Why You're So Angry

It's one of the characteristics of modern life: people having noisy and sometimes violent meltdowns on planes, trains, and buses; in coffee shops and supermarkets; at government offices and Little League baseball games. Indeed, the Internet so bulges with videos of public tantrums, rants and rage-sparked outbursts of vandalism that it's difficult to remember that not all that long ago – well within my own lifetime, and I'm not old – such antics were exceedingly rare, and confined almost entirely to poor or working-class people, who had more to be angry about. Now, however, sudden and explosive anger seems to be universal, cutting across class lines. With my own eyes I have witnessed seemingly trivial incidents provoke the most volcanic eruptions of fury from men driving Lambos, from women in thousand-dollar shoes, and from middle-class kids who only moments before were saying “please” and “thank you” and exhibiting all the other verbal stigmata of the middle class. Spontaneous rage: it's not just for poor folks anymore.

God knows we live in troubled times – unusually troubled, I mean. Extremes of weather are now the norm everywhere. Political discourse has devolved to the intellectual and moral level of a junior high school shoving match. Oil, the edifice upon which all human civilization is built and which cannot be replaced by any other form of energy nor combination of energies, is now “past peak” and what's left is burning up with terrifying speed. Democracy, which only 20 years ago was on the march all over the planet, is now in shameful retreat everywhere. People are frightened, and if I may presume to paraphrase Yoda, fear leads to anger, and anger can lead to otherwise intelligent, civilized human beings into behaving very badly indeed. Still, I'm convinced it's not the shaky and ill-balanced state of the planet that has most people throwing fits. Nor do I entirely subscribe – partially, yes, but not entirely – to the idea that people have become less mature, less disciplined, less orderly than they used to be. Rather, I blame our collective behavior on a feeling of mounting frustration over the impersonal, incompetent, and indifferent way in which we are treated in our daily lives – not only by the government agencies with which we interact, but with the businesses we patronize and even the ones we work for.

When I was growing up, “customer service” was a term that had real meaning. Businesses, whether public or private, operated from a philosophy that “the customer is always right.” They strove at all times for that quality known as “the human touch.” Whether at a hotel or a hardware store, at an airport or a government office, a barber shop or a switchboard, you could be assured that you would be treated with either formal respect or friendly intimacy, depending on the circumstances. What's more, there was a certain level of accountability. If a service were poor, if a product was defective, if an employee had been rude or disrespectful or dishonest, satisfaction was obtainable, often very swiftly. Businesses did not, of course, do this out of the kindness of their hearts, but because they feared loss of revenue: the dreaded exclamation, “I'll take my business elsewhere!” was probably the focus of recurring nightmares to men and women in the complaint departments of various corporations and networks, because losing a customer meant that you might lose your job.

“The customer is always right,” as a philosophy, provided an important benefit to people in society. It gave them a feeling – probably a semi-illusion, but nevertheless an important and comforting semi-illusion – that they had power in their everyday lives. They might work low-paying dead-end jobs themselves, spend their lives dog-paddling in debt, and be hapless pawns to forces far greater than themselves, but damn it, they could get a fast refund when the toy they bought for their brat nephew broke coming out of the box. They could get a free night in a hotel if the concierge was rude, or a free meal if the service was slow. If the airline lost their luggage or the mail-order service lost the package or the postman kicked the dog, they could get satisfaction, or at least a simulacrum thereof. All it took was a phone call or a letter or a request to speak to the manager. This knowledge went a long way to keeping people's tempers in check, and to swiftly mollifying feelings of anger before they became outbursts of rage.

