People vs. Animals

The president hasn’t demonstrated any desire in wanting to unite the country recently or any modicum of diplomacy, so when he shut down the government for over a month in response to not getting funding for his stupid wall, I must say, I wasn’t surprised. Was anyone?!

What I was surprised about was how little I knew about the effects of a government shutdown and the number of people it impacted. I was surprised by how many people were employed by the US GOV’T living paycheck to paycheck - I’ve certainly been there - and I was surprised by the unapologetic callousness of the Right. I know the latter shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering their profound disregard for humanity, but seeing how politicians really didn’t do anything to stop the shutdown, how disinterested they were in coming to an agreement, how persistently stubborn they were at the expense of people’s lives- it was alarming to witness. I just don’t understand how anyone can continue to support the Republican party as it is now. It’s representing less and less of the American people and they don’t seem to give one f-ck that their base is dwindling. Ah, their base is a whole other ball game. The people who blindly concede to leadership that has no plans to include solutions to their actual problems with any sort of viable policy. Instead, they use fear and white supremacy disguised as patriotism to brainwash people into believing the “preservation of whiteness” is going to solve all of their problems. News flash: IT’S NOT.

The sentiment that these rich, greedy politicians are going to somehow “save us” from economic plight is getting so old, and so exhausting to debunk. Minds that far gone can’t be changed. I still day dream of sending all of the bigots to an island where there’s nothing “foreign,” so there’s just dirt and grass, maybe some trees, and absolutely no amenities that people of color have had a hand in, so they can really “stay true” to their ways and live lives devoid of happiness , wonder, and spices.

Speaking of crazy ideas, I did want to touch on another sentiment I’ve seen being circulated around the internet and that’s- get this- the comparison of human life to animals.

Let me start this off by saying I love animals, though, I’m not a vegan, and I wholeheartedly believe in human rights and animal rights respectively. HOWEVER the strange, and honestly, downright maddening outrage for people who abuse animals versus the justification given to police who kill unarmed people has become beyond bothersome.

I will never forget that moment a few years ago when Cecil the lion was shot and Jimmy Kimmel cried on air. I think this is when I started thinking about the way WP react to animal cruelty vs. human cruelty. The amount of outrage I saw about the lion being shot wasn’t remotely comparable to the emotions from the white community to any of the police brutality at the time. I know there were white people who were and always have been outraged by police shootings but this isn’t about them. This is about a wave of people coming to the defense of this beautiful animal, with genuine sadness. An amazing consensus indeed. We were all stunned and disgusted by these imbeciles. But some of these same people virtually ignored this homicidal epidemic.

My question is, where was that unifying disgust and outrage when it came to police brutality? Instead what I see is the harsh judgment of lives and situations, not a universal upset about the disproportionate number of unarmed people of color being assaulted and killed. People feel it necessary to scrutinize the lives of innocent individuals dying at the hands of police instead of joining the outcry to surface these obviously racist confrontations. It’s not just police brutality that’s subjected to these comparisons, but the treatment of inmates as well. People who are taken into the system somehow lose their humanity in the minds of these disturbing people who are so self-righteous, they believe the life of someone who stole a box of cheerios and winds up in sing sing is no longer worth protecting. No, it was the victim of brutality or prisoner’s fault for “not adhering to simple laws” so they deserve death/mistreatment - I have literally seen someone comment this in response to the prisoners who were protesting not being given appropriate heat. The same commenter later said, animals were innocent so deserve to be treated better than “those criminals.”

And let me also clarify that it is mostly black lives that are under attack in these detrimental, misguided arguments. The fact that animals are brought up at all is a fundamental issue with this country and the thought process about police brutality/the prison system. Animals have rights, yes, and they should, but these rights should not be involved in conversations about the mistreatment of HUMANS. I will never stop saying how slavery’s effects persist today and they are alive and rampant in the prison/judicial system. No. In the fabric of our society, ever so carefully and completely woven in.

I do want to point out the Tiffany Haddish video about her wearing fur until police brutality stops to raise awareness and further show how f-cked up American society is, proving her point through the insane comments to the video. In this respect, it was necessary to raise awareness, and I personally though it was a powerful declaration. It certainly pissed a lot of people off, and I totally understand why, but I hope those people also reexamine their anger and empathize with what she’s ultimately saying. Seriously, go read these comments. So insane.

