I am a milk tea shop worker. During the lunch peak the day before yesterday, I was deeply engaged in preparing ingredients, making drinks, packing, and serving alone inside the shop. At that moment, the shop’s phone suddenly rang, and I couldn’t help but shiver: “Is it another customer complaint?” (Because these days I often encounter customer complaints, and handling them is quite troublesome.) After imagining this scenario, I picked up the phone. Sure enough, on the other end was a customer calling to inform me that one of her bubble teas was missed in the delivery, and she requested that I resend the missing drink to her. Faced with this situation, two solutions came to my mind. One was to ask her for a partial refund, but this would mean the store manager would find out about it on the shop’s phone and question me. The second was to verbally agree to her request, then choose to use a paid delivery service or personally deliver the drink to the customer. After a brief hesitation, I chose the second option, and without the store manager’s knowledge, I spent 40 minutes during my break to deliver the missed drink to the customer, performing a shameful act of servitude.
The reason I did not choose the first solution was because I had recently experienced several incidents of packaging omissions leading to customer complaints, which the store manager was aware of. When the manager found out, he often asked me to make claims for compensation, but I chose to ignore it, and ultimately, my manager covered the costs. Based on the logic of petty-bourgeois equivalence exchange, I believe I have repeatedly caused the store manager to spend money dealing with customer complaints. In the moral framework of capitalism, I am already in a situation of “causing trouble for others” and “being in the wrong,” but the Marxist teachings I learned also made me realize that accepting the capitalist punishment system in wage labor is undoubtedly a form of endorsing capitalist oppression and exploitation of workers. Therefore, during the few times I faced fines, I did not kneel to the threats of the store manager and instead claimed compensation from the capitalist. However, I also pursue a comfortable and stable life in my thoughts. When the customer complaint occurred this time, because the store manager was unaware of it, I thought that reporting my mistake to the manager and asking him to compensate the customer would inevitably intensify my conflict with the store manager. So, in order to maintain my comfortable life, I chose to “cover it up,” trying not to let the worker thief and the store manager know about this matter. Ultimately, I decided to deliver the takeout to the customer myself during my break (since delivering during work hours is also not allowed in our store, especially because this order was near our shop, about 10 km away, and I thought if I explained this, I would be refused and asked to use a courier service for compensation).
When doing this, I initially tried to beautify my actions, thinking “I didn’t let the store manager know I personally delivered the order, and I won’t be used as a ‘honest employee’ to be portrayed as a negative example or to enslave workers,” but in reality, by doing this, I consciously eliminated the economic impact on the capitalist. In fact, worse than those openly submissive workers is the act of secretly obeying the capitalist’s labor discipline and viewing the capitalist’s exploitation order as completely reasonable, even when the capitalist is unaware. Moreover, my act of servitude means that next time I will be even more constrained by the rules set by the capitalist. I should view this act of servitude from a political perspective: as an employee, I created countless surplus value for the capitalist, but when I made a mistake involving one or two cups of milk tea, I still had to compensate the capitalist. In reality, such costs should be borne entirely by the capitalist, not by me. Previously, I had a rebellious thought that “the store manager has already covered a lot of costs for me,” but I didn’t think about how the capitalist exploits workers’ sweat and blood, and instead, I was willing to accept fines and regulations that the capitalist set to extract more from workers. I should learn a lesson from this act of servitude: as someone who has accepted Marxist ideas, I should clearly oppose the capitalist exploitation system, not pretend to be naive and be the tail of the working class.
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