Don't you know who I am?

Isn’t that a Spice Girls song? Or am I getting confused with “Who do you think you are?” Kind of opposite my intended meaning, however had I actually said my post title out loud, I’m sure the receiver would have been quoting the Spice Girls.




Every so often, not too much thankfully (because to say the above would mean I’m in a not-very-good-situation) but I’ve had the feeling of wanting to say something along the lines of that.



In particular in relation to my job, if I’ve felt I was going to get unwelcome, in particular unfair trouble/treatment for whatever reason, I’ve had the strongest inclination to say “Do you know where I work?”



It’s something that naturally comes with working where I work, at a particular ‘influential’ media company, with ‘influential’ media contacts, and lots of other people I work with, have both admitted to thinking/doing the same, and encouraging the same. If you have it, you gotta use it, true?



Although I’m not one to take advantage of, guilt people into, or blackmail others into certain ‘desirable’ outcomes for myself, like I said, only when I felt I was getting inappropriate treatment did this thought cross my mind. Never have I used it.



A couple of weeks ago, something happened, that rather than make me want to say “Do you know where I work?” made me want to say something that only the biggest nose-in-the-air stuck-up celebs would say. I was soooo close.



I’d made my hair cut appointment over a month before the busy/crazy festive month. I’m never this early or organised with my hair, only just getting in before Christmas each year, but this time I was there at the hairdressers for a hair cut in October, and I thought “why not? I’ll be organised.”



So I made it.



Then something/someone broke my windscreen. I don’t know who/what it was, whether it was intentional or not, but one morning I got into my car, and there was a crack in the top right, and it proceeded to get longer and extend to the middle of the window over the next couple of days.



I initially freaked out. I thought the windscreen would shatter and cave in on me at any point in my driving. I was yet to find out that I could drive like that for 3 years (not that I wanted to), and in my freaked out state I had to IMMEDIATELY get it fixed.



The only day the guy could fix it, was a day I felt I already had an appointment. But I made the windscreen appointment anyway.



I called up my hairdresser’s, hoping whoever answered wouldn’t tell me what I already suspected. Yes I’d made the appointment so many months earlier, only I hadn’t been organised enough to write down the date. When I found out that the time of the hair cut coincided with the windscreen getting fixed, well I felt I had to cancel my hair cut appointment – I felt it was a matter of safety.



A bit disappointed, I informed the girl that I had to cancel, and asked her what other times I could see my usual hairdresser.



No times. Not that week or the one other.



I took a deep breath, and asked about getting my hair cut by the owner. He’s cut my hair a few times, and he actually knows me really well. I’ve been going there for so long, and he’s always really polite and friendly to me, and treats me almost like we’re friends. On several occasions he’s even bent over backwards to get me in, because I’m such a loyal customer.



No free times for him either. Not that week or the one other.



And then they were on leave ‘til end of Jan. END OF ‘JAN.



I was quite upset, and mad, but asked to get my name and number down so they could call me if there was a cancellation. Surely there’d be a cancellation.



In the meantime, the windscreen man cancelled on me, 10 minutes late into the time he was meant to come and fix it. I told him not to worry about coming another time, and then screamed the house down when I hung up. I was having a bad week.



At about the same time I got a voicemail message from the hairdresser owner, telling me someone had cancelled. I was really excited calling back, until I realised the date he’d given was actually a date I was already booked with something else. I wasn’t going to cancel my work Christmas party for a haircut, no matter how much my split ends needed to be removed.



I asked to speak to him – it was the same girl who told me there were no bookings available the first time around – and when she asked why, I explained he’d left a message for me. She returned in less than 10 seconds, informing me he’d made a mistake and hadn’t seen the message that I actually couldn’t come in on the day he suggested. I knew that, I just wanted to talk to him and get him to help me! I knew, I felt, that if he actually spoke to me, HE would squeeze me in, because HE knew how important I was. “Do you know who I am? How long I’ve been going there?” I wanted to scream into the phone. But I didn’t scream it. I tried to remain calm.



I was soooo mad. I devised a plan to ‘swing by’ the salon after work the following week, even if they hadn’t called me, just so I could see him ‘in person’ and make a ‘booking’ for the following YEAR.



When I came in, perhaps right near their closing time, I found:

Owner

Woman with child (child appeared to be getting hair cut), &

Said women from phone with her hair in foils.



AHEM. IN FOILS.



So it appeared that two people were working, and only one was paying. They couldn’t fucking get me in, a loyal customer, for a simple haircut, but they could put foils in the hair of a non-paying employee. I was soooo shitty.



Owner seemed to be aware they’d been trying to get me in though. That’s what I found surprising. He asked when I was coming in next, and I said with some bite ‘next year.’ I couldn’t follow through though, and still said a nice goodbye and ‘Merry Christmas’ – but really thinking of the scenario there over and over, I felt they could have treated me better, and at least tried. Considering it was their last week of Christmas trading hours, they didn’t look busy AT ALL.



Maybe owner didn’t know I had previously booked, and had to cancel due to what I temporarily though was a safety emergency – I certainly didn’t tell the girl, but she knew I’d booked months earlier, I told her that much.



Maybe I should have asked to speak to said owner from the start, in order to avoid all these ‘what if’s’ and urgencies to scream “Do you know who I am?” through the phone receiver. Maybe he would have helped me out more. She doesn’t know who I am, after all.



However, it didn’t appear I was anyone, from the moderate, average treatment I got when I walked into the salon unexpectedly that day… from the lack of treatment I received.



I’m booked in with him in late Jan. On the first day they come back. Gosh I hope he comments on my split ends. I intend on making him feel soooooo guilty.



Because clearly he’s forgotten who I am.

Can anything derived from ones own creative mind ever be truly Original?

I'm pondering this thought, following from my recent surfing of the web site TV Tropes. A couple of posts ago I mentioned my discovery of this site, and I guess one way of describing what tropes are, are not to say they are cliches or stereotypes, but familiar conventions found across various forms of media. Whether it is the archetypal stairs found in living rooms of American sitcoms (see my previous post!), or the convention of certain heroine or evil personality traits you'd find in movies ( a really basic example I know ) they are traits that pop up regularly over time and tend to endure, becoming re-born and remastered to enter into the current popular culture more easily. It appears in a variety of media outlets in various contexts, therefore becoming a media trait, a "trope."
There that's my uni essay explanantion.
I was checking out a few different sections, reading about tropes and trying to think of any I may have noticed in movies and TV.
And I'm starting to really think that in this day and age, with the multitude of current film and literature, coupled with the amount already present in our history, for the aspiring writer or film-maker, game creator and tv producer, there can really be no original idea or thought. Every idea is derived from somewhere, every convention already exists, and although your idea may have a different name to it, and your characters may be called Sue and Trent as opposed to Mary and Ken, the story will most likely fundamentally be the same.
Even if we believe to have a truly original idea, our thought patterns, and novel creative inspirations are most likely to have derived from something in our distant memeory, from something we've read, or seen, or even experienced. No matter what convention one may use in his/her literary work, undoubtedly it will already be present elsewhere, somewhere in a form of media text, in this great big wonderful world of ours. So much of our past forms our current and future experiences, so it would be impossible NOT to draw upon knowledge we've learnt or acquired in our past.
Something to think about next time you get an idea..... (!)