Trip report: fight in Internet cafe

[luckyjimm]

[ QUOTE ]
jimm - do the lawyers socialize much with the secretaries? Do you feel they look down on them much?

[/ QUOTE ]


No - never, ever.

Yes, a lot.

I spent six months there as a temp secretary, then came back two months later to work in the word processing department. I am a complete anomaly, having pretty much the education of the lawyers (though I'm from a more middle-class background) but, seemingly, so little ambition I'm happy to do a school leaver's job. So they don't know what to make of me.

The other day in the street outside, I walked past one of the guys I used to work for. Out of politeness I nodded hello, and while doing so, as you do, looked him in the eye. He didn't nod back, didn't smile, didn't alter his expression a fraction. He just carried on walking like I wasn't there. He was one of four lawyers I worked for and he never gave me any work to do, he was self-sufficient - for which I was grateful - but WOW at being cut dead like that. While I worked for him we were both smokers, and we'd see each other several times a day in the courtyard where the smokers were, but when he saw me there he'd always walk ten metres further down. Sometimes we found ourselves walking back at the same time and went up together in the lift in silence!

Since I work an afternoon/evening shift there now, I eat my evening meal there. A lot of the lawyers will be in the canteen when I go in around 7.30pm, guys I used to work for. But I'd never dream of sitting with them - I'm just not interested in them. I'd rather wolf down my food and read the paper, than try hard to find some common ground with this alien species.

I also don't feel comfortable taking orders from young guys, guys younger than me. It makes me aware of my complete lack of status.

Ah, [censored] it - it's about personalities. I worked for the head of department, an equity partner who gets paid £1 million+ a year. When I left, she took me for lunch to a little Italian place I'd told her was good, and she said to me "So what happened?" - as in, what was a guy like me - she was very astute at judging people by appearances - doing in a job like that? She told me I was too good to be a secretary at that firm, and implored me to get a proper career path. Even though she is super-busy, she is very sharp, shrewd, and observant. I felt very flattered, even if I wasn't able to take her advice.

Some of the other lawyers were also very friendly, once I got them talking. I sat amongst them at a couple of firm social lunches and we talked the whole way through. But I think they are people who have spent their whole lives in institutions with rigid hierarchies - a lot of them are ex-army, too - and they like using their perceived status to snub those "beneath" them.

There's an inverse snobbery, too, of course. You can be sure the mailroom guys look down on the lawyers. And the secretaries look down on the junior lawyers, who for just twice their salary work three times the hours.

[JokersAttack]

Did this guy turn up to sort things out?

[FlyWf]

[ QUOTE ]
rofl if you think class snobbery is exclusively confined to England. You are very short-sighted if you don't see these things going on in America (though admittedly probably not as bad as in England). One similar area where Americans are much, much worse imo is when it comes to people of different financial situations than them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Class snobbery is hilarious whereever it's found, imo.

But I changed my mind, the best part of the whole thread is jimm's "I have a gambling problem" 62 GBP deposit.

[luckyjimm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
rofl if you think class snobbery is exclusively confined to England. You are very short-sighted if you don't see these things going on in America (though admittedly probably not as bad as in England). One similar area where Americans are much, much worse imo is when it comes to people of different financial situations than them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Class snobbery is hilarious whereever it's found, imo.

But I changed my mind, the best part of the whole thread is jimm's "I have a gambling problem" 62 GBP deposit.

[/ QUOTE ]


Oh really, why? I worked out how much cash I needed until a £520 withdrawal comes through tomorrow (and I get paid the day after), got out slightly more, then deposited the rest.

[FlyWf]

No need to get defensive, 2p2 celebrates degeneracy in all it's forms.

But 62 exactly. 100% of your disposable income? Not healthy.

[DLizzle]

[ QUOTE ]

Effete mannerisms like class snobbery are a big reason why English people seem gay. It's either that or the buggery.

[/ QUOTE ]

hmmmmmm.


fwiw i am from North America

[DrVanNostrin]

Nice TR. It would be better if you somehow included British accents or at least a British saying or two. I look forward to the audio version of this.

[Golden_Rhino]

This is what I thought when I read the title

[GTL]

most people stereotype and judge based on race and class, they just aren't open about it like the English.

[Taso]

[ QUOTE ]
I had a perfect session last night playing from 10.30pm to 3.30am at the 24 hour Internet cafe. I deposited £62 and withdrew £392 for a win of £330. I didn't play higher than $0.50/$1, either.
When I walked in, the poker player I'd talked to the previous night was asleep in the corner. When I spoke to him later, he told me he'd been there two days. He was waiting, he said, for a tournament. And for Godot, I suppose.

I sat at the back, and noticed the man sitting in the corner next to me was watching porn films. Another man was looking at escort websites; someone else was on Gaydar.

Around 2am a stout, cheaply dressed, gel-haired young Englishman with a cheap sports bag started shouting at the middle-aged lank-haired semi-destitute Pole sitting next to him, telling him not to look at his screen. He was pushing, shoving, and yelling in a high-pitched, chippy, common voice. He asked the Pole to come outside to fight, then pushed his chair so he fell over hard onto his back.

The young Turkish man from the front desk came over and stood between them, and tried to escort the English thug out of the door but he refused to leave, demanding a refund. He said "Go on, call Old Bill if you want", and I guessed he was and would continue to be no stranger to the inside of a police cell. I walked over to watch and so did all the other guys, forming a scrum at the front of the store.

The Polish man was hiding behind the counter, protected by the store owners from the English thug. I missed what happened for a fraction of a second. Suddenly the English man was curled up on the floor and the Turkish man, no doubt being from the fighting class himself, had lifted a large metal stool above his head and was about to bring it down onto the thug's thick head. I felt my heart race and desperately wanted him to do it, but his colleague held him back. The English thug got up, and I saw the bridge of his nose was bleeding. He said he was going to call the police. The Turkish man had by now reached behind the counter for a three-foot long steel pole, and was wielding it as if he meant business. He called the Englishman a "little dick" and invited him to come and have a fight. Golly, what fun!

The English thug finally was convinced to go outside, and he paced outside shouting, telling us "You've got weapons? I've got weapons too" - though I guessed his cheap sports bag contained nothing more than packed lunch and P.E. kit - and said he would be waiting for the Turk when his shift finished. I found myself telling the thug to get lost, and that he started it. Someone else observed there were thirty witnesses who'd speak against him. Finally we saw him get on a bus.

Fifteen minutes later two policewomen arrived, called by the thug or the store-owner I'm not sure. As the ladies walked to the back of the store, the man in the corner unplugged his headphones and we heard a loud UH - UH - OH - YES - YES from the porn film he was watching; the place erupted in laughter. The policewomen interviewed the Pole, but since the thug had gone there wasn't much they could do.

An amusing night!

[/ QUOTE ]

Was this internet cafe in the United Nations or something? Poles, Turks, Englishmen, my word.