Unbreakable Rubber Balls

 

One of my favourite Dignity Statement Stories is a regular spot on The Gas Spanner, and it is one I save for a bit of Christmas goodwill because in this case the target later apologized to me, for example see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-gas-spanner-programme-104.html. Another similar tale happened to me many years earlier when I was quite new to hospital portering. I on reception duty in JRI Maternity, later called the Women's Centre, when somebody approached the admissions desk next door to reception. The patient was clearly what is known as a "Karen", a very entitled female customer who is never satisfied with the service she receives. It quickly became apparent that she was very unhappy with the situation and began lambasting the two staff members serving her, a middle-aged woman and a young male trainee about my own age, his late teens. At one point when the trainee was speaking she jerked her finger at him and yelled, and I distinctly recall her exact words: "I'm talking to this lady here! I'm not dealing with you; you're too stupid!" He opened his mouth to reply, but the young man's supervisor cut him off: "Jonathan, let me deal with this." The young trainee got up and slumped off to the office. I thought at the time that I'd like to have seen the supervisor reprimand the patient for how the patient spoke to her colleague, but she didn't. Many times through the years I've been in a similar predicament and received no support from line management. Whether you do or not depends on your tacit subconscious status within the team and mine was always very low. A teenage admin junior is right at the bottom of the pile. A few minutes later the young man came out of the admissions office wearing his coat and walked off towards the entrance. He didn't say a word, but he was weeping. His supervisor called after him: "Jonathan, where are you going?" He didn't respond so she chased after him out of the hospital building. After a while she came back and said: "Sorry..." and continued the interview with the patient alone.

What was amazing about this whole debacle was that while the supervisor was running after the new recruit, obviously trying to persuade him to return, I was watching the Karen. There are several ways somebody like her will react to that eventuality. Most people will shrug their shoulders and double down on how they are being affronted, "the customer is always right" and that everything was the young man's own fault. He really is "stupid!" and deserved to be called so. A few of them, luckily a minority, will even smirk with sadistic satisfaction that they reduced somebody else to tears. This woman was different. What I saw in her expression was a look of shock, disbelief and self-reproach. This woman clearly had had no idea exactly how much of a bitch she was and when she suddenly realized, she hated herself for it. This is sadly an unusual response; most people lack the introspective consciousness to think in those terms. I think feminism has a lot to answer for here. It teaches woman that men... or to be specific: white men, occupy a place of unique evil among human demographies. Everything bad that happens in the world is our fault; therefore there is no code of conduct in their dealings with us. They can be as mean, deceitful and abusive at they like to us because we deserve it, each and every one of us, regardless of our own personal actions. What this incident taught me is that women who exhibit feminist cruelty are not all feminists; some of them are ordinary women who have come to believe another feminist lie; that if a woman is troubled by qualms and says things like: "Okay, we know they're all bastards, but we shouldn't be nasty to them all the time should we?" then there is a fallback position. This states that white men are all resilient enough to take whatever abuse an "oppressed!" "Woman!" can hurl at them. We are like unbreakable rubber balls on a squash court. No matter how many times you whack us against the wall we just bounce back unscathed. When they realize that this is not true, they suddenly find themselves staring at a pile of broken glass lying on the floor of the squash court realizing that what they ignorantly threw against the wall was actually a crystal goblet, and they've just destroyed it. The interview at the admissions desk continued and the ex-Karen lowered her voice from then on, but I still overheard her saying: "Is he going to be alright?... I really should apologize." I don't know what happened to that young trainee; I never saw him again. I assumed he decided ward clerking was not for him and started a different career. If so then I hope he fared better than he did at OxRad. I expect that the ex-Karen learned a lesson that day and didn't act so horribly ever again. The late comedian Robin Williams, somebody who wrestled with his own morale throughout his life, once put it very well: "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always."
See here for more information: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.

Chad is Fine

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/08/a-machine-shouldnt-speak-for-men.html.
I have an update on the above article I wrote the other day and it's very good news. It was found by a reader who told me about it in the comments. The love and solidarity shown to Chad Willoughby by the people of Taylorsville has triumphed over the heartless and mindless corporate bureaucracy that stripped him of his livelihood. The fundraiser raised US$6000 and that helped keep a roof over and food on for him and his family while he was unemployed, but I'm pleased to say another supermarket snapped him up very quickly. The grocery chain Harmons is a smaller institution than the global giant Walmart. It was founded in 1932 and has just twenty branches only in the state of Utah. They have given Chad a similar job as a cashier in their store in the nearby town of Sandy. Just like in the Taylorsville Walmart, he has quickly developed many admirers among the local residents who shop there. One of them, Candee Allred, organized a party for him in the shop's cafeteria. His customers cannot sing his praises loudly enough. They say he cheers them up whenever they're feeling down. No doubt this has increased the shop's popularity and therefore profit. His supervisor puts it very well: "His former employer's loss is definitely our gain." Source: https://www.sandyjournal.com/2022/01/03/380210/harmons-cashier-flourishes-in-his-job-and-gains-hundreds-of-neighborhood-fans. There are a lot of terrible things going on in the world right now and sometimes the evil seems overwhelming. It seems invincible, marching onwards with nothing and nobody willing and/or able to stop it. But we can stop it. The saga of Chad Willoughby proves that the light can defeat the darkness. (I will copy this article to HPANWO Voice because of the version of the background one I wrote there.)

A Machine Shouldn't Speak for Men

 

Yesterday I wrote an article on HPANWO Voice about Chad Willoughby, the shop worker who had been sacked, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2025/07/friendly-shop-worker-sacked.html. (Somebody in the comments has informed me that Chad has now found employment in a different grocer, one that I hope will value him more.) This article is not really a follow-up, more a hospital portering edition of the same one. I'll address other issues to do with this case that lie outside the scope of the Voice. The title of this article comes from the lyrics of an excellent song by the rapper Immortal Technique which is paraphrased from a speech made by Charlie Chaplin in his 1940 film The Great Dictator, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCoTVCgWX90 and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20. Why did Walmart sack Chad? It's not a good business model to dispose of employees who attract customers. There may be a connection to my own experience in the MRI although in this case the aversion comes from the top, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/03/he-loved-his-work.html. I've heard many stories about people who are fond of their work and take pride in it; and worst still, behave in a manner that makes it obvious they are enjoying it, getting into some kind of trouble. I include myself in this. In Chad's case it was from management; in mine it was from both colleagues and management. I wonder what Chad's fellow Walmart employees thought of him. In some cases it is the customer who objects, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/starbucksbaristas/comments/hh0siv/i_got_a_complaint_for_being_too_friendly_and_it. Obviously they'd rather be served by some glass-eyed script-reading Stepford husband; that would somehow give them comfort. Some people can't abide seeing other people happy. They're like prisoners in jail; when one of the inmates tries to escape the others block his way and alert the warders. Another metaphor might be the strange crabs that live at the bottom of the sea whose body is so used to the crushing pressure and oppressive darkness that they can't survive without it. They don't feel that way about people with high conventional social status because such people are supposed to be enjoying their lives. The ones who grate are those with low status, shop assistants and HP's for example, who are not walking round with bowed heads and slumped shoulders, cursing every moment of their mortal existence. This is an awful situation because I feel humans are slowly turning into machines, just like the faceless and soulless consoles that shoppers use to buy their own goods from the supermarket. It's very revealing about my own life and why I made so many enemies at the hospital without even trying. Maybe this is why they eventually discarded me.