All in all, animals absolutely deserve to be protected, but SO DO HUMANS- especially unarmed, innocent ones and it’s not helpful or productive to continue bringing up animal rights when it comes to fucking humanity.

Fight me.

That Time I Applied To Diesel

In my four and a half, going on five years in the workforce I have been to my fair share of interviews. Usually, they go pretty well. The employers ask questions pertaining to the position I’m applying for, using my answers as a decoder to my soul. I leave either feeling completely useless, borderline content, or super stoked because, yeah, I got that. However, there was one instance in my life where none of the above applied. After leaving this particular charade of questions and answers I felt incredibly lost, confused and mildly violated. 

I was living in Northern VA at the time. I got a job at the infamous Urban Outfitters at Tyson’s Corner which was steps away from where I was living. It had been a few months into the position when I made the stupid decision to expand my horizons into the strange realm that is Diesel in Washington, D.C. I was never unhappy at this particular UO store, but regardless, I heard there was an open call and went. Upon arriving at the hotel, yes, a hotel, where the entire process was to go down, I was told to wait in the lobby with the rest of the hopeful applicants who looked upon each other with harsh amounts of disdain and disgust, which would soon be countered by an emotional bounding experience. I began to question if this was how FBI agents were found. A simple ad on Craigslist merely setting the grounds for an intricate series of tests, beginning with a willingness to subject yourself to unavoidable awkward circumstances, ending with your threshold for gobbledygook and an onslaught of social, professional, and general snafus. 

The lot of us were called to the conference room in the sky, overlooking the city, in a sort of ominous way. Music blasted from speakers expertly set up in two corners of the room, one of the speakers looked like it had been from the trenches of ‘nam and was wondering why it was being forced to blast tasteless remixes of Britney Spears songs. I wondered the same thing. The music was at the level of absurdity. It made me nervous that the entire purpose of this noise was to see how well we could speak without screaming because this would be the normal volume in stores and costumers had to feel like they weren’t being assaulted if they asked for jean prices. Then two guys came in after we were seated and turned the music down- not off. They were an interesting duo, one of them looked like he had just rolled out of a Hollister ad and stumbled into the conference room looking for the pool, and the other wore all black, like he was about to light some candles and pray to the lord of the underworld to take all of our souls for his annual ritual sacrifice. They were cute though because it was obvious they knew each other and worked together before. Somehow they complimented each other, but that’s were the adorableness ends. Individually, these dudes were cray. They introduced themselves and I promptly forgot their names and decided to dub them Thing One and Thing Two, and together, The Things, obviously. Thing One was the Satan worshiper. The Things separated us into the coveted teams that are so common among group interviews and the bane of every potential employee’s existence. This dynamic forced you to revert to barbarism. It was a cut throat, heartless, every man for himself situation within seconds. Everyone was going to be vying for The Things’ attention. I sat there unconcerned with who was on my team, already reserved to the abundantly clear fact that I would not fit into the Diesel aesthetic but after having my brain rocked by the bass I was feeling up for a challenge. I felt it was my duty to help my overzealous, wide-eyed teammates with acquiring their goals. 

After we were in our groups we went around the room, introducing ourselves along with where we were from and some other pointless piece of information, like our favorite animal or brand of orange juice or something. I don’t remember what I said, but I like to think is was something like, Hi, I’m Chris from Cthulhu, Illinois and my favorite jigsaw puzzle pieces are the corner ones. I wish. Instead I answered like a drone and waited patiently for everyone to share their favorite crayon color or whatever. Anyway, the interview continued and The Things hand out these (wasteful) sheets of paper listing 10 items “we found on a deserted island.” We are told to do this ridiculously mundane task of ordering them from least important to most vital. Thing Two says, “Without using your cell phones,” and smiles smugly like he just pulled off an Ocean’s 11 heist but in giant, bright puce letters IDIOT MASTERMIND is written on his forehead. It takes everything in me at this juncture not to flip a table, scream, How will this help you determine if I can sell a tee shirt?! And summon the dark lord (Voldemort) himself to rid this muggle of speech… and motor function. Alas, it is not his fault corporate felt this inconsequential task would determine the best sales associate in the room.

