by Linda Tirado
3. ATTITUDE
So, okay, sometimes I have a shitty attitude. I’ll give you that. But at least I’m not often entitled. People in the upper classes are so used to having everything done for them that they get sort of irrational and start to feel like you’re personally attacking them for not being honestly pleased to see them. It’s a bit off-putting, to say the least, to have someone sweep in like that.
If you think poor people are entitled, try denying a rich person with an attitude some service they think they’ve earned. It’s like grief—there are phases. Anger and denial are first. Then comes “do you understand how fucked you are if I don’t get the thing I want?” Followed by “I demand to see your manager” and “I’ve never been treated so poorly in my life.” The final stage is bargaining, where they try to give you extra money because all of life is like valet service to them, and an extra five bucks can change the world.
If that doesn’t convince you, try wearing stained or unintentionally torn (professionally torn is fine and thus useless for these purposes) clothes and sitting on a stoop somewhere. Note how many rude comments or nasty glares you get from well-dressed people. Being rich is like being white, you guys. It’s not that sometimes your life doesn’t suck even if you’re white. It’s that you’re not allowed to complain about the two times being white is unhandy, because all of your alternatives are much unhandier. Your other options are any race or ethnicity but white, all of whom face normal human shitty existence and racism of the entrenched or overt variety. It’s the same thing being rich. I’m not saying that sometimes you don’t get the short end of the stick. All I’m saying is that you look ridiculous whining about how you just can’t make ends meet on $200,000 because you have to spend so much money to survive. You come off as petulant and incapable of managing the slightest taste of reality when the raising of the capital gains tax back to what you paid under Clinton is cast as a brimstone-filled apocalypse. Sometimes you just have to bite your tongue and keep your mouths shut to avoid looking like assholes.
Barack Obama caused a flap because he told rich people that they weren’t the sole factors in their own success. You are not allowed to do that, because wealthy people are far too precious to face the idea that they didn’t do it all themselves, or spring out of the womb, fully formed, as hotshot entrepreneurs or whatever they want us to see them as. I cannot fathom actually thinking that the entire world must collaborate to hide reality from me, and on top of that hubris, being upset when someone dares to speak a distasteful truth. You guys have got to get tougher than that.
4. HEALTH
I have no idea what a wealthy person’s health care experience is typically like. I’ve never had that. But I do know that some of the things I see more comfortable folks doing look pretty stupid, and I tend to trust the people with the advanced degrees and years of experience when it comes to how things like cars or bodies work. At least I do if what they want me to do is reasonable and attainable. I only ignore the stuff that’s out of reach. You guys, though—seriously, why even bother going to the doctor at all if you think you know everything?
I am so sorry, rich people. It has to suck to have enough money to stay healthy, because then you don’t have an excuse for aging. You have to maintain.
On the other hand, some of the shit you people will pay for blows my mind. Like lotion with actual pearls ground up in it. Actual. Pearls. I stopped at a mall cart to ask about the stuff. It’s obscenely expensive. I think that’s because you’re literally smearing semiprecious materials all over your face.
You seriously need to control yourselves with the surgical anti-aging. You’re starting to look … weird. At least we in the lower classes rarely have to live with botched plastic surgery. Very few poor women have someone over-collagenate their lips or paralyze their foreheads. Poverty has its privileges, and one of them is not having to worry about where the line between beauty standard and malpractice lawsuit is.
We use home remedies because they are cheap, not because they are superior to all of Western medicine. If you can afford a real doctor and you prefer an herbalist, you have lost all sense of reason.
You guys pay people actual cash money for the privilege of becoming physically exhausted. Has it occurred to you all that you could probably run, for free, on the streets—that you do not actually need to pay money to a gym for the privilege of running on a treadmill? I said that to a wealthy woman once, and she told me that she preferred to work out in air-conditioning. It is possible that I am fundamentally misunderstanding something here, but I thought that sweating was a good thing when you’re trying to lose weight?
Concierge doctors. I am totally cool with people having on-call physicians. But I do think it makes you look like assholes to have your own special VIP offices. Doctors do that, you know; they have a regular office and waiting room for regular patients, and a swanky spa setup for the boutique patients. It is the same doctor. You are not getting the benefit of more expertise, he’s just kissing your ass more in a slightly more refined setting. If you make the (valid) argument that you get more time, as well, I will just say this: Can you please hire special nurses to listen to your worries about this discolored spot you just discovered on your arm? There are already not enough doctors to go around. I promise you, a talented nurse is as good as a doctor in most cases.
5. COPING
I am certain that you have stress, rich people. Nobody’s life is perfect. I am equally certain that your stress and my stress are only similar in that they are called the same thing. I take plenty of shit for my habits and vices; what I simply cannot stand by and allow to happen is for you to escape with no notice. I am sorry, guys, but I’m forcing you out of the human closet.
