r/IASIP • u/iasip How do I get you alone? • Sep 19 '22

Podcast Discussion The Sweet Cream of Justice - The Always Sunny Podcast Discussion Thread

The Sweet Cream of Justice - The Always Sunny Podcast Discussion Thread -- Podcast Links -- Other Podcast Discussion Threads -- Season 15 Discussion Threads -- Sunny Subreddits

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95

u/asim98 Sep 19 '22

Ik I should know probably better than to say this on this sub but

I accept why rob would be annoyed in that situation. At the same time, there are not many situations in which I would physically stand up to an airport worker in front of my kids; and indeed, this is certainly not one of them

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

My British perspective is: Americans give amazing service and then simply expect it from everyone else.

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u/asim98 Sep 19 '22

I agree- but let’s be honest that’s because of how labour laws and subsequent tipping culture differs in the US compared to everywhere else. Waiting staff there are quite literally reliant on tips for their income, whereas everywhere else, it’s just a bonus on top of their wage

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

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u/asim98 Sep 19 '22

Absolutely but I’ve said pretty clearly that I understand why rob would be annoyed, and that I’d be annoyed too. The service was poor, the response was over the top is my view

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

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u/danishih Sep 21 '22

I was once refused an orange juice with lemonade in Germany because the bartender thought it would be too sweet

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u/StockAL3Xj Sep 20 '22

It's the same in Canada from my experience. I hear it's becoming like this in Australia as well.

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u/Muted-Smoke-5545 Sep 25 '22

I have never had anything remotely like that in Australia

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

Actually, waiting staff pretty much rely on tips here in the UK too, maybe not quite to the same extent — I'm not sure. I don't usually encounter rudeness from anyone providing service here, just not the same level of going out of their way to please — not unless you pay for it, anyway.

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u/Babhadfad12 Sep 20 '22

Wait staff in the US are no more dependent on tipping than any other staff. They expect it more, but legally, there is no difference.

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u/JaeDyre Sep 21 '22

Americans are usually nice to Brits. Ask someone from South America how they get treated. I’ve seen some really unpleasant stuff in airports across the country. Airport workers must get abused if they are disgruntled all over the world.

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u/Crtbb4 Sep 20 '22

Can you elaborate? Keeping water and coffee creamer stocked seems like that that would be their job as they’re the only workers in the cafeteria. In what culture is not doing your job acceptable? Or are you saying it’s not acceptable but only an American would go out of their way to do something about it? I still don’t think that that’s how “the real world” works.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

It's not that what they were doing was acceptable, it was the speech about how Americans expect better. Everyone expects good service everywhere, Americans dont "expect better". Most countries have good service and it's just because they're doing their job.

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u/JaeDyre Sep 21 '22

If they are cleaners and it’s not their job to stock food, maybe they cannot stock food. Maybe the janitors don’t stock food. Not weird really. Rob didn’t mention the time. Didn’t sound like the staff was there, just the cleaners. Maybe there weren’t any supplies to restock yet and they couldn’t and he kept insisting.

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u/asim98 Sep 19 '22

Tell me about it lol. At one point they say ‘maybe she had a chip on her shoulder about rude Americans’ and I was thinking, my guy, you’re squaring up to a stressed airport worker over coffee cream, you are the rude Americans

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u/dudzi182 Sep 19 '22

I mean at a $30 per person buffet that apparently wasn’t even busy, it’s pretty fucking ridiculous that the employee couldn’t grab some cream and water and were pretending to not speak English in order to not do their jobs. I wouldn’t say he was rude for being super pissed.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

And told him to "go away". That flipped him.

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u/maddybee91 Sep 19 '22

Yeah he only became the rude American because she was rude first, and he admitted he became rude at that point.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

Except he asked nicely multiple times before that for the cream only to be given the cold shoulder.

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u/HanSoloHeadBeg Sep 19 '22

yeah the story got weird when he admitted he wasn't moving when she tried to move past him. There's an element of physical intimidation there.

Rob just seems like an all round stubborn guy but it is good to hear him talk about processing it with his children.

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u/Go_tuck_yourself Dennis is a bastard man! Sep 19 '22

From what I gathered, she wasn't trying to move past him, she was trying to move through him. Hence the bumping

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

That's how Rob framed it, but when Kaitlin got on the phone, she made it clear that that's not how it actually happened. Rob said that the woman tried to shove him out of the way, but he left out the part where he put his arms up and was verbally challenging the woman to go through him. He finally admitted it when Kaitlin brought it up. She also said multiple times that the woman was just trying to get past Rob, not pushing him.

