Nice To The Waiter / Western Animation

Times where you can tell the good guys from the bad based on whether or not they're Nice to the Waiter in Western Animation.

---

• Archer:
  • Both Mallory and Sterling Archer treat their hired help at ISIS like crap, though Mallory treats Sterling just as bad (if not worse) as the rest of her ISIS employees, not to mention is far more sympathetic towards Woodhouse (Sterling's manservant and male nanny) than her son is. Mallory summed it up quite well when she was Mistaken for Racist.
    Mallory: I treat every servant the same regardless of skin color! If anything that makes me an elitist, but not a racist.
  • Sterling, meanwhile, is marginally nicer to the staff, though he tends to behave like a bullying jock toward most of them. But his behavior toward Woodhouse blows right past bullying and into outright torture, including forcing Woodhouse to do odd things like eat bowls of spider-webs and have his brother sent to prison. On the other hand, flashbacks have shown that while Woodhouse was Sterling's nanny, he often left the kid alone in a run-down apartment while he locked himself in the bathroom and got high (even on Sterling's birthday), so perhaps this is Sterling's idea of payback.
  • Ironically, while Sterling has a pretty bad record for his servants and underlings, he tends to Pet the Dog when dealing with people who are socially beneath him but aren't working for him. This includes refusing to hunt ships while acting alongside Ruthless Modern Pirates because he recognized that most of their targets were poor fishermen who wouldn't survive losing their livelihoods, and showing genuine sympathy and anger for people being given fake cancer drugs.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • You can easily use this trope to see the difference between Zuko and Azula. Sure, Zuko comes off as a bit of a Jerkass at first, but he does save the life of one of his Red Shirts in "The Storm". Azula's Establishing Character Moment, meanwhile, includes threatening to throw her ship's captain overboard and let him drown because he's reluctant to bring the ship in to shore during a period of dangerous tides. (To be fair he later proved himself an idiot, so maybe she had some reason to treat him that way. At least that time.)
  • Further driven home in the third season, where we see Zuko and Azula interacting with their respective servants. Zuko is unfailingly polite to his servants and they seem happy to work for him. In contrast, Azula's servants are terrified of her (rightfully so) and the first sign of her Sanity Slippage is when she banishes one of them for leaving a pit in her cherries. This is also implied to be an act of mercy by Azula, so no telling what she has done to servants who have screwed up in the past.
  • The events surrounding the Agni Kai that left Zuko scarred and banished worked as both a straight use and a inversion of this trope. Zuko protested a plan that would have led to the pointless deaths of many loyal soldiers, but by doing so, he ticked off his father and was forced to duel. The inversion comes from the Fire Lord: if he was willing to brutally scar his own flesh and blood just to show everyone who's boss, he certainly wasn't going to be a good tipper. And considering Iroh's own habits (including befriending his own prison guard, and making sure she was not present during his escape), we know where Zuko learned a lot of it.
• In Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Terrible Trio", Bruce Wayne gets berated by his Upper-Class Twit golfing buddies for thanking his caddy; one in particular, Warren Lawford, sarcastically asks if he also thanks the garbageman for picking up his trash. Bruce replies, in full Sincerity Mode, "If I happen to run into him." Needless to say, the three twits end up going on a crime spree because they're bored, and Lawford in particular tries to murder his girlfriend after she finds out.
• Carmen Sandiego:
  • Nigel Braithwait of British Intelligence is very friendly with the personnel in his office, asking after a security guard's sick wife and encouraging them to address him by his first name. It's an act he drops the instant he's in private, as his position depends on being a Villain with Good Publicity.
  • Meanwhile, Carmen takes the time to minimize collateral damage and uses the money she steals from V.I.L.E. to give back to the communities they've been harming, even taking the time to bemoan that their Botswana diamond mine is taking away revenue that the government would have invested into schools, hospitals, and other public interests, but she doesn't typically get chummy with people outside Player, Zack, Ivy, and Shadow-san.
  • When Chase fakes sick at Interpol, his supervisor reacts with annoyance and distain (though, to be fair, we only see the supervisor's reaction after Chase has pulled the trick several times). When he does the same at A.C.M.E., the Chief assigns an agent to bring him soup and check up on him to make sure he's okay.
