Commodity People

From Jedd Medefind:

[T]he people there weren't so much potential friends as potential commodities, each hoping to rise in some unknown way through the rub of others. Sure enough, when the people around the man discovered he was a reporter for an influential newspaper, they fawned over him. This irritated the man. He went upstairs, where someone again chanted the Washington mantra, "What do you do?""I'm a garbage man," he said."Oh, you own a garbage company.""No, I pick up garbage."A labored silence followed. "Yeah, and you know what bugs me — people who put wet grass clippings in plastic garbage bags. You know how heavy that is? Why don't people think?" The man rambled on and on, knowing that his squirming audience was trapped as long as he talked. When he finally stopped nobody said a word. Heads turned and soon he was alone.

Walt Harrington, "Prisoners of Overachievement," The Washington Post Magazine, (November 13, 1998)