A few days ago my family went to the supermarket, and I saw someone that had been an intern with me, in that same big company in my small town that I now work on. He was working as a cashier now.
As an introvert in real life—hard to believe I know—I tend to avoid interacting with people, even those that I should be familiar with.
If I see friends from work, I won’t engage with them unless we actually face each other and there’s no way around it. If I see friends from University, I will not talk with them—unless she was a crush and we somehow happen to sit together in the bus, maybe I’ll say hi, but that only has happened twice so far. Otherwise I’ll probably ignore.
However, this situation was a little different, because now there is a certain social imbalance that I had never felt before. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s not a real thing, I know that we are equal, I know status based on the work you do is as vain as it gets.
And yet, I couldn’t help it. This person studied a similar career as me, could probably land a job similar to me, and yet he’s a cashier.
That is of course, absolutely fine, absolutely great for anybody. Who knows what other factors are at play here, maybe it’s only temporary, or maybe he’s still doing a Master’s degree and just needs some extra income and will surpass me eventually. Or maybe he just enjoys it. I don’t know.
But the truth of the matter is that, at least for a second. I felt bad for him. I just couldn’t look at him in the eye, I didn’t say Hi, as if I didn’t know him. I didn’t even bring it up to my parents, and I always say “oh that person works with me!” or “they were a classmate of mine!”
And then I felt bad about feeling bad, that I looked down on him like that. I guess a feeling of superiority got to me, the fact that I’m closer to some arbitrary ideal than them. A part of me wants to think I just felt bad not because he was lesser, but because this world is just kind of unfair. But well, I know part of me thought that, and it was wrong, or at least it felt wrong to me.
Or who knows, maybe it was actually insecurity of mine, mabye I felt a sort of imposter syndrome, for being in a better place because all of my circumstances just lined up better, even if he could do just as good a job as me. No idea at this point.
Maybe the other person didn’t even recognize me either, maybe they were happily focused on work and doing their thing. Maybe I just felt bad for being impolite and I am trying to justify myself just to feel better about it somehow.
To make matters more ridiculous. the reason I saw them was because the label on a product had a lower price than the one showing up on the screen, and they showed up to validate the price and change it. So not only did I not say a word to them because I felt bad about being in a “better position” than them, I did so while being a cheapskate who complains about a product being 2 bucks more expensive than what the label said.
Whatever it is, maybe it’s no big deal, maybe they didn’t want to talk to me either, I don’t know, I am terrible when it comes to reading social interactions, I just felt like writing something about it and move on, and well, I just happen to have a place that lets me do that.
This is day 11 of #100DaysToOffload
