OpEdNews - Diary: Rich people leave me sad, baffled.

A day at the mall induces suicidal ideation.

::::::::

I work for a small non-profit agency that takes families at risk of homelessness and diverts them into a privately developed network of rental housing before they wind up in the city shelter system. It's good work, I believe in it. But when you work at a small agency that operates on a shoe string you wear a lot of different hats. Most of the time I'm a caseworker; I'm out in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia checking up on the families we've housed and making sure things are okay. However, if need be, I write grants, do fundraising, even sweep floors and clean bathrooms. Everyone does when their turn comes up. If we could afford janitorial staff, we'd get some, but we can't. So we were selected recently by a local television station to take part in a fundraiser, staffing a table at a local mall for a week. We get to sell things while we're there and engage the public with our message. At the end of the week, the TV station cuts us a generous donation check. That's all very aweseome; we are very excited about it. Except the part about the table in the mall. I'm not real big on malls and neither is anyone else I work with. We live in the city and this mall is one of those seriously high end jobs located in the city's wealthiest suburb. It's not exactly the kind of place that attracts the sort person I consider to be my kind. But, hey, work is work. I do what I'm told, even if it's to sit at table in a mall all day. During the course of the day I was mostly people watching as it was not surprisingly slow traffic-wise on a Tuesday afternoon. I noticed that the kind of rich people who shop in a mall that's all about Cole Haan and Hermes apparently have enough resources to live in full blown delusion about their age. I'm sure they have people who work for them that would love to inform them about how inappropriately they dress but are probably scared to for fear of losing their jobs. So they are insulated from the truth, which is that they kind of look like complete fools. I'm talking about women my mother's age who wear those giant, face devouring sunglasses preferred by Hollywood strumplets. They wear skin tight, bleached out jeans with rhinestones tacked all over them. They wear Ugg boots and undersized denim jackets with real fur trim. They wear enormously oversized belts, usually leather, always adorned with emblems that someone who has never heard a Rolling Stones album would consider "rock and roll" looking. If their daughters are with them, they are dressed alike. As in, actually wearing matching outfits. But let's not forget the men. The men seem to favor the look of the casual club goer, the yuppie type guy who at twenty years their junior thinks he looks relaxed and stylish with a martini in his hand in the hot happy hour spot for the banker set. I think that guy looks like a putz, but apparently these older gents model themselves after him, still parsing GQ and Men's Vogue and the occasional copy of Maxim that is better suited to their sons' dorm rooms. If you're not getting a mental image let me paint it for you: Crew neck t-shirt under a sport coat, loafers with no socks and designer denim, de riguer cell phone surgically attached to the face. Lots scalp showing through thinning hair heavy with products that are supposed to make them look less bald. Etc. Then there's the guy with a hunk of ostentacious gold wristwear strutting around with a set of those plastic wrap around, oddly shaped reflecting shades that guys who drive tanks seem to prefer propped up on his forehead. I don't like that guy. Noooooooo, not even a little bit. It's probably no coincidence that Lockheed Martin shares real estate in the same lot as the mall. I went to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee (good luck finding anything independent, and not just coffee shops) when I arrived a good twenty minutes before the mall even opened. Already there were tables full of women with twenty pounds of jewelry on each arm, dressed like they just walked out of a copy of Cosmopolitan, which isn't flattering for the average fifty year old. It was clear that they do this regularly. You know, hang out in Starbucks admiring each other's jewelry until Nordstroms opens and then spend a few hours browsing. Spend a grand, run home to catch Oprah. Or something. I'm just making things up because I have so little insight into that particular brand of person. Who knows if their lives are anything like that. There's probably pills in there somewhere, though, that much I'm sure of. Anyway, the best part is that occasionally one of these space creatures would hover into my orbit, always looking beyond me but never at me and ask me a question like I work there. Now, I'm sitting at a big folding table with a banner unfurled in front of it that says, "EVERY CHILD DESERVES A HOME" in bold letters and there's these easels with our t-shirts draped over them and a big display of holiday cards that we sell at fundraisers laid out in front of me. It's pretty clear that not only am I not a mall employee, but I'm there for a reason that has nothing to do with the generalized mall experience that an even mildly curious person might ask about. So one of them walks up to me, decked out in this leopard skin get up that makes her look like an Eastern European hooker or something and says, "Where's that organizer store?" "Excuse me?" I was genuinely confused. I was getting ready to launch into my spiel about housing homeless children. "Where's the organizer store? Didn't it used to be over there? They sold boxes that you put things in." "I don't know." "You don't know?" She looked at me with completely undisguised disdain, like I'm the kind of flunkie that works in a mall and doesn't know the answer to her question when I obviously should. She walked away. Over the course of the day, I was asked where the bathrooms were three times and for directions to a number of stores despite the fact that my table was set up directly next to a brightly lit, practically pulsating mall directory. A bunch people looked at my sign from a distance and smiled at me weakly, feeling like they should acknowledge me in some affirmative fashion, before moving on without stopping to talk. I sold one t-shirt in six hours.