SOCIAL PROBLEM

Being raised outside the norm by survivalist parents, it has taken me a long time to become ‘civilized.’ Every day I have to work at it hard, understanding reciprocity of speech, for example. That is, when someone says, ‘how are you?’ the response is not, ‘mind your own business,’ but, rather, ‘fine, and how are you?’ Then wait interestedly for their reply. Even if I am not fine. Even if I am tempted to growl, ‘What do YOU care how I am?’ or even bark, ‘hypocrite! you don’t mean it so why say it?’
My husband who taught college sociology patiently went over these basics with me when he finally realized I didn’t know them, had never heard them used. “They are not hypocrites,’ he would say. ‘This is the way society sorts out its neighbours. If you are a friend, you will say back what they expect. Then they can go on with their business, reassured that they are safe with you.’
‘But I might not even LIKE them,’ I’d worry. ‘Shouldn’t they be saying something they really think, not just mouthing a dumb platitude?’
‘Saying, ‘how are you?’ when they’re not really interested in the answer isn’t a platitude,’ he would say, patiently. ‘ It’s a short form for saying, ‘will you hurt me? can you understand me? are you like me?’
Well, I got it. How long had this been going on? It was like a secret code, to see if you were in the club or not. And I dearly wanted to be in the club, to know what they knew about how to live in the world. Most of the ones who smiled and said, ‘ how are you?’ seemed to be doing okay. They were up, dressed and going about their business in what seemed a thoughtful manner. Those who didn’t ask often hiccuped and staggered or shouted nasty epitaphs across the street at their spouses.
So I started using the code in a loose form -”How are you doing,’ and ‘good morning,’ fully braced for having someone respond, (as one did, early on – “Why are you saying good morning to me? – I don’t know you.’ ) Turned out her son used to be the mayor and she had a list to whom she said hello. My name was not on it.
All this to say that the rules of civilized behaviour came late to me. So when I encountered a clerk in a store I love who merely packaged my purchases with a grunt and then thrust them in my direction, I inquired, interestedly, “Why don’t you say, ‘thank you?’
The young clerk glared at me. ‘Because I don’t own this store so I don’t have to.’ Her tone implied, ‘dummy!’
I took my bag and went off, fascinated with the thought that there was someone like I had been who thought such exchanges were hypocritical.
“But if you did use, ‘thank you,’ after someone bought something,’ I said next time I went in, ‘ it would make your life easier. People would smile at you and feel comfortable.’ I smiled, both to show her how it would look and also to share that I understood, that I had been in her shoes not that long ago.
“LEAVE HER ALONE!’ a fellow clerk came over and put her arm around the clerks’ shoulders. ‘You have no business coming in here, picking on her.’ She glared at me over the other clerk’s shoulder who was giving me a vindicated look, all but sticking out her tongue and saying, ‘ so there.’
‘But I was just…’ I started to say. But how could I explain all my background away from civilization and how I’d learned to find a way forward, especially with a line forming behind me at the checkout counter?
“I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I finally said, took my bag and left. So I still didn’t know how to make this thing clear to strangers. And maybe I didn’t need to, though nothing that clerk was doing seemed to make her happy.
I didn’t go in for awhile after that. Here I was, past middle-age and only now coming to grips what living in society, let alone living in a small town, was all about. I’d been too busy, writing, working, raising a family to suddenly become skilled at what everybody else seemed to know since birth. Oh, I’d made friends but they tended to be mostly artists and nurses, two communities who embrace those who might be considered out of step by others.
Finally I went back, keeping a wary eye out for the clerk who surely by now had found peace if not understanding. They had gotten a new coffee machine, probably because the old system meant anyone could run their fingers, however unwashed, through the beans. Now they were positioned in plastic tubes, untouchable. But I couldn’t figure out how to release them into my bag.
“Excuse me. Could you help me figure out this new system?” I called to a clerk with her back to me, not recognizing the woman I had run into last time.
She stopped putting boxes of special flours on the shelf and came over. “You just hit the levers,” she said. Her tone added, ‘dummy!’
“What levers?”
“THESE LEVERS, RIGHT HERE!” she said, louder and pushed a small plastic half-ring that seemed to be part of the rigid tube holding the beans.
Being a writer, of course I had been expecting something like the lever you pull back to start a train or the man-size one Charlie Chaplin uses in Modern Times or – ”
Of course it was the same problem again. “You don’t need to be mean,” I said, sadly, accepting the beans that tumbled from the tube into my bag.
“I’m NOT mean. YOU’RE the problem!” she said, giving me a stern eye. Then she turned on her heel with a look I’d last seen on a small, snotty kid and walked away.
