Brave new jobs
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A woman who has to take a waitress at a hotel serving the political and financial elite finds many of the guests obnoxious:
Like people who speak extra loudly around the blind, the privileged communicated with me as if I had the I.Q. of a canapé. Once when I used the word "synonym" in conversation with a guest, he and everyone else in the party broke out laughing. "My God, she just used a word with three syllables," his wife said.
On another night I approached a table in the dining room.
"Are you the Epsilon who's going to serve us tonight?" asked one of the men at the table.
He was making a reference to the classic novel "Brave New World," by Aldous Huxley, in which a future society is divided into strict castes according to intelligence and capabilities. The names of the castes, from the top down, are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and at the absolute bottom, Epsilon, the semi-morons. He didn't think I would understand his reference, and exchanged amused glances with a friend, enjoying his joke.
"No, actually I'm an Alpha in disguise," I told him. "I'll be happy to take your order, however."
This is not what I would've said. It's not nearly spiteful enough. Perhaps something like:
"Yes, sir. And you? A Beta? Beta-plus, perhaps?"
That would enrage the presumed Alpha plus.