“B-But What If I Can’t Avoid MAGAs This Thanksgiving?” (Know Your Options)
I received an interesting response to my recent essay on avoiding intolerable MAGAs this Thanksgiving (I advised “Just don’t go to the stupid dinners”). It was from my niece, who works in the service industry, specifically at a restaurant where she has to abide horrible coworkers and customers. Just passing this along.
She wrote:
“Your advice is don’t go’? What do you have to say to people who have to work with that type, the type you referred to in your article as ‘people who would tell their trans niece that it’s time to “turn back” while laughing at their discomfort’? People who physically walked up to their co-workers one by one the day after the election and laughed in their faces while asking if they cried or felt ‘butt hurt’ about the results and [suggested] putting Trump banners at the entrance we use. What’s your advice for people who HAVE to put up with this at work? My god, if it was only Thanksgiving and holidays I had to worry about I’d be jumping for fucking joy. I’m dead serious, what is your advice?
“Leaving isn’t an option. Do I break jaws and establish dominance? Do I speak up even though I’m the overwhelming minority and they don’t have brains capable of comprehension let alone GEDs, and let’s not forget the handful that are felons, alcoholics and drug addicts. I’m out of sick time so I’m staying home; waiting for the fire to die down ends today. Fuck, my degree that I’m killing myself for will most likely mean diddly dick now. I honestly don’t even know what to do. I’m hopeful a conversation with the sensible [restaurant] owner will put an and to the nonsense, but it’s a kitchen and these people are evil to their bones.”
So I, being the cool uncle in the family, replied:
“Obviously that advice was family-gathering-specific, generic to a scenario that comes with a simple binary choice that won’t endanger one’s ability to feed themself and such. I mean, if you want to drill down further, obviously some people will be literally forced to attend deeply unpleasant gatherings because they work for a business owned by the family’s douchey patriarch. In that case, maybe research undetectable poisons found in rare shellfish, something like that.
“What can I say. Everything always depends on one’s options. Jobs suck to begin with; I’ve been there. In your unique and specific case, my off-the-cuff response would be ‘Clock out for good this afternoon, — , just put your kitties in your car and move into our spare room until the MAGAs’ victory-gasm mellows and Trump starts unfriending everyone from his limo driver to Elon Musk and we go back to literally no administrative stability whatsoever (good times!). You know, get settled in our mid-sized city, which is wall-to-wall restaurants big and small. Just don’t eat my Lorna Doones or bring home men with felony records, that’d be great.”
Anyway, that.
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My second book, My Year In The Online Left, came out on June 10. Meantime, if you want to be fully, genuinely informed about the political troll/bot invasion of Election 2016, 2020, and Elections-Yet-To-Come, buy my previous book. There’s the tiniest bit of technical stuff in there, but you’ll get it, I promise. My Twitter is @esaeger, my Mastodon is @esaeger@universeodon.com (I’m spending a lot more time there now), my BlueSky is @esaeger.bsky.social (ditto) and my cursed Facebook is eric.saeger.9 (I do visit it daily).
