to say to a waitress.
There’s somehow a whole section of the economy where one’s cut of the pie is determined entirely through one’s social visibility and ability to inflict embarrassment. Blue collar is defined pretty much as doing necessary but low visibility work, and the means to do that and be alright with yourself day to day are pretty thin, which is why there’s so much focus on “being real.”
Anyone with a pinky toe in this trading rubbing social mores business is then automatically suspect. Not particularly fair to waitresses, but it’s unfair in a way that often lets them have significantly more income than people in technically the same income bracket as them.