Chaotic Not Random

If you're like most of us, you dislike poor people. They irritate you with their endless prattling about "mortgages" and "the high cost of day care" and "Girl Scout cookies." They drive their own cars and scratch their buttocks in public and their children live with them, instead of in Europe. They reek of sausages and domestic beer. Aren't they disgusting?

"I hate poor people!" you are saying. "There are so many of them that the only way to avoid their kind completely is to retreat to my 900-acre country estate and have my chauffeur drive me everywhere in the car with the mirrored windows."

Isolation can only partially solve your poor people problem. Suppose, for example, that on the way to the yacht club, your chauffeur runs over a poor child, and the poor parent insists on making a fuss. What now? You cannot throw the offending poor person into your dungeon or trample him with your horse, as you would on your own property. You can try to dismiss the poor person by saying, "Away with you, knave!" but -- strange as this may sound -- poor people legally do not have to do everything you say. You will have to deal with not just one poor person, but with a whole host of unsavory types: ambulance drivers, tow truck operators, gawking bystanders, and the police, who being poor themselves will side with the poor person and may require that you "make a statement" or even "appear in court." Keep reading to learn a unique set of strategies for surviving encounters like this one.

When dealing with poor people, you should avoid reminding them of their poverty, as doing so will only inflame them and make them more disagreeable. In the example above, you would not want to tell the angry parent that his child now resides in Heaven and/or Hell, either of which is preferable to the desperate, grinding destitution the child knew in corporeal life. Instead, pay the poor person a compliment, even if it's a lie -- you could tell the parent, "I like your Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt" or "You smell like delicious Hamburger Helper."

On the flip side of the coin, you should never flaunt your normalcy in the face of a poor person. Our angry parent would not want to hear that you have seven cars just as good as the one his child wrecked, or that the accident has made you late for your roast giraffe luncheon. Instead, broach a topic likely to interest a poor person, such as professional wrestling, baloney sandwiches, or Pac-Man.

Consider giving the poor person some pasteurized process cheese food. Poor people love cheese.

In the case of an extreme intransigence, you should consider offering the poor person a job. For as little as $90,000, you can purchase a year's worth of loyalty and toil from nearly any poor person. Once on your payroll, the poor person will have to do whatever you say, like cleaning blood and hair from the grille of your automobile.