Sunday, March 02, 2008
Opinion, Stephanie Ramage

Snobbery in America

...America has become every bit as class-conscious as Victorian Britain...

CREDIT: shutterstock.com
Polo—the international symbol of snobbery

By Stephanie Ramage

Thanks in part to the vagaries of the news business, and in part to the egos it attracts, I have been in and out of jobs fairly frequently over the years. As a result, I have sometimes found myself juggling two or three part-time jobs—at coffee shops, bookstores, restaurants and a day care center(this is only a small sampler of my endeavors)—while writing freelance.

Working at the day care was the single most enlightening work experience of my life. Even as I write this, I am still in awe of my amazing co-workers, from the resourceful director who managed with astounding grace to tread the treacherous ground between parents, the center’s owner, her own employees and the children, to my ever-patient, ever-striving and wise co-teachers “Miss Ann” and “Miss Mel.”

It just so happened that prior to going to work at the day care in 2003, at the invitation of the director who knew I was out of work and remembered me from the days when my son was enrolled there, I sent my résumé to an editor at the largest—and for that matter, the only—daily newspaper in town. I thought of the editor as “Helmet Head” because of her hair. I never heard from her. I took the job at the day care and, as fate would have it, I found myself taking care of Helmet Head’s daughter.

Helmet Head’s daughter was about 3 years old. She was a very independent and perfectly nice kid, but she often had diarrhea, so her potty training was a shambles. One of my co-workers, upon examining the contents of the child’s pull-ups, announced, “It’s peas. You need to tell her mother to stop sending peas for her to eat.” Her mother, remember, was the woman who had never responded to my résumé. When she would come to pick up her daughter, she would act as though she were visiting a slum in the darkest pit of Calcutta. Avoiding all eye contact, never responding to anything said to her, she would extract her daughter and leave. I did not want to be the one to tell Helmet Head to lay off the peas. I asked my co-worker to tell her instead.

That afternoon, Helmet Head stared at something over Miss Ann's head as she talked, saying, “I see,” but clearly she didn’t. What was particularly striking about Helmet Head was the markedly different way in which she dealt with us as opposed to the parents at the day care. She suddenly “turned on” when she bumped into an attorney or public relations person or professor who was there to pick up a child. She flashed a big smile and chatted animatedly. They were important to her. The people who cared for her daughter were not.

The next day, Helmet Head’s daughter returned with the same lunch supplies as always and once more filled her pull-ups with peas that were so intact that my co-worker quipped, “Maybe we should start canning them.” She talked to Helmet Head again, this time showing her the evidence. Helmet Head said nothing and left.

This continued. Then, one day, Helmet Head arrived as I was changing her daughter. My co-worker was busy cleaning up, so it fell to me to talk to her.

“If you would come over here,” I said, “I’d like to show you what’s going on.”

She walked over, her eyes riveted by something on the wall. Clearly, a day care worker was beneath her attention. “Do you remember me? I sent you a résumé,” I blundered, trying to get her to see me. “We met a couple of times at press club events.”

She looked at a sink faucet and held fast to her belief that I didn’t exist. I had seen the same thing happen at the restaurant where I worked at night. A Democratic state legislator whom I had covered for years sailed in like a battleship one evening as I was at my post as hostess, looked right at me and quickly looked away, searching desperately for anything else upon which to affix her gaze. Years before that, when I quit a business publication in town and got a job at the coffee shop across the street from it, one of my former editors came in, saw me, stood frozen for a moment, started to order, then walked out.

It is often the case that journalists (and politicians) are craven social climbers who would rather be dead than serving a latte and I believe that they have infused such snobbery into their work, so much so that America has become every bit as class-conscious as Victorian Britain. Of course there are wonderful exceptions, and I have been lucky to count them as my friends, but Helmet Head wasn’t one of them.

Standing by the changing table, she looked anywhere but at me or at her kid.

“Never mind,” I said. “Look, she doesn’t do well with eating peas. You’ve got to lay off the peas.”

She wordlessly waited for me to finish cleaning up her daughter, collected her and left.

My co-worker came over, put her arm around me and said, “She doesn’t see you because she doesn’t want to believe you are here, because if it could happen to you, it could happen to her. One day it might. You’re one step ahead of her. You’ve been to the place she’s afraid of, and you’ve survived. Let’s pray for her.”

She prayed. I closed my eyes and thought that it was likely that Helmet Head’s daughter would continue in her pea processing. She never became an entry for “Ripley’s Believe it or Not,” so I assume that at some point she stopped, though I don’t know when. About a month later, a worker left and I moved to the 4-year-olds’ class.

As I wrote this, I tried to remember Helmet Head’s real name, but I couldn’t. I remember what she did for a living, but I don't remember who she was. SP