You know who smokes? Rich people and poor people. You know what that means? Rich people smoke too. I’m not kidding, I’ve seen them at it. I even loaned my lighter to a couple of them, just so I could touch their hands and verify that they weren’t holograms or something. With as much shit as I’ve taken in my life for having such a nasty, wasteful, stupid habit, I’d assumed that wealthy people would be much too good for something so déclassé. But nope, they’re on the streets getting cancer with the rest of us. I think I’m done hearing about why poor people smoke. I don’t know, why do rich people smoke? I’m willing to bet that our rationales are pretty fucking similar.
You guys look pretty ridiculous talking about our drug and alcohol use while swanky rehab centers are doing a thriving business. It might behoove you to just admit that addiction is terrible and can hit anyone; otherwise we’re probably going to have to start pointing out your raging prescription drug abuse problem. And you wouldn’t want that; as it turns out, it’s kind of embarrassing when people accuse you of copious drug use.
6. SEX
Tell me, how many of you were virgins when you got married? So, our sex lives are up for discussion how again? For all the concern about underprivileged people fucking with reckless abandon, you guys sure don’t seem to hold yourselves to a higher standard.
I know this argument has been made everywhere. But it’s valuable. So here it is: You cannot cut access to birth control and then act surprised when people get pregnant. I am fairly certain that few wealthy people walk around with that infamous cheap aspirin between their knees. Poor people are allowed to fuck sometimes too! And we do! Because we’re human! Just like you!
You really need to start using condoms or something. Your STD rates are pretty much the same as ours. It’s hard to listen to you guys on public health issues when you’re getting the clap as often as we are.
I know that we, the lower classes, tend to speak more frankly and openly than you guys do, as we lack a proper sense of rich-person propriety. So it is very possible that you do not know much about BDSM, and that would explain the success of the Fifty Shades franchise. But I worry about you without any plainspoken poor people to tell you what’s what, so please listen closely: You need a safe word. Do not, rich people, attempt bondage on your o
wn. Please find a high-end sex club for your wanton romps.
7. PARENTING
I disapprove of about as many of the upper class’s child-rearing habits as they do of mine. Rich and poor are different, you see, and as such, we value different things. I have trouble with the way you’re raising your kids. They’re not all special precious unicorns, destined to cure cancer. And if you tell them that they are, they feel entitled to act as though it were true.
You can stop this cycle, rich people. Just teach your kids that they’re human like everyone else. Maybe a special snowflake, but one that will still get in trouble if they misbehave on the playground. I have faith in your ability to heal the next generation. I am counting on you, rich people. Don’t let me down.
One word: nannies. You cannot call anyone out on their parenting skills if they’re doing as much of the parenting as you are—or more of it. It’s great that you hired someone with advanced degrees and multiple languages to sing Junior to sleep—more power to you. But I don’t see the difference between hiring a nanny or two so you can attend to the rest of life and dropping your kid with a sitter for the same reason. It’s the same thing.
And the kids’ accessories! I know I already talked a bit about this, but how much shit do you actually think an average toddler really needs? I have a weakness for bouncy balls and coloring books, and my kids get a ton of those. You know what they don’t have? Anything that says Giorgio Armani on it. Because it’s fucking silly to put designer anything on a kid.
We feel bad for your kids, rich people. Your kids aren’t allowed to be kids. Your kids have tutors by the time they’re three and start taking standardized tests in preschool. Your kids have parents who seriously think it’s a bad idea to just let them play with sticks and rocks, who think that’s actually objectively bad parenting. Loosen up a bit. They’ll survive it, and so will you.
I promise you, you don’t need a titanium stroller. You just don’t. I thought I had the Range Rover of strollers when I got a normal-size one instead of the folding metal-pipe travel kind. But then I recently spent some time in upscale neighborhoods, and I realized that I had been wrong. I’d had the midsize stroller; the super-big ones come with not just a place for your kid but a place for your groceries and an attached activity center for Junior and wheels with extra shocks. I had the perverse impulse to ask a woman how much hers had run, and she told me. After that, I am assuming that this stroller also picks up the dry cleaning and will murmur sweet nothings into your ear on command. I’ve bought cars for less than half what an expensive stroller runs.
Science disapproves of your antibacterial-spray fetish. Kids need to develop immunities, you see, which they do partially from coming into contact with germs. Not to mention, you’re actually creating superbugs, bacteria that are resistant to our killing methods. I’m gonna be pissed if I get some superflu because you were afraid Johnny might catch a cold, that’s all I’m saying.
I am seriously disappointed in you for bringing back measles with the anti-vaccination kick. And whooping cough. Get on that, rich people. You need to self-police. Seriously, guys, I’m a mother. I understand wanting to protect your children. All I’m saying is that maybe, you could protect the kids from the mumps. Maybe we can start there.
8. PRACTICALITIES
I hope that at this point you are feeling like maybe you hadn’t thought this whole stratification thing through all the way. You guys don’t really ever talk to us and have no idea what our daily lives are like. But we watch and notice what you do when you are politely ignoring us. And I have some parting words of wisdom: When you think of your stacks of cash, remember that they are gifts, simple things put into your lives to make them easier. You get to have those things. Fucking enjoy them or pass them to the left, man.