At some point about twenty or more years ago, however, all of this began to change. As more and more privately owned businesses were bought out (or wiped out) by corporations, the corporations began to discover that “customer service,” as it had previously been understood, was simply a drag on profits, and with it the long-standing philosophy of “customer rightness.” Changes in technology allowed them to begin the process of building firewalls between themselves and irate or unsatisfied consumers, the first of which was the replacement of telephone switchboards (where you could speak with a human who could direct you to another human) with automated switchboards (where you could speak with a robot who could direct you to another robot). Understaffing complaint departments, which leads to endless hours on hold, was another weapon in this new war waged against the patron. As time marched on and “globalization,” became what we refer to now unpoetically as “a thing,” corporations also discovered it was possible to hire foreign companies – in India, say – to handle customer service, thus placing a second firewall behind the first and further isolating the customer from the people who had wronged him. But the devolution did not stop there. It spread to all aspects of government, who began shunting complaints and even ordinary communication through automated websites as well as contractors and subcontractors. In each and every instance, the idea is the same: to prevent the customer from obtaining relief for their complaint, or, failing that, to make the process so tedious and unrewarding that he either drops the matter or, having seen it through to the end against all odds, decides never to complain again, because it's just not worth the time and misery involved.

One of the many victims of this very deliberate attack on the old philosophy was the idea of personal or company-wide accountability. A rude, disrespectful, lazy or incompetent employee had little to fear from an angry customer when protected by multiple lines of defense designed both to protect him and to keep him anonymous. And indeed, one of the many aspects of modern interaction with government and business is anonymity. It is possible for a government worker or a corporate drone to get away with all manner of infuriating mischief or stupidity when policy keeps their identity from being known to the customer. This in turn leads to a perception, which is in fact quite accurate, that the ordinary consumer has no recourse when insulted or wronged by an agent of a business or a governmental department. He must not only put up with the broken toy, the lost luggage, the fudged hotel reservation, the leaky washing machine or the cold soup, he is powerless to vent any of his quite reasonable ire on anyone responsible for the situation.

In our society, anger is frowned upon, considered unhealthy, and discouraged from being displayed openly. In fact, anger is a necessary and often positive human emotion – many of the great works of literature, the most important pieces of muckraking journalism, most of the advancements in human rights, innumerable works of art, and even some of the more beneficial wars were the product of righteous anger which demanded, and got, release. Injustice produces anger, and anger can produce satisfaction: it is only unhealthy when it is unreasonable or uncontrolled. We now live in a world, however, where anger has no point of healthy release, no way to escape harmlessly before it builds to the danger point. To raise one's voice when rudely treated in an airport or on an aeroplane can lead to a felony arrest. To express indignation over the way one has been treated by a government agency can mark one for retaliation. To raise hell with an insurance or credit card company over an error can lead to ugly shouting matches in which one not only fails to gain satisfaction, but leaves the situation angrier than before. Businesses and government have taken a hard line, to wit: “the customer is always wrong,” and they stick by that line like the Confederates stuck to their earthworks at Cold Harbor. Even in the rare case of an admission of fault, it's expected that the admission will be grudging and issued with ill grace. A fine example of this would be in a ticket I received by the Mountain Recreation and Conservation Authority for parking at a trail without a permit. In point of fact I had the permit, and had proof that I had purchased it, yet when they dismissed the ticket in my favor, they scribbled in the margin of the flimsy that the dismissal was a “one-time curtesy” (their spelling). The rightness of my counterclaim was therefore never acknowledged. They were doing me a favor, you see, by not forcing to pay $70 because of their mistake.

My private journals are littered with this sort of incident, documenting numerous incidents with various types of businesses and agencies over a period of many years. To give you some random examples from random years, I begin with a conversation which occurred in 2007, when trying to book a hotel room in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. I rang up the Courtyard Marriott, but was shunted to a booking service in India. The woman to whom I spoke had no knowledge of American geography or ZIP codes or anything else. We had a 30 minute conversation, of which I transcribed this part:

“I need to reserve a room.”
“When?”
“June 19 – 24.”
“What day?”
“The 19th. Through the 24th.”
“And your zip code?”
“17401.”
“York, Pennsylvania?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s the 19th?”
“Through the 24th.”
“And your zip code again? One-seven….?”
“Four-zero-one.”
“Four-zero….?”
“Four-zero-one.”
“One-seven….?”
“Four-zero-one.”
“And that’s the 19th….”
“Through the 24th.”
“And your street address?”
“Eleven North Beaver Street, Apartment –”
“Hold on, hold on. Eleven North….Beaver?”
“Like the creature.”
“Beaver Street….”
“Apartment 205.”
“Apartment?”
“Two zero five.”
“Two zero five?”
“Yes.”
“Eleven North Beaver Street Apartment Two Zero Five?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s one-seven….”
“One seven four zero one.”
“One seven four zero one?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s York, PA?”

