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Friday, December 10, 2004
the birth of frost: chivalry IS dead
I've spent the week at my boss' apartment. He's in France on a convention tour and has had someone over doing his bookkeeping. Apparently he trusts her enough to have access to his financial records, but not enough to be around his Zagat Guides from 1998 - 2005 without babysitting.
His apartment is located on the fabulious 5th Avenue and Upper East Side, which translates to me as very very rich. And it is, and he is, and all around me more and more I'm becoming surrounded by and covered with cash. Plenty to see, none to touch. Pffpt.
In the lobby of his building is a man whose job is to push the turnstile for the revolving door. Because, apparently, we lack the tendons in our forearms to do it ourselves? There's a man in the elevator whose job is to push the button to open the door, close the door, go up and down the floors.
It boggles my mind. It's been raining all week, and there was a man in the lobby who was holding umbrellas open over people's heads as they walked to and from the building. And there was a line in the lobby of people waiting for the man to get back to escort them out. Despite the fact that they were holding umbrellas themselves.
I don't get it. I've never had money so I guess I won't. But still. Lord.
There's a deli a block from his apartment, and after I went in and paid for a sandwich I thanked the cashier. Like I always do. And the man regarded me with such a look of shock that for a second I racked my brain trying to remember if "thank you" was somehow insulting in India. But it wasn't, he replied "Thank you" with all measure of gratitude that I was reminded of when I first moved to New York and thanked someone at McDonalds and she said, "You're not from here, are you?"
Perhaps it's just my cynicism, but I find it depressing that proper manners are something that marks you as an outsider.
So, in order to balance things out, later on as I was walking away from a restaurant after picking up my lunch (also near my boss' apartment) I held the door open for a woman on a cell phone. Y'know, generally when someone holds the door open for me I scramble as quickly as possible to a place where I can take over the door from them, but this Madison Avenue Bitch didn't know that's how the game operates. She meandered slowly through the door, not even touching it. So. There was a second glass door in front of me, which I opened up for her. As she was about to walk past I let go and continued down the street, happily hearing the "fuck you" that followed me.
Yeah I'm petty. But I've had enough of asking people to be polite. If you didn't learn the skills required to exist peacefully within a functioning society by now, then we're at war, bitches.
And PETA. They're next. Those fuckers.
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