On outward appearances

The things you don't see

I don’t shop.

Well, allow me to clarify… I don’t shop in shops. I very much prefer to have a steady stream of boxes showing up at my front door. Keeps me away from the hectic parking lots and lineups.

But sometimes you gotta attend to an urgent matter.

And so it was that one day I was sent to buy some snacks for a kids’ party. With my basket full of chips, cookies, and ice cream, I made my way to the checkout. It so happened that in front of me was a woman with a couple of loud, misbehaving, and poorly dressed kids. She looked like quite a mess herself.

I made some judgments about her story.

When it came time to pay, she just validated my assumptions. There was no card tap. No Apple Pay. Just a slow and chaotic process of rummaging through her wallet, collecting small bills and looking for change, all while her kids ran amok.

I knew it.

Look, I’m far from perfect, and patience is not one of my strong suits. This woman, with her mess of a life, was wasting my time. At no time did she apologize to the cashier, or to me, for the delay, which somehow made me even more mad.

Okay, now the ice cream is starting to melt…

As the episode dragged on, I started to realize that she might not have enough money to pay her tab. I considered reaching for my wallet to help her out, but she eventually found the $20 bill she must have been looking for swimming in her purse and handed it to the cashier.

Finally! She collected her kids and her grocery bags and went on her way. Good riddance!

And as the cashier started ringing up my groceries, the lady came back, grasping her receipt.

“Excuse me…”

Oh, come on, lady!

Based on the story I had built up in my head, I was ready for her to claim she was overcharged and ask for some money back, maybe to try to make a quick buck off a tired and frustrated cashier.

“Excuse me,” she said again. She never looked at me to apologize for taking so long, or for interrupting.

“I think you gave me too much change,” she said. She handed the cashier back a five dollar bill.

Oh. Never mind.

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Jared Dillian

writes a great Substack newsletter that is only peripherally about money and finance. Last week he wrote a piece titled Assumptions, which reminded me of this incident. His final line: most of the time when I make assumptions about someone, I end up regretting it.

Tell me about it, Jared.

The assumptions we make about other people are shaped by so many factors, and money plays a big role in this. I can’t see inside of your wallet, or your brokerage account, but I can attempt to infer what’s inside of it based on the clothes you wear, the car you drive, or the neighbourhood you live in.

I’ve been in the investment business long enough to know that none of this is true. In fact, it’s often quite the opposite - financial wealth is an accumulation of the money you don’t spend, of course.

What assumptions are we making about other people based on what we perceive about their social class?

What assumptions are we hoping that people are making about us based on the same outward appearance?

And most importantly, does any of this matter?

On that particular day an outside observer may have thought that I had my shit together better than that woman in front of me, but on more than one occasion I’ve knowingly walked away from a cashier with extra change and not said a word. On that particular day, despite any outward appearances or assumptions another person might have made, she was a far better human being than me.