For years I have railed against particularly deceptive, misleading, euphemistic words and so I’m going to start an occasional series of blogs dealing with these words.
JOB CREATOR Tom Steyer, the multi-billionaire vanity candidate for president who built his wealth as a hedge fund manager, has assaulted us with a barrage of TV and radio ads. He brags: “I started a tiny investment business and, over 27 years, grew it successfully to 36 billion dollars.” His argument is that he is a superior capitalist pig to tRump. With no governmental experience whatsoever, he brags that as a “job creator,” he is capable of running the world. His campaign has spent $17 million on ads so far.
What does it mean to be a job creator? McDonalds and Walmart and other minimum wage companies – they’re all job creators. They’re also union haters, do not pay a living wage to their employees, and in most cases offer no benefits. I don’t know how many or what type of jobs this Steyer “created” – these hedge funders usually just buy, ransack, and then sell companies. But what he really means is that he managed to exploit the labor of enough people to make him so rich that he can attempt to spend his way into the position of president of the USA. As a “job creator” he wants to create that one additional job – for himself.
After my mother – a mean-spirited woman – died, my friend went through the jewelry she had accumulated throughout her life. Much was tacky mid-century plastic and gaudy Florida flea market stuff, but my friend did identify a few items with a bit of value: a gold chain, gold bracelets, a necklace with a diamond, some diamond earrings.
It was 2009, deep in the Recession, and selling/buying gold was big business. I contacted a gold-buying guy who had a big ad in a brochure featuring varied Cape Cod businesses. He turned up with a tray, a special light, and one of those lenses (known as a monocular loupe) that screws into one eye and apparently lets jewelry experts see deep into the item. I was one of a bunch of such buying stops he was making that evening. It was his profession over many decades, but business had really picked up because of the Recession, he said with glee. If I recall, he gave me $250 cash for the lot and left. Two days later he called to say that he had screwed up on the assessment of one of the pieces and wanted to return to my house to take back $100. I said no.
After his call, I realized that I did not recollect what I did with the cash. I scoured my apartment but never found it. This loss has stayed in the back of my brain. My mother had treated me like crap all my life. Luckily I’m not superstitious or spiritual – or I might think she was messing with me from her grave.
Fast forward over a decade and I’m in the midst of a de-cluttering blitz. Among some very dusty papers, I found that Cape Cod business brochure. Inside was $350 cash. So it was more than I remembered and it was right where I had laid it over 10 years earlier. Now I have enough money to pay the woman I’ve hired to help me organize this attempt to tame the chaos of my tiny crowded apartment.
I recently read an article about giving “directly and unconditionally to homeless people” in the UK – something I did when I was living in England and something I do now. For those who aren’t clear about how to respond to folks asking you for money on the streets, here is my take on the matter – including how to decide to whom to give.
Why are people homeless? Here are some theoretical examples:
Lindsay’s husband drained their joint bank accounts before leaving her and their infant twins. She could not pay the rent, so she and the children have become homeless, basically living in her unreliable car.
Timmy’s father threw him out of the house and disowned him when he found out that Timmy is gay. Without any resources, Timmy lives on the streets in a tent he shares with several other lads in a similar situation.
Maryellen only had catastrophic health insurance when she developed early onset Parkinson’s disease and her medical costs drained every cent of her savings after she could no longer work as a waitress. After crashing at one friend’s apartment after another, she has exhausted her list.
At 79, Aliya received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder but as English is her second language, she has been unable to navigate the complexities of Medicare. Without prescription coverage, she is unable to get her meds. Sometimes she gets taken into a hospital for a few days but doesn’t get ongoing care and lands back on the streets.
How I give money
When I got to London to live, at the start of the 1990s, I was blown away by the number of homeless people on the street. My work was in King’s Cross, at that time the center of drugs, homelessness, and petty crime. Every day, from the minute I got out of the subway car, I was being asked for money by people who needed it. I had to figure out how to manage the situation, how to balance my limited ability to give vs the huge need.
My friends were divided between those who said they did not give to individuals, but rather to non-profits serving homeless people, and those who did offer people money on the assumption that organized help was not reaching them.
