A Self Pitting: I was raised to be a (sniff!) SNOB!

The BBQ Pit
#1

And it took 49.5 years to figure it out. Yeah, I’m a little slow on the uptake. :frowning:

It happened Saturday night. I was on my way to my boss’ place for the company Christmas party and got lost. In fact, I got lost twice in two different ways, a personal best, which is especially embarassing considering how easy it is to get there. Maybe I didn’t really want to go. :rolleyes:

Anyway, WBEZ was playing their “Stories On Stage” show, where an actor gives a public reading of a short story. Saturday’s was “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, set in an upper-middle-class suburb back in the 60s. At that time I was growing up in a similar place and my mind drifted back to the days of my youth and, apparently, the mindset I held then.

I pulled up to the gate and gave my name and reason for being there to the guard. He said, “Okay, Drop, just follow the drive and you can park in front.”

I could barely get my window closed before muttering aloud, “Who the fuck are you calling ‘Drop?’ It’s ‘Mr Zone’ to you.”

At the party the staff was friendly and familiar in a way that I wouldn’t expect had the usual sort of guests been there and I realized the reason was that the staff knew that we, like they, are The Help and their social equals. I filed this away for later introspection and went off to chat with the boss’s wife and the bartender. I may be a snob but I can be flexible and maybe he could rustle up something better than the swill they called “brandy” when I got there. (Also on the way there I was listening to “A Prairie Home Companion” which puts me in a Minnesota mindset and since it was snowing and when it’s snowing there’s nothing better than brandy–except THIS brandy.)

The next day I asked my wife, “Was I raised to be a snob?” This goes with my question to her a few years ago, “Is my mom a JAP*?” and again the answer was “Yes.”

Oh well. At least this gives me somebody else to blame for my behavior (the ultimate American goal :wink: ) but the insight will give me something else to think about before I say anything (and already there can be five minutes between being asked a question and me responding).

So, why is this in The Pit rather than MPSIMS? Maybe because the responses will be more fun and I’m in no mood for the pat on the hand, “You are making an effort to be better,” tea-and-sympathy responses I’d get there. Or maybe I just got lost again.

    • JAP = Jewish American Princess. Yeah, she was raised Catholic and I knew her father was Jewish fifteen years before she learned it (he told me) but other than that she has all the earmarks. Including the scars from the nose job (really–and actually–for some sinus work (she had the same nose afterwards) but the scars are the same). :smiley:
#2

Dude, if you require people to call you Mister Whatever, else you become haughty, you’ve got bigger problems than people here can assist you with.

Unless your first name is something you’ve got to be embarrassed about, just be glad he didn’t refer to you as “mack,” “pal”, “champ” or “sporto.” You’ve got to give respect to get it.

By the way, did you pay anything out-of-pocket for the free food and drink you ingested while there? No? Then smile, shovel a couple more crudites into your gob, and thank Christ you’ve got a boss that cares enough to put on a fancy party for you at all.

#3

You are a snob of the worst variety. To chastise someone for calling you by your first name is wrong. He probably should have been more polished in his role, but to call him on it (when you aren’t even his employer!!!) is waaaaay worse.

And don’t dis the free booze. He probably broke out the cheap stuff because he figures a low brow like yourself wouldn’t know the difference!

#4

Just a note: I didn’t chastise him to his face. I mean, that simply isn’t done. I muttered it to myself when I was out of earshot. But yeah, it was nasty of me because after thirty years in the trenches I had forgotten that part of my personality even existed. Thus this thread.

As for breaking out the cheap stuff, the boss’s wife said that the manager had called to say that he had gotten some special wine for the party. Turned out to be Three-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s.

“It’s really quite good,” said I. “It used to be Two-Buck Chuck but it’s so popular they raised the price by fifty percent and nobody squawked.”

#5

I was raised to be a snob, too, and—thank goodness!—I still am one. You and I must get together, sometime, dear Mr. Zone, and have drinks at the Algonquin.

#6

Your post confuses me. How are you a snob? The entertainment tastes you noted are typical MOR, bourgeois stuff.

Fussing about “Playboy Advisor” stuff like the brand of brandy your host serves, doesn’t make you a real snob, it just makes you a solidly middle class lifestyle poser, which is fine, as there are entire industries that depend on your upwardly mobile angst for their very survivial.

