I have started a letter-writing campaign.

I’m not sure when it started. It could have been after a slightly fuzzy night at Politiki when the bartender accused me not once, not twice, but three times of leaving without paying. Following me out of the bar and onto the street where I stood with my friends, The Freak and four very large men trying to figure out if they would all fit into the back of my Wrangler with a box of books and a lamp, he shouted at me that I had left without paying. The first time, he was right. The second time, I told him where we left the cash. The third time, I went in to show him.

It was all a little confusing. I walked in with a group of girls and left with a group of boys. Somewhere in the middle, the wires and possibly the tabs got crossed. The bar closed and the bartender did not serve up the tab. Mike, one of the big guys, bellied up to the bar, paid a tab and we all walked out to the sidewalk and the aforementioned dilemma with boys, books and lamp. I was embarrassed the first time, realizing that I had truly left without paying, annoyed the second and downright angry the third.

At some point, the boys realized that they would not, could not fit into the back of my Jeep and they piled into the back of a cab. Cartoon puffs of steam billowed in the cold night as I stomped down the street, The Freak trailing behind me. Birds had started chirping by the time I dropped her off and I think that sunlight cracked the sky by the time I pulled into my own parking lot. I dragged my laptop out of the back of the car, leaving the books and lamp, and stomped into the house. I plugged in my computer and typed a letter I thought particularly scathing at 5:30 in the morning. A few days later, I revised a few sentences but found myself surprised to see that it still contained the caustic wit my sleepy mind had imagined. I patted myself on the back, closed the file and promptly forgot about both it and my anger.

Over the months, though, I’ve started writing more and more letters. They really cover a range of topics – from the lack of bread with my salad at a local restaurant (the salad is so not worth $7 alone) to the ineptitude of a reservation clerk at a hotel in New York (“I need to cancel my room… No, I realize that… Regardless, I’m not going to be there… I realize that… Okay. Can you just cancel the second night? … I realize that… I’m still not going to be there…” followed by a call to the corporate desk to make sure that I would only pay for the privilege of not spending one night in hell, versus the two I’d reserved). Most of the time, I don’t mail them. Occasionally, I do.

I don’t want to get anyone fired. I don’t want free things. (Though, I’m not going to turn them away if they show up at my door, looking for a free home.) I just want to be less angry, to feel less helpless. Culture, our parents, our own good intentions have made us victims of a society no longer desperate to please. The customer isn’t always right, as minimum-wage earners, fed up with their own deplorable lot in life, have made quite clear.

I cannot blame them. Their lives suck. Check out “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich or better yet, get a part-time job at a restaurant, a grocery store, or at an amusement park. For virtually no money at all, you, too, can experience the pleasure of screaming children and abusive parents (to whom you are not allowed to say anything), displaced anger, condescension, disrespect, appraising looks and complete disregard. I know this. I’ve held practically every job known to man from lifeguard/kitchen help at a summer camp (I think I cried for three months straight) to bookseller, from usher to dishwasher (I definitely cried for three months straight), housekeeper, engraver, cashier: all at minimum wage.

With these scars, er, memories fresh in my mind, I go out of my way to be nice to people, all people, and to remember that the girl behind the counter might be working to pay tuition or to support her children, her parents, her addiction to Prada. I realize that yelling at the poor girl because my bread’s gone missing won’t fix anything whereas a letter to a corporate office, an owner, a manager might affect a small degree of change. The trickle down theory of complaining.

Early last summer, I cut off my hair and donated it to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides “custom-fit hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children who suffer from medical-related hairloss,” or as I generally put it, they make wigs for kids with cancer.

My brother-in-law, a barber, chopped off two fourteen-inch ponytails in front of my gawking sister, nieces and nephew as well as a barbershop full of bewildered men. (“Hey, man. What’s wrong with her? Why’d that girl cut off all her hair?”) He chopped another two inches trying to straighten up my thick, shaggy mop of hair. He actually did a pretty good job, leaving me with a chin-length bob. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t quite get the back. The harder he tried to straighten it, the shorter my hair. I simply laughed and threw on a baseball cap, reveling in my new hair (or lack thereof).

On the way home, though, the uneven hair started bothering me. I decided to stop at some drive-thru hair cuttery where someone I’d never seen before, someone I’d never see again would comb and clip my hair. (Shampoo is extra.) I figured that it would be fine; I just needed to have my hair evened out a bit along the bottom, in the back. Twenty minutes later, I walked out in a daze. My cute little bob? Gone. Replaced by a flapping mushroom cloud of hair.

She layered my head. The evil girl in a purple smock layered my head. As I watched in speechless horror, she attacked my defenseless locks with a pair of scissors.

“You’re going to hate this,” she announced smartly as she snipped. “You just need more body.”
I sputtered, trying to stop her, willing my mouth to form words as I imagined myself in the recurring nightmare of my childhood, hunted by a purple cow in my house cum J.C. Penney’s, unable to move or speak. I wanted to tell her that my hair was too thick for short layers, that I’d just lost sixteen inches and couldn’t take any more, but I couldn’t. My mouth, my mind, my words failed me. I’d told her all this before she started, but apparently it didn’t matter to the burger flipper of the hair styling world.
She whipped off the smock and walked up to the counter at the front. I followed in a daze, pulling out my wallet with trembling hands.

“Oh, you think it’s too short, don’t you?” she asked glibly. I think she actually smirked.

“Twelve dollars.”

I passed her my credit card, signed the receipt and added a 25-percent tip. I muttered my thanks and stumbled out into the bright sunlight, into my car, home where I set about the business of weeping and gnashing of teeth. I tore at my hair, trying to make it longer. (“Put it back! Put it back!!!”) I pulled out every ball cap, cowboy hat, beret I owned and tried them in turn, vowing not to bare my head until the following summer. I drove to the whole foods market and invested in an industrial-sized bottle of vegetarian prenatal vitamins.

I felt so… violated. And I had thanked the evil woman. I not only thanked her, I gave her a tip. Cow. Purple cow.

I shuddered and picked up a pen.

-Kristin