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This take on the trend was a hot topic of conversation in a r/antiwork thread on the topic. It was posted last week with the title: "Growing trend to ask delivery workers to "tell me a joke" "draw me a picture." Just no. Why is this being normalised and defended so much…?"
A correction of the r/antiwork post I'd probably like to issue is that the post's author defines the trend as "recent" and "growing," whereas google trends shows a decrease in interest over time. Also, this trend is by no means recent, and it has even earned its place in internet history. Know Your Meme's entry on the trend identifies it starting as early as 2007. Which makes this trend just about as old as the original meme that started it all for us here at Cheezburger.
"On October 19th, 2007, the Internet humor blog The Sneeze[1] published an article titled "The Great Pizza Orientation Test," which featured screenshots of a custom pizza order testing to see if they would properly fulfill his requests."
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Regardless, the thread raises an interesting point. The Original Poster starts off the thread with the following statement.
"I've noticed in multiple topics over the last few days in other subreddits, people uploading the picture their delivery drivers did for them (after they included wanting one in their orders), or asking them to write a joke on the pizza box. Anybody who points out that this is wrong and minimum wage workers aren't your performing monkeys gets downvoted into absolute oblivion and called bores or insulted as whining babies."
The commenters were on board with this interpretation of the trend, with some users sharing similar experiences in their lines of work.
What's your take on this? Fun and games? Or exploitation?
The full thread from antiwork and some examples of the trend are included below.
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Some viral examples of this trend from over the years...
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