• One Cartoon Network bumper had Droopy working as a barista at a café only to be stiffed on the tip by the Wolf. Of course, being Droopy, he simply stalked the Wolf and continued to hound him for a tip, no matter how hard the Wolf tried to escape from him. The Wolf finally caved and left him a ton of money before jumping off a plane. Droopy just sat there and pointed out that the Wolf forgot his latte.
• It is usually played straight with popular kids and Timmy in The Fairly OddParents!. Timmy is sometimes nice to Tootie and is friends with Chester, a poor kid. Trixie has been nice to Timmy sometimes too. The other popular kids and villains are not.
• Family Guy uses this trope frequently with regard to Lois's parents. Lois's father once sits next to his gardener on a bus and fails to place him.
  Carter: I didn't recognize you without my lawn underneath you.
  Gardener: I don't take the lawn with me when I go.
  Carter: I was right to trust you with it, then.
• Gargoyles: Inverted with the Pack. They may be a bunch of bloodthirsty mercenaries, but their time on TV was a job, and they treated it as such. When training after hours, Fox bids a friendly good bye to Harvey, one of the stuntmen who worked as the ninjas the team would beat up while on air, telling him to work on his backflips.
• In the Kim Possible episode "Dimension Twist", Dr. Drakken yells at the cable installer to hurry up and finish (he's expecting Kim and Ron to show up soon). This comes back to bite him when the rush job cross-circuits the TV with a dimension-jumping device.
• In King of the Hill, Buck Strickland does nothing to run his own business and treats the entire thing like a personal piggy bank (he frequently takes money out of the safe to buy strippers). Capping that off, he's dismissive of his employees and doesn't care what they have to say. The only man under him he seems to care about his Hank (who's the only reason Strickland Propane isn't bankrupt), but even then he blows off many of his warnings and has him do his dirty work. In one episode, we see Buck's idea of tipping his pool boy is throwing large bills into the pool and laughing as he swims for them.
• The Legend of Korra: This is a critical point of difference between the various rulers of the Earth Kingdom.
  • Earth Queen Hou-Ting is a remorseless, power-mad monster who lived in decadence while her people were forced into ruined squalor. As you can imagine, she treated her staff with the same barely-disguised contempt she showed for everyone else.
  • The Queen's successor and nephew, Royal Brat Prince Wu was vain and foolish to the extreme, but wound up being far more courteous than his aunt. His personality was largely defined by being spoiled and self-centered, but he readily accepted criticisms and advice from those below his station. Once, upon seeing that Mako (who'd been forced to serve as his bodyguard) was depressed, Wu dropped everything to try and cheer him up.
  • Kuvira straddles the line in this regard. She does care about her soldiers and refuses to put them through anything she wouldn't do herself. On the other hand, she's an extreme Control Freak who hates criticism or even the slightest hint of disloyalty. If you're not fully behind her, or if she doesn't think you're fully behind her, you don't want to know what she'll do to you.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Twilight Sparkle, upon her arrival in Ponyville, politely and sincerely thanks the Royal Guardsponies that had been pulling her chariot, even calling them "sirs" (to which they react very positively). This is despite the fact that Twilight is currently in a very sour mood over being sent to Ponyville in the first place. Until this moment, viewers could be forgiven for assuming that Twilight is an asocial, self-centered Jerkass (especially in light of her earlier treatment of Spike), but her being nice to ponies who are nothing more than temporarily assigned servants proves that she is a good pony at heart, if a bit obsessive and thoughtless at times.
  • Likewise with Twilight Sparkle's treatment of Spike, where she frequently does callous acts like slamming doors in his face, dropping heavy books on him, hurling him around via magic, or throwing things at him. It firmly establishes her as being scatterbrained rather than malicious, as she tends to not realize it's happening, and when she's not otherwise distracted she treats him very well.
  • Princess Cadance is shown to be this as well, showing concern about her hairdresser calling in sick.
  • In the season 4 episode "Rarity Takes Manehattan", Rarity establishes herself as this; she tips generously and helps strangers in need without a single thought to getting anything in return. Conversely, the antagonist of the day, Suri Polomare, routinely mistreats her assistant and takes advantage of others for her own gain. Needless to say, at the end both Rarity and Suri get what they deserve.
• Zigzagged with Emperor Palpatine in the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials: while he's verbally abusive toward Darth Vader and has told stormtroopers to "go fuck themselves", Vader made some boneheaded decisions, and he only yelled at the stormtroopers after getting irritated by every stormtrooper greeting him. He's pretty cordial with his secretary Sheila, and regards his barber Alfonso as a confidant, even taking his advice to hire bounty hunters to find the Millennium Falcon.
