Disgust & Generosity

Below: Ass't Man helped me re-create a Frida Kahlo portrait in Toys:

I don't correct coworkers' writing, but I did add a line to this note someone wrote warning coworker Wayne to stay out of a cart of shoes:

I. What's Disgusting?

Below: Grateful-J set up these two action figures in Ass't Man's work area:

Mr Furniture pointed the figures out to me and said, "That's disgusting."

"Aw, they're just having a piggy-back ride," I said.

"No, they're not," he said. (No, they're not.)

A lot of my coworkers (all races) are vocally anti– a lot of things, in all directions.
The white, middle-class volunteers often say things like, of the paid coworkers, "Why don't they take some pride in their work?"
Art yesterday told me that abortion should be legal, but, he declared, "It's is an atrocious thing to do." He's prissy and self-righteous. Well-educated, but kind of stupid.

The Black guys are mostly kinda anti–rainbow.
I miss Mr Linens, who would always pronounce in his LOUD voice, "There's nothing wrong with being gay!"
 
I don't know if he always felt that way? And now that he's retired because he can't breathe, I can't ask.
He has a gay stepson, middle-aged, who he likes and is proud of. The stepson is a television news journalist and his husband is a psychologist.
When I asked Mr Linens what his own son did, he said, "He sells drugs."
He said it matter of factly, but I know he didn't like it.

Mr & Mr Stepson take Mrs Linens on expensive trips. Peru, this year. They always invite Mr Linens too.
He wouldn't accept, he told me, because he couldn't repay them.

I gave Mr Linens ten dollars for beer on his birthday the first year I worked at the store.
A few months later, he won a few hundred on a lottery ticket. He came up and handed me a ten dollar bill: "Now I can pay you back."
After that, I only gave cheap-n-easy gifts, it anything. Last Christmas, I gave everyone a new Sharpie marker, which we used to write price tags (before the new sticker system; I do love not handwriting every damn price).

Further, some older Black coworkers say, "I worked like a Hebrew"--on the delivery truck, for instance. (Most of my coworkers are older.)
I'd never heard this (of course not--no one in my previous middle-class, liberal workplaces would EVER say any such thing--they would find it disgusting. Hm. Also, they didn't work physically hard.).

I assumed "to work like a Hebrew" referred to Jewish slaves building the pyramids in Egypt.
I looked it up, and so it does.
It's also "legally punishable religious harassment" according to an article in the Washington Post.

Half the things my coworkers say are legally punishable!
Not to mention illogical, inconsistent, uninformed, and contradictory. They'd be shocked if someone accused them of being anti-Semitic, though, or even homophobic. Mr Furniture has told me he has nothing against gay people.

My coworkers are generally kind to individual people.
Mr Furniture, for instance, was friends with BJ, and he knew she was a lesbian.  Once she asked him if he knew what the slogan "Family" on his T-shirt meant.
He'd grabbed it from the recycle bin to replace his too hot sweatshirt.  He said he thought it meant all humans are family.
"No," she explained, "it means gay family."
He laughed, and he changed it immediately.

When I gave him the note BJ had dictated to me the week before she died, he said, "I'll read this later, because I know I'm going to cry."

She had told him how proud she was of him and his art and his kindness.
 
So many Hidden Class Rules.
My first year at the store, after Christmas I asked people what they got for presents. After a couple people looked at me like I was stupid and replied that they got nothing, I stopped asking.

My coworker Super Shopper Louise––(she buys tons of donated stuff, like whole sets of living-room furniture, and redistributes it to relatives and friends)––she is usually well-informed.
Yesterday she was talking about how rich people have bought up old missile silos and built towns miles below the Earth, where they will live when climate change gets bad.
"There's restaurants down there and everything."

Louise is not one to spread kooky conspiracy theories, so I was surprised. I looked it up, and . . . how 'bout that?
Her version was exaggerated, but she's right:
"Rich People Are Buying 'Survival Condos' in Abandoned Nuclear Missile Silos".
No restaurants, but dog walking facilities and swimming pools.
Sales boomed during Covid, even at $1.5 million for 900 square feet.