My feeling is that people who are standing around in the cold (or heat) begging you for money are not on a lark and they are not stupid. They have run into the endless roadblocks to government or charity assistance and may simply not qualify. Homeless shelters are notorious for theft and assault and are often only open certain hours of the day. Services have been cut back and are difficult to access.
I made the decision in London – and apply it here now that I’m living in the States – to decide on a certain amount of money per day that I could part with. I was working a steady job in London and so I put aside £5 per day to give away. I got a ton of £1 coins and each morning would load 5 of them into my coat pocket.
I also decided to prioritize women and people of color, on the assumption that other givers might well overlook them. When my £5 was gone I would just smile, say hello, and say sorry to others who asked.
Here in the States, I am less frequently walking around, but people ask me for money while I’m in my car, stopped at red lights. I keep a bunch of dollar bills in my car to give to those who ask. I do not see very many other drivers doing the same, and almost never someone in a luxury vehicle.
My final word: Don’t be judgmental. Don’t be rude. Don’t make assumptions. If you’ve got a lot more than someone else who is asking the world for a dollar, just give it to them. Once given, it’s their money and not your concern about whether they’re going to buy a drink or milk for their kid. Naturally we want to make revolutionary changes in this country so that the majority of people are not impoverished while a few are unspeakably wealthy, so that people’s basic needs are met by the State when necessary, so that there is affordable housing. But until we succeed in achieving that, reach into your pocket if you are able.
Invisible Nation
I learned a great deal about homelessness, particularly among women and children, from this brilliant book by the author Richard Schweid. If your library does not have it, insist they order it right away – and they will. As one of the most captivating, skilled non-fiction writers in America, Schweid opened my eyes to the unseen impacts – especially on children – of this scourge of homelessness.
This summer I experienced a change to my character and behavior so fundamental that I’m surprised my friends recognized me. Let me first lay out the context:
Having lived in London for 10 years, I have maintained my bank account there and in that bank account are all of my pounds sterling. Because of Brexit, those sterlings are less sterling, and have lost a generous chunk of their value as punishment for the stupidity of the vote – 13% on just the day after.
When I arrived and started to understand what that meant – that a good deal of my very hard-earned money had evaporated without my consent – I remembered all the other times throughout my adult life that burst bubbles, stock crashes, and government perfidy erased the savings I am a chump to have worked towards all my life. And now the uncertainly of Brexit.
I could’ve succumbed to depression if I hadn’t decided to make lemonade out of lemons. Since I had just been ripped off of years of effort and modest living, I decided to live as if I weren’t Sue Katz, She Who Saves and Worries About Every Penny (only to be sucker-punched.) I decided instead that I should spend my money, not just surrender it without choice to sleazy financial and governmental bodies. I should add that I’m about to turn 69 and since I have saved and saved for old age, and since old age seems to be arriving for a visit of unknown duration, it is time to switch around and spend.
All of which is to explain why, contrary to a life’s habit, I ate where I wanted and what I wanted. As one friend said, I read the menu from the left instead of, as has always been my habit, from the right. I had eggplant stuffed with minced pork at an amazing Vietnamese restaurant and then went back twice for succulent cubed beef. I established myself as a regular at a neighborhood restaurant which, while the menu could only be called that unfortunate term Nouveau Cuisine, served the most scrumptious vegetable crepe and a damned good hamburger. I brought so many guests to this restaurant over the month that Kevin the gay proprietor squealed my name whenever I came in the door and seated me at the hidden back garden table for VIPs. And it’s no wonder: I was single-handedly paying off his mortgage.
Not pinching pennies – which can take both hands and half a brain – means I was able to luxuriously pass the time with one friend after another – at least one or two per day over a month – without a gnawing concern in the back of my head about whether this particular meal would mean that I’d have to die a week earlier in my dotage. Friends came to see me from Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Tunbridge, Whitstable, Bristol, and Brighton – not to forget south London – and I broke bread with each one without reserve. It meant that I could go to my favorite Turkish restaurant where “greasy grilled lamb ribs” does not begin to describe the orgasmic delight, and pick up the check without it giving me indigestion. It meant that I could go to My Old Dutch Pancake House and split not one but two confections with my buddy.