I left with my little bag of now-ground beans, feeling like a fool. I thught about all the women like me who might not understand the new system but for whom this store might be their only encounter with the community all day. I would’ve gone home and cried, if that was the case. I felt very low.
For a couple months after, I got my coffee beans stale and prepackaged at a store way out of town. I dithered. I read articles on standing up for yourself and not letting bullies intimidate you, which I had, all my life, basically because, as my husband said, I was what he called a ‘heat score.’ I attracted attention because I didn’t blend in like all the others who had known the rules of what he called, ‘interpersonal behaviour,’ since childhood.
It was March before I went back, cautious, looking around the corners. I approached the coffee machine and managed to push what I now recognized as a lever. Then I poured the beans in the top and adjusted the dial to the ‘old-fashioned perk’ setting with a picture on it of my old tin coffeepot, which always made me feel reassured. I might be socially inept but at least I was brewing an acceptable form of coffee.
I stood there in the shaft of sunlight, wondering if the clerk had simply identified me as one of a variety of fussy women who are constantly shopping, bullying clerks, criticizing the service while counting on their wealth and privilege to forstall unpleasantness in return.
But surely she would recognize me as someone like her, in my cleverly-second-handed outfits, my hair in a little bun on top of my head, wouldn’t she? As I wondered how she saw me, the machine stopped grinding.
Just a few feet away was a nice-looking young man putting dates and apricots into the bins of dried fruit. “Could you help me?” I called. “The coffee machine stopped.”
He looked around nervously. “I’ve never run it,” he said. “I’ll get someone to come over.”
“Wait!” I called urgently to his departing back. “Don’t get anyone who will yell
at
me…” But it was too late. A tall young woman was swooping down on me with the expression that said she had spotted something in the store that didn’t belong.
“Not you!” I said weakly. Her hair was a sparkly gold. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t her.
“IT’S ME!” she said loudly as though she were pronouncing some sentence for my crimes. She had coloured her hair.
My knees began to weaken. I didn’t feel I could handle any more scolding. I spoke loudly before she could start the put downs.
“Have those beans ground and brought over to the counter,” I dictated, like the sort of shopper I abhorred. No pleases or thank yous. Then I turned on my heel without looking back and went over to the gluten-free cookies where I shook and tried not to snivel.
After I thought I had myself pretty well by the scruff of the neck, I went over to the counter and there she was, glaring! “LET ME TELL YOU A FEW THINGS ABOUT YOUR ATTITUDE” she began loudly, thumping my coffee down hard.
“No, i have something to tell you first,” I said, fixing her with as commanding an eye as I could manage. “You’re angry with me without a cause, you don’t care who knows…” I stopped because she was going on talking, yellling at me to LISTEN to her. “And you’re not listening to me,” I concluded.
“Oh there’s no point listening to YOU! she said at the same time. Then she literally threw up her hands (a gesture I’d only read about in books) and stomped off! You could hear all this the length and breadth of the shop.
There were two other clerks behind the till, nice women with whom I had talked and joked many times before. One of them was still standing with her mouth open, trying to process what had just gone on. The other engaged me pleasantly in how I liked the brand of cookies I’d chosen and stated she would have to try some soon. We both knew none of this was about the cookies.
I paid, collected my coffee, said I didn’t need a bag and then staggered weakly out the big yellow double doors with the handle that says ‘pull’ not push but which I push anyway, every single time, past the big windows where the bedding plants would soon be appearing; tomatoes, herbs and flowers. Such a pleasant place in the spring sunshine.
But until I got this clerk thing settled, it would see me no more.
I wouldn’t, couldn’t report her. When I had been her age, I was terrible with people, not knowing any of the rules. If someone phoned and asked, ‘how are you today?’ I would say sweetly, ‘how kind of you to phone and ask how I am. I am fine. ” Then I would HANG UP! (What can I say, I didn’t know the rules so I saw them as simply wasting my time when I should be getting on with somethng productive. I didn’t yell at people but I did make assumptions that were entirely inadequate).
I will not cause her to lose that job which she obviously considers beneath her. I will not report her to the owner, whom I know. I will sort out, sooner or later, a weird, sad, even frightening situation which I never meant to cause and wish to heal. Anyone with any suggestions about this out there, I’m listening.
*Talking this over with a friend, she suggests that I simply can’t be the only person this woman picks on. That she senses I would be polite and not nasty back and so she feels safe in using me as a target for her considerable anger. Also, as the store is experiencing heavy construction outside for the next few months, they will already be losing business. As I have abandoned it, others may too for their own reasons and it may not exist, come summer. Which would be a great loss to all concerned, even this poor, lost and angry soul who seems to have a particular brand of woman in her sites. Her mother? Her grandmother? But perhaps a larger target than just me.