I was collecting rudeness stories and it was interesting to me what people offered, because sometimes it was just a cruelty story or just a stupidity story, but rudeness to me, or just the kind that interests me, has to do with class. So I met this woman and she worked at a country club over the summer, and she was a college student. So she’s in the dining room at the country club and a woman in her 60s beckons her over to the table, and the woman in her 60s says, “Hold out your hand” and the girl held out her hand, and the woman spit a mouthful of food into her hand and said, “There’s a bone in my chicken salad.” That’s gold. That’s a really good story because the waitress couldn’t say, “Oh, that’s funny because there’s a bone in your hair, too,” and wipe her hand on the woman’s head, because she would have lost her job and she couldn’t afford to lose her job.

Or, this woman I met who worked at Starbucks, and this woman comes in and she says, “Can I help you?” and the woman is looking at that overhead board and she can’t make up her mind. So the Starbucks employee starts talking to her supervisor and the customer says, “Excuse me.” And she says, “Oh sorry, I was just talking to my boss.” The woman says, “I’m your boss.” So, that was a good one, too.