Egalitarianism

There was one incident that occurred during our house-hunt, that struck both Cat and I as a bit odd. We were in a car with a real-estate agent, Mike, who was driving, and Cat said she needed some more cigarettes & bottled water, so he stopped at a supermarket enroute our destination. Cat hopped out when he stopped, and went off to get what she needed, without a second thought - and Mike was flabbergasted. He had naturally assumed that, as clients, we would expect him to do the fetch & carry - and I suspect also to pay for it out of his pocket, tho I didnt ask.

It rather made me think about the whole way deferrence and superiority are treated here. In the UK, social deferrence was definitely structured around both class, rank and money, but primarily around class. I think Cat experienced this much more, and worse, than I did, as floristry is regarded there as a working-class profession, so all florists get treated as such (with perhaps a tiny minority of floral boutique designers who get treated as 'artistes'). Of course, shop-owners are pretty much the definition of bourgeousie, so are middle-class, and get to treat the serfs like scum if they so desire - and quite a few DO so desire, in fact for some I would have observed it is their primary cause for emerging from the cave they're pleased to call a bed, every morning.

As a result, Cat - who noone could ever accuse of lacking backbone or spirit - had an endless headache with employment, and got fired or encouraged to move on, many times: a total lack of respect for the despicable, plus the common Kiwi attitude of brutal egalitarianism, guaranteed that this would be a frequent outcome. Funnily enough, the two bosses (both women) who treated her well, she is still on close terms with, and did freelance work for even after moving on to other positions.

Which is not to say she had no fault in the matter, having her own authority-figure issues, but these were - to my eyes - enormously multiplied by the strict class/hierarchic (and patriarchal) attitudes that seemed to be universal.

I'd have to add, I had my own problems with these attitudes. Of course, being an IT worker and therefore something approaching a professional (now there's a subject to get me foaming and gibbering, but another day, another day), I was slotted into the comfy middle-class cardigan, but still supposed to show proper deference to those above - and to treat those below me with the appropriate panache and disdain. After all, how else do you know where you are, if you can't rain your contempt downwards?

Funnily enough, none of the janitors, secretaries or food-workers objected to being treated as just people - and til I gave up smoking, they were the bulk of the people I knew at that worksite (after that, working life got a lot lonelier). However, I know I made enemies through most of our company's hierarchy because - when they made their annual trip down to see us and assure us we'd get treated as 'part of the company' from now on - I would always ask pointed comments about contracts, performance of sales staff, the necessity of so many layers of management, and (especially) about the financial figures in the finance reports they presented so proudly.

Of course, they couldn't answer these - some because there was no acceptable answer, but in the case of finances, usually because they didnt actually understand the figures or what they actually showed. Often enough, neither did I, I know - but that's why I was asking: and sometimes the figures were such an obvious flimflam, I was trying to pry out some reason for why they were lying so badly.

I managed to mostly avoid the customers' management hierarchy, which is probably a good thing, but I am told I did create some annoyance, simply by not observing the proper protocol towards the CFO and CEO while in an elevator - what I did wrong, lord only knows, and could I care? Doubtless I just failed to kowtow to the right degree, or spoke to them offhandedly: as I couldn't pick either out of a police line-up anyway, I can't really say.

Aaaanyway, having wandered off on a massive tangent, what I started off on was, here in the USA I had thought they would be much more egalitarian (well, the whole race mess aside), and they are ... sort of. What gets deferrence here seems to be wealth and custom, that is, if you're paying someone it seems that you're meant to treat them as inferiors. I suppose this is the flipside of the supposed great service that is available in the US (and often, it really is).

Naturally, as good honest kiwis, we still tend to (or try to) treat everyone as our equals. I think we (all us kiwis) have tended to expect the same treatment back, and if that means the waitress doesn't jump when we snap our fingers, or the server looks us in the eye and calls us mate, or the food is a bit slower than we might want, well, that's just part of our culture.

It seems to cause real shock and surprise here, tho - for instance, both the estate agents we dealt with commented on how easy we were to work with, and what a pleasure it was: and at our favoured diners, we are now instantly recognised & treated as warmly as friends.

Up til now, it hasn't caused either of us problems at work - Cat hasn't been working, and as I'm working essentially as a team of one, there's noone much to offend except my site manager, and she was a gem. How this turns out now, as Cat is gearing up to start, and I've got a new site manager who is vastly more bureaucratic, and seems to lack even the simplest understanding of what the job is, well, I guess we'll just have to suck it and see.

It's still a badge I wear with pride, though, and I think it is something, paradoxically, that makes kiwis a touch better than other people :)