Beauty II

Ok, more bitching about work before I get on to the real post. Today, I worked only a 5 1/2 shift, one of those hours being before opening and 45 minutes of it being on break, that means I only had contact with customers for 3 hours and 45 minutes. Perhaps there was something in the air, I don't know. First, I was bitched at because the Member's card is a "con." Whenever I sell, or even try to sell a member's card, I ALWAYS tell people that it's only good if you spend $21 or more in the store. You have to spend at least $250 a year to start to save money. It's SO easy to rack up $250 a year in books and starbucks coffee. But I was told that "nowhere does it say you have to spend $250 a year to save money." No, it doesn't. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out though. People will come in and drop $100 at a time like nothing.

At any rate, then I was bitched at for our prices being too high. A grande iced coffee is $2.35 because the coffee is double brewed and sweetened and prepared food tax in this city is 9.5%. I was told "That's criminal! Why is it so expensive?!" and as I tried to explain, "Just give me a tall coffee!"

The greatest, however, was yet to come. A man, probably in his 50's came in, and was very nice and polite and asked for two cookies. As I got them, he went to the counter and saw a small stack of the Dixie Chicks' newest album sitting there. I gave him his two cookies, and, I'd like to be making this up but I'm not, all of a sudden he became very mean and said (as I took his money) "I shouldn't be supporting this store. This store is horrible for selling the Dixie Chicks CD after what they said about our president. He's a great man. He can do no wrong. You tell your manager about my unhappiness." He went from a very easygoing manner to a very stilted, robotic tone, you know, the kind when you know a person is just repeating the same thing they've heard and repeated a million times before. At first I thought he was joking because what he was saying was so exptreme (Bush himself wouldn't have agreed with any of it) and he sounded so fake, but no. At this point it's always best to not make eye contact, say "have a nice day" and get them out of your face as soon as possible.

Aside from the last one, which was just plain scary, these were things we get all the time. I mean, if someone were REALLY upset, they wouldn't be talking to me. They would be talking to my manager directly or writing a letter to the corporation. Consumer indignity is a pretty feeble disguise for taking out your anger on a total stranger just because you can. Most of the time, if people bitch the booksellers for something, they don't go and gripe at the managers, too. However, what am I supposed to do, keep a little log book of every time someone complains to me about the high prices or the fact that we can't take Starbuck's cards. Oh, yes, your server has the power to change everything. Let me get on the phone with the CEOs of Starbucks and Barnes and Noble and have them merge their accounting systems so you can use your gift card. It should be done before your latte is up. Why should I waste my and my manager's time to tell them that somebody about something that neither of us can change?

If you really have a complaint, complain to someone who can do something about it or keep it to yourself.


WELL, after that's over, I wanted to add to my post on beauty.

Firstly, I know that I have the power not to conform to normalized beauty because A) I'm not ugly or overweight and don't need to do things like wear makeup to make me feel comfortable in my own skin B) I have a choice not to buy expensive clothes, but I could if I wanted to and C) I will not be marginalized or discriminated against for not conforming because of my place in society.

That being said, there are many other women in my position who still feel compelled to dress up, dump tons of money down the drain, and spend a huge amount of time preoccupied with what other people are doing, wearing and thinking. Some people just like to dress up and it's their passion or their hobby. But for every person like that, there are many others who, I feel, are going into autopilot and dressing because they think they have to.

Normative beauty is exactly what it sounds like: normative. It's not there because it's the age-old idea of beauty, nor is it able to include everyone (hence all the trouble so many black people have to go through with their hair just to be able to style it like white hair). Normative beauty is there to keep everyone secure. It's comfort. I mean, we all like to gripe about the 15 teenage girls we saw at the mall all wearing slight variations of the same thing. It makes us feel good about ourselves. We Americans like to believe that we're rugged individualists, but we can't see the bigger picture. Normative beauty means wearing sweats to the grocery store, dressing up in a business suit, dying your hair red...things like that, but when someone shaves their head or wears clothes from their ethnic culture, or wears something that betrays their religion, it begins to make people really uncomfortable.

This is why it's good that people think about the politics of hair. White people can wear their hair almost any way now (you see mohawks on TV commercials, sorry, it's been assimilated) but to get a job, black people can only wear their hair a certain way. If you think discrimination on the basis of hair alone doesn't exist, then I'll tell you about one of my black friends who was offered a job on the condition that the cut his dreds. Fortunately, he called bullshit to his interviewer's face and walked out.

If we want to spend an hour every morning doing your hair and makeup and dress up and give the fashion industry all your money, that's fine. But first think about why. Is is because you truly like it, or is it because you want to make yourself secure in the knowledge that nobody feels unsafe or offended by your looks?