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.
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