The filthy rich strike again June 26, 1985

 

I keep thinking about the rich liberal lady who came into the Englewood store and demanded all the carbons from her credit card purchase, eyeing me behind the counter as if I was a robber. Or the other woman who handed me a hundred-dollar bill, double checking my math when I gave her the change, and then still questioned whether or not I was ripping her off. Then, she sprang a new one on me when she opened the bag with her prints.

“There are only 24 prints here,” she said. “I brought in rolls with 36 exposures.”

Since I had not been here when she dropped off the film, I had to rely on what the other Fotomate had checked off on the envelop.

“It’s says you dropped off 24 exposures,” I said, pointing to the check mark.

“I don’t care what it says there, I know what I brought in,” she growled. “Don’t you know how to do your job?”

At this point, I decided I didn’t want to help her and told her she should come back when the original Fotomate was on duty, then closed the window, putting the glass between me and her irate face.

“What’s your name!” the woman shouted, her shrill voice filling the air like a siren. This was followed by a series of obscenities, which I couldn’t believe, this refined person sounding more vulgar than most of the people I knew from the street.

At this point, I got up, exited the booth and headed over to the supermarket – or at least pretended to, where I bought a soda and tried to calm down.

I have a problem with rich people, picturing them all in my head as snotty little twits with pudgy noses stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, hearing their shrill voices in my head as they show contempt for anybody like me.

With an attitude like mine, it becomes difficult to work in a service industry when there are so many of their kind doing their best to make life miserable for anyone they see as inferior, their air of superiority creating a new kind of slavery – not one based on skin color, but on upbringing.

The rich always need someone they can look down on, to show contempt for, in order to bolster their own position in society.

It’s not even conservative vs liberal – even though we hear a lot about how rich conservatives are, while almost nothing about the liberal rich.

Conservative rich know damned well how much they need working people, much the way the Deep South knew how dependent they were on slaves before the Civil War. But the liberal rich – like the northern rich back in those days – tended to turn a blind eye to the working people they exploited in the north while railing against slavery in the south.

In some ways, the liberal rich these days hide behind all the good deeds they claim to do, yet still managed to stare down their noses at the people who actually do all the work.

Confrontations with people like this woman always shake me, partly because I do not understand her and most other rich, as if we came from two completely different and alien species from each other.

She apparently came back later and confronted Tony in the afternoon shift, telling him that I had been rude to her and made faces at her through the closed glass.

I actually believe she believed what she said, reshaping her side of the conversation to bolster her own case.

Tony said she acted perfectly reasonable with him, which I suppose will go badly against me when Bob gets the complain and files a report on my behavior.

At which point, I’ll likely get fired or if I don’t, I might quit or insist I work only those booths in working class neighborhoods.



email to Al Sullivan

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