I had phoned ahead for the item I wanted so I know they have it put away somewhere. At Customer Service I wait for a very long time while a man buying stools hits on the clerk. When it is my turn, I ask the very nice young lady if my item is put aside. She says no but she will check with the cashiers at the front of the store. Another customer stands behind me, impatiently fidgeting and huffing. How dare I hold up the line while the clerk goes to find my merchandise? She sighs, very loudly and directly. I turn around and glare at her.
“What?! I dropped something,” she says, which is clearly not the case but I suppose she needs some sort of defence because she has been pretty rude. The obvious audible agitation was aimed at me – how dare I take the time to ask a question. I refuse to be treated like a pain in the neck so I give her the look, the up and down, up and down – the green-eyed stare. It wasn’t until the second up and down that she looked away. A point for me.
The clerk comes back with my item and I take it to the checkout with the shortest line. It is a slow process. I am standing behind a couple of other customers and there is another lady behind me. We form an obvious line. Just as the couple in front of me approaches the till, a tall, well-dressed 30-something shoots out from between two display shelves and stands in front of me. “Excuse me,” I say.
“I have been standing behind this man for a long time,” she says.
“Not nearly as long as I have,” I say.
“Oh. Whatever,” she says, obviously displeased and maybe a little embarrassed. She moves to stand in another line and the lady behind me chuckles.
Have I just had the unfortunate experience of meeting two unpleasant people and everyone else is just fine or are there other dynamics at play here. My recent women and gender studies course and my research on ageism causes me to question motives and view myself as I never have before – as a disappearing entity with little value in our society. I have always hated condescension and I will not step out of the way because some sweet young thing is in a hurry, just because she thinks I should.
I am not sure who I should be angry with. Should I be upset with our culture and our society because it places little value on the elderly because they are no longer a functioning cog in the wheel? Should I be upset only with the young women because of their displays of condescending bad manners? Or should I be upset with myself and other women my age? After all, my generation raised these pretentious, self-centered individuals. We strived to give our children the all the things we didn’t have. We wanted to make their lives easier, not realizing that a little struggle was okay and instant gratification wasn’t such a good thing. They lived an advantaged life. We were too generous.
The whole experience was a bit unsettling. However, there was a little spark of joy glowing in my heart as I left the store. As I passed the other checkouts I noticed that the young woman who wanted my place in line was still standing about four people back at another check-out.
