Sunday is a long shot. It probably needs to happen and there are many subjectively “important” things dependent upon Sunday happening- but realistically? Come onnnnn. Face the facade of reality and acknowledge how often things truly work out in anyone’s favor.
One time I used my retail voice on a coworker and she was like, “Don’t use your customer voice on me, I know you’re dead inside like the rest of us, it’s just frightening and weird”
The other day I asked for a table for two in my customer voice and the waitress squinted at me and I cleared my throat and said “Sorry, still in service mode” and she dropped hers and we swapped stories about our day and my boyfriend was like “You two just became two entirely different people in like .5 seconds…”
I can be bitching up a blue streak about a customer-from-hell while the store is empty, and when the phone rings swap over to my retail voice practically in mid-sentence. I even have managers and salespeople from other stores in the chain fooled into thinking I’m infinitely friendly and helpful, and my manager’s husband thinks I’m one of the most professional people in the store. One assistant manager’s daughter dubbed me Perky-Pants because she mostly dealt with me over the phone, and was shocked to the core when I dropped an F-bomb at her graduation picnic.
The acting required in the service industry is beyond the pale. My cousin freaked out when she came to see me at work because I was all smiling and nice while helping someone who was asking inane questions and who basically forced me to walk them to the product and put it in their fucking hand but I was nice as pie until I turned around to walk away and my demeanor changed back to normal and I muttered “what a fucking moron” under my breath as I got back to my cousin. She just looked at me shocked and said “no wonder you’re so exhausted when you get home.”
this is actually referred to as emotional labor in criminology, and is considered one of the hardest forms of labor
The art of bullshit is strong in the service industry
That’s why it irks me when people act like my job isn’t hard and there’s no reason to be exhausted at the end of the day. Yeah I’m at a desk, but dealing with people isn’t easy!!
And like, I do tech support, so I have to be friendly, I have to figure out what their problem is, then I have to figure out now to solve it, and then I have to explain it to them in a way that they understand, all the while assuring them that they aren’t idiots, and sometimes things happen, and it’s perfectly okay that they called in. Or I have to soothe someone that’s pissed off long enough to figure out how or if I can help them.
Hubby doesn’t understand why I prefer to work evenings, but it’s because I’m so exhausted by the time I get off work, that I’d have zero energy to do anything if I had to work and then go to school. Also why I generally need quiet when I get off.
And I’m a natural extrovert. I don’t know how introverts can do this.
– the rise of old friends senior dog sanctuary
– Hamilton
– pokemon go
– female ghostbusters
– i don’t give a fuck im outta here Obama
– captain america civil war
– girl, black guy and latino guy leads in new star wars
– deadpool
– lemonade
– literally???! Nothing??? Else????
… . and this is just what I came up with in a pretty lazy google search in an hour, including distractions where I went down the research rabbit-hole for a bit because holy crap some of that stuff’s NEAT, guys!
And I know I’m missing stuff, because I wanted a citation for every single thing I put on there.
And like I do actually get the sudden overwhelmed feeling of EVERYTHING SUCKS? but that mindset is, at this point, literally our worst enemy. “Everything is terrible somebody do something” helplessness is what will in fact consign us to everything BEING terrible.
Everything is not terrible. In fact there are new ways, every single month, wherein new opportunities and miracles are happening and no that does not balance out the bad shit but it gives every reason to FIGHT the bad shit, and to get past the bad shit, and to make sure the bad shit ISN’T the overwhelming stain.
Look, when I say “representation matters,” I believe that the most important thing is for people who are often ignored in arts and media to see themselves there.
But I also mean that it’s important for white/hetero people to see people who aren’t white/hetero.
Here’s the thing. I was raised in a very white/hetero community. Every friend I had was white. I never had a black person in my classroom until late high school. I never had a black teacher until college. There was one out-gay student at my high school. One. And I saw what shit he had to go through by being out.
And, if I’m honest with myself, most of the adults in my life were racist and homophobic. They were good, loving people…to me. But they were also racist and homophobic.
And as a kid through my teen years, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that didn’t affect me. I parrotted the adults in my life, which meant that I often parrotted their hate and their prejudice. I’m ashamed of those attitudes now–now that I’ve had education and met people who were different from me and travelled the world and put aside hate.
But then? It was easy to excuse racism. People who weren’t white and straight didn’t exist in my world–and they didn’t exist in the world I saw on television and in books and on the radio. It was easier to live in the bubble of that world.
Representation matters to white people, too. It is important for white people to see diversity. Not as a token, not as “politically correct”–the white people who feel that adding a minority character to a storyline is pandering are horrible people who are entirely missing the point. I’m talking about the white kids who don’t see minorities in their lives, but who see a black girl and a white boy being friends on Sesame Street. I’m talking about the straight teen reading More Happy than Not, I’m talking about the white teen empathizing with Malala Yousafzai. The more representation we have, the more we hold a mirror through the world rather than whiting-out people who aren’t like the majority, the better our world is.
Representation matters.
I swear to god, it’s like every damn word could have come out of my own brain. Brava!
Honestly. As someone who went to a very tiny, almost completely white private school through eighth grade and then to a high school in a city with the demographics of a marvel movie (89.3% White, 0.7%African American, 0.4% Native American, 5.6% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 0.8% other races, 3.0% two or more races. 3.7% Hispanic or Latino) I never realised that the casting choices in most tv shows and movies vastly underrepresent any race that isn’t white.
I remember being confused about people saying they should hire more actors of color for movies set in like new york because thats what i legit thought the rest of the US and western europe was like.
Representation matters more than you think.
Agreeing with all the above. I didn’t interact with people of color until I was in the military, because where I grew up was that white. Now, my parents always made a point of telling my brother and I to treat everyone the same, and not use certain words, and they at least made some attempt to expose us to different media. But it was still a culture shock when I finally met people and I know I said and did some ignorant things just because I didn’t know any better.
Also, graduating high school in 1997, there was nobody out when I was in school, and I didn’t even know bisexuality was possible.
Part of why I’m so glad for the Internet and things like tumblr is because it knocks down some of those walls. But people still need to seek those things out if they don’t see them in the ordinary media they consume.
