I went to pick up Angelic Daughter’s Friday night pizza from a place that makes an individual size pizza that’s smaller than the smallest size from the usual place.
When I entered the shop, there were two young men (teenagers, I thought), sitting on a bench across from the counter, staring at their phones. I assumed they were waiting to pick up pizzas to take home or to deliver. There was no one behind the counter.
I stepped up toward the counter and stood under the sign that said, “pick up.” Then two things happened simultaneously: a man carrying a toddler entered the store, and a guy came out of the kitchen behind the counter and, without so much as a glance at me, immediately asked the man with the toddler “can I help you?”
Neither man acknowledged my existence, and the boys with the phones never looked up. Despite me standing directly underneath the sign that said “pick up,“ the guy with the toddler didn’t ask, “have you been helped?”
I always ask that of anyone who looks like they are waiting for service, before I assume it is my turn to be served. The boys with the phones were so disinterested that I knew that they had already been acknowledged and had moved to the waiting part of their program.
I’m short, and the counter is nearly as tall as I am, but the guy behind it was easily tall enough to see me. But he didn’t. And neither did the Dad with the toddler. Neither of them seemed to think there was anything amiss.
Their mutual failure to acknowledge my existence sent me over the edge. I said, loudly and none too nicely, “hey, I was here first!” At which point neither pizza counter guy or Dad with toddler apologized. Counter guy just looked at me in that indulgent way you look at your grandma when she’s cranky. I said, “I’m short, I know, but…” in a “you’ve got to be kidding me” tone, and told him I was picking up for (insert my surname here).
Whereupon he ducked back into the kitchen and brought Angelic Daughter’s pizza out right away, and handed it to me, still wih no apology, and no acknowledgement that toddler Dad had waltzed right in past me, assuming he was to be served first, regardless of my position DIRECTLY UNDER THE SIGN THAT SAID “PICK UP.”
So much for being “less” and for embracing my invisibility. So much for shutting up and listening. Hell with that shit. GOD DAMMIT, I EXIST! (Maybe I’ll put that on a t-shirt). With pizza in hand, I said, quite stridently, “sure, I’m short, female, and old – that makes me invisible!” Then I took angelic daughter’s pizza and marched right outa there. In a huff.
Look, I acknowledge the possibility that Toddler Dad had come in earlier, ordered something, or found out his order wasn’t ready yet, and took a stroll with his toddler to keep the child calm. Maybe Toddler Dad had talked to a different pizza counter guy. Because if he had talked to the guy who ignored me, why would that pizza counter guy ask Toddler Dad, “can I help you?”
The thing that flummoxed me most was that neither guy seemed the slightest bit rattled by my obvious displeasure. It was very much an “oh, okay, get the old lady what she wants so we can send the old bitch on her way and get back to the important business of IGNORING HER AND SERVING HIM.”
There’s a scene in a Netflix comedy called “Grace and Frankie” that starred Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, where the two of them, both older women, tried to get some service in a grocery store. They thought the clerk was coming to help, but he became completely preoccupied a the pretty young blonde who came to the counter and assumed, as blondes do, that she came first. The scene proceeds to the point where Grace (Jane Fonda) is pounding on the counter yelling. Frankie escorts her out. Back in their car, Frankie casually lights up, revealing that during the commotion, she took advantage of her invisibility to steal some cigarettes.
I stopped watching that show after the second season, I think, because just got a little too ridiculous for me. It’s one thing to take the vulnerabilities of older women seriously, and another to have them inventing vibrators and toilet seats that eject their users (when they’re supposed to just gently “rise up” to help the user stand). But that scene of invisibility in a retail establishment really had some impact. That was years ago, but the scene came back to me as I was bitching about being invisible
Unfortunately, I had already paid for the pizza.
Next week, I’ll just get a few slices from the place that only makes big pizzas.
Until then, I remain,
your seething, not-fading-gently-into-invisibility-after-all,
Ridiculouswoman