I broke down on my resolve to be a bigger spender many times, slinking off to the Pound Stores and the cut-rate supermarket, but then I’d shake myself out and saunter down to the – she says spitting over her shoulder – Whole Foods, which has followed the wave of gentrification into the neighborhood. There I bought the most delectable elite tea without bothering about the price at all – enough tea to sustain me during the month and to secret back into the States where a cuppa is sitting next to my computer as we speak.
Sitting, in fact, next to the pile of mail I have received from my London bank – surely credit and debit card accounts that I am unable to bring myself to open, now that I have returned to my scrimping real life. Perhaps one more cup of tea and I will buck up, stiffen my upper lip, and settle my arrears, putting that life of unfettered indulgence to rest.
I have a long history with the local supermarket chain Market Basket. When it was my neighborhood grocery store for a decade in the 2000s, I noticed two patterns there. First, every single solitary time I stood and oversaw as my groceries were rung up, the person or the cash register made at least one error in favor of Market Basket. There was always, without fail, an error and it was always, without fail, an overcharge. Not a single undercharge in a decade. You can believe that I called a manager over each time and was loud in my objections. I pointed out that the consistency of the problem meant that it was a policy decision, not a hiccup.
The other pattern I noted was that every manager and assistant manager in the store was a man and every checkout person was a woman. 100%. I put my outrage into a correspondence with upper management and within months that was no longer the case. Ever after I used to go up to the women managers and tell them, “You’re welcome.” They probably thought I was some crazy old white woman. To which there is some truth.
I no longer live near any of their stores. Yesterday, though, I decided to go to the new Market Basket that opened up about 5 miles from me. The thing is: I am addicted to MB’s basic toilet paper – and as my storage space is almost non-existent – I have to replenish every few months. Why bother over this one brand? I was in a quandary when I first returned to the States. I didn’t like most of the available toilet papers. The Scott was so thin that it needed to be wadded; and the over-“luxurious” types like Charmin felt spongy like Styrofoam. Market Basket’s basic product feels like paper and does the job.
So it is time to go load up on MB toilet paper. I also need a quart of milk and a few lemons. I enter the store (the first time I’ve been to this new one), and I’m immediately overwhelmed by the gargantuan size of the space. The milk turns out to be all the way to the left and the lemons all the way to the right, with the toilet paper in the middle.
I am not wearing my walking shoes, which is unfortunate because I end up doing more walking than a day in Venice. They ought to think about providing Segways or motorized carts. Helicopters would be too noisy and Star Trek transporters too expensive.
How I longed to be back to the human-sized Trader Joes. I don’t need a choice between 11 different brands and sorts of Raisin Bran. This American concept of “choice” is a delusion, meant to force us to pass hundreds of commodities in order to get to our quart of milk. My butt and I have got to face up to the challenge and find a different brand of toilet paper.
I’m sick: flaming throat, coughing, sniffles. And last night I went out for the first time in days. An hour or so of gentle dancing and a stop at Trader Joes. Mistake. Came back slaughtered and had nightmares all night.
I dreamed that my life savings were concentrated into individual pieces of honeydew melon, which were in a big glass jar. Each piece contained an entire year’s savings in compressed form. But due to weakness from this flu, I dropped the jar and spilled the melon. Many pieces slid under the stove, under the fridge, never to be retrieved. Whole years of my life savings gone.
Well, sort of. I wasn’t at THEWhite House Conference on Aging (which is to be held in July): I was at the fifth and final regional consultation forum leading up to the actual Conference. I was recommended for the Conference by SAGE (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders). My job was to bring up the particular needs and realities of LGBTQ people, to inject the queer into the conversation. I applied and was accepted, putting down my “affiliation” as writer.
It was held at the new Edward M. Kennedy Institute, sitting with sibling congeniality next door to the JFK Library on the University of Massachusetts campus. The main hall is a replica of the US Senate chamber, holding 100 comfy seats with desks, ringed by a balcony of stiff observer seats. Lacking a red dot on my name tag, I was ordered upstairs. AARP was the co-sponsor and provided copious, decent snacks and lunch. Instead of just cookies at the break, for instance, they also offered energy bars and trail mix.
