Well, I’m going to say this again, and yes, I’ve said it before several times. 

I’m a pleasant person. I’m normally cheerful. I’m nice. 

But in the city that I live in, maybe people just look down on others. As an Asian person, I can say for sure that multiple times I received poor service in restaurants, even before the pandemic. In other situations, people just seem to have no time for me. It could be a group setting and I’m literally ignored by others. When I do try to speak up, I get talked over by others and they appear oblivious to what I’ve said. I could say, “Well, my arm is sore today because…” and I get cut off like I didn’t say anything. 

Or it would be something like, “Oh, what you’re saying doesn’t affect me, so I’m not going to listen to this story.” Or something like, “Who cares?” 

I had a former boss named Ian who did that. This was about 15 years after I’d last worked for him — we had still kept in touch all these years after I’d left his school. He asked me something. I explained it. And his next comment was “So what?” in a patronizing tone. It was a question about why I wrote my 1988 Dodgers book. I said Fred Claire suggested it because it was the 30th anniversary of that season (back in 2018), and Ian’s response was “So what?”

I was offended and didn’t return his texts for a day. After that, he disowned me. 

More recently, I had another boss (who kept insisting she wasn’t a “boss” but her business card said “….Manager” — so that counts. But she was helping me move to my new place sometime ago, and I invited my sibling to live there because my sibling didn’t have a home — and of course my sibling was supposed to pay rent. Yet my  boss — jokingly — said that if I was “mean,” then my sibling did not need to pay.  I found that to be offensive and not amusing whatsoever. 

I had a parent who also said that my sibling could pay well below market value for rent. Well, that’s cute but why am I expected to support my (older) sibling who gets angry if I said I didn’t want to pay for the rides that my sibling sometimes provided me. I’d rather take Uber if I had to. I’m basically losing money every month because of the below-market-value rent that my sibling gives — and a few times the cheques were postdated — and so that boss thinks it’s funny that if I, as a positive and cheerful/upbeat person was “mean,” the sibling didn’t need to pay. 

There are people out there who will not and do not respond to polite messages that I send. I suppose I am viewed as an annoyance or below their level, and so I do not even warrant any sort of response. It’s as though I’m a non-human in those specific people’s eyes. 

I’m surrounded by people who just don’t want to listen to what I say, likely think I’m some sort of dirt below their shoes, etc. Through their actions, it’s as though they don’t think of me as a human being — which really means they don’t want me to succeed. By that logic, they don’t care enough about me and/or want me to fail. As Hathaway’s character said in The Intern (2015), her mom was a “terrorist.” By that logic, I would not be out of line to say those people around me are terrorists, too. Not everyone, obviously, but quite a lot.  

In spite of all that, I’m someone who’ll continue to try my best in my daily life. And I’ll continue to be upbeat and cheerful.