Xfinity Connect

Xfinity Connect

Late morning on a rainy 50 degree election day here in Central Illinois I spent some hours at the Xfinity store. My phone was refusing to do all I asked and had to be replaced to accommodate.

The manager sitting at a desk in the corner by the door greeted customers cursorily as we entered signalling one of his employees to sign us in. He was a once-blond man  now going-to-seed who was constantly at work on a computer. The employees, a team of young people of many colors, were all dressed in dark blue, the men slimmer than the women whose big thighs filled their denim leggings. I found them all appealing, and mentally thanked the manager for his pluralistic hiring. 

We, the customers, were older white farm people who came in couples, young mothers of color with a young child or two, pairs of young Asian men, me - a  thinwhite woman in olive sweats and leather dingos, curious-eyed,  messy-haired, saggy-necked. 

Some of us were waiting for help with purchase or problems but others came in and out. Mostly alone these were individuals coming in to pay their bills in person. Why? No computers for online banking? No income big enough with which to assume all bills could be paid automatically at the same time every month?

I watched a group of hispanic men ranging in age from 30-50  come in behind a handsome boy of 15 who served  as their translator. 

The farm couples were especially interesting. They varied in who was the spokesmen, sometimes the women, sometimes the men, they appeared long-married, together managing the ever-changing technologies of cell phone and credit payment. 

A big, tough, apple-shaped white woman in her seventies (like me) came in with an air of truculence. She wore mustard-colored leggings, and rubber thongs on her bare feet. She announced her unhappiness about the long wait she always endured when she came in for help with her expensive phone. 

My assigned helper was a cappuccino-colored young woman with flawless complexion who vacillated from warm to wary as I made jokes. She studied my lizard-belly-colored face and almost laughed. She counseled me to buy charging cords from Amazon, and seemed to like it when I said I wouldn’t. She said she didn’t like Bezos either. Learning I was a photographer, she said she understood that I didn’t mean the kind that earned money. She said she gave her photos away too. 

I felt her swing between big-don’t- mess-with-me black-woman-in-the-making and something more willingly, less-defensively, interactive. She said she too was no friend of Trump’s. But did not say she voted for Kamala. Though it didn’t matter as we are in blue Illinois, albeit south of Chicago, where country folk in sundown towns are snarlingly Trump. 

After selling me the phone, case and chargers we agreed I needed, she fed me off to a scruffy young white man who spoke like a black man who deftly handled the uploading of my cloud data. He said they were not allowed to have the televisions — there were two big-screens on to entertain us while we waited our turns—on the election results coming in across the country. My helper was playful with his team mates. The boss man seemed to stay aloof but tolerant of their interactions. 

One of the white farm women was especially sweet with the children. She had the staff turn on cartoons. She settled into the waiting with them. Another asked the manager if she could “do her steps” and given the nod, began walking around the edges of the waiting area, occasionally winding in between our benches. She was open to my idea of walking backwards being good for old people like us. I stopped myself from conga-lining behind her, mostly because I wasn’t waiting, the young man was working on my issues, and I felt obliged to pay witness. 

When I left I couldn’t get the new phone to connect to the new Mazda I’ve had for a few months so I went back in. My young man said to drive the car up and he’d help me. I did and he did. I’d tried to connect to the phone I’d just disconnected instead of the new phone that looks just like it. He sorted it out. I was grateful.

The problems continued back home as I dealt with the aggravatingly updated systems while listening to the election come to ground in the hostile libertarian bedrock Trump leads so deftly. People like him, victims of intergenerational cruelty, trash-talking and mean, belying  the humorous tolerance of the Xfinity store, were winning the day.

I went back the day after the election because I couldn’t get the phone to connect to Facebook where I desperately wanted to post my election reactions,  My young man greeted me warmly. 

Beset by a senior moment I asked and he directed me to the restrooms. 

A sign said “Unisex  customers only.” 

Did that mean I couldn’t use them if I were bi?

I guess we wait to see.

And while we do 

We continue to imagine a world in which such concerns were …?

Unconcerning

?