There were two panels filled with worthies to start off the day. I was struck by their demographics:
**Taken as a whole, the speakers were a lot younger than the group they were talking about. **There were no “users” on the panels, only “professionals.” **The majority of the speakers were white women.
Here’s a short report of my personal experience of trying to inject LGBTQ content, followed by some salient points from some of the speakers.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I had prepared my question and dutifully copied it out on the postcard that came in our pack, but the volunteer usher who collected it stood around in the balcony with a bunch in her hand instead of handing it in for consideration. Luckily Lisa Krinsky's (Director of Boston’s terrific LGBT Aging Project) question about cultural competency and treating LGBT people with dignity did get asked.
In our breakout session on Elder Justice we were divided into six smaller groups to come up with a priority/challenge/solution. I talked a lot about breaking the isolation of LGBTQ seniors, especially those who are closeted, and about other marginalized groups. I saw to it that I was one of the people reporting back to the room to ensure that LGBTQ concerns get written down. However, in the end the leaders homogenized the varied concerns of the six smaller groups into one single “most important” priority. That is, they made mush out of nuanced issues. You know: more resources; more public awareness. Blah blah.
In the final, most interesting plenary session, filmed "for the White House," they opened the mic and at last “the people" were able to speak. It was enlightening to hear from the participants – and to finally see the passion activists have about their varied issues. One nursing home resident basically said, “Nothing about us without us.” A woman spoke about encouraging seniors to prepare for Guardianship. We learned that half of people over 65 live in communities with no public transportation whatsoever. And that 90% of trips taken by folks 65+ are by car, leaving them devastated when they can no longer drive.
I had snuck into the main chamber in order to be positioned to make a jump for the mic. I spoke about isolation, marginalization, and the necessity to use increased resources to reach groups like isolated LGBTQs and undocumented immigrants. I talked about the LGBTQ generation before mine – people who had never been “out” in their lives – and how they would experience senior services/institutions. I talked about people of color and others who did not necessarily see the social worker or the criminal justice system as a place to turn to. I regret that I neglected to raise two important aging issues: sexuality and HIV.
Afterwards about six or seven gay people came up to personally thank me – and I refrained from asking them why they had not themselves spoken up. Two (assumedly naive) people said, How great that Obama is going to see this footage and hear what you said.
In the end, I felt I had successfully accomplished a bit of my mission.
However, queers are decidedly not on the radar of the main speakers and the bigwigs, to say the least. Issues of poverty, race, gender, and sexuality were hardly referenced by the experts (except for one panelist, Jeanette Takamura, Dean of Columbia University Social Work). No one said the word "ageism" until the end of the day. That was disheartening.
OVERVIEW OF THE SPEAKERS
The day’s Superstar is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who scores the only two standing ovations – bringing a spark of passion to a day that will be very “conferency.” The first comes the moment she opens the door and enters – people jump and cheer – and the second is for saying, “This is not the moment to talk about cutting Social Security; this is the moment to talk about strengthening Social Security.” In between she champions Medicare and Medicaid, tells us that 1/3 of all people near retirement have no savings, and raises the alarm on conflicts of interest among financial people selling retirement plans and getting kickbacks. I am most gratified by her point that beefing up Social Security “is not only about honoring our promises to our seniors, it is also about honoring our promises to our young people” since all of us are aging. We learned that from the disability movement: improved accessibility helps everyone.
Caregiver (and Union member) Kindalay Cummings-Akers, introduces Congressperson Stephen Lynch (both pictured on left), after talking about the real challenges of her profession, not the least the restrictions by Medicare on who gets care at home. Lynch, himself a champion of elder services and of improved employment circumstances for carers, looks at the implications of our increased life expectancy.