Needless to say I became increasingly angry as this nonsense continued. By the time we had finished I had to call the hotel back again and ask the desk clerk why the fuck she couldn't have handled the reservation herself instead of shunting me to India. She coldly explained it was “policy” and hung up on me. Doubtless she resented my anger at her – she did not, after all, create policy – but the incident is noteworthy because a simple task, fundamental to the existence of a hotel – booking rooms! – became an unendurable torment which left everyone involved furious.

Government agencies are no better. When working as an investigator in the mid-2000s, I used to have to obtain Offense Tracking Numbers as part of my job. The following type of conversation was a daily, sometimes an hourly, occurrence:

ME TO CLERK OF COURTS: I need the disposition on this case.
CLERK-DRONE: What is the OTN number?
ME: I don’t have one.
CLERK-DRONE: I need an OTN.
ME: Where can I get it?
CLERK-DRONE: Try the website.
ME: The website requires an OTN.
CLERK-DRONE: Try the DA.

(calls DA)

ME TO DA: I need the disposition on this case.
DA-DRONE: What is the OTN number?
ME: I don’t have one.
DA-DRONE: I need an OTN. Try the Clerk.
ME: The Clerk said to try you.
DA-DRONE: We can’t give out that information.
ME: But it’s public record.
DA-DRONE: We can’t give out that information.
ME: Where can I get it then?
DA-DRONE: Try the website.

Complaints never availed me anything, and usually caused bridges to be burned – employees remember people who try to hold them accountable for indifference service. Thus I was forced to keep a lid on my temper, which only made me angrier still. It is one thing, however, to be indifferent and apathetic to a customer or member of the tax-paying public: it is quite another to be hostile almost to the point of provoking violence, and doing so deliberately. On two occasions, one in 2000, one in 2017, I was treated so badly at airports that still cannot believe the incidents actually occurred. In the former, my mother and I were racing to a small jet taking us to my brother's wedding, and needed information about the gate since it had been changed without our knowledge. The man behind the desk was on the phone, and barked, “I'm busy.” When I tried to explain we needed the information now or we'd miss a wedding, he looked at me and said, “Did you not hear what I said? Are you deaf? I'm busy.” Only the knowledge that smashing in his face would certainly cause me to miss my only brother's nuptials saved that man from permanent damage. In the latter incident, the following conversation occurred, at what was laughably referred to as United's “Help Desk.”

WOMAN: You can't have two carry-on items. You have to check that laptop.
ME: The laptop was in my checked luggage. They made me remove it back there. That's why I have it now.
WOMAN: Well, they shouldn't have done that but you can't take it on the plane. It has to be checked.
ME: Well, I can't go back, can I?
WOMAN: Not my problem.
ME: I guess it is since I can't go back.
WOMAN: (laughs) Then I guess we just won't let you on the plane.
ME: (staring)
WOMAN: (laughs again) We won't let you on the plane, understand?
ME: What am I supposed to do? Leave it here?
WOMAN: You can check it with us but that'll be $25.
ME: What! It WAS checked. They made me take it out. Why should I pay for your mistake?
WOMAN: Not my problem.

It's impossible to communicate in sober prose the deliberate, nasty smugness of the woman in question, or the furious anger I experienced while staring into her pudgy, oily, smarmily-smiling face. It was the type of anger that is only a hair's-breadth from exploding into either a screaming fit or fisticuffs...and it is the type of anger that occurs only when one feels one has been punished for someone else's mistake and then deliberately insulted in the bargain. One final example, from 2003, is telling because it occurred not when dealing with a faceless bureaucracy or a heartless corporation, but at a restaurant down the street from my apartment. I ate breakfast – total $9 – and when the waitress came handed her the only money I had, a $20. Many minutes passed and she never reappeared with my change. At last I flagged down the manager.

