I have class issues, I guess. I come from blue-collar lower middle class stock; my dad served in both the Navy and the Coast Guard in order to get an education and get away from a drunk, and for most of my life, worked as an electrician, in construction. Mom worked extra jobs when she needed to but was basically at home raising the kids. I’ve had no college; my older sister went to college and may have gotten an associate’s degree (she’ll chime in if I”m wrong). In politics, I empathize with the poor, the ill, the folks just doin’ OK or barely scraping by. I’m a shop steward, because unions are the key to raising working standards for everyone.
I work in what is probably one of the last solidly middle class careers available in this country; I’m worker bee in local government. My cubicle is in the basement. I’m in tech support, basically, so to most of my co-workers I’m “the computer guy”. But the building I work in, out of all the offices spread around the county, the one I’m at the most also has the offices for the elected leaders and their staffs, not to mention the professionals in the county attorney’s offices, the law enforcement folks of the Sheriff’s Department, and other upper management types.
Where the upper managers and elected leaders wear business attire and dress up, I wear jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies. I take a small delight in the looks I get from folks who don’t know who I am; I’m sometimes asked when riding the elevator if I need help finding something. I tell them, with a smirk, that I work here and flash my badge.
But the 6th Floor, where the elected leaders work, is a special place. In theory, in the myth of America, anyone can be elected if they’re just plucky and lucky enough. In practice, it takes money to run for office, even a local one, and the folks that win are, generally speaking, all the kinds of folks who did not see their top marginal tax rate increase under Pres. Bush’s tax cut. Likewise for the people who staff those offices.
Or at least, that’s my impression. As I said, I’ve got class issues. My smirk hides an uncomfortable fear that I am not on the same level as they are.
So Monday, when I was on the 6th floor helping to move computers around for a workspace reconfiguration, dressed in my usual black t-shirt, button-fly 501s, and battered Chucks, amid all the button-shirt and pressed slack wearing men and women, I was feeling that strange mixture of pride and wariness. I knew in my head that I worked with these people; they are my peers. But I felt in my stomach that I was separate; I support these people - as from underneath.
On top of it, I was engaged in manual labor; unplugging keyboards and mice, carrying computers and monitors, pushing around carts and gondolas, climbing under desks. It is the least technical work I do. That only adds to my discomfort. I moved around, probably unconsciously avoiding eye contact with the workers in their cubicles. I wanted to finish and go back to my basement.
Normally I didn’t directly support this floor; there was another co-worker of mine who was specifically tasked for that. But moving computers is compartmentalized to me and the team I work with, so that particular co-worker wasn’t there that morning. I like him, generally, although he and I disagree completely on politics and have, for the last several years, agreed that we will only speak about work topics, in order to avoid any future fights.
“Hi! I’m Vee,” came a woman’s voice, loud and clear and happy, penetrating my dark thoughts of class warfare.
I was standing in an empty cube and the voice came from the next cube over. I couldn’t even see the woman who spoke. I had barely registered that she had been talking to Ken, my friend and teammate, and had zoned out so completely that it took me several seconds to realize she was introducing herself to me. I walked around the cube wall to see if she was actually talking to me.
I saw a young woman, maybe a decade or more younger than me, jet black hair and dark brown skin, with some Asian ancestry, wearing a shirt and slacks, sitting in her chair, smiling and looking at me.
“Hi,” I said. “How’s your morning going?” I was speaking on auto-pilot. “Is your computer working OK?” My assumption was that she needed help with something. Why else would she talk to me?
“It’s going great!” she said. “So far, so good. Computer’s all working. For now!”
I nodded. I must have let my wariness show on my face because she laughed and added, “Uh-oh! You’re thinking that I’m going to start asking for help and use you as my personal support, right?”
She was gently mocking me and my silly defensivenes. I laughed in response and finally warmed a bit to the situation. “Right, right! My name is” I thought of my co-worker who normally supports this floor “Steven [Last Name]”. I said this last with a forced deliberateness that was intended to convey that this was not to be taken as a true statement.
“Oh, I know Steve,” Vee said, laughing. “Try again!”
I felt myself warm a bit. She was just being friendly; my issues with class and 6th floor vs. the basement were all in my head. I was letting my own baggage carry me away. We small talked for a bit and then Ken and I finished up our work and headed back to our own work area. As we left, Vee saw us once more, and said, loudly, “Bye, Steve!”
Oh, snap. Because of my own joke, I had doomed myself. I was certain that from that moment on, whenever I saw Vee in the hallways or elevator, bright, cheerful, attractive and energetic woman that she is, she would jokingly call me “Steve” - the name of someone with whom I could not agree less on matters political.
It was my own damned fault.