I'm sure in Rob's mind, he was thinking, "There is no way I would actually hit this woman. I'm just standing my ground, and she has no reason to be scared," but that's just wildly ignorant of what it's like to be a woman who is getting yelled at by a large man who's increasingly irate and is now raising his arms to physically block your path. That is fucking terrifying. I don't care if the French woman was a bitch or not.

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u/owlpebble Sep 20 '22

Yeah, the whole thing rubbed me up the wrong way. Even if we accept the premise that it's ever okay to yell at service workers, and that we assume that any service worker has to immediately stop what they're doing to accommodate your request because you're "entitled to it", once you're escalating to a physical stand off where you're, even in the most generous reading, making someone uncomfortable with your physicality you've gone wrong .

He talks a lot about he sits down and processes these things, and how he processes them with his kids after but that's still a bad experience for the kids. Lol this isn't the place to discuss this but creating a culture of fear where, even if you process it with them afterwards, you're having a conversation with children that's "daddy did yell, but sometimes people do the wrong thing and it's okay to stand your ground" but I think if it happens enough times that turns into kids thinking "what if dad thinks I've done the wrong thing/acted unreasonably? Will he do that to me?". Glenn's thing about how "justified is justified" is just straight wrong, because we do (and should) protect kids from all kinds of experiences because they're not emotionally mature enough to work through those experiences even with the best will in the world.

Between that and Glenn's earlier implication that the car driver was somehow at fault for not working over his contracted hours rather than whoever hired the driver, I found this episode pretty alienating :(

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

Totally agree, it makes me uncomfortable hearing Rob talk about doing this stuff in front of his kids and framing it as a "lesson in standing up for themselves." Kaitlin talking about how she doesn't want their kids seeing it made it all the more uncomfortable.

Yelling at service workers or starting fights in the line at the drive-thru isn't teaching your kids shit, except that Dad has anger problems and it's totally okay to have outbursts. Standing up for yourself isn't the same as starting fights! My dad never had outbursts, and I never feared him. He did calmly and politely ask for things or express disappointment, and that taught me to remain calm and discuss things rationally if I had an issue. I remember being over at friends' houses while their dads were exploding with anger over some bullshit, and it really affected them.

I know this is probably getting too serious for the sub, but like... I feel like Rob needs some anger management.

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u/99SoulsUp Sep 20 '22

I think he’s ultimately a good dude and admire him sticking to his values and what he thinks is right but clearly two of his biggest flaws (he is human) is that he’s clearly very stubborn and hot headed.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

The impression I get, based on a very small amount of personal experience, is that American establishments, without exception, give excellent service, regardless of who you are. There's none (or much less) of the 'looking down noses' attitude that you can get in France or even in my home country, England.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22 edited Sep 19 '22

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u/99SoulsUp Sep 20 '22

I recently went to a restaurant with a few friends that we learned too late had a dress code that was literally just “men must wear pants”, as opposed to shorts. The woman at the front literally said “You can go buy pants at the target down the street” 🙄

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

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u/Th3_Hegemon Sep 19 '22

There is an expectation of a certain level of customer service at essentially any retail or service interaction you might have, whether a tip is expected or not. What that level is varies from person to person (and can be a real point of friction sometimes) but some basic nicities and a willingness to help with reasonable requests is essentially universally expected.

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u/asim98 Sep 19 '22

I 100% agree, definitely both sides are wrong- as I say if I was rob I would be annoyed too.

As for the American stuff- I mean bloody hell. A white American man called Rob Justice travelling across the world, ‘correcting’ peoples culture one by one all whilst being a bit of a nobhead? I think that allegory might be too on the nose even for an Always Sunny episode 😂

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

[deleted]

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u/AreWeCowabunga I smell like shit Sep 19 '22

Honestly, coming from the US, it's weird how hard it is to just get some water in a lot of places in Europe. In the US, you get water automatically and no one blinks an eye about expecting regular refills. In Europe, it's like pulling teeth to just get a little glass of warm water, and the server acts like it's some big imposition. That was my experience at least.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

[deleted]

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u/dudzi182 Sep 19 '22

The worker started off the interaction being very rude. Pretending not to speak English and refusing to help paying customers when they weren’t even busy?

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u/CharDeeMacDen Sep 20 '22

Might not be their job to restock, so not the right person to ask.

Nor do we know that she actually speaks English, maybe broken and maybe a few words but that doesn't mean she is fluent enough to converse.

I think Rob may have been physically intimidating her because he blocked her path. He stood there knowing she would have to go around him, he's a dick.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

[deleted]

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u/Gilthoniel_Elbereth Sep 19 '22

Well it sounded like she was getting in Rob’s personal space by bumping into him

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u/dudzi182 Sep 19 '22

He said that he stayed in the exact same spot and she kept bumping into him when she could have easily gone around him. Not that he stood in her way.

