The Joy of Hate

            Have you no heart? Have you no compassion or even basic recognition of your waiter’s humanity? Of the cashier’s or the hostess’ or the lifeguard’s? For if you did, surely you would not behave the way you do—smiling at them, and showing them courtesy, and making good-natured jokes as you walk by.

It is sickening.

            For if you did, you would realize a very fundamental truth about minimum wage customer service workers. They hate you. They hate you the moment you walk in the door. They see your khaki pants and groan at your business-casual, date-rapey douchiness. They see your new purse and boil at your condescending arrogance and snobbery. They see your 6’3 frame and wonder just what you’re trying to prove in going around taller than everyone else.

Oh, don’t take it personally. They do hate you as an individual, but really it has nothing to do with you as a person. You are merely the object that is forcing them to work. The 19 year old kids working the kitchen are having that wonderfully relaxing cigarette—the best you’ll ever have—by the dumpster out back, laughing with each other and comparing the heat marks and callouses on their hands. Suddenly the boss rears his head out the back door and screams that there are customers. The reverie has been utterly crushed. It is back to the grind, and it is all because of you. You cheapskate, motherfucking, piece of shit.

Right now you are probably thinking that this is a very immature way of thinking. After all, if customers did not come, those workers wouldn’t have jobs.  It is you, the customer that is providing them with the chance to have this job that they have chosen to take. And really they are lucky to have jobs at all. A lot of people would be grateful to take in as many customers as possible if it meant steady employment.

Well, obviously you’re right. Such thoughts and feelings are entirely immature. And the worker realizes this. That is what makes his contempt and rage and hatred for you all the more infuriating. Because on their own, anger and hatred are not so bad. They can be as wonderfully, transcendentally gratifying as any joy or love or good-will. Remember that whole Kony thing a few months back? That was fun, wasn’t it? Hating him felt empowering because we were so obviously right in doing so, and it made us feel good about ourselves. Suddenly I could join arms in unity with all the people I’ve dicked over the years against this monster. Comparatively, I suddenly seem like a pretty good guy. I’ve hardly enslaved any third world children.

And this is why hatred and anger can be wonderfully joyous feelings, but only if they are validated. Only if they allow you to feel like the good guy. And this is where things become tricky for the customer service worker. He sees a customer come in and he knows that he has to do more work. Negative feelings arise invariably within him. And unlike with a Kony or a Hitler or a Taliban, converting these vaguely negative feelings into joyfully validated contempt is a bit tricky. In all likelihood the worker realizes that coming to order a hamburger at a business that advertises its hamburgers is not a sin on the level of, say, the holocaust. But as Freud said, depression is what happens when rage collapses in on itself, and so, the rage must go outward, outward onto the customer. It takes creativity and great mental concentration and intellectual elasticity to successfully function in such a way. Suddenly you see the fact that the forty year old man is buying burgers alone. That must be because his wife left him after he abused her during her pregnancy and caused a miscarriage. What an asshole! What a totally justifiable object of your contempt.

But then some people just have to go and ruin everything. You see a kindly old woman walking in and you realize that this it will take some effort to make her into a validating object of contempt. By the time she has approached the counter, the pistons in your mind are whirring and kicking out steam as they push into first gear. You can see the light of validation at the end of the tunnel.

“Ya know you look like my grandson” she breaks in with a warm smile “Such a sweet boy. Handsome too.”

NO! It’s like having the girl let out a thundering, wet fart right as you were about to finish. It’s like that last dollop of poop that clings so tantalizingly but will not fall. You were so close, but she just had to ruin it, didn’t she? Now, there is nowhere for the contempt to go. It falls inward and mentally you curse her good nature and kind disposition.

Now, I have no doubt that the people who act like this probably are decent kindhearted people. They simply don’t understand. If they did, I am sure that in their generosity and good-will they would find it in their hearts to do whatever possible so to make another person’s day a little easier.

And so, if you are one of those decent, kindhearted people, here is what you do. Be rude and condescending and arrogant and aloof. Do not do anything that would actually create more work for them, but just be a general asshole. In doing do, you will make the workers’ contempt and hatred for you just a little more enjoyable.

Here’s what I do whenever I am in a Ruby’s or an IHOP. I walk in and force waitress to repeat everything she says so that I may make clear that she is unworthy of my time. Upon sitting down I groan and make a disgusted little noise. I glare at her in contempt and as she walks away, I can feel my heart leap. I imagine her hating me with all the unbridled abandon that her discontent could possibly imagine.

As David Berman of the Silver Jews once put it, “you can’t change the feeling but you can change the feeling about the feeling in a second or two” And so in a matter of seconds you too will be able to change the guilt of their hatred into a joy and celebration. You’ll be the hero the workers deserve, but not the one they need.