Real Life Moment Which Needed Addressing

“Get a real job!”

Those four syllables were loaded with all the contempt and scorn it is possible to pack into such a tiny space.  They were hurled, thankfully not at me, out of the window of a moving car towards the person gathering carts in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart.  They were coming from a modestly expensive vehicle, for a person who finds it necessary to live in Topeka, and to shop at Wal-Mart.  Suffice to say, their job couldn’t actually be all that fantastic.

And yet… This atmosphere of casual, indifferent disregard for those who are not as fortunate as those in power / wealth is stunning.  It is possible (not likely, but possible) that the individual so quick with their judgement and condescension were Christian.  It is possible they had men and women who reported to them, for whose fiscal well beings they were responsible for.  Yet the person who had the tenacity to stick it out with a job, a job at America’s single largest employer, was somehow considered sub-human.

That man or woman (couldn’t ask as I was driving) had to deal with an enormous verbal bomb dropped on them out of simple spite.  Maybe they had been having a rough day.  Maybe they had just been fired from a good job (something that happened to me two weeks ago) and this was all they could get on such short notice.  Maybe they were working to pay for a large family, or maybe they were supporting their elderly parents / grandparents.  We won’t know.  And the person who felt it was so necessary to heap completely undeserved and unwarranted vitriol on an individual who has refused to stay idle and instead wishes to contribute as much as they can at that moment to society.

I think it speaks to a really nasty segment of our population, and our species, when moments like these happen.  There really isn’t anything to be done either.  I’m sure the sorry excuse for a human doing the yelling thought they were… I dunno, helping?  Something.  Maybe their deity of choice compelled them.  Maybe they just wanted to vent because they too had a bad day.  Regardless, moments like these are what wear a person down.  This is a cut that the person employed by Wal-Mart has to endure.  And sadly, it is probably one of but many they receive daily.  I hate it.  I hate that aspect of humanity so bad it hurts.

I try, every day, with everything I write and speak and share, to correct such instances.  I know that there won’t ever be a resolution: Some people are just dicks.  But these moments are why I write about enslavement, addiction, LGBTQ rights, and why all of my protagonists are women and of African American, Hispanic, or Asian descent.  Someone needs to fight back against that sort of nonsense.  Maybe I won’t do much, in the end.  I just hope that someone has taken the same stance I have.  That Wal-Mart employee deserves to go home to some form of preferred entertainment where they are treated with respect and dignity deserved by every human who hasn’t proved otherwise.

Respectfully,
Justin