It’s All About Me!

                I’ve often complained about the people who stay at our hotel, and frequently it’s the local, low income guests that I mouth off about.  To be quite honest, they’re not the worst.  They just stay with us more often.  The people I can’t stand are the ones who think they’re entitled to things. They really get up my nose.

                I think entitlement is killing our culture.

                That may sound melodramatic, but I don’t think so.

                This last weekend we had a girl’s soccer tournament in our area.  Our hotel hosted teams from wealthy suburbs of Milwaukee and Indianapolis. It was like Chatswin threw up on our hotel.  Pampered girls; a bevvy of svelte blonde soccer moms; over-indulged children; it all was exacerbated in a lot of booze and sugar. In addition, it was graduation weekend for Notre Dame, so the remainder of the hotels guest also had deep pocket books, and a “you owe us” perspective.

                Now I’m in customer service.  I agree that my profession means that I am meant to help my customers, and do the best I can by them.  This doesn’t mean that I someone has the right to take advantage of another. 

                Let me give you an example.  It’s annoying that people insist on filling their large travel coffee cups from the breakfast room coffee, when they have their own coffee pots in their room.  Two cups and we have to brew another pot, causing other people to have to wait for a cup of coffee with their breakfast.  Annoying, but we deal. Keeping fresh coffee available is part of our job.  On the other hand, watching your teen-aged daughters throw french fries at each other in the lobby.  Not stopping them, or asking them to pick them up from all over the floor, and watching the desk staff clean them out of the carpet?  Well that’s just obnoxious. You deserve good service.  You’re not entitled to a servant. 

                Yet this is the type of behavior we witnessed all weekend.  The blatant lack of caring about anyone beyond yourself, and the breeding of such narcissism in your children was evident in almost all the families we saw.  It really made me sad for our future. 

                To me, the four most important things that I want to instill in my future children, and indeed the kids of my close friends, are:

1.   The completely secure knowledge that they are loved
2.   A deep sense of faith
3.   The ingrained understanding that the world does not revolve around them
4.   Profound sense of grace and gratitude for all they have been given.

                None of these things were evidenced in the interactions I witnessed this weekend.  Instead I saw demanding behavior from parents and children alike.  Not just directed towards us, but towards each other. I saw enough pre-Copernican [1] behavior to satisfy me for many years.  Witness with me the conversation overheard in our lobby between two teen girls:

                Daliah: Where’s your mom?  I thought she was coming.

                Bayleigh: She was.  But she’s like a relator now.  She had to show a house.

                Daliah:  What?  You mom has a Job? 

                Bayleigh:  Yeah.  For a couple months now.

                Daliah:  That sucks.

                Bayleigh: I Know!  I HATE it!

                No idea that it’s probably the mom’s job that made a trip like this even possible for the girl. The entire situation was, instead, evaluated by how it immediately affected her.  In addition, there was absolutely no sense of gratitude on the parts of anyone.  When we went above and beyond, they demanded more. When we asserted rules, they demanded an exception.  When one woman was discreetly notified that her card was declined she proceeded to loudly berate the front desk staff for making her daughter worried that they didn’t have enough money, and in the process let everyone in the lobby know the very thing we kept quiet for her sake.

                The thing is, it’s not the iphones, expensive cars, and costly personal grooming, it’s the attitude that seems to go hand in hand with it.  I have my selection of gadgets and enjoy a good pedicure on occasion, I’m just seeing over and over that when you hand people everything, they never learn to care for others.  I know as parents there is a desire to give your children every good thing, but unless you balance that with gratitude you’re raising a hot mess.

                I see this every day at work, not just with the soccer moms and their Plastics, but with the boss’s daughter. It breaks my heart to see the pain and damage her lack of caring causes her parents, and her coworkers. Today her mother was doing the laundry for nearly 50 rooms.  The daughter came in with her bedspread and wanted her mother to wash it. She was angry when the mother asked her to help.  The girl is 35, married, living rent free in her parents house.  Her parents supplement her income, and yet she is demanding that her overworked mother wash her bedding. She is the grown up version of the kids I saw this weekend. The sad thing is that I see this kind of narcissism becoming common place.  It isn’t the way for a society to function.  It isn’t the way to encourage one another, and build community and life.

                The thing is, I don’t know how to go about balancing this or correcting this.  If I chose to live a life where I put other people first they don’t see how life can be different, they just think they’re getting what they’re entitled to.  Serving those who think they deserve to be served just perpetuates the entitlement cycle. So how then do I build something different?  How do I help the people I’m around choose to care for those beyond them? How do I help people see the way they’re taking advantage of others? Furthermore, how do I keep myself from being infected with the entitlement virus?  It’s contaminating just about everything I see.  And I think it’s killing us.

 

1. Copernicus being the person that figured out that the Sun doesn’t revolve around the Earth, thus we were not the center of the universe.  Pre-Copernican people still see themselves as the center; post-Copernican people now know that life is not a story about them. 

praying with crazy eyes.

OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD.

Now my car isn’t working

battery light came on, and car starts smelling sweet like it’s burning coolant.

This can’t be good.

I’m going to go rock in a corner now.

OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD.

Help!

