Regarding the Class Divide...

I could creep around the fact that Bob died until the end of the story. If I chose to, I could paint a poignant, sobering punch line about the callousness of the urban professional. I could talk about how little anyone noticed his absence and replacement, the fact that he died and maybe more importantly, had been dying for months without being noticed by the white collar workers he shipped back and forth in his parking lot shuttle bus. It would make a powerful example of the isolation in general of people nowadays and the rational coldness of class, that would eloquently harken back to serfdom. It would be true to some degree, but it would be a disservice to all involved and I would simply be using Bob as a pawn in an intellectual game of demagoguery.

I could easily excuse myself from this game. I talked to Bob every day that I saw him. I would have minor conversations with him regarding the weather, but he also told me how expensive the toys his grandchildren wanted for Christmas were and I listened carefully to his bitter toned yet cleverly mocking disgust of people who got onto his small shuttle bus with attitude and contempt for his lack of a serviced smile and tendency to be smoking the last half of a cigarette in the moments between each of the forty to sixty trips he took from the far, far end of the largest parking lot to the connecting plaza of office buildings. I empathized with that feeling, since I too have it towards the modern white collar worker, even if I have just by the barest amounts, become one.

Still, any attempts to abstract myself from the burdens of the rationalized day to day callousness that exists between servers and servees would only be the barest of excuses. I am a pleasant person and I know how to be warm at a moments notice with strangers, but that is not comparable with interest. Interest like social currency must be willingly invested, it is not simply a toll that we pay when we politely interact with people of different status or station day to day, it's investment, establishing a foundation of friendship or at least acquaintance, that builds on equal footing with each encounter and it requires trust and sacrifice, not a lot, but at least your anonymity. At least there would be a cordial exchange, an introduction, at least he would know that my name is Jared and I would know that his name is Bob, which I did not know, until the woman who drives the shuttle at night told me, when she told me Bob had died over Christmas from a complexity of aliments that he knew had him cornered. I still don't know her name.