Cupcakes and the Bourgeousie.

On the weekend for extra dosh I work at a Cafe (which for the purposes of this blog I will call "Cafe" lest I get fired for writing incriminating things) which is a rather lovely place, actually. It is just another one of the small businesses that make New York a great town: a place where, if one has enough capitol, creativity and ambition you, the individual, can own a small, unique, store. Basically, it's not some giant chain, where all the stores look the same from New York to New Dehli (I am thinking, of course, of Starbucks which I don't entirely hate because they give their workers, EVEN part-time workers, healthcare so they are off my conglomerate shit list). At the cafe I work at we don't call the customers "guests" with fixed grins and magic kingodom happy faces and we don't play appropriately hip worldmusic to enhance the consumers intake of coffee and cupcakes (the bedrock of what this cafe sells). We just, you know, sell cupcakes, make coffee drinks, take money, serve people but not in a way that would suggest we are running a quasi-spa and not a cafe.

However, many of our customers don't realize that this is not a spa or that I am not their personal maid service. I posit that customer service is one of the last arenas that Americans feel it is acceptable to exhibit all of their bigotry and it is a great microcosm of the American class system. The only thing that really seperates me and the customer is a glass case with cupcakes but they are on the other side brandishing cash or an American Express black card and with it a huge sense of entitelment and a really ugly air of moneyed superiority. When I open my mouth to speak I get the sneaking suspicion that they are surprised that, well, often I speak better than they do, am wittier, and, yes, probably have a liberal arts degree equal or greater than theirs. It doesn't matter to them though because with cash or plastic in hand, on the other side of the glass incased fence, they have the power. So whatever has been going wrong in their lives, the job they hate or the child they thought they wanted or the pounds they've put on or the loveless appearance oriented marriages they are in, have a sudden outlet.

They can misdirect all of their frustration (read: anger) at the chick behind the counter who hasn't gotten them the right cupcake! "No, I wanted the pink flower", "Why don't you have any more chocolate vanilla", "How much is that?!?" and on, and on, and on. Sometimes, if feels like a hundred Veruca Salts have been let loose and they are all asking me for an Oompa Loompa. Oftentimes, my interactions with the Fat-free Pilates toned Mommy crowd or the Mr. time is money Man turns into a passive agressive exchange that takes on the quality of a Harold Pinter play (random aside: Pinter just won the Nobel - Go Harold!). The simple act of my serving and theri buying a cup of coffee or cupcake becomes a power play fraught with subtext with "that will be $ 2.50" really meaning " that will be $2.50 you cheap, classless, bastard" and "large or small" becomes "large or small you spoiled fatso." Sadly, I am on the losing side, behind the counter, and, until Americans learn that money isn't a liscense to treat others like identured servants, than serving will continue to be an exercise in sadism.