Loosing my Religion

Not in the faith sense, in the REM sense, the southern sense.
Today temperance is something I’m holding to with all 10 fingernails, but it’s slipping from my grasp. I mean, what do you do to an employee who:
*ignores instructions
*ignores notes
*ignores prompts
*ignores personal conversations
*ignores reminders
and fails to do her online training of the new software system that the hotel is going to use?
Fire her, right?
Ok, what if she’s the owners daughter?
Answer: You try very hard not to punch her.
For weeks you try not.
You try not to punch her when you tell her that she is the only employee that has not completed the training and she says “What training?’ and you say “the on-line training I’ve sent you three messages on, the one we’ve had two conversations about, the one you talked to the other front desk staff about, the one you reminded your brother to do, the one that I wrote on the schedule that had to be done last week because the switch-over is coming next Monday, that one?”
I tried not to hit her when she hadn’t done any of the training by the Saturday before the Monday the conversion happens.
I tried really hard not to hit her when she texted me on Sunday and asked what time the training was on Monday. Instead I calmly texted her the training web site, her user name and password and specifically told her what training to do.
Now, here I am. Loosing my Religion.
Here’s why.
I’ve been at the hotel since 8am on Monday. I have had very little sleep. Now I’m about to stay up all night, because she came to work having done only 1 of the 10 training episodes and has no clue how to do anything on the computer. She didn’t ‘realize’ that there was more than just the “Intro” training. (which just means that she didn’t pay attention all the times that I told her, wrote her….etc.)
So now she’s in the other room doing the training while I’m doing her job.
And I’m trying not to punch her every time she asks a question, can’t figure something out, or generally says anything.
It’s taking all I have. I may do a McDonald’s run.
Her dad and I are going to have a conversation in the morning.
This is insane.
I’m not normally a punch people kind of person, but I’m fast becoming one. I don’t ask for much, just that you do your job.
Is that too much?
Clearly.
(Update:
Her: What does it mean “Phone Field”? Where am I supposed to put this phone number?
Me: (sitting on my hands) The empty field right beside where it says Phone)

1081

Reblogged from ASBO Jesus:

Inked

One of the musicians I most admire in the world (Karen Berquist of Over the Rhine) has a tattoo that reads “comparison is the thief of Joy”  I’m not sure exactly who coined it first, but it is a quote.  I also came across this website tonight. It contains picture after picture of people’s tattoo’s that are quotes from literature.  It ranges from poetry, to distilled quotes; Latin to “42″.  I find it so fascinating to see what inspires people so much that they want to ink it onto their body permanently.

It makes me curious.

What would I ink?

And, even more importantly:

What literature moves you so much that you would put it on yourself forever?

Sigh. I’m a b^$%h today.

I am a bad person.

At least today I am.

I am a bad person that wants to call the wrath of the universe down on so many people, but mostly the pregnant ones.

Ok not all the pregnant ones, but a good proportion of them.

I’m a vindictive, jealous bitch of a woman today.

Here’s the thing.  I’m going to rant.  You can judge me if you want.  I judge me today.  I just have to get this out somewhere or I’m going to melt down.

I don’t have time to melt down.  I’m responsible for too much.  So instead I will rant.  You can stop reading now if you don’t want to be disappointed in me.

Oops Pregnancy:  This is your third damned child.  Your husband doesn’t want them any more.  You know you’re practically a single mother as it is.  You know the drill.  You know where babies come from.  You know the stress your marriage is under.  You also know how damned fertile you are.  I have no sympathy for you, so don’t come to me for any.  You chose this. Also.  HOW DARE YOU blab on and on about this and how surprising it was, and how frustrating it is to suddenly find yourself pregnant for the third time, to the woman who had to go through all kinds of infertility treatment and endured years of never being able to get pregnant!  She is finally carrying twins from in vitro, and is worried she won’t carry them to term.  She also has no promise of another pregnancy or another child.  HOW DARE YOU boast about your easy conception and ask for her sympathy for your oops baby.  Also your other two kids are holy terrors.  You clearly don’t know how to mother them effectively. Maybe you should do something permanent to prevent this from happening again.

Counting down the days: I get that you’re excited to welcome little whatever-his-name-is but honestly I can’t bear these status updates for the next 4 months!  I’m suffocating under your boast of how awesome everything is, and how great life is, and how much you’re looking forward to this.  You always had to do everything first, and more perfectly, than everyone in your little group.  Hope this works for you. I really do.  I just don’t want to hear about it, because it really isn’t excitement, it’s showing off. And I’m sick of it.

There are a myriad of other people I know who are pregnant.  Many of them had to try and struggle and managed to get to this place by hook, crook, or lots of money.  I love them, and wish the best for them, but I’m still damned angry today.

I think part of it is that it makes me feel less than, because I have no one who loves me enough to want intimacy, commitment, and children with me. (I’m also not about to do that in a different order unless my action would be helping a child avoid a worse situation). It also brings home that my chances of making children of my own is slipping away like water through my fingers.

And DAMN IT, I am ANGRY about that.

Partly it’s my own damn fault.  I know I’m overweight and that affects the way people see me.

Partly it’s that there are slim pickings where I live.

Partly it’s no ones fault, it is just the way the cookie crumbles.

And yet, here I am, raging against the dying of the light.

I’m raging because yet one more person posted a picture of an ultra sound on Facebook.

I’m raging because I have to figure out how to respond to the people close to me who are pregnant and pissing me off.

I’m raging I have yet more baby showers to budget for and attend.

I’m raging because I have to put on my happy face and go back to working like nothing at all is wrong.

Really though?  I want to curse the sky, find a bar, and get knocked up.

(not really.  Just kinda.)

I just want to be allowed to live my dreams instead of watching everyone else live it for me.

Since I can’t, I’m just going to be a big bitch today.

(best avoid norther Indiana today if you can)

If nothing else, we can laugh at ourselves

My family has the remarkable ability to laugh.
We laugh loudly and often.
We laugh at ourselves, we laugh at each other, we make each other laugh.
Our laughs are distinctive. I could hear my dad in the audience of a play where about 1000 people were attending.
My laugh is just as distinctive.
At my grad party this December, a friend wanted us to get together for a family picture. Much laughter ensued. I thought I’d share the results with you. I knew you’d enjoy it.
Have a laugh on us.

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