He has seen Important People at the elevators, he has listened to Important People talk Important Things while waiting in line for coffee beverages.

The City Employee With The Weird Grin sees himself as an elite. Sure, he just has a mid-level job with the City, but he is in the Clubhouse. He has seen Important People at the elevators, he has listened to Important People talk Important Things while waiting in line for coffee beverages. They might have nodded at him once or twice.

I have used in reference to him the phrase Cut-and-Paste Nation, and he is Cut-and-Paste smart. He has read about that thing you are talking about, he will send you a link. He might not know much about that other thing you are talking about, but he has memes about it on his phone, so he gets the gist.

I would think that he would be frequenting a bar with more status, one Downtown instead of on the Ave, one more in line with his self-regard. Of course, maybe he has tried that already, and found that the Important People that talk Important Things have no need to talk to him. This is just a guess.

So he positions himself as an elite at a bar that really has no use for elites. Sometimes I actually feel a little empathy for him -- it is tough when your life doesn't match up with what you thought you would have -- but he will inevitably soon say something in that pedantic condescending tone, and play up the Weird Grin. And then the empathy stops.

I think a lot of regulars at the bar feel it when your life doesn't match up with what you thought you would have. But they have a sense of humor about it. Or made peace with it. Most of them, anyway.

At the bar once in a while is a former athlete who made it to the college team, but stalled out without making the Pros. It is obvious that this still haunts him. When you consider yourself an elite you can always blame other people for not understanding your genius. As an athlete, you pretty much have to accept that you were just not good enough.

File under Lessons The Elite Will Never Learn.


- james james

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