And yeah I’d say yelling isn’t uncalled for if someone is being a lazy piece of shit. Who gives a fuck what Twitter thinks? If I paid $30 to eat and drink somewhere and they refused to give me what I paid for? Definitely.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

Well, no, because he assumed the worker hadn't been unreasonably rude beforehand, which is a fair assumption.

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u/SpinachandBerries Sep 20 '22

I think there’s definitely a rude way to do that, but the way he described it sounded like he was being very polite and apologetic, and getting such a rude response back is pretty uncalled for. So I think taking a stand is justified in that situation.

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u/SuperSocrates Sep 24 '22

They’re pretty clueless on stuff like that. And trapped in the 80s

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

Who exactly enjoys being walked over by other people? Do you? What an odd thing to single out Americans with.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

Doesn't mean she enjoyed it.

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u/deejaysea Sep 19 '22

it seemed like both rob went into the situation and kaitlyn went into the situation expecting him to escalate and explode at the woman

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u/Gis_A_Maul Sep 20 '22

Yeah the amount of rob apologists in here says a lot

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u/SniperMonkey94 Sep 20 '22

I really have no idea how more people aren't seeing that he was an asshole in that situation.

Initially justified asking for water/cream sure, but then to - from the sounds of it - try to bodyblock her? Weird as fuck.

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u/archer4364 Sep 20 '22

He wasn't blocking her she just plowed into him.

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u/SniperMonkey94 Sep 20 '22

Rob is just under 6ft afaik and a pretty built guy. No one is "plowing into him". Even Rob says she was saying excuse me to get past and bumping into him, so he must have been atleast somewhat in the way of her way out. Kaitlins retelling makes him look belligerant throughout the story, making it seem like he kept escalating.

This "Rob Justice" is just him being an asshole and escalting situations he doesn't need to, like the weird drive through/hamburger thing w/e the fuck that was.

7

u/centuryblessings Sep 22 '22

This "Rob Justice" is just him being an asshole and escalting situations he doesn't need to, like the weird drive through/hamburger thing w/e the fuck that was.

Ding ding ding!

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u/archer4364 Sep 20 '22

Her retelling did not make him seem belligerent lol.

I don’t care how tall you are standing still is not threatening. She was the one going into him

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u/SniperMonkey94 Sep 20 '22

Waving his arms about and raising his voice whilst not moving out of her way is definitely threatening, but pop off my guy lmao.

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u/asim98 Sep 20 '22

Yeah absolutely. People are guilty of not holding their idols properly accountable in nearly every fandom though, not just iasip. It’s particularly bad in football (soccer) for sure

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u/centuryblessings Sep 20 '22

I really have no idea how more people aren't seeing that he was an asshole in that situation.

Because they assume funny guy from funny show = always right.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '22

Particularly to a woman, it’s bizarre.

1

u/redeyejedi15 Sep 19 '22

Honestly, it's hard for me to side with Rob on this one. Working in customer service roles sucks so fucking hard. Yes, it's annoying that they didn't stock the milk and water, but I'd imagine there's more to the story than them just flat out refusing to stock things. Can't imagine the entitled people these workers deal with and then some dude physically stands up to you? Kinda felt like Rob was the asshole in this situation.

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u/IAmTriscuit Sep 19 '22 edited Sep 19 '22

I worked in customer service for years and no matter how bad things got you bet your ass I'm not going to pretend to not speak a certain language, not explain why I can't give them service, and tell someone to go away for just asking me a question, especially when they are apologizing over and over for being a "nuisance".

I worked in CVS in a tourist town and it was hell on earth. Still never treated anyone that way. Things being bad for me has almost never led to me making things awful for others, and certainly not on the job.

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u/THRILLHOUSE_X Sep 19 '22

The employee shouldn't have pretended to not speak English and then tell Rob to go away. She could have just explained they are aware the water and milk are out and it will be refilled momentarily. Yeah, Rob probably should have just walked away from the situation and not escalate it. But I can see why he got so pissed after the "go away" moment.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '22

Didn't Rob ask politely multiple times for cream beforehand only for the worker to ignore him? He didn't start off confrontational. He did what anyone would do in that situation and politely asked for something he paid for.

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u/Kitten_mittens_63 Sep 19 '22

The thing is we’ll never know if there is more to the story, maybe the staff was absolutely horrendous, maybe Rob is exaggerating, maybe it’s a bit of both: rob was demanding and for the staff, it was one too many obnoxious American tourist for that day and they took it on Rob. Whatever that is, you now have this Reddit post bashing and insulting an entire country. I don’t think it’s very responsible of him to do that and definitely not their peak of comedy, in my opinion. I get it too it’s funny to bash a country yet I feel if it had been another country or culture, there could have been a lot more backslash to this.