Thanks, good point. I’ve edited my comment.

I learned women actually don’t have the same access to higher education as men.

You’re right - women have significantly better access to higher education than men, and have demonstrably better education outcomes as a result.

For example, women are significantly more likely to receive scholarships and grants than men in undergrad.

Partially as a result of this lack of access, men have dropped to almost 40% of undergrad students, while women make up nearly 60%. Women also receive more doctorates than men, and almost twice as many Master’s degrees as men.

I’m not trying to minimize the bigotry that you observed (or faced), but it’s objectively false to claim that women have worse access to higher education than men.

I can’t tell if this is cope or Kool-Aid.

Excellent point, very logical and persuasive. I’m sure this will be the comment that finally changes my mind!

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The ridiculous part, of course, being that Modern English isn’t special, that “no man” didn’t mean anything 6,000 years ago when PIE was spoken, and that its contemporary equivalent, smth. like “*ne dʰǵʰemṓn” doesn’t mean anything in Modern English.

Also, the actual reconstructed form of “name”, *h₃néh₃mn̥, looks a lot less like “no-man” than they seem to think.

Working at McDonald’s isn’t bad at all - it’s just that people who are more difficult to work with often end up working in fast food by necessity. My comment implies that the OOP works in fast food due to a lack of professionalism and a tendency to make rude comments to customers, as evidenced by the post.

“Minimum wage workers should be intentionally rude to people who are probably fellow wage workers instead of finding actually productive ways to push back against their exploitative employers” is certainly a take.

I appreciate your honesty and straightforwardness (here and in your other reply to the user below - sorry, I confused you with another user), but compared to the levels of vitriol being thrown at me in this thread for having the audacity to not just assume that a woman is a horrible bigot deserving of a bafflingly rude customer service interaction simply for asking for a “boy toy” for her son, I’d say I’m doing pretty well here, all things considered.

I’m just not sure how I’m the obnoxious one in this scenario, instead of all of the inflammatory commenters and the really obvious fishing attempts for bigotry that are keeping this sub-thread going?

Am I the obnoxious one just because I’m the one choosing not to go along with the ridiculous circle-jerk, even though my comments are an order of magnitude less antagonistic than the ones I’m responding to? I legitimately don’t know.

You’re the other user is right, though - my mind’s not going to change, and the handful of upvotes I’m getting lets me know that others feel the same way, even if they’re understandably hesitant to speak up about it with all the personal attacks I’m getting here as a result.

Once again, the 196 circlejerk and the real world are very different places.

Them and everyone else, from the sound of it.

Nope, I was a normal minimum wage employee who worked the counter while I was putting myself through college. I also didn’t intentionally antagonize customers who just wanted a happy meal toy for their kid, though, so that may be where the confusion is coming from.

Did… did you not read the enormous thread of replies to this comment where I explained exactly that, multiple times?

Assert whatever you like, random person on the internet.

This comment is an excellent example of an interesting, sill-unsolved question in the Philosophy of Language community: “is it possible to ‘know’ something that’s factually incorrect?”

Researchers seem to be split on the issue, so depending on which researcher you talk to, you could be right!

Pragmatics literally always comes into play. Humans cannot communicate without pragmatics, because semantics without context doesn’t actually exist in the real world.

You know literally nothing about my worldview other than “intentionally being difficult to an innocent customer who probably has no idea why they’re being antagonized is usually bad”.

Once more for the kids in the back: “Believe it or not, many of the people you interact with each day aren’t actually bigots. They’re just, y’know, reasonable people, which I know must make everyday life very difficult for you.”

Pragmatics doesn’t seem to be your strong suit either.

Also, I literally have worked in fast food, so…

Edit in response to your edit: “Believe it or not, many of the people you interact with each day aren’t actually bigots. They’re just, y’know, reasonable people, which I know must make everyday life very difficult for you.”

And yet the OP exists, whether it’s a creative writing exercise or not, in which a girl toy and boy toy have clearly been offered to the woman. Regardless of whether the hypothetical restaurant in question is actually a McDonalds, the employee in question would certainly have been disciplined for their actions in the OP if their needlessly antagonistic behavior had made it back to a manager, and that disciplinary action would have been completely warranted.

Believe it or not, many of the people you interact with each day aren’t actually bigots. They’re just, y’know, reasonable people, which I know must make everyday life very difficult for you.

In the context of a fast food chain offering a Hot Wheels car and a Barbie doll as possible toys, her choice was a perfectly clear choice.

She was given the choice of A or B. She chose A, twice, and then the employee repeatedly chose to ignore her choice, on purpose.

If the driver had decided to bring the attention to their supervisor, the employee would have been rightfully disciplined for their poor customer service behavior.