#7

Must be a liberal whining about his past. I couldn’t see a Conservative worried about that. :smiley:

#8

Aaaaahhh, that makes a difference if you didn’t bitch him out to his face. I think manners mean more than knowing your brandy any time.

My ex-mother-in-law is extremely bitter that she hasn’t lived at the social level her parents and grandparents did (i.e., North Shore Chicago Snobs). She manages to belittle the help everywhere she goes. One one particular outing, she embarrassed my son to the point that he won’t even visit her anymore.

There’s a lot to be said for smiling and suffering the mistakes of well-meaning people.

#9

No, it’s more like what was on the radio that didn’t have commercials. The CD/MP3 player with 384 MP3s from those “these songs are so old the RIAA can’t sue” sites stayed at home because of the weather.**

Priceless! I love it!**

So I’m the bedrock of the economy? That’s a comfort! (BTW, if you think I’m bad you should meet my customers. Their keeping-up-with-the-Gateses angst is my bread and butter.)

Saint Zero? Bite me! :wink: (Actually, you hit the nail on the head. God knows I try to be A Man of the People but breeding will tell. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. A leopard can’t change his spots. A stitch in time saves nine.)

And Kalhoun, please continue to take this thread seriously. It was meant to be serious though I can’t keep that up for longer than five minutes. (Though I don’t know my brandy, which shows how bad this stuff was. I hope they don’t serve it to their regular guests. And it was in a plastic ‘glass!’ I mean, really!)

#10

Eeeeewwwww…plastic glasses! You should have just swigged it outta the bottle!

(pssst…I hate brandy. I’ve swirled and warmed, and it still tastes just awful.)

#11

My Dear Mr. dropzone,

You are, quite obviously, a closet snob. That is, you may have the nacent spirit of a snob, but you don’t want others to know this, because it may cause some social embarrassment. I advise you to try to come to terms with this shyness vis-a-vis your innate snobbery. Good God, man! Any decent, self-flattering snob would have backed the car away from the gate and gone home in a royal huff at the first hint of familiarity from the help! Where’s your self-inflated self-respect? Then, to make matters even worse, (!), you come here and PUBLICLY DEBASE YOURSELF with this self-loathsome “Self-Pitting”! You ought to be ashamed! I mean, really! How dare you grovel here in public! I submit, sir, that you are a fraud! A pretender to the throne! You are nothing but a snob poseur! That “definition” of your mother’s J.A.P. pedigree proves it! The fact that you have yet (after nearly 6,500 posts) to identify your location only intensifies my sentiment soupçonneux that you are from… how do they say it?.. the wrong side of the tracks?
From now on, you’ll call at the rear entrance, do I make myself clear?

As for the “brandy”, it was cognac, you twit!

#12

Being a snob simply means you have high standards and don’t wish to compromise them.

It does not mean you are a racist or a bigot or rude. In fact, snobs tend to be better-mannered in public than the hoi-polloi who feel free to pillory them.

#13

Hating to drag out the dictionary again, but for *snob[/]Webster’s says:

I prefer to think of Eve as “refined”, rather than “snobbish”.

#14

Nah, she’s just in denial.

#15

Yeah, yeah yeah… I’m going to sic Joe Piscopo on your sophisticated rear end.

“I’m from Joisey, you from Joisey?”

#16

(sobbing) Yes! YES! You have found me out! I am a CLIMBER!

#17

Well, I don’t know about being a snob, but I just want to say that I love, love, love this story.

#18

dropzone, if you were really a snob, you’d realize it’s not so much what you are drinking than how it is you appear when you’re drinking it.

Even if it was foot-stomped apple core brandy, you should have made a flourish of sipping it like it was the finest merlot, then wrinkling your face in disgust, and then spitting it on the floor. Then hand the (plastic) glass back to the bartender and mutter “Dispose of this properly.” That would have made a good impression on the boss’s wife.

#19

Not to continue your hijack, but I love how you are well into it, asking “Where’s the dramatic tension?” before it starts to dawn on you. Of course, others might ask that earlier than I but I had been too busy asking, “Is this my exit?”

#20

I don’t think you’re a snob–I’m still reeling from our argument over whether two years at U of Chicago is a laughable waste of money given that one can get similar classes at a community college. The side of the argument you were on wasn’t the ‘snob’ side.