Trump’s “Sacrifices”

I’ve met Trump before. Well, not literally, but I’ve met the type.

When I was a young man, I took customer service supervisor calls for an online retailer. I regularly got calls from angry customers when there were problems with the delivery of their packages.

I specifically remember one customer. His package had been damaged in shipping (it was a birthday gift for his daughter, but her birthday was over a week away), so he called into our company and immediately proceeded to curse the representative who answered the phone. Within a few minutes, he was transferred to me.

I apologized to him (just as the rep had) and told him I would immediately ship his package back out. I explained that I would send the package with overnight shipping, so it was guaranteed to arrive several days before his daughter’s birthday.

That wasn’t good enough. He tore into me like I had murdered his family.

“You people are morons.”

“This is unacceptable!”

“I’ll never order from you again!”

“Are you a bunch of trained monkeys?”

This customer was a doctor and was probably in his late 40s, early 50s. It always bothered me more when someone who was old enough to know better acted so abusive.

Well, that’s when he said something I’ll never forget.

“This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me!”

This was during the time when my wife’s mother had passed away, so we were in the process of dealing with her loss.

I immediately hit the “mute” button, so he couldn’t hear me, and said, “Give me your life! Give me a life where a late package is the worst thing that has ever happened to you!”

Now… years later… as I hear Trump say that “creating thousands of jobs” (that also happened to make him millions of dollars) is a “sacrifice” that’s comparable to losing your child to a war, it occurs to me…

Trump is that customer.

Trump is the man who calls in to a call center and abuses customer service reps (who make little more than minimum wage) because he has to wait one extra day for his package. Trump is the man who describes that minor inconvenience as “the worst thing that ever happened to me!”

So yeah. I know Trump. I’ve met him many times. Sure, he had a different name and a different background, but it’s the same basic guy.

And this is the guy Americans are considering for the presidency of the United States of America.

This terrifies me.