White Man's Burden

So, I was accidentally racist today.

  I hate my career. The company I work for is fine.  It's not their fault  Regardless of the name on the door, claims adjusting is a thankless job that is at once boring, yet difficult. Very often, it's people at their worst: Unscrupulous vendors who would screw their mother out of a nickel, customers who have been robbed of perspective and logic while in the throes of a stressful and often traumatic event, and the flock of cat herders that are claims adjusters; beaten down and sapped of energy from working too many hours in a job that is completely opposite anything they remotely dreamed they'd be doing with their lives. No one leaves college with the goal of adjusting claims and invariably the claims adjuster will at some point ask themselves just how the fuck they ended up here. Many mornings upon my arrival, as I walk towards the endless sprawl of grey and beige cubicles,  I find myself hating the guys who clear the snow and cut the grass on our campus. The source of my hatred is pure envy. “Lucky Motherfucker,” I’ll hiss as I walk by these guys. Simply put, from a career standpoint, claims’ adjusting is akin to The Island of Misfit Toys from "Rudolph The Red-Nose Reindeer."  I've even taken to whispering "No one wants to play with a Charlie-in-the-box" when the weight of my career pushes down upon me.

The winter of 2014 has provided unprecedented weight. Flooded homes from frozen pipes all over the Midwest have put an unbearable load upon adjusters everywhere. I’ve correlated this winter to the suffocating snow that drove Jack Nicholson insane in "The Shining."  I've begun telling people I'm one snowfall from typing "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy" while sharing drinks with Lloyd the imaginary bartender

The combination of corporate life and this particularly brutal winner has festered a special kind of hell for those of us in the insurance industry. Surly and short tempered, we snap at our loved ones and are constantly on edge. Honestly, anyone in the Corporate Cotton Dockers Circle of Hell can understand this to a point. At it's core, there is an isolation that is difficult to convey to someone outside life in a cubicle.  This is what makes the movie "Office Space" so fantastic . Anyone who spends time in this setting will tell you how spot-on this movie is. From the corporate speak to the omnipresent cubicles and overwhelming dread. It hits the mark with almost no hyperbole. To say I’ve been relating to this movie lately would be an understatement. I live this movie from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.  For comfort, solidarity, and a touch of masochism, I have been watching the movie incessantly and even decided to download some of the music from the movie. Specifically, I downloaded most of the hardcore rap that appears on the soundtrack.

The morning of my unintentional act of bigotry was exactly the same as every other morning because, sad as it might seem, all my mornings are exactly the same. One slight difference today was the sound of “Still” from The Geto Boys pumping through my nondescript four-door sedan. “Still” is the song playing as the characters destroy the copier that has become the symbol of their professional scorn. I pulled into a Speedway, with a smile on my face and the radio as loud as it can go while the Geto Boys scream “Die  Motherfucka  Die Motherfucka, still fools!”  Completely clueless to my surroundings as I am most of the time, I left my car on and volume at max and went inside. A minute later, Diet Pepsi in hand,  I exited the store and walked to my car.  I could hear the muffled bass straining to escape.  It’s worth noting at this point that I am a forty year old white man with not an iota of gangster in me. As I approach the car, Gangster Rap blaring, this occurs to me and I feel instantly sheepish.  As if  my life was playing out in some improbable movie, it is then I notice three black men in their early twenties walking through the parking lot towards me and headed into the store. The sheepish feelings turn to complete  embarrassment. The bass makes it very clear what type of music this lame-ass honkey is listening to and I am focused only on my utter whiteness. I quickly open the car door and the constrained  lyrics explode from the passenger compartment. 

But it isn’t lyrics per se.

It’s a single word at the end of a line. One single terrible word.  It’s a word very often used in this genre. It's a word no white person should say and probably even listen to. As I open the car door that word blasts out at a bone-jarring, spinal-tap 11 and hangs in a cloud of white guilt over the Speedway parking lot. Without a thought, I plunge headlong and do the absolute worst thing I can do in this scenario. Like a panicked and wild animal with a look of complete mortification on my face, I look instantly into the faces of the three black dudes. 

My friend Tiffany accurately observed that all my problems really seem to go from awkward to terrible when I try and "fix" the situation. I related a story to her once and my habit of doing this was more than she could take. Eyes burning into me and mouth half open with hand on her forehead and completely exasperated with me, she literally yelled at me:

“DON’T TRY AND FIX IT! JUST LEAVE IT ALONE!”

It’s great advice.

I have never once listened to it.

 

My solution to fix it was a weak barely audible "sorry."

I have no idea what I'm apologizing for. I didn't say this word. I didn't write it. I didn't even sing it.  I am within my Constitutional First Ammendment Rights to play and enjoy this song. I wasn't sorry I like the song, so to these guys who did nothing but cross paths with me, I'm saying "Good Morning Gentlemen,  Terribly sorry you're black and I'm white." Of course it wasn't what I meant. If anything I'm sorry I'm such an idiot. I'm sorry that I heard that word and looked immediately at these guys. I'm sorry, at that particular moment, that I was anywhere but a casket.

 

I slid meekly into my car and made the only good decision I made that morning. I wanted nothing more than to rapidly leave that parking lot and then die. I grabbed the shifter of the caucasian-mobile and was just about to throw it in reverse and speed away in a cloud of exhaust, rubber and shame but I stopped. Considering these guys never really batted an eye and that all of this sprang from one terrible reaction to another, all within the trappings of my stupid mind, appearing to fear for my life would be the only way I could look like more of an asshole and I had well exceeded expectations of that particular goal.

 Just like we do with my three year old child when he acts like a little butthole, I took ten deep breaths and drove slowly and gratefully to the isolation of my cubicle..