“Birth? Status? What the Hell’s Rank?!”
It’s strange to think sometimes how little empathy people can have towards their fellow man.
I was working Monday night, filling up the cigarette racks. I asked my manager if he knew if we had anymore of a particular kind of cigar left. It happened to be one of those really cheap cigar packs (the ones that come in a box like a pack of cigarettes), and he said that he ordered them last week, and they’re already sold out. I shrugged my shoulders and said to him: “Oh, then I guess there’s nothing to put there. I didn’t know these things were big sellers”. He chuckles to himself and says: “Yeah, well, these fuckin’ bums will smoke anything, they don’t give a shit. They’ll drink or smoke whatever you put in front of’em”. He then continues on for a couple of minutes talking down about our customers.
Now, it’s one thing to complain about the occasional jerk customer, but really? This dude is going to start laying into the general populous of the area? I can’t be the only one with empathy at that store.
I don’t know when working at a shitty liqueur store in a bad neighborhood made you a better person than others. Nothing about my job makes me think that I’m any better then the people I serve. Most people that come in are just trying to make it by one day at a time, and if they can only afford a cheap pint of vodka, then that’s fine. Just because we might be able to afford some higher shelf alcohol doesn’t mean we’re better people or that we have the right to look down on people for their choices regarding cigarettes and alcohol.
The very notion that we have anything up and over on the customers chaffs me. It’s not like we’re war veterans or that we raised a whole bunch of money for various charities or anything, so maybe we should try and check our privilege for a second and remember that we’re in the same boat here: We’re not heroes or notable figures in the city, we’re just clerks who don’t get regular breaks and have to deal with the occasional asshole.
I know this was kind of a left field post for this little rant space, but this has been on my mind off and on since I got off of work. Thanks for taking the time to let me get this off my chest.