Therese McMillan, from the US Department of Transportation, gives a fascinating peek at how good public transportation can make a difference in the lives of older people. When seniors were asked what they’d most want near their house, the majority said “bus stop.” People who regularly use public transportation walk more than those who drive, countering the sedentary lifestyle which she says is “the biggest threat to health.” (Writers are done for!) Poor neighborhoods are often “food deserts” – where fast food and liquor stores dominate: public transportation helps people get to fresh fruit/vegs. I love her concept of “extending the ladders of opportunity”: mobile seniors help others through volunteering, childcare, etc.
We are told by Maine’s Judith Shaw that elders who are victims of abuse are three times more likely to die in the three years following their victimization than their general group. John Friedman of Brown University says that a generation ago three out of four workers had a work pension: now three out of four don’t.
I am a bit put off by the injection of rapacious corporations into the proceedings. We are subjected to a CVS “retail pharmacist” and a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (!!) spokesman bragging about how well they take care of their senior customers. (The two corporate representatives were both men of color – the only ones on the panels.) I was unhappy, too, with remarks by Brigitte Madrian, a “public policy and corporate management” professor from Harvard, who couldn’t bear the idea that people were able to tap into their own retirement savings before retirement – as if people in crisis are frivolous.
Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, pointed out that 2015 is a big anniversary year: the 50th anniversary of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Older Americans Act, as well as the 80th anniversary of Social Security. The department’s present emphasis is on the prevention of heart attacks / strokes, the #1 USA killer.
Two hours into the day and there has been no mention of the impact on aging of poverty, gender, race, or sexuality. Disability was only mentioned in terms of transportation.
The second panel, including two participants of color, consists of all physicians (in senior roles) and one PhD. We’ll start with her. Jeanette Takamura (on left) is the first woman Dean at the School of Social Work at Columbia University. She is the bright light of the day for me. She’s got an impressive CV of significant work around older people, including the development and enactment of a modernized Older Americans Act. Takamura is the first to mention women and the LGBT community – and also the first to raise the crucial issue of political will on the federal, state, and local levels. She says the money needs to follow the person. She points out that by 2043, the majority of Americans will be people of color. I am surprised to learn that private (for-profit) long-term care companies are not expanding: they’re contracting. Later, in response to the question of the LGBT Aging Project, Takamura talks about the “micro-aggressions” people of color and gay people suffer all their lives and gives a “macro-aggression” example from her own life. (“She speaks English so well!”)
Ellen Flaherty from the Dartmouth Center for Health and Aging talks about rural elders. Rural communities are older and more isolated than urban ones. She is full of suggested solutions: For long-term care, shift Medicaid spending from nursing homes to home care. Improve the conditions of caregivers. And use technology for fall detectors, for Tai Chi lessons via Skype, etc. I am surprised at her emphasis on solutions using the Internet because my experience of rural connectivity has not been impressive.
Every profession has its jargon and I repeatedly heard two buzz phrases new to me: “health confidence” and “activated patients.” I can only guess at their meaning. I fear “health confidence” is somehow a similar construct to “food insecurity,” which means “We don’t know where the hell our next meal is coming from.” As for “activated patients,” your guess is as good as mine.
Finally, thank you to the three brilliant people from the LGBTQ seniors movement who got me involved. Terri Clark forwarded me the Conference announcement. Terri has encouraged my involvement in this work from the time I met her in Philadelphia where she does education work around HIV and also around senior sexuality. Serena Worthington (Director of National Field Initiatives at SAGE), who ran the LGBT Elder day-long session at the Creating Change conference in Denver with such panache, provided my recommendation. And Aaron Tax, SAGE’s Director of Federal Government Relations, sent me useful educational materials.
Here's the Conference trailer (very different optics than the session I was at).
After Marriage: The Future of LGBT Activism Harvard University’s Third Annual Gender & Sexuality Symposium (March 27, 2015)
When I saw Harvard University was offering a free breakfast and lunch, I decided to go to this all-day workshop. Seriously, I had never seen the keynoter Jewelle Gomez speak, although I was long aware of her activism and writing, not the least her much-admired novel The Gilda Stories. I’m hoping that the movement really does have a future, for I have been perplexed and infuriated by the choices that well-off white male “gays for pay” have been making for the American movement. I’ve written many times about my opposition to the call for “gays in the military.” (The American military! The world’s worst bully.) Since the earliest days of the women’s liberation movement, I have considered marriage and the nuclear family to be at the heart of women’s oppression. I was bewildered when the queers decided to sweep in to save this failed institution, with its 50% divorce rate and uncounted more living in separation or misery.
