dealing with the public

For those who prefer to read English, I’ll translate:

What do you do when you have been loading a car for 45 minutes, and the parent tells the kids to go get ices and does not offer you one? Do you say something or not?

Say nothing, create no Machlokes and reap the reward.

It would have been nice if they had offered you an ice also. However, as far as what you were doing, that is what you were paid to do.

The man was certainly wrong to cut your rope (it was your rope, wasn’t it?).

If you were being paid to work, although it would be nice for them to offer you ices or a drink, the only agreement you made with them was an exchange of monetary payment for a service. I would not EXPECT them to offer you a snack. Yes, it’s menschlech. It is strange that they didn’t think of it. I have been in both positions, both as employer, and employee. I regularly offer coffee and a snack to our housekeeper as soon as she walks in (after being on the subway for nearly 1 1/2 hours). My husband feels it’s stepping over the line of appropriateness. I also worked doing housekeeping when I was a student for several years in seminary in eretz yisroel. I worked for a few families, one of which sat me down and offered me hot kugel, fresh out of her oven Thursday night after I helped her (the daughter of a rosh yeshiva) another (equally as frum) barely said hello, another pushed me out of her house before her kids came home. What a different feeling. I tried to learn from the first. What is required though, is simply payment, so that’s all you can, in all fairness expect.

i would have asked politely “Can i bother u for some water- please”. I’m sure you would have gotten it.

and maybe they woul have learnt to perhaps offer next time.

They are not mechuyav.. its just mentshlechkeit.