Like everybody else on this planet, I get thirsty. So after speech practice one cold winter night, I go to the local gas station to buy a Pepsi to drink. I just wanted something to wake me up and my Mother will often times call Pepsi her ‘coffee’. I walk in and get my ‘coffee’. This gas station I visited for the sole reason it had a fountain. So my drink will only cost me a dollar and its convenient for me to get, as a convenience store should be.
This story goes south once I reach the register. The cashier held a short and nice exchange with the person in front of me. He goes outside and gets into his truck parked outside, which unless he moved it, he did not buy gas. I walk up to the register and receive this stink eye with a silent feral grow, the kind where they just lift up one edge of their mouth like, "What does this guy think he is doing?" I set my drink down and pay the lady, then I walk out. In a stuck up tone, all she had said was, "Dollar forty-nine.” Not a greeting and not a thank you.
Before I go on a tangent of proper customer service, I want to say this happened in a small, rural Iowa town. In rural Iowa, where I grew up, it is common courtesy to act nice with each other. Nicer than the experience I have had with people in the town I currently live in and that cashier. If I am cruising through the area I will give a wave to somebody because, at one time or another, they were likely my neighbor. This is what my parents did, what my grandparents did, and what I might as well do. It is a small gesture, but something I don’t get living in town. So, considering the area, it is not wrong of me to expect a ‘thank you’, which is also proper customer service.
My mind was confused by the look this lady gave me, because I didn’t know why she gave it to me. The guy in front of me bought something very similar in value to my purchase and she had a decent exchange with him. I step up and I get the stink eye. Maybe I pushed her patience too far by buying something from her store. Or maybe I was holding up the line, but I was the only other person in the entire building. So I go through other various explanations and I eventually reached this one, she did not value me as a person of our society.
It is fair to say most of us find people younger than us irritating, I know I find underclassmen annoying. Likely this lady thought I was just like the rest of my classmates and lumped me together with them. At one point or another, everybody can recall a time they thought less of a person younger than them because of their inexperience or lack of knowledge. It sucks, but this is how our society works.
If we continue to clump together every new generation of people, are we not limiting our societies potential? True, we are inexperienced and foolish, but I believe I can at least bring something to the table. With any amount of hard work and diligence, something of mine should become worthy of some recognition, but it is potentially harder than it needs to be. This is because of the people who rush to judge as well as my equals who set these false impressions. I don’t act like an idiot and attempt to set a good impression, but a bad impression has already been set for me by people my age. But I can’t change an entire generation, so I can only hope that time will fix this, as it does.
This is just not an issue for me and my generation, but all sorts of groups. Let’s take self-publishing for example. Self-publishing can be a good way for a budding and serious author to get started. It can also be a good way for a guy to make a quick buck. Quickly the self-publishing market became overran with books that were unedited and unoriginal. Self-publishing lacks the extensive challenges a traditional book must go through. So while some great books are self-published, they must be discerned from the pile of trash that has also flooded the market.
We all want to be recognized as valuable for something, but it is very difficult when you are preconceived as worthless. Maybe I miss the target with the cashier, or maybe I got exactly what she was thinking. Regardless, I think it is worth saying that something valuable can come from a pile of what is seemingly trash. Not that I am calling my equals trash or claiming what I have is valuable, only that we should not judge hastily.
No comments:
Post a Comment