You guys completely take the little things for granted. If you are sleepy while you are driving, you just pull over and find a hotel. If your car breaks down, you call a shop. If you are sick, you go to a doctor. If you break a heel, you get a new pair of shoes. Appreciate that, assholes.
Money doesn’t buy happiness. It buys ease. You can make your life pleasant and enjoyable, get yourself a decent mattress and thus a decent night’s sleep. Will it make you happy? Not a chance. But it doesn’t hurt.
If you guys are so good with money, then what do financial planners do? Put another way, maybe you’re good with money because you’re paying someone to sort out the details?
Warranties are awesome. They only come on things you buy new. This is why all our shit is broken and yours isn’t; you get a grace period after you buy something in which you can be pretty sure you won’t have to buy it again, because if it breaks it’s under warranty.
As long as you keep holding me accountable for not making it when I was well under the national median income, I’ll hear no whining about how difficult it is to find good help. (Pro tip on the help, rich people: Treat us fairly, pay us decently, and make it clear that you give half a fuck whether we live or die. We’ll kill ourselves for you.)
And there you have it, rich people. I hope it helps.
Afterword
You’ve got a thousand more questions than you did when you started the book, don’t you? When did we start reliving the Gilded Age? What do you mean they can fire you for no reason? Why bother trying at all if poor people are so fucked from the start?
Well, because we don’t have an option. Millions of people every day aren’t feeling particularly hopeful that today will be the day it all turns around—but we still look for a job that’s marginally better than what we’ve got. Just in case. When all of your options are as bad as the next, you take your pick and, yes, you hope for the best. Sometimes those decisions turn out to be less than great. Occasionally that’s on me. I’m only human, after all, and I make mistakes. But as often as not, the poor outcome was destined from the start. You can’t choose between a terrible option and a dreadful option and come out of it whistling a happy tune. You can try to dismiss my depiction of poverty as being representative of just one person’s experience, but I am not an aberration. Millions of people have had to shake their asses for Wal-Mart.
Hopefully that last paragraph answered some of your questions. I’m sorry that I don’t know the answers to all of them. But I know exactly how you can find out: Ask someone.
There are poor and working-class people everywhere, guys. You can just have a conversation with one, like a real human being. Give it a try. You’ll like it. We’re entertaining. We have to be; we’re stuck entertaining each other because cable is ridiculously expensive.
I don’t claim to be an expert. I don’t know what we do to solve the problems of stratification. What I do know is that we can and have to do better than this. We’re so far behind the curve on these issues that we’re having a public fight about whether or not the poor are too comfortable. (Hi, Paul Ryan!) It’s not fucking pleasant to be poor. It’s not a free ride, a gentle swing in the hammock. It’s what’s left when you’ve lost everything, when you’re fighting to survive as opposed to fighting to get ahead.
If you feel that something must be done before the villagers find their pitchforks, here is what you can do: Stop being a dick to service workers whenever possible. Start filling out those stupid surveys when someone’s done their job well, because they really do make us get a quota of them. Stop pretending you’re doing us a favor or performing some high moral duty by refusing to tip. And start admitting that you need us as much as we need you.
And the next time you feel as though you’re shouldering more than your fair share of society’s burdens, ask yourself: How badly do I have to pee right now, and do I need permission?
Acknowledgments
Mollie Glick, at Foundry, decided to be my agent and I wish her nothing but best-sellers in the future. I additionally hope that the next person she decides to make into an author has more idea what she is doing than I did. Amy Einhorn has a wicked sense of humor and is an amazing editor, and any praise you care to n
ame should go in her direction. Thankfully, she put me in touch with Peternelle van Arsdale, who not only knows where to find good food but is adept at pulling half-formed thoughts from your brain and turning them into sense. Rodney Staton deserves thanks for patient questioning and teaching while I tried to get my brain in order.
I’d also like to thank:
Sara Benincasa, for keeping me posted and sending me into the best sales pitch in history; Alexis Welby, for being incredibly patient with me in general and also for an insane amount of stress tolerance; Kirsten Neuhaus, for coordinating details through time zones and making it work somehow; and all the people at Foundry who worked on my stuff that I don’t even know about. Emily Brown and Katie Grinch, for taking my calls even when I had that tone and emailing me things endlessly when I lost the last thing in my inbox. And the people at Penguin: Ivan Held and Kate Stark, Andrea Ho and Lisa Amoroso, Linda Rosenberg, Meredith Dros, and Maureen Klier, as well as all the people I don’t know to name, because all of you spent time making this thing come together. I won’t pretend to have a clue how, but I really appreciate it. Finally, Liz Stein, who picked up the baton and ran with it like a pro.
Barbara Ehrenreich, who spoke for me without knowing it years ago, and whose encouragement came at just the right time.
John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, for Hotties from History.
To everyone I have met along the way: You are all amazing in some way. I’m sorry for the times I have not been my best self, and grateful for the times you have been yours. Mostly, I am probably glad to have met and hung out with you. Four of you can seriously go fuck yourselves.