"Survival Condo is a 15-story deep Cold War-era missile silo that has been repurposed as a luxury condo complex.
...The occupants of this luxury condo building, with redundant power systems, military-grade air filters and a five-year supply of food and water, could survive the apocalypse."

Well, for five years, anyway. Then what?

“The fortified condo is just not a viable doomsday strategy,” said Douglas Rushkoff, author and host of the Team Human podcast.
“It's a Western billionaire’s view of the world."

II. My (Shifting) View of the World

Looking at my photo years in review, 1998–2007, I was reminded what a different world I used to live in.
It was a little startling to see what used to be normal to me.

I worked part-time and actually didn't make much more money, but expectations of the people around me were entirely different, and so were the opportunities.
The trips I took! Airfare was cheaper, and, several spring breaks in a row, when the art school was closed, bink and I went to London and stayed in student dives around the British Museum (now boutique hotels).
Or, when I joined Sheet Music Allan on a couple of his art historical trips (I was the passenger), he paid for extras, and we sometimes slept in the car he'd rented.

BELOW: Part of my first collage, when I was thirty-seven and working at the art college library.
I joined Allan on his trip went to Turkey.
My current coworkers don't "travel", they go to see relatives in other places. They fly to Chicago, or take the bus to Mississippi, or drive overnight to Texas to see family from across the border.

Look at that old computer ^... We didn't use it for checking out books though--that's a stamper for stamping due-dates on checkout cards I'm holding!

The art college library had computers since 1993, though, and we all got trained and set up email accounts.
Many of my current coworkers don't use computers. Some don't use banks. (They get paid in prepaid plastic cards.)

BELOW: Part of my last collage. I was forty-six and working on contract for the children's book publisher, mostly revising their series of world geography books for middle-schoolers.

As editor of a biography of Pope John Paul II for teens, though, I practically rewrote the book. The author knew nothing about Catholicism, so while her facts were correct, the book made little sense.
She dedicated the book to me--you can see what she wrote, below.

(Above, bottom left ^ : the young Karol Wojtyla shaving on a camping trip.)

The middle-class, white women I worked with mostly had BAs in English. They generally disdained religion, considering it outdated, ignorant superstition. That, and their lack of any actual knowledge about religion, came through when they wrote anything on the topic. (Proofreading a book on world religion, I had to change "goddess" to "god" for Shiva.)

We finished the pope's bio days before he died, so we could add his death at the last minute. Barnes & Noble picked the book up, ordering lots of copies for display in their stores nationwide. (Who ever knew we'd miss those big box bookstores?)
The author therefore earned a lot more in royalties.
While the dedication was very nice, I always thought she might have shared some of that money with me too. She did not.

Here's another big difference I notice between social classes--the practice of sharing.

My coworkers in publishing didn't earn much by middle-class standards. Publishing was (is?) kind of a white girl ghetto...
They often had college debt, and cars (not new), and apartments in a nice part of town, all of which costs a lot.
And dental care, fashionable eyeglasses and hair cuts (and maybe manicures and hair removal treatments), travel abroad, gym memberships, new clothes, and retirement plans, all of which, ditto.

So, they felt poor. And, really, by their doctor and architect parents' standards, they were.
So maybe that's it? But the thing is, I did not experience them as generous. At all.
Everyone brought their little organic lunches to work, for instance, and there was no sharing. It would have been weird even to offer.

My current coworkers are poor, literally. They are eligible for food stamps. They are missing teeth, they never go to the doctor unless it's an emergency, their goods come from the thrift store or Family Dollar. They take the bus––younger ones (and I) bike––or, if they have a car, they repair it themselves with Coke cans and duct tape.
They live in cruddy buildings in dangerous or distant neighborhoods. One told me he's happy he can bake a  turkey for the first Thanksgiving in three years--the landlord had just replaced his stove after two years of its oven not working.
And, they share.
Not money, usually. Hardly anyone ever has money to give, though people will lend a twenty till payday.
But if there's food, you're offered some.

Early on, the guys chipped in for a package of hot dogs, which they boiled in the break room in an electric frying pan.
Mr Linens offered me one.

"Oh, I didn't chip in," I said, "and I haven't got any cash on me..."

"If there's food," he said, "YOU EAT!"

I did.

Social class. It's a mish-mash.