Customers as cattle

At Hobee's Palo Alto today I got browbeaten in front of other diners because I asked to not be brought water. It was very bizarre.  It was noisy and I had to raise my voice in order to be heard, and to interrupt the customer "chute" I was being herded into in order to ask for room-temperature water no ice instead.

The busboy didn't understand English well and eventually understood after I gestured, explained why I didn't want automatic water delivery, and asked to be asked before being given icewater.

But apparently there was a problem because I had spoken up. The floor manager took my gesturing as his cue to come over and browbeat me, casting me as a bully for not being the piece of meat he expected me to be, a quiet one who just takes whatever they dish out and doesn't ask for anything different, or to be asked first.

If I hurt the busboy's feelings by asking to be asked before being brought water, because water is a precious resource and it's a waste to bring it to people automatically -- I'm sorry.  I apologized for hurting anyone's feelings.  But the manager wouldn't stop yelling and browbeating me.  I was stunned.  He seemed to have taken it personally.

I countered his accusations but I remember how automatically I became defensive.  Everything I know now about controllers and abusers went completely out the window.  The browbeating was wrong.  And the fantasy that he was God and *knew* my attitude and intentions was also wrong.

But trying to talk sense into someone who is out of control and targetting you never works.  They're not listening anyway.

It quickly became clear that he was unwilling to hear me.  But in a public restaurant it was really over the top.  It finally got so bad that I'm afraid the f-word slipped from my mouth, in a semi-whisper I swear, but as I fled the restaurant.  I'm not happy about using profanity, but under the circumstances I think my reaction was understandable.

The manager may have had a bad day.  And after a busy morning filled with difficult customers, maybe my request broke the camel's back.  But I still don't find that treatment appropriate.

Part of the problem may be that Hobee's is a chain.  And perhaps customers are supposed to serve Hobee's. like predictable cattle all in line, instead of Hobee's serving customers.  Maybe we're all meat, we just don't know it.

Who serves who?  Do I serve the system -- or does the system serve me?  Am I a human being?  Or am I just a unit?

And would it take that much horrible effort to simply ask people when you sit them down whether they want water?  It would be nice, even refreshing, to be engaged with as a person, instead of herded along like cattle serving the restaurant's bottom line.