Nice to the Waiter

"Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors."Seneca, Epistle 47:11

In much of Fictionland, as in real life, a whole variety of social stratification plays major and minor roles in how people behave. What power imbalances exist, and how they play out in the characters' lives, is largely a reflection of your chosen setting. But whatever these dynamics are, showing how your characters navigate them is a crucial opportunity for revealing and developing their personalities. This trope will almost inevitably pop up, whether your characters are on the giving end, the receiving end, or both.

That said, this trope has two potential pitfalls that can undermine the author's intended message. The first potential issue is that the non-privileged people (servants, wait staff, members of an oppressed group, etc) show up just to give the hero a chance to show off how 'nice' and 'enlightened' they are by their magnanimous behaviour. Usually the gestures which the author intends as good deeds come off as condescending. Now if this is intentional-- perhaps the protagonists thinks they 'get' the servants, but are clueless that their kind gestures are actually patronising-- keep going. But if you mean this to show the hero is a good person trying to overcome the social hierarchy in their world, the gesture needs to be meaningful on some level. Also, the less-privileged characters need to have motivation beyond cooing over how awesome and nice the main character is to them. Even if that motivation is simply to get through another exhausting day so they can flop into bed. Even if that motivation is never stated outright. But the characters need to at least hint at having their own lives going on, rather than just existing to cheer the hero for being a decent person.

The second pitfall is that the hero gives a lot of lip service to being nice to the less privileged, but doesn't actually follow through in the story itself. Again, this could be intentional if the character doesn't believe the rhetoric, or needs to act a certain way in social settings, but this needs to be explained, otherwise it comes off as hypocrisy by the character at best, and general sloppy writing at worst.