Open Letter to a Rich Person

Hi. There’s been a lot of talk about you lately. President Obama has decided that you’re being paid too much, and he is – or members of his administration, at least, are – cutting your pay. It may be up to 90%. And the scary part, from your perspective at least, is that most people seem to be all for it. Even people who are against it for moral/political reasons think you deserve it.

You may count me among them. The one thing that I think will make it stick is that it’s going to happen to rich guys whose companies took stimulus money. That gives the lender some say in things like that, like it or not. They can do it to Chrysler, but they can’t do it to Ford.

Your stockholders should have already done it, but they dropped the ball just like they did when they hired you to lead the company. If you’d done a job worthy of a big bonus, they wouldn’t be in the trouble they’re in now. I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. Consider yourself lucky that you have a job.

Why is this attitude so pervasive in American society? I’ll tell you, simply and succinctly; it’s because you’re an asshole. Think about that next time you go out to a restaurant, or the grocery store, or get gas for your BMW. Listen to the words that come out of your mouth to the people who serve you, get you things, hand you your change, ask you for more detail regarding what you want, and then smile and say, "Thank you, have a nice day."

Day after day I have had you and people like you look me in the eye and call me stupid, or say something that shows you think I’m stupid, in spite of my education and experience. I know my job, and I hope I’m not guilty of sinful pride when I say I’m pretty darned good at it. When you come up and spout gibberish and I don’t leap into action, it’s your fault. Your explanation of what you want makes no sense to me. When I come back with questions that you have to actually think about, it’s because I want to give you what you want and I’m trying to figure out what that is. Coming back with the same gibberish, only louder, does not expedite the process.

You seem to forget that you need us, and we don’t need you. You ought to carry that thought around for a while. Your ability to be an asshole with no negative repercussions relates directly to the amount of money you have, and nothing more. You don’t seem to realize that your attitude toward the people that feed you, clothe you, and get you things to amuse you is reprehensible. Try to imagine what your life would be like if you woke up one morning and your bank account was empty. Your job was gone. The things you own are being repossessed. By 10 in the morning, you’re standing beside the road with the clothes on your back. And the rest of us are going about our business with no more cares than the night before. We don’t need you.

We grow the food. We pick it. We transport it to places where people will buy it. We build the store it’s sold in, and the truck that brought it. We clear the land it’s built on. And if you and your kind were to vanish tomorrow morning, we’d manage without you. We were growing, traveling, and building long before there were any banks or corporations.

But what about you? If we were all to disappear, who would bring you your latte? Who would make it? Who would harvest the coffee beans and milk the cow? Who would feed the cow?

None of us, really, doubt that you work hard. Or that you serve a useful purpose in society. We all have bank accounts, and take out loans, and we like the fact that if we buy a Chevy in Idaho we can easily get parts for it in Georgia. It’s people like you, managing these large organizations and their interaction, that make these things possible. You make and distribute the movies and music and TV shows we enjoy. You excel at the games we’ve invented, and it’s entertaining to watch you do it. We take significant amounts of our income and freely spend them to enjoy the fruits of your labors, and don’t begrudge you a dime as long as we get what we’re paying for. After all, we’ve got families to feed and bills to pay, and we hate getting ripped off as much as you do.

So when you come into the places we work so hard in and act like we’re ripping YOU off, we don’t like it. We’re not, usually, and your contempt is unjustified. You should behave better, and you should certainly teach your kids to. Have you ever seen them in line for food at a ski area? Have you heard the things they say to the people providing them sustenance? If my kids behaved that way, I’d discipline them.

Or do you even know your kids? Do you spend time with them, or do you shunt them off to schools and then in the summer shunt them off to camps? Do you send them postcards from the places you go, with two gushy sentences about how much you love them, while they deal with surrogate parents paid to amuse them for a month or two? Is that how you were raised? No wonder you’re an asshole.

Why not consider this; you’re in a Dunkin’ Donuts, or a Post Office, or a Mercedes-Benz dealership, or the place you store your boat, or a lift line at Loon Mountain. You need something. You come to a person who makes his living by getting you breakfast, or shipping your package, or making sure you don’t break your neck getting on the chair lift. Already, today, that person has served dozens, maybe even hundreds, of other people successfully. They’ve been doing it for a while, and they’re probably going to be doing it for a while longer. Maybe years. Maybe for life.
Try this; be nice. Smile at them. Thank them. Act, for two seconds, as if you appreciate their efforts, and maybe even care about them. Wish them well. Yeah, I know, you don’t care, but try and appear like you do. Just for two seconds. Believe me, they will remember you. They will mention it to others. It will give them a lift. It will even make them want to do their jobs better. And if it doesn’t appear to do that, it’s because so many people like you have been so harsh to them for so long, they’ve tuned it all out. So do it again. Don’t be pushy, just be nice. Keep it up, and it will eventually rehumanize them.

And, just maybe, it will rehumanize you, too.

And as for your pay, just suck it up. Those of us who make your life possible and get low to mid five figures for doing it would trade with you in a heartbeat.