Day 68: August 7, 2009 (an old man teaches a lesson in social acceptance)

Position: Driver

Number of Deliveries: 13

Sales: $597.64

Tips: $75

Hours: 4.58

Total Wage: $24.38 per hour

On my first run of the night, I'm surprised to find an elderly gentleman guard at the gate to Rancho Del Lago. Judging by his bright white, thin hair, hearing aids, and the condition of his aged skin, I would say he's in his 80s. He reminds me of my maternal grandfather, who died two years ago. I read him the address, and before he opens the gate, he says he'd better call first. "Last time I didn't call her, she chewed my ass out." Confiding this in me puts us on the same team, socially speaking: the servants. He then asks, "You got anything in there for me?" I look around the car and tell him I'm sorry, but I don't. Even though he just pressed my pet peeve"don't ask the pizza guy if he has extra food" button, I don't mind as much.

The whole incident calls to mind this paragraph from "The Symbolic Power of Money" report, which I can't stop thinking about: 

As social and cultural animals, humans rely on each other (i.e., on their social group and its organizing systems) to get what they want and need. This social interdependency sustains a strong need to belong, because, gaining acceptance by the group is important for obtaining the means of survival. However, in all but the most primitive cultures, money can substitute for social popularity: Money enables people to manipulate the social system to give them what they want, regardless of whether they are liked. In other words, either money or interpersonal inclusion enables people to obtain what they want from the social system. 

The old man and I have socially accepted each other, confirmed we belong to the same social group of servants, and rejected the rich woman with her condescending ways. She can counter our social rejection with money and her own social group: she couldn't care less what we think about her (if she could hear us). 

Many doors in these wealthy communities are answered by the tall and beautiful, people who have always been socially accepted, but from time to time you see the socially awkward Bill Gates type––he might even have a mail-order-looking bride––and somehow his money makes up for what he lacks. I imagine being able to buy your way into a country club serves the same function of social acceptance, even if you're not well liked there. 

The report goes on to say:

Even just the idea or feeling of having money should generate a broad sense of strength or efficacy. Hence, feeling rejected (i.e., low in social approval) should increase the desire for money. Thoughts of having money should blunt the pain of being rejected . . . we found that counting money, which presumably evoked the idea of getting and having money, reduced the suffering induced by . . . ostracism and real physical pain.

While I don't think I was ever socially rejected as a child, I had a mental glitch that made me occasionally ask my mom if I could stay home from elementary school because "nobody there likes me" (a glitch that has shown up in one of my nephews). This study may explain why I often sat alone in my room counting the change and bills, saved from not eating lunch, stuffed in my metal coffee can. 

Without money, the guard and I only have our similar social position as servants, so we create social bonds by goofing on the rich: we're not assholes, like them. As a matter of fact, this whole exercise in writing about feeding the rich can be seen as my attempt to be socially accepted by you, the reader, as we sit back and criticize and laugh at the rich. They are the Other. While we pretend there's something wrong with them––greedy; uncaring; socially unconscious; conspicuous consumers––maybe our criticism is just a way for us to feel more bound together in our middle-classness or poverty. After all, our goal isn't to be poor. (I love this Seneca quote from Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy: "Stop preventing philosophers from possessing money; no one has condemned wisdom to poverty.") We don't envy the poor, and their condition only makes us feel the same compassion we should possibly be feeling for the rich, though in an altered form ("It's sad that he needs a Hummer to feel socially accepted"). Even though I don't consider myself poor by anyone's definition, I realize I want to be perceived on the side of the poor, to be on the same team.   

On tonight's episode of NPR's Marketplace, there is an interesting story on the shifting focus of famous homes in America. At "The Breakers," the Vanderbilt's summer mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, the narratives now being told center on the role of the servants rather than the fancy furniture. Visitors are now told about the extravagances of the Vanderbilts and the unending labor of the maids: "each bath was made of marble so thick and cold, a maid had to fill and empty it twice before the bath was warm enough for a Vanderbilt." A woman who works at the home says the tours are geared to a more "socially conscious" public, and as one visitor observes, "There's certainly no way I would have ever walked the halls with the Vandebilts, so to hear the other side is very interesting." 

While us commoners will never tire of stories about wealthy people's material extravagances and poor behavior, maybe we're shifting back toward the original, more democratic and egalitarian vision of our founding father's words (not their actions), and if we should ever have the good fortune of becoming wealthy, we will learn from these narratives and prove we actually are a more socially conscious public. I know the next time I come by Rancho del Lago, I'm bringing my elderly friend in the guard shack some cookies.