Going shopping sometimes ticks me off, even though I like to shop, whether for groceries or clothes or presents for other people. I never found myself disliking it at times until I moved here to the Seattle area. Plainly put, there is a lot of money up here, with the corporate headquarters of Microsoft, Boeing, and even Starbucks. Nothing against well-to-do people, but ever see the movie
Titanic? A lot of the people up here actually seem to still have that mind set that the lower-class people aren't worth a cent. Really, they do.
And working in retail is more humiliating up here than anywhere else I've lived. Ugh, people seem to think I should kiss the ground they walk on for giving the company their money so I can get a paycheck. Sometimes I feel some customers actually expect us to maintain a downcast expression (like a child who is humbly taking a scolding) when in their presence.
Anyway, when I go shopping, especially grocery shopping, I try to go to some of the nicer neighborhoods and bigger stores because some of the people that frequent the smaller and cheaper places scare me (gang activity, drunkards, Post Trauma Syndrome Vets, etc.). I feel safer and more comfortable in the bigger, better lit and even more expensive grocery stores. Unfortunately, this is also where a lot of the snooty rich people usually shop. And they're arrogant. They hog up the entire aisle, and when you try to pass or even say "Excuse me" politely, they glare at you as if to say "How dare you think you can just pass through my space?" You can be coming to the end of an aisle with your cart, slow down in case someone comes around the corner from the other aisle, and someone walks right into your cart because they weren't looking where they were going, and you might say "Sorry" even though
you slowed down, and they glare at you as if to say "Watch where you're going, I have the right of way!" Yeah, you pretty much have to follow all traffic laws in the grocery store. If the store is busy enough, I just pull the cart behind me, other wise, even if I stop at the end of every aisle and look both ways before going on, people will still walk into my cart (and look at me as if I'm the one who ran into them). And at the checkout, you can have all your stuff ready on the counter/belt with the plastic divider already in place for the next person in line, and the person ahead of you is fussing with the poor cashier over the stupidest thing, as if accusing her/him of not treating them with the service they "deserve" (even though you might clearly be able to see that the cashier is already going above and beyond great customer service). And/Or, the person behind you is impatient and throws their stuff on the belt behind the divider and even though you smile at them and might even say some friendly comment like "I hear *brand name* is great stuff!", they glare at you as if to say "Shut up and just get checked out so I can get out of here!". I always try to dress up somewhat, and am usually even more dressed up than some of the other shoppers, but I think they can still tell that I'm not really "one of them". Although I know for a fact that they all treat eachother this way as well, I seem to get more of it because they think I don't even belong there or something. It just really aggravates me. And even though I usually like shopping, sometimes I come home mad and depressed because I had so many encounters with rude people.
I know there's rude people no matter where you go, but there just seems to be a higher concentration of them up here, compared to the other places I've lived. Likely because of all the money up here, and more people are use to hired help and get so much respect in their work place they expect the same high respect outside of work, regardless of the others who deserve just as much (if not more) respect from them.
I don't know how much sense all that made, but it reeeeaaaallllyyyy irritates me how some people think they should be the center of the universe, when we're ALL in this together, no matter how much money one has.
