Right, so maybe I'm just some special case who has a tattoo on my forehead that only I am unable to see reading “I exist purely to serve you at all times, AMA”, but after yet another one of these incidents today, I feel like I'm going crazy. What the hell is going on here? Why do so many older people approach me wherever I happen to be and demand my service? Now, I was plenty used to this with customer service jobs in the past (I no longer even work a customer-facing job). Idiots walk into the store, ignore a line of waiting people to walk practically behind your register, and before you can say a word, shout the name of a product at you like an oblivious toddler responding to Dora the Explorer. Par for the course–customers don't see you as human once they spot a nametag.
And whatever. It's clearly not an acceptable way to treat others, but it is something you can expect to encounter working in a retail environment. What I don't expect is to encounter it constantly outside of any sort of job when just going about my daily life. Once I was at a drugstore browsing the acid-reducers when some older woman comes around the aisle, sees me, and says, “I need to know where the vitamins are.” At first I didn't even look over, because why would I assume she was talking to me? But when I didn't respond, she got impatient and said. “Excuse me, I asked you where the vitamins were.” Which, first of all, uh, no you didn't. But I just give her a confused look and say, “I don't know. Probably a different aisle.” She crosses her arms and says “Probably? Are you new here or something?” Annoyed, I respond with, “Lady, I don't work here.”
And that freezes her up for only a few seconds of that stupid scoffing, huffing thing entitled folks always do when caught squarely in the wrong before she says “Well then can't you find someone who does?” Jesus Christ. I mean, okay–maybe she was just flustered and didn't know what else to say, but really? Now I've got a short temper on the best of days, and while that trait does me more harm than good by a mile, it does tend to make for blissfully foreshortened interactions, so I turned fully towards her and said “I beg your fuckin' pardon?” And she storms off. I can only imagine she went home crying to her husband about how she was verbally assaulted by some millennial just for 'asking a simple question'.
As a one-off incident, this would just be kind of funny, but it's not. This happens with enough frequency that I've been convinced at points I must be inviting it in some way, but I don't see how if so. I don't smile at strangers, I'm not talkative, I dress like a grungy asshole, and I'm in my mid-thirties–not the age range most older people generally associate with service workers. Today, I was at some thrift store wearing sweatpants and a horror t-shirt and this bag of hair barges up to me and says, “I need to know where teacups are.” I succinctly say, “I don't work here.” She stares at me in disbelief and repeats “TEACUPS”, as if I simply didn't hear her. So I raised my voice and said, “Again, I don't work here, I'm just some random customer you're bothering.” And for some fucking reason, she responds with “This place is ridiculous” and leaves the store.
But they were just mistaken, right? Well, once I was at the grocery store, pushing a full cart of groceries down an aisle, when some older man rushes over from a long ways away, ignoring several other shoppers between us, and says, “Hey! What forms of payment does [store name] take?” I utter what has bizarrely become my catchphrase: “I don't work here.” And this jabroni has the brass to say, “Oh, no, I know. But I bet you can help me anyway. I need to know what forms of payment they take so I know if I can use my American Express.” I debated saying something about steering clear of Vegas with bets that shitty, but I pulled back and said instead, “I can't help you, because I don't know that. You'll have to find someone who works here.” And apparently it was his god-given right to utilize me as he so pleased, because he was extremely offended that I wouldn't go find out for him since he “didn't know where any of the workers were”.
These are just a few of several things like this that have happened over the years. Not once have any of these people every apologized for their mistake, instead acting like I'm the one who wasted their time by not happening to work at whatever building I'm currently standing in. And these are not handicapped or infirm people. Some very old or injured person asks if I would maybe bend over to grab something off a low shelf because they can't? You got it–I'm there. Someone in a wheelchair asks me if I wouldn't mind going down a cramped aisle to grab them something so they don't have to try and squeeze down it? No problem. But this isn't that. They're not politely asking me for my assistance as a fellow citizen; they're demanding my service as a perceived inferior with zero evidence that I even work there. And these have all been people in their 50s, 60s, maybe sometimes 70s, but fully cognizant and capable. They act as if very idea that people younger than them existing in spaces where they are not meant to serve is out of the question.
No wonder these types are so against living wages for service jobs when they think that labor should be free to begin with. But demeaning the value of labor by calling it “unskilled” while simultaneously not even possessing the skill to navigate a grocery store trip by yourself does make me chuckle, at least.