Page 7 - Failed Experiment

A Failed Experiment

The next day, my first day on the job, I was instructed to set up chairs
for an assembly in the Imperial Gym basketball court. A blonde,
skinny teenager was in the gym shooting baskets and became very
angry when my work interfered with his solitary play. He approached
me with an angry face and said: “You are not an AC student and I don’t
have to do anything you tell me.” At that point, I had said nothing to
him. I just patiently tried to work around his activity. As I continued to
try to set up the chairs, this teenager, an Imperial Student, would
dribble by and pretend to throw the ball into my face as I carried a
couple of folding chairs in each hand, unable to protect my face but
needing to get the job done quickly. Ironically, this was the son of the
official who delivered the first day’s introduction to me. (I found out
later that it was not unusual for some Imperial students to flex their
nascent authoritarian muscles by trying to order 1-Ws around. They
had to cut their teeth somewhere. In one case, the daughter of one of
the prominent Big Sandy families brusquely ordered me to move a
large and heavy cabinet containing band equipment so that there would
be more room for a student party. Only by my appeal to regular AC
staff was this demanding request avoided.)

Fast forward a few months. A minister flies into the AC Big Sandy
Airport with two daughters who are AC students. I was nearby
cleaning the hanger floor and the minister approaches me and says he
must go to a meeting and he asks me to take his daughters to their
dorms. I am expected to get the luggage out of the minister’s fleet car
and put it in my car. No help is offered by the minister or his daughters.
That is servants work after all. The daughters are aloof, arrogant and
rebuff any attempts at simple conversation on the ride over.

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