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a place of disconnection

My goals seem so impossible. While I tell myself to think well of people during my 6 hour shift, it is difficult to maintain a positive outlook amidst the psychological violence that Americans unconsciously commit to people in service careers such as mine. Yesterday I came home partially destroyed from the judgmental looks for very inconsequential mistakes, from the non-responsiveness to questions such as "how are you?", from the always time-crunched and fragmented communication that happens between co-workers. Yet this is the day to day world in the service industry - both in my experiences as well as in service professions far beyond coffee service. Still, it is in this environment I will continue to promise myself to listen, love, and pay close attention.

It will never cease to amaze me how many people are blatantly able to ignore such a very simple question of greeting. Yet, the words, "How are you?" get ignored more times than I can count. "Yeah, can I get a decaf late with some vanilla" is often the very out of touch response to my question. This makes me look right at the heart of disconnection that plagues US society. A person with a uniform is 1/4 human, 3/4 object of service. Even if i go to a Walgreens and I am really trying to be more awake to humanity, by the time I have an incident with a uniformed women doing her job right in the way of the toothpaste I would like to grab, I have some mental episode that tell me that her work setting that label can wait for me to grab my toothpaste; she is the worker, I am the buyer. And I ask to grab that toothpaste.

What I mean when I use the word 'disconnection' is that people have this tendency to be asleep, or disconnected, to the truth that all people are equally thinking and feeling beings who are trying to be as well as possible in each minute of every day. I think that plenty of evidence points to how, in a way, the overall U.S. culture values this brand on disconnection. Perhaps it achieves temporary kinds of superiority that is socially hard-wired into our desires. When I stop the woman from her job so that I can carry out my toothpaste task, I get to be affirmed that the world revolves around me so long as I am the one spending the money at that store. When a customer cuts off my connection-making question of "How are you?" to move straight to the ordering of their drink, they tell me that they have no obligation to connect with me. The only obligation is one of service. No one is wearing a uniform to be alive and connected. We service people are there to serve.

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