ME: Can you get the waitress?
HIM: She went home.
ME: What do you mean, she went home?
HIM: She left.
ME: But she has my money.
HIM: She must have thought it was her tip.
ME: Her tip? Eleven dollars? My bill was $9! Why would she assume I was tipping her 120%?
HIM: (walking away) Next time you see her tell her you want it back.

Individually, none of these incidents or the dozens or hundreds of others I could recount may seem like big or even mid-sized potatoes, but together they have a cumulative weight. In each and every instance the underlying message is that we, the individual consumers/taxpayers, have neither a right nor an expectation to be treated decently; nor do we have any reasonable avenue, recourse or means by which we might complain or obtain a redress of your grievance. And if we dare express anger or frustration, the furthest implication is that you will be punished further for doing so. Had I “made a scene” at the restaurant, I've no doubt the manager would simply have called the police, in which case I'd have been out not only my money, but possibly my freedom as well.

I chose the words “redress of grievance” specifically, because it was acknowledged by our forefathers that such redress was a fundamental right of all free people. To deny the petition is not merely to deny freedom, but in a greater sense to deny a person's humanity. And this in fact is a fundamental condition of being unfree, i.e. a slave – to feel powerless, impotent, robbed of dignity, and to have no outlet for one's legitimate complaints. And this is the world in which we presently live. Whether dealing with the IRS or the Unemployment Office, the local police or some petty city official, a corporation or a small business, the result is generally the same: knuckle under, and lose one's dignity, or fight back, and bring down further inconvenience and humiliation upon oneself.

There is no longer any question that freedom is under attack everywhere in the world, and perhaps nowhere more ferociously than in the West, where most modern democratic ideals originated. But the means by which our freedom is taken away from us vary enormously and do not always present in the obvious ways -- troops in the streets, thugs at polling stations, imprisonment and execution of dissidents, attacks on journalists and journalism. There are far more subtle weapons, and one of them is to first blunt and ultimately smash the idea that it is possible for the ordinary Joe -- or Jane -- to complain about unjust treatment with some expectation of receiving a fair hearing and a measure of compensation. To lower our expectations, rob us of our sense of power, demoralize us so that we accept the stick rather than demand the carrot. To make us feel as if our God-given inalienable rights are actually just privileges which may be revoked or curtailed at the whim of our masters. In short, to keep us in a perpetual state of impotent anger, and never mind the psychological results.

During the First World War, British army psychologists discovered that one of the principal causes of "shell shock" was not war itself -- not the fear, discomfort, and pain -- but rather the one-way nature of military discipline itself. Men at the front were led by officers who in many cases were either criminally negligent, grossly incompetent or psychopathically callous, yet the iron discipline of the British army prevented them from expressing their anger. They simply had to take it -- week after week, month after month, year after bloody year, without letting on that they thought their superiors were bloody fools. It was this, more than the shells, machine gun fire and poison gas that caused so many men to crack. Fury, especially righteous fury, is not an emotion that can be bottled up long without consequences.

It follows that there are many paths to anger. Frustration is probably among the shortest, and frustration is generally caused by unmet expectations. Some frustration – my inability to go back in time and have sex with the 1969 version of Kim Novak, for example – is not legitimate, but most of the frustration I see around me today, and which I experience myself, is caused by a sort of ancestral memory of times when it was possible to be treated poorly or inadequately by a business or an agency, to express one's dissatisfaction about it, and to obtain either redress or a rough approximation of same, without being subjected to abuse or ridicule or a process so deliberately tiresome as to discourage future complaint. It is chic today to say “dissent is patriotic,” but the fact of the matter is that dissent in the face of injustice, even so petty an injustice as rude treatment at a coffee shop, is also patriotism, not to one's country only, but to one's entire race...the human race.