Reoccuring Themes

The service industry is like highschool. Most readers of DW have either worked service industry, or at the very least you can relate some employment you've had to the highschool, gossip-based mentality. And within Ruby Tuesday's, I hear a lot. Maybe it's because of my position to the management, maybe because I'm a neutral entity there, not belonging to any clique or group, but whatever the reason, people tend to gossip a lot in my presence. So I hear all the dirt, all the running jokes; essentially, all the things said behind people's backs.

Except mine. But everytime I hear someone's rant about some other person, I can't help but wonder whether this is evident to that person. Do they know the type of things people say about them? Are they aware that they're known as the heroin addict, the slut, the inept manager, the hard body with nothing going on upstairs? I mean, that would transcend any accomplishments of self-awareness, reaching an other's-awareness, right? And so, in the back of my mind, everytime I listen to someone's loose tongue, I can't help but wonder what this same person (and others, too) say about me behind my back. What am I unaware of being known as? And, keeping with the highschool mentality theme, what would my superlatives be?

I know it's a cheezy activity, but chances are you've also been in some employment or group where everyone made up superlatives for everyone else. Given that I worked for Housing for four years, I got my fair share of such activities. I bring this up, mainly, because the ones made up about me always had a reoccuring theme; one that was brought to my attention again tonight. I was hanging out with a couple friends from philosophy, and we were going to head to the bar. In the course of the conversation en route, it came up that I used to play darts and, though not great, can hold my own. One of the guys turns to the other and says, "this just confirmes my hypothesis from earlier." Though I don't know I ever understood the connection he made, the previous hypothesis was that I lead a double-life. By day, a mild-mannered philosophy student, by night a secret opperative for some indecipherably abbreviated governmental institution. They even asked if I ever moonlighted as an assassin. I think this probably developed from an earlier conversation about M:I:III (which, for what it was, was a decent action flick). Anyways, this was very similar to several superlatives that have been given for me; something to the effect of "Most Likely to be a deep cover operative for the CIA."

Ok, so given, that's kind of cool. And I wouldn't mind if that's the only thing being said about me behind my back (albeit I live an increadibly boring life, but, as pointed out earlier, that's just what a deep cover agent would say). The point, though, is that I think I have a fairly stable personality. And, as we human animals have the habit of catagorizing everything in our lives, I sometimes wonder, especially when hearing the catagorizations other people make, what catagories I tend to fall into with people who know me. And yes, the good and the bad. So feel free to share with me, as I think I'd be fairly objective about the whole thing. Afterall, I've already mentioned my acceptence of the arrogant (mis)label, and after reading The Fountainhead (finished tonight), I could accept myself to be an egotist (in Rand's usage, though again, mistakenly deluted to the common notion of the term). But, yeah, it must makes me wonder what I'd know if I was other-aware.