I’m interested in what the panelists have to say about looking forward. Our Harvard host Michael Bronski introduces the keynoter. Jewelle Gomez, born and raised in Boston, recalls Boston as “deeply intransigently exclusionary, and it is internationally recognized for being so.” She describes her experience as a child at the South End Cathedral, “where the nuns vigorously ignored me and all young kids of color.”
She tosses out some great quips. She declares from the outset that she would be using the word “queer” in its most inclusive sense, “because there is a letter shortage – like our California water shortage.” Ain’t that the truth! A “femme icon,” as one audience member calls her, Gomez points out, “I spent my life looking for a butch woman like Barbara Stanwyck riding a horse. Today young women think a butch looks like Justin Bieber.”
I appreciate Gomez’s repeated use of the words “feminism” and “lesbian,” as in “Feminism is my religion of choice.” These words seem increasingly rare in academic and conference settings. She mentions our treatment within our bio families – where we are too often treated like infants, when we are neither married nor parents. She notes how the queer baby boom pulled the community away from “free living” – which I understand to mean our fast-moving political lives outside traditional structures like the family.
But then things changed. Gomez explains how she became a litigant in the California case for marriage equality. Once invited to join the other couples, she says it took her and her partner “about five minutes” to agree. While somewhat conflicted, Gomez says that “It was the principle of the civil right, not the institution itself.” She describes staying within the prescribed talking points language (“marriage equality” yes, but never “gay marriage”) and wearing the straight-assed clothes the lawyers insisted on. Gomez also expresses the hope that movement resources will go to other campaigns as well, naming as an example the problem of homeless queer youth.
Following a “Cambridge” lunch that features the choice of sandwiches of a gluten-free or vegan or vegetarian or roast-beef persuasion, the afternoon panel discussion is high-energy, open, and full of revealing info. The moderator, Sue Hyde (National LGBTQ Task Force), injects rocket fuel to the day’s tone in her introductory statement, in which she talks about how we need to grapple with the broader economic questions: in fact, says she, “we need a socialist revolution.” Been a long time since I heard such exhilarating and welcome sentiments said from a queer podium.
Nan Hunter, introduced as the inventor of queer family law, is Skyped in and therefore looms over the rest of the panel on-screen. She says that the legislative wing of the LGBT movement is fairly confident of a positive Supreme Court outcome in June regarding gay marriage. The other panelists agree. Hunter shows us two extraordinary charts of the USA. One illustrates the location of the 630,000+ gay couples (self-identified on the census), mainly on the two coasts and in the big cities in between. The other shows the 120,000+ couples with a child in which at least one partner is a person of color. These folks are scattered throughout rural areas, especially in the South. (Thanks to Sue Reamer for remembering these stats.)
Aisha Moodie-Mills (Center for American Progress) references some sobering figures that show that lesbians raising children are more likely to be poor than anyone else. Black lesbians more so. Trans women even more so.
Kevin Cathcart (Lambda Legal) blows my mind with an observation that should have been obvious: “No civil rights movement has ever been over or finished by a Supreme Court decision.” There is no such thing as a victory, for any gain is a constant target for a backlash – from the Voting Rights Act to Roe v Wade. Cathcart also talks about how, even if marriage equality is established by the Supreme Court, other June decisions are going to have a dire effect on our communities, not the least the weakening of the Affordable Healthcare Act. He says that in this country there are “50,000 sero-conversions to HIV per year,” and points to the impact a stripped-down health insurance system could have on those living with HIV as well as on prevention resources.
Joey Mogul from DePaul Law School warns us about the mass criminalization and incarceration of people of color by the prison-industrial complex. “We spend more to cage and kill people than to help people.”
Audience members speak about coalition-building, about the relationship of the movement to the faith communities, and about funding. Kevin Cathcart points out that only 2% of queer people donate to LGBT causes.
