Service of Being Ignored
Thursday, March 23rd, 2023
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
It’s no fun being ignored. I’m curious about the insensitivity of the people who enjoy doing it. If you’re young and handsome/beautiful, it might not happen to you. Those who do it I suspect feel a sense of power.
I delivered documents to a NYC court the other week. The halls were empty. There was a couple ahead of me in the room I needed to visit and they soon left. Nobody was behind me. Had it been a retail situation I’d have worried for the life of the place. The amount of real estate in this giant building on Chambers Street in Manhattan was breathtaking and the lack of activity–of humans in hallways–astonishing.
I waited at the window while the woman who would eventually help me stood about 12 feet behind the see-through plastic divider and chatted with a colleague to her left who was seated at a desk. Next, without moving, continuing to ignore me, she spoke with someone I couldn’t see in another room. It was as though I wasn’t there. Spooky. Not even an “I’ll be with you in a minute,” uttered from her lips. And she didn’t look busy.
Since I needed something from her, I kept silent.
I suppose this is the in-person version of the telephone customer service “I bet you can’t reach a human to help you.”
When you’re not in the driver’s seat, how do you handle being ignored? How do some have the temerity to discount the value of another person’s time?
Image by Marta Cuesta from Pixabay