From what I can remember the items on the list included, a barrel of water, a compass, some rope, a flare, and a SEXTON. That’s right, a sexton. So, of course now I know what the hell that is, but at the time all I could think of were dirty things and was aghast such an instrument would be abandoned on an island for us to use. Anyway, we were not the only group to be confounded by this seemingly random piece of equipment and after all the groups revealed their list we found out all of us were wrong. Yay! The sexton turned out to be in like the top 5 or something. This is not to say The things’ list was correct because, well, this hypothetical situation could hypothetically produce many results. Recovering slowly from our collective defeat, a remix of a Christina Aguilera song gently bumps in the background, only slightly vibrating the tables. A few people stared into their paper cups, probably wishing they could be carted off to that deserted island at that very minute, wallowing in disappointment and hopelessness, possibly imagining drowning themselves in their shallow cups of water. Thing One then came to life, telling us there was another challenge. The room almost seemed to glow with rays of sunshine as the group realized all was not lost. The Things told us to arrange ourselves in a circle and Thing One began to explain to us who what kind of person he was looking to work with at his new store. He told us about his work history with the company, how he started as a sales associate and through hard work and determination made it to where he was today- standing in front of us uninteresting plebeians deciding which of us shines in the sea of muck, anxious to follow in his genius footsteps. 

Thing One tells us he is looking for a friend, someone he can depend on and trust. He’s looking for someone he can hang out with because he just moved to the city. He was searching for “true friends.” He went off on a tangent about how someone he thought he could trust betrayed him and stole a pair of shoes or something. This incident pained him deeply and he swore he would love again one day if the right person came along. Ok, that last part I added, but I’m sure he was thinking it. Looking at his face, I couldn’t fully comprehend whether or not this guy was about to laugh uproariously or cry uncontrollably. Unsure how the crowd would react either way, I prayed he kept his swelling emotions neatly buried within himself so none of us would have to find out. Thing One spoke fondly, longingly of his past experiences and hoped we would be “on board” to create new experiences “together.” At this, people seemed to snap out of their Stepford Wives trance and look at each other with serious concern. Do we really want to make memories with this dude who takes his job too seriously, they all seemed to be yelling silently with their eyes. Thing One concludes talking without having a nervous breakdown or a laugh attack and gives us our final task of selling an article of clothing to an imaginary customer. This should have been the ONLY thing to do for the interview. We all had to individually sell whatever it is we were assigned using nothing but our “wit and personality.” On the most part everyone did pretty well, with the exception of me who suggested the customer cut up the shirt they would purchase for a cool $100 because it might look better as a crop top on them, or a tank. NO BUENO. I thought Thing Two was going to jump up from where he was sitting and tear me to pieces where I stood. Oops. Seconds later the homicidal moment passed and he focused his attention on the next victim, selling a pair of jeans like a straight up pro. I wanted those jeans by the end of his spiel. Then I realized they cost more than some used cars and let that dream fade. 

The last person sheepishly tries to sell an awful messenger bag and finally, we were done. We would be contacted for second interviews via phone later that day. Surprisingly, I got a call back. They told me to come in for a one on one interview back at the hotel the next day. This time the interviews took place right in the lobby, so you could watch people being interviewed, see their nervous ticks- a lip twitch here, eyes looking side to side there, constant tapping, endless sweating. Either you were devoid of empathy and felt empowered by watching the exchanges or utterly terrified everyone’s eyeballs were going to be on you while sitting in the hot seat. When it was my turn, The Things looked at me with amusement. I sat across from them, unsure of what I would possibly be asked after disclosing so much about myself through those telling tasks. That’s when I saw what Thing Two was wearing. FLIP FLOPS. He was wearing flip flops at the interview. Now, I am by no means a stickler for any sort of dress code, but when I’m being interviewed it just seems like, out of respect for everyone, you would wear close toed shoes. He could have worn those weird brown shoe-looking sandals or loafers or even those toe sneakers or ANY footwear, but FLIP FLOPS? I don’t wanna see thaaaat.  Also, The Things kept calling me Crystal, and I’m pretty sure they got me confused with another black girl in the interview, which is inexcusable and OVERTLY RACIST.

That’s when I knew definitively I couldn’t work there. Seeing his toes wriggle after he asked each question, the both of those morons calling me Crystal with their unapologetic pompous tone was too much AFTER I corrected them numerous times. I sometimes wonder if there was a camera in that room with us, a failed attempt at Candid Camera or that awful Jamie Kennedy show. Never again, Diesel. Never again.