Sue Hyde ends with a hard truth: “Marriage is an equality issue but it doesn’t change much,” in terms of racism, classism, and the other forms of oppression that we are still grappling with. The panel brings a grounded energy to the day that counters the attitude of those organizations working to integrate queers into the worst of American institutions. I am glad to feel a shared anger in the room, a sense that we can at last put our energies where they are intensely needed. It brings hope for a more radical twist in the path the movement has taken: from asking for acceptance in the homophile days, to fighting for liberation post-Stonewall, to the present lawyer-led lobbying for assimilation into mainstream institutions.
There is something wrong with me. I can’t get over class rage towards individuals. About twenty years ago my friend Nicola – a working class English girl – told me that seething all the time only hurts me; it doesn’t affect anyone of privilege.
I have kept a series of little TVs in the corner of the counter in my tiny kitchen. When one TV dies, I usually find another for free as they’re the old-fashioned tube TVs and no one wants them. The picture on my present TV, given to me by someone who wanted it out of their basement, has started to shiver.
Someone we’ll call XY advertised a 14” set on Craigslist. He lives just a few miles from me. XY was asking $30 and when he admitted that the TV was from 2001 - i.e. a couple years past its bar mitzvah, I asked if he was flexible about the price. He gave an emphatic no. I went to see it today. He and his wife – we’ll call her XX – live in a disconcertingly fancy gigantic apartment with vaulted ceilings about four stories high. The flat is one of a number constructed inside an old stone church as part of the gentrification of the area. XX told me their bedroom was upstairs along with several other rooms – “two or three,” she said, “I’m not sure. We don’t really use them.”
XY was transferred here to Boston by his company – one of the biggest corporations in the world.
I just could not bring myself to give him $30, even though I need the TV. I should have said that. Instead I said I didn’t realize it had such a huge rear-end (the truth) and I didn’t think it would fit my tiny kitchen counter (not the truth). I should have said, “You are disgusting for charging for something that only a person without many resources would need.”
His wife tried to be helpful. “Why don’t you just buy an iPad and use that? If you don’t have much counter-space you could set it up on a little table.”
If I could afford an iPad for my kitchen, would I be scrambling around Craigslist, asshole? I didn’t say. Instead I said, “There’s no room for a table in my kitchen.”
All that happened to these wealthy people was that they wasted 15 minutes. I’m sitting with a stomach full of acid and a heart full of resentment, and I know that Nicola was right.
Whole Foods charged me $6.90 for a tiny eggplant that, after I insisted, was correctly priced at $1.84. I caught the mistake – not the vegetable department, not the checkout woman, not the supervisor, and not the store manager. It took me 30 minutes to convince them that their product was wrongly rung up and when they said the wrong sticker was on it, it took me more time to question their lack of concern about all the other customers who had been over-charged.
“We’re fixing it now. They’re changing the stickers. Everything’s okay.”
“No, it’s illegal to mark products wrongly and to overcharge. How many eggplants did you sell today and why don’t you seem to mind having ripped off other customers.”
“We get it right 99% of the time.”
“How do you know? It’s methat identified the problem, not any of your staff.”
“There’s nothing I can do about the other customers.”
“And you have done nothing for me, but waste my time. I’m going to send you an invoice to cover these 40 minutes of my life that you’re forced me to work on your store’s quality control.”
They give me a gift card for a paltry $20. I wonder how regularly they make these “mistakes.” Beware Whole Foods. From their prices you can see they are rapacious. And now we know they not only make charging “errors,” but don’t even apologize for having wrongfully pocketed our money.
I take my bag of groceries and leave the store, only to find that on this, the first day of Spring, it is pouring snow and my car is covered with it. “Oh shit,” I say at the exit. “Oh shit,” says the guy next to me.
“You know what?” I tell him, “one more winter like this and Boston’s going to lose half its population.”
“Already happening,” says he. “I’m moving to Atlanta in three weeks.”
“And we,” says the woman of a couple right behind us, “are going to Florida next year from November to March, aren’t we honey?”
Ripped off and snowed on: Is it any wonder that I’ve arrived home and am slumped in front of my third hour of “Murder, she wrote.”
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