It’s good karma to thank one’s internet friends, so let me give a quick shout out to Pete and Raul for their recent comments on my posts.
Speaking of amigos, a friend and I met up for dinner recently. For some reason, we started talking about shitty jobs that we’ve had in the past. Between us, we’ve had some pretty horrific gigs, but one of hers in particular caught my attention.
My friend used to be a personal assistant for a minor celebrity here in Los Angeles. One of her duties was to take the celebrity’s mother out to lunch. Yes, Hollywood types really do pay people to perform such tasks (I’m glad I could confirm your justifiably low opinion of them).
In any case, my friend was doing her job, listening to the celebrity’s elderly mother drone on over lunch, when the old lady stopped talking. My friend looked up, concerned that her client’s mom had just suffered a stroke on her watch.
But the celebrity’s mom was staring. My friend noticed the unmistakable flitting of anger cross the lady’s face.
“Look at them,” the celebrity’s mom hissed.
My friend turned around to see what the offense was. As you can imagine, the object of scorn was a Latino family.
The celebrity’s mom launched into a diatribe about how Hispanics were taking over and how they were “stealing my benefits.”
The exact nature of these benefits was not made clear. In fact, my friend briefly considered telling the old lady that any privileges she had accrued were because of her majority status in the culture — that and the fact that her daughter had once starred in a hit TV show. It wasn’t because the old lady had actually worked hard for anything.
Nor did my friend learn how a normal-looking family out for a meal was really a front for stealing the old woman’s “benefits,” whatever those were. In fact, as my friend explained, “I’m not even sure everybody in the family was Hispanic. A couple of them looked Middle Eastern.”
In any case, my friend endured the diatribe about “sneaky Mexicans” and escorted the old lady out of the restaurant. The benefit-stealing family of possible Hispanics remained oblivious.
My friend quit the job soon after this incident. Cut off from the entourage, she never heard from the celebrity again. It’s just as well, because her old boss is now an ex-celebrity who hasn’t worked in years. In all likelihood, she doesn’t even have a personal assistant anymore.
Who knows, maybe the celebrity has to suffer the indignity of taking her own damn mom out for lunch.
