Entitlement

Entitled people are people with no self awareness of their life in context to the world

Despite my constant reminder for myself that people have contexts for their life and I should not be a judge of that, I will say that it doesn’t help that I feel like garbage when these type of people inevitably have a conflict with you. It’s almost like they are looking for a fight, or like they are looking for some way to apply what little agency they have on the world.

Yes, I am deep in the trenches of retail and have now gotten a deeper understanding that most people operate on a sort of auto pilot that their circumstances have lead them to. What I mean is that they operate on a deeply static sense of what the world should be and how interactions should go in every day life. However, their sense of what’s normal is skewed towards how they’ve never challenged themselves in their own life or have gone past the point of caring for anyone else but themselves.

This leads to a sort of entitlement that never leads them to ask an important question: why? Why am I so angry at this person right now? Did they seriously wrong me, and if so, was it intentional? Perhaps a better question would be: could I be wrong in this interaction?

A reoccurring irritation that occurs at my current job is when the customer complains about the quality of the food when very little of the actual quality has changed. “This pizza is cold” - when it literally came out of the oven 10 minutes ago and is in a hot case to keep it warm. “The smoothie doesn’t seem to be finished cause it’s not frozen” - when it’s called a smoothie so it’s supposed to be more of a thick liquid rather than a frozen drink.

I have found that this irritates me to no end as these people are expecting the quality service of a fancy restaurant. Lady, I’m sorry to say, but this is a pizza sub department in a grocery store. The pizzas are frozen and I am getting paid mininum wage.

Not to say good service is not important, I try my best to ensure I am competent in my work; however, it is a rarity to maintain when the conditions are not in place.

The difference in appreciation is astouding as I have a feeling these people have not experienced any true hardship in their lives. If they had, they wouldn’t complain so much or at the very least be understanding of other people. Which brings me to the other type of person I encounter: ego maniacs.

Real self entitled bozos that want things done the way they want and will not compromise with anything else. “You need to serve the pizza to me before I pay, that’s how it must be done!”. I find that these type of people likely have nothing that great going on in their lives, at least, that’s my theory. Since their lives don’t have many avenues for them to exercise their own agency, they have to use that sense of agency on the people that cannot or likely won’t fight back.

In my experience, luckily, most people will be more accepting of you if you seem to make a reasonable effort of accommodating their requests. Even the people with big egos I serve regularly eventually lighten up as they realize they will encounter me for the foreseeable future; so they should maybe build some rapport with me if they want to continue buying stuff at the store I’m working at.

This view on entitlement likely stems my own sense of quiet guilt or, more likely, appreciation for the existence of simple things. For example, working at a half decent grocery store without absurd prices or being able to live in a home without worry of dangers intruding on the space (for the most part). I find that the quiet guilt is finding out that not everyone has the same standard of living as me, or more so not a chance of the same standard of living. Having been in the Philippines myself and also briefly traversing through slum areas in America, there are so many people that are struggling to even have the bare necessities.

Did I win the life lottery? I very much did for most things in my life; however, I want to take these things for granted. I want to be able to extend these gifts with everyone else… why? I’d rather see a more beautiful world whose flaws are from the human soul rather than the ruthlessness of pure survival.

Therefore, I guess the opposite of entitlement would be to build the values I want to share myself instead of relying on the system or others to make it for me. To be the change I want to see in the world. To appreciate every single thing and extend that into my being.