>Then I turn and use that information and rake them over the coals and cite
>numerous examples of just how stupid they are to support the idea that
>they are poor because they are stupid. You'll be OK with the fact that I
>lied to them, and misrepresented myself so I could get the story I wanted?
I asked earlier, but I'll ask again on the thread itself. Could you point to the examples where she does this? I personally can't see it, but maybe you could explain where you do so I can look at it with fresh eyes. She explicitly says they aren't stupid and frequently explains how what appears to be stupid behavior is not stupid at all. But I can see how she might undermine her own claims. So, I'm curious how you think she has.
Here's how workers responded to her leaving and her "real" identity -- with real under erasure b/c, as BE explains, when it comes to co-workers, most of us are not anything other than what we do on the job. She was a Walmart worker or maid or dietary assistant to them and they don't much care if she's writing a book. Which I don't find surprising. Plenty of folks in the low wage work force are there, not necessarily because they were born into it, but often were on the way out, with identities oriented and aspirations geared, toward something else or were, in fact, working a rung or two up the ladder. Anyway, the relevant passages:
"On my last afternoon, I try to explain who I am and why I've been working here to the women on my team for the day, a much more spirited group than Holly's usual crew. My announcement attracts so little attention that I have to repeat it: "Will you listen to me? I'm a writer and I'm going to write a book about this place." At last Lori leans around from the front seat and hushes the others with "Hey, this is interesting," and to me: "Are you like, investigating?"
Well, not just this place and not exactly "investigating," but Lori has latched on to that concept. She hoots with laughter. "This place could use some investigating!" Now everyone seems to get it-not who I am or what I do-but that whatever I'm up to, the joke is on Ted.
At least now that I'm "out" I get to ask the question I've wanted to ask all this time: How do they feel, not about Ted but about the owners, who have so much while others, like themselves, barely get by? This is the answer from Lori, who at twenty-four has a serious disk problem and an $8,000 credit card debt: "All I can think of is like, wow, I'd like to have this stuff someday. It motivates me and I don't feel the slightest resentment because, you know, it's my goal to get to where they are."
And this is the answer from Colleen, a single mother of two who is usually direct and vivacious but now looks at some spot straight ahead of her, where perhaps the ancestor who escaped from the Great Potato Famine is staring back at her, as intent as I am on what she will say: "I don't mind, really, because I guess I'm a simple person, and I don't want what they have. I mean, it's nothing to me. But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and the n ... if I had to ... and still be able to buy groceries the next day."
I work one last day at the Woodcrest and then call in sick. Sorry, Linda, Pete, and all you sweet, demented old ladies! I visit Lori on Sunday and let her have the satisfaction of returning my uniforms to Ted and explaining my departure however she wants.
I take her personal goodbye to the gang at Woodcrest indicates that she'd told them, too, and expected to send them copies of the book. (Oooops. She wrote using words like salubrious! Oh! My! The horror! :)
Also, this from her time at Walmart:
When Melissa is getting ready to leave work at six, I tell her I'm quitting, possibly the next day. Well then, she thinks she'll be going too, because she doesn't want to work here without me. We both look at the floor. I understand that this is not a confession of love, just a practical consideration. You don't want to work with people who can't hold up their end or whom you don't like being with, and you don't want to keep readjusting to new ones. We exchange addresses, including my real and permanent one. I tell her about the book I'm working on and she nods, not particularly surprised, and says she hopes she hasn't said "too many bad things about Wal-Mart." I assure her that she hasn't and that she'll be well disguised anyway. Then she tells me she's been thinking about it, and $7 an hour isn't enough for how hard we work after all, and she's going to apply at a plastics factory where she hopes she can get $9.
At ten that night I go to the break room for my final break, too footsore to walk out to the smoking area, and sit down with my feet up on the bench. My earlier break, the one I'd committed so many crimes to preserve, had been a complete bust, with no other human around but a management-level woman from accounting. I have that late-shift shut-in feeling that there's no world beyond the doors, no problem greater than the mystery items remaining at the bottom of my cart. There's only one other person in the break room anyway, a white woman of maybe thirty, watching TV, and I don't have the energy to start a conversation, even with the rich topic of the strike at hand.
And then, by the grace of the God who dictated the Sermon on the Mount to Jesus, who watches over Melissa and sparrows everywhere, the TV picks up on the local news and the news is about the strike. A picketer with a little boy tells the camera, "This is for my son. I'm doing this for my son." Senator Paul Wellstone is standing there too. He shakes the boy's hand, and says, "You should be proud of your father." At this my sole companion jumps up, grinning, and waves a fist in the air at the TV set. I give her the rapid two-index- fingers-pointing-down signal that means "Here! Us! We could do that too!" She bounds over to where I'm sitting - if I were feeling peppier I would have gone over to her - leans into my face, and says, "Damn right!" I don't know whether it's my feet or the fact that she said "damn," or what, but I find myself tearing up. She talks well past my legal break time and possibly hers-about her daughter, how she's sick of working long hours and never getting enough time with her, and what does this lead to anyway, when you can't make enough to save?
I still think we could have done something, she and I, if I could ha ve afforded to work at Wal-Mart a little longer.
>Or can you only deliberately deceive such people if you have their best
>interests at heart?
>
>What if you think it would be best to have them simply accept that are
>are poor because they are stupid so you believe you are acting in their
>best interests?
>
>If you want to engage in and/or condone that behaviour please go ahead
>but don't imagine that there is something wrong with persons who object
>to it. There isn't.
>
>If her way were the only way to glean the information one could easily
>ignore the subterfuge as a necessary methodology however distasteful.
>It isn't the only method or even necessarily the best method so what is
>wrong with questioning it?
>Why are you so certain it is no big deal and anyone who disagrees is
>trying to hold to some impossible moral purity?
>
>John Thornton
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