At lunch break today I took my usual lunchtime spot in the canteen, and was joined by another regular and his cheese sandwiches (he eats cheese sandwiches every day, has done for the past year at least, it used to be Marmite, then one day he announced the change, a cheese sandwich, and it has been cheese ever since), anyway, we started talking about cars because someone was selling his Jag. and the youngster had wanted to look at it (purely aspirational he confided).
A bloke in a blue shirt with cufflinks put down a plate of chips and a plastic cartoon of canteen food on the counter and planted himself opposite us, highly irregular, the bar that divides the canteen is usually only occupied by warehouse staff, those that like to natter and get a good banter going as we refuel during our short and unpaid lunch break, who's this then?
"I've counted the chips so don't think of helping yourself", then he went off to get a fork and soon returned,
" I wouldn't eat chips without ketchup anyway" was my response, bloody hell I thought, he thinks we want to eat his chips, they looked good, but helping myself certainly hadn't crossed my mind,
then I turned to Ned to resume our conversation about cars, the cufflinks butted in some comment about not being concerned with car brands any more and that he'd lived in Toronto where he owned a Bugati and lived in an apartment in a location that would be the London equivalent of Mayfair but that in Toronto it was 2000 meters square, and that he doesn't agree with the overinflated cost of cars in this country, so he doesn't have fancy cars any more,
"well I'd like a Lamborghini"
"I have a friend who has a Lamborghini",
long silence from Ned and I,
and the memory came to mind of the ridiculous challenge I'd set myself in an Essex nightclub on a recent night out for cocktails with my nieces that had just turned 18; the quest was to pick up a guy with a Lamborghini,
I couldn't help myself, and although my voice was confident and I looked him straight in the eye as I urged myself to say it aloud, but I might have been blushing when I asked,
"is your friend single?"
Ned, "you couldn't resist that could you?", also blushing,
"he's gay",
"oh,
actually, I'm on the look out for a boyfriend with a Lamborghini, you see, I get around on a pushbike, but sometimes think it would be lovely to be picked up in car and taken out at the weekend, and then it occurred to me that if I was to be driven around it shouldn't just be any car ... and that got me thinking about what would be my ideal car to be driven around in, and I came up with Lamborghini, they are wonderful machines, and that's why I'm looking for a boyfriend with a Lamborghini."
"What about a Ford Fiesta?"
"No, absolutely not, why would I want to travel in a Ford Fiesta?"
"On a recent trip to the Bertelsmann Head Office ..."
"What, you mean the head office of the corporation?"
"Yes"
"You meet the staff there?"
"Yes"
"Well, I have a message for them, can you pass it on?"
A concerned look from the cufflinks as he shoveled fork loads of dripping brown noodles into his gob,
"ask them if they are aware that there are workers in the UK distribution warehouse working on minimum wage, and don't they think this might be bad for the reputation of the corporation?
Can you pass that message on?"
"Well actually I think a cap on wages is not such a bad thing",
"I would agree if the cap was set at the rate of a living wage, but the current minimum wage is below that of a living wage",
"Ah yes"
Ned looking as if he's thinking - oh here we go another living wage rant -
"well actually the people I meet are in IT; I am just a contractor ...
so how is the Lamborghini driver going to go with the minimum wage?"
HA, YOU'RE ON MINIMUM WAGE and you think you can pull a guy with a Lamborghini?
Fuck, now I'm red with fury, what is he getting at? where's the connection? Well Yes I do actually, I don't have status issues, but it seems that he and the rest of the world does.
I looked at Ned, I need back up here boy,
so I tried to get back to the relatively uncontentious issue of the car and asked what colour his freind's Lamborghini was,
white,
oh yuk, that's no good I said, to regain some dignity,
and then I got twitchy and felt I needed to go, I can't remember what he was saying as I was putting the lid back on my lunch box (it actually never fits properly anyway, all I wanted for Christmas was a lunchbox with a properly fitting lid) but I recollect the words Lamborghini and minimum wage being repeated and restructured in each phrase, in between mouthfuls of drippy noodles and chips,
I left,
I got back to the warehouse and realized I was actually 2 minutes early; no one is ever back from lunch break early.
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On reflection, cufflinks completely missed my point, I'm thinking aesthetics and all that idiot could see was an impossible scenario of a warehouse operative on minimum wage aspiring to having a boyfriend with an expensive and high status car, got me thinking that people really do have issues about status, that it really means something to them, that some people really do construct opinions of others based on their perceived income, so he assumed I must be very poor and clearly thought I must be deluded to think I could hook a guy that drives an expensive car.
This bothers me. Let's put aside the notion that I do want to catch a guy in the first place in order to focus on the status problem. I am beginning to realize that it matters to people, that as a warehouse operative doing a manual job on minimum wage I that I am somehow excluded from an association with people with better wages, is this what cufflinks was getting at??
This got me thinking about a book I'd browsed once by Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, ISBN 9780375725357. And then I found a film based on the book, it's on youtube, it was a great comfort, I placed myself as highly evolved in terms of the complex problem of status that is a major disorder in contemporary western societies, in that I must have reached the enlightened state of being a 'bohemian' and cufflinks - matey was still confused with status issues.
My fury has subsided and my equilibrium returned, thank you Alain de Botton.
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