I was transparent. Unless someone wanted a wine refill or had a special request for food I didn’t exist. I was the queen of my empire, the 10 square feet stretching from the stove to the kitchen sink, but beyond that invisible boundary I was just the ‘help.’ What most of the event attendees didn’t know, was that the ‘dope’ apartment they were in and kept commenting on, is actually my home.

It’s no secret that I have a love affair with food. It has led me to work in kitchens, write a food blog, and occasionally cater events as a favor to friends. This particular event was for a young philanthropists network that I am a part of. They needed a space and food, and we (my roommates and I) were glad to help out. So, instead of attending as a guest, I threw on an apron and started cooking. As people began to fill the space they mingled, picked up drinks, and munched on hors d’oeuvres. I didn’t expect them to chat with me as I was clearly busy, but it wasn’t until someone asked who had hired me that I realized how set apart I was. There were the events attendees and the events staff and I was clearly the staff.

You can learn a lot about someone by how they treat those that are serving them. Bartenders, waitresses, and baristas, all interface with thousands of people, many customers are kind but others are curt, cold, and straight up rude. There were people at this event who I’d been told were amazing, are leading young philanthropists, and that we would be great friends. I was astonished when those same people were often the rudest. Pushing past me in the kitchen to get to the sink or blatantly ignoring my attempts to refill a platter. I was the staff, and they were the guests, I did not matter.

It was funny when, about three-quarters of the way through, the events organizer made an announcement thanking me for the food. Within minutes a professor from a well-known college who teaches my writing to his students came up to introduce himself, a young woman who’d heard about me through a mutual friend gave me a big hug, and one of those men who’d shoved past me on the way to the sink asked for my business card. I was no longer transparent; I had a name and a value beyond crostini’s and mini cupcakes. I was human again.

New Yorkers, it seems, put a huge amount of value in what a person does for work. I include myself in this; I am guilty of asking someone what he or she does before almost any other question. A persons worth in a given scenario is then classified in a pyramid structure where those in service industries form the base. At the peak are the financially wealthy, the elite of NYC. As long as I was a chef, a service provider there to make their lives easier, I was at the base. When people learned that the sick apartment is my home, that I work in tech and that I’m a writer, I started to move up. I hadn’t changed at all. I was still behind the stove, spatula in hand, but all of a sudden I was generous to be cooking rather than just doing my job. The very activities that had doomed me to invisibility now made me a bastion of all that the young philanthropists society stood for.

And those people, the people I’d been told I just had to meet? I realized that I could never be friends with them. If they treated all the waiters, cooks, baristas, etc. the way that they had approached me, they weren’t good people. They might give away millions, but the ability to part with wealth doesn’t make you caring or kind. Starting a company or being a big shot doesn’t give you permission to treat other people poorly.

Be aware of how you treat people. Your favorite blogger might just be the woman refilling your wine glass.