The Invisible Folk

Picture yourself at a restaurant with friends. The waitress (okay, the “server,” if you insist) comes over, pen and pad in hand.

“Hi there! Welcome to [insert restaurant name]. My name is Amber, and I’ll be taking care of you this evening. Can I get you guys started with something to drink?”

You and your friends order beverages and an appetizer. As you are browsing the menu to decide on an entree, you realize you have questions. You look around and see a few servers bustling about. Is that one over there your waitress? What was her name? She just announced it a minute or two ago. Not only can you not remember her name, you’re not sure of what she looks like.

I bet you’ve done this. I know I have.Servers are part of what I call the invisible people — people we can look at without seeing. People we can forget seconds after meeting.

It’s not just the waitstaff at restaurants that are subject to this social erasure. When I was fresh out of Berklee College of Music, having dropped out to pursue a ministerial calling, I got by on whatever work I could find. My first job was temping for Manpower. I was a janitor in a downtown office building. As I went about my duties, such as emptying trash receptacles in occupied offices, I could feel people’s eyes slide right past me without really seeing. I knew nine out of ten people I met while working could not have picked me out of a lineup ten minutes later. I had gone from training for a life onstage to becoming one of the invisible folk.

In Fighting Back, my first novel, the main character takes advantage of the tendency most of us have to overlook people with menial jobs. As an enemy approaches, Eddie commandeers a mop and bucket he finds standing near a janitor’s closet. The bad guy comes around the corner. “Oh — excuse me sir.” Eddie mumbled the words mostly to the floor, barely looking up at the man as he passed. He hoped that Loudmouth would not really register his presence; that the mop and bucket would grant him a menial laborer’s standard cloak of invisibility.

After high school, I worked summers at a commercial bread bakery. The janitor at this bakery was known for arriving at work each day wearing a three-piece suit. Like those of us on the production floor, he’d change into his work uniform in the locker room before his shift started. But commuting to and from work, he was always dressed like he was interviewing to be the next CFO. Seeing him arrive at the employee entrance, few people would have guessed he was the janitor. I don’t know why he got so dressed up to go to his job sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms. Maybe because he felt a little less invisible dressed that way. Maybe wearing clothes that didn’t shout “janitor” would keep people from jumping to conclusions about his intelligence or abilities.

The only thing worse than being an invisible member of the working class is being seen and assumed to be less intelligent, less capable than others. My paternal grandfather, born in 1892, had no formal schooling past the third grade. Yet I inherited a collection of great books from him, including the Federalist Papers, and famous works by Adam Smith, Machiavelli, Freud, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill. My point is not merely that he owned such books. Rather, I point out that he could read them, and discuss them intelligently, despite never finishing elementary school. As much value as our culture places on a college education, it will come as a surprise to many that a college degree is not a proxy for intelligence, or drive, or even education itself.

Which brings me to one of my writing decisions: I like to feature working-class characters who are smarter than people assume they will be. My character Eddie was a used car salesman. The main antagonist in Kindred Spirits works in the trades. He may be from the lunch bucket class, but people underestimate his brain power at their own peril. A few readers of early drafts of both books have suggested that my blue-collar characters seemed a little too articulate, a little too well-read. I wish these readers could have known my grandfather. As a common laborer, he might have been invisible to them at first. But he would not have stayed that way.

Here’s to seeing the invisible.