What to do with Nice To The Waiter?

Recently, I did a wick check for Nice to the Waiter (under Sandbox.Nice To The Wick Check) and have found that most wicks seem to take the title at face value and only put in examples of characters, well... being nice to the waiter (or other workers). The flip side, which is just as valid to the trope, is rarely touched upon (even if it's spelled out that in-universe other characters are in act mean to the waiters, I can't put them in "both" unless that side of the coin is elaborated on).

I brought this up at the TRS meta thread twice, but I got ignored both times. I don't feel comfortable just jumping into making a TRS OP, so I'm asking here instead if this seems like a problem worth pursuing — and if so, what should we do about it? (Of course, I know full well that there's no making changes through Trope Talk. I just want to see if anyone else has ideas or agrees that there's an issue here.)

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 28th 2023 at 1:53:07 PM

Nobody? :/

Option 1: Rename to something like The Measure Of A Man Is How He Treats His Lessers.

Option 2: Create a new trope called Mean To The Waiter.

Some works will only emphasize one of the two (nice or mean) which is still a thing viewers will pick up on (the mean part anyway). Showing the contrast is great and all but writers may see this as too heavy-handed. Perhaps we should lower the standard.

My concern is less that there's no contrast, but that people hardly ever use it for the "mean" version. It really feels like people just think the trope is "character is nice to the waiter, period". It feels like a misunderstanding of what the trope is actually for, however it's difficult to prove that people misunderstand the trope when most of the examples are technically correct (even if they're not correct for the right reasons).

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 2nd 2023 at 5:01:43 AM

So basically, maybe we should either require the contrast be played up (which would require a rename), or just split it into two tropes.

I favor a split myself, though I'm still concerned over people leaving out the "they're nice and this shows that they're a good person" aspect in several examples.

A name change to something neutral like "Waiter-Treatment (As) Characterisation" would solve the mentioned problems.

Edited by eroock on Aug 4th 2023 at 12:02:34 PM

I like that idea

I suppose that would also work...

Well, thanks for the responses guys. I can now throw it on the TRS queue without worrying about it.

Noting that Nice to the Waiter already has Nice to the Waitress, Nasty to the Waiter, and Nasty to the Waitress as redirects, something that should be considered along with future options.

Maybe something like "Revealing Treatment of Service Workers"? It's a hard concept to phrase concisely, but I think emphasizing service work rather than naming specific type of laborer as a stand-in would be better for avoiding misuse.

Edited by 8BrickMario on Sep 7th 2023 at 9:24:13 AM

The misuse had more to do with people not realizing the whole "reveals a specific morality" point though, nothing to do with which workers were involved.

Anyway, it's on the TRS queue already, so eventually it will get a TRS thread.

In practice it's a more specified version of Kick the Dog and Pet the Dog. Thing is I'm noticing a lot of examples that indicate "subverted" use for Affably Evil type villains, contrasting polite behavior with their actions as a form of Evil Virtues. Which tells me it might be more useful as an indication of personal values rather than a broad good/evil alignment.

What You Are To The Staff, or something like that, since What You Are in the Dark is similarly about indicating the character's morality to the audience?

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Sep 14th 2023 at 11:25:36 AM

Really good points.