• One of the ultimate examples of this trope is Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. He frequently mistreats and abuses his employees to almost comical degrees, such as laughing maniacally when a window washer's platform collapses right outside his window. He abuses no-one more than Smithers, who turns a blind eye to it.
  Smithers: Oh my God, Mr Burns is dead! Why must the good always die so young?
  • In "Bart the Fink," Bart and Lisa go to the docks to find Krusty. They meet a diminutive man who vaguely resembles him named Handsome Pete, who dances while playing an accordion. While the Sea Captain says he dances for nickels, Bart gives him a quarter.
• Sofia the First:
  • In the episode "The Emerald Key," this is what clues Sofia in on the real Princess Lelani's identity. The better-dressed, more formal "Lelani" is cold to the servants and takes them for granted, whereas the wet, casual "Lani" treats them respectfully and takes the time to help clean up a spilled tray.
  • Played with by the Enchancian royal family themselves. While they claim to be nice to their staff, and certain episodes have them treating the entire castle staff to a picnic or show Miranda helping clean up the playroom, in general, they tend to take their servants for granted. Amber, in particular, tends to throw lavish parties that rely on her bossing the staff around without acknowledging anyone's work but her own, which she never gets called out on. "The Tri-Kingdom Picnic" has a whole musical number about how over-the-top they go for the titular event, during which the staff sings "They're going to party until we drop," but their contributions are never recognized. This is best demonstrated in their treatment of Cedric, the Royal Sorcerer. Roland treats him with open disdain, while the rest of the family takes advantage of his magic while simultaneously deriding it, and even Sofia, the only person to treat him with respect and admiration, spends the first season mispronouncing his name despite being repeatedly corrected and has no problem requiring him to give her rare magical ingredients so that she can have a suitably impressive project for class and ignoring his despair when she takes it.
• Steven Universe:
  • Greg Universe. As a humble musician who's lived in a literal van for the majority of his life, he's sympathetic to people who similarly don't have a lot of money. When he unexpectedly strikes it rich, and treats Steven and Pearl to an impromptu stay at an expensive hotel, he's very nice to all the staff and gives them handsome tips.
  • Pink Diamond is likewise very kind to the Gems beneath her, treating her servants as close personal friends, wants to pal around with Amethysts, and even took the time to thank the Pebbles who tend to act in secret serving their masters. Recognizing this behavior is why the Pebbles conclude Steven is Pink Diamond. However, we eventually see a darker side to this behavior, as Pink Diamond could act harmfully even toward the servants she considered friends, usually because she didn't appreciate the (both physical and social) power she had over them.
• Catra of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power has never been considerate to her subordinates, and it only gets worse as she accumulates more power and the Sanity Slippage continues. Come Season 4, she's forcing her underlings to work three shifts back-to-back without a break, refusing to come rescue them when they're trapped in an acid storm, telling them to "figure it out" and get back to work, not telling them anything about what's going on or why she's having them do certain things, and lashing out at anyone who even attempts to question anything she does. She even berates and mistreats Scorpia, who has been nothing but kind and supportive since day one. This comes back to bite her, hard. Scorpia realizes she can't defend Catra's behavior anymore, and defects to the Rebellion after finally growing a spine and telling her, "You're a bad friend." Soon after, three of of her Elite Mooks, Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio, all get sick of her crap and abandon the Horde because of her—and they look the other way when Scorpia and Glimmer are sneaking into the Horde's lair.
• Wander over Yonder takes this to extremes with All-Loving Hero Wander, who seemingly is familiar with every single member of Lord Hater's 5000-strong army of visually indistinguishable Adorable Evil Minions, down to names, life details and birthdays, and manages to give each one his ideal present on You Mean "Xmas". By contrast, Lord Hater is a Bad Boss, which is implied to be the very reason he finds himself Surrounded by Idiots—when they're lead by Wander to believe that the presents were from Hater, they begin to display the very competence he had unsuccessfully tried to browbeat into them, motivated by the concern he's apparently shown for them to be the best soldiers they can be.
  • Although he's the Card-Carrying Villain of the series, even Lord Hater thinks that people who do animation for a living deserve more credit and respect.

---