I just finished working my way through one of those click-bait memes featuring a bunch of funny "Karen" incidents found on the Internet. And most of them were pretty funny--like the woman who got mad at a restaurant because she and her little dog were not allowed to dine and that policy was not mentioned on the company's web site. Stuff like that.
My question is, where do you draw the line? When does complaining to a store employee become a "Karen" incident, and when is a complaint justified? Under what circumstances does asking to speak to the manager become too Karen?
Everybody has a story. Everybody has several stories, to be more precise. I won't bore you here. And I've been a Karen, myself, on occasion. I think to be honest we all have at one time or another. So, has this always been this way? Is it just the Internet that highlights what is and has always been a sort of universal thing involving businesses and customers?
When I was in high school I worked as a gas jockey and encountered lots and lots of Karens--people who if they acted that way today would have been dressed down properly so many times it seems they would have been embarrassed to go out in public anymore. At that time, though--it was the Sixties--gas stations in particular advertised heavily in a manner that tried to make the customer a sort of King for the Day. Now, my gas station didn't make us wear little military style uniforms, but the idea was, we were the Privates, the customers were the officers. And they knew it.
Somewhere along the line that went away, and I suppose the driving force behind the Karen phenomenon is that disillusionment, that lagging realization that Corporate is King now, and your request to see the manager is not a cost-effective scenario for it, and our $7/hour employee will (perhaps gleefully) show you to the door.
But it can't be that the customer in these sorts of situations is at fault, or is being unreasonable, every single time. 'S'all I'm sayin'. And, as is the case almost every time I start to bitch about something and start writing it out, it sort of dawns on me that the issue is more complex than first perceived. Of course nothing on the Internet is allowed to get too complex. Gawd. Who are you to write long paragraphs about stuff? That's not entertaining me very much. Get a life.
Great post, Roy! The whole Karen thing is ridiculous, imo. I believe it began because there’s a perception of a certain type of suburban whyt woman with a “mom” haircut, driving an SUV, who believes she is entitled to things because she’s always had life go smoothly. So when her little Ashleigh doesn’t receive the right toy in her Happy Meal, “Karen” goes ballistic at the minimum wage employees, who are often minorities. OK. That is unfortunate, assuming it ever actually happened. But now anytime any whyt woman simply asks for ordinary decent service, welp, she’s a Karen! How dare this woman not wait patiently while her order takes forever or doesn’t arrive at all. She should just suck it up because she generally has an easy life! That’s what this has turned into. We’re supposed to be so grateful that stores and restaurants exist that any type of crappy service should simply be shrugged off. Don’t complain about your delivered item being broken or incorrect! Those poor workers don’t get bathroom breaks! Which is, of course, Karen’s fault. Meanwhile, the actual privileged people (whyt male gazillionaires) just slide by unnoticed…
ReplyDeleteYes, I am pissed about this! There is not one thing wrong with asking for decent service when we are spending money at a place…
You strike me as a very reasonable person. I'm glad we're in agreement!
ReplyDeleteIt's me, Hetty. I admit I've acted a bit Katen-esque once or twice... What really bothers me is the filming of these encounters. I don't think people should be hf up for international ridicule. Thanks for injecting some nuance into this topic.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about all the cellphone videos, Hetty. You're absolutely right. Who looks good on the screen, anyway, when they are not "on," but just being themselves doing their job, or running errands, some having good days, some having bad days?
ReplyDeleteOnce again, if you read this, Hetty, sorry about blogger.com's comment gyrations. Don't see why this can't be one of those standardized things . . . on the bright side, you must have passed the robot test!
I read a poem written by another blogger, I'll have to dig it up, but one thing that was fascinating was that this poem made the point that there's so much ageism and sexism underlying the Karen stereotype. Like a young person or a man doing the exact same thing to get better service would barely be given a second thought and if a middle-aged white woman does it, it's a meme and a joke.
ReplyDeleteI think the line between appropriately asserting yourself and crossing the line is tone. If the store gets your order wrong or overcharges you or whatever, it's appropriate to ask management to rectify that. I don't think it's necessarily inappropriate to escalate the issue to a higher level of management if the $7/hr employee cannot resolve the issue (noting that escalate here means talk nicely to the person at the level of authority who can resolve the issue, not use threats of violence or something)n But it's never appropriate to use abusively bad language or threaten violence or bash minorities or anything like that. And it doesn't matter who is doing those things.
Never thought about it like that, JYP. You're absolutely right--a woman asserting herself is somehow unacceptable to some people who are quick to jump on this kind of behavior. I think the Karen meme is valid enough if we reserve it for anyone with an overblown sense of entitlement. I mean, among men, that's already sort of a meme used for litigious, entitled jerks, but we don't have a gender neutral meme for it.
ReplyDeleteIt's unfair, though. The only Karen I know is so not like that.