The Luv Doc: Middle-Aged, Caucasian, and Cranky

Dear Luv Doc,

I had to go to the post office on Wednesday. My post office is always very busy and seemingly understaffed. The workers there try their best, but they are on their feet all day, so they go about their work at a measured pace. There is always a line and for the most part, people are patient and understanding, but on Wednesday, there was a middle-aged man in “patriotic wear” standing behind me in line who kept making overly dramatic, exasperated noises each time he felt someone in line in front of us was taking too long. When I finally got to the counter, this man decided to lean against the counter next to me as if to intimidate me and the postal employee into hastening our transaction. As I expected, the postal employee went about her business at her usual pace which elicited another round of exasperated exhalations from the man, who by now was really starting to encroach on my personal space, so the postal worker very politely asked him to please back away from the counter until it was his turn. This sent the man into a temper tantrum. He accused the postal worker of being slow and lazy. I finally had enough so I asked him, “Have you ever worked in a post office?” He spat back, “No, I have a job where I’m actually expected to work,” to which I replied, “Just not today I suppose?” He then said I was lucky I was a woman or he would “slap that sass right out of my mouth” and stormed out, presumably to mistreat some other postal employee. My question to you is: Why do certain men think their needs are more important than everyone else’s – to the extent that they get angry when other people’s needs are put first? These men always seem to be “of a type,” but I am not exactly sure what that type is, other than middle-aged, Caucasian, and cranky. This isn’t just a Texas thing, either. I’ve seen it in other places too. What happened to men with manners and civility? Are those traits now unpatriotic? – PO’d at the PO

CLEARLY you have NO IDEA how HARD it is to be a middle-aged white male in Texas. Imagine that man’s frustration having to take precious time off from his important WORK – perhaps masturbating bald eagles, stringing razor wire on the Rio Grande, or making deepfake Taylor Swift porn – whatever it is patriots are doing these days – so he could go to the post office to mail some ivermectin to his Discord incel buddy in Idaho. Imagine his consternation when he realizes he’s in a real post office and not some freakishly clean, fantasy FedEx office with chirpy, unctuous, overly subservient employees. That would ruin a patriot’s day every bit as much as Taylor Swift winning the Super Bowl. Question: How many times have you not been called “sir” this week? I’ll bet you it’s the same as that guy and he really believes he deserves it. After all, milking bald eagles for semen is surely a man’s job. You won’t see Taylor Swift masturbating bald eagles ... well ... unless it’s one of those AI porn deepfakes because with AI, pretty much anything goes. Its daddy didn’t raise it right.

And you’re correct, middle-aged white guys have it tough all over, not just in Texas. They’re always having to put the toilet seat down, remember to use plural pronouns, or allow for the possibility that someone else knows more than them about some useless, esoteric topic, indie band, or sportsball statistic. I ask you: When did middle-aged white males stop being the absolute authority on everything? If you can pinpoint that exact moment, maybe Michael J. Fox and the Nutty Professor can hop in their souped-up DeLorean and go back in time to set things straight. Otherwise, we’re left with the highly frustrating possibility that the last few thousand years of Caucasian male hegemony in the Western Hemisphere has been based on violence and oppression and not natural intellectual superiority. That can’t be right, can it? If it is, we should definitely keep it out of textbooks. We can just use the Bible instead. Jesus always favored white males – otherwise he wouldn’t have let them write his biography. You can surely imagine then, that given this guy’s enormous superiority complex, interacting with his inferiors would be highly frustrating. His delusion doesn’t excuse his behavior, however, so fuck him. You did the right thing. In the words of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “If you see something, say something.”