Eish, I snapped… just call me ‘Karen’ now

I did it: I went the Full Karen. Karen (noun): an amusing pejorative for entitled, ignorant, uptight middle-aged white women, often found demanding to “see the manager”.

Also Karen (noun): a contemptuous slur levelled at middle-aged women when they lose their cool.

It happened at my local stationery shop – overpriced and understocked, but we Karens like to support our community.

I’d been in days earlier for some colour copies, then got home to discover they’d missed one.

When I went back, I picked up a few supplies then got to the till, where I was charged four times the price of one copy – for one copy.

Turns out they have a “minimum spend” for copies, despite my other purchases, despite the fact that they’d messed up before.

ALSO READ: I was a ‘Karen’ and I’m sorry

Still they wouldn’t budge, and the queue behind me grew.

“Well, don’t forget my student discount,” I finally snapped, brandishing my never-used student card. But they’d already rung my purchases, they protested.

I shrugged, immovable, waiting while they reversed the sale, rang it up again, and gave my discount.

Yes, I was a middle-aged white woman with blonde highlights throwing a strop in a shop: a Karen. Guilty as charged.

Everyone knows a Karen: just look for the nearest middle-aged woman glueing a lot of worlds together, overstretched and underappreciated.

Karens are partners, mothers, daughters, and friends, doing the unpaid work of caring for ageing parents and sometimes grandchildren, running households, cooking dinner, and often working “real” jobs too.

Meanwhile their menopausal bodies regularly surprise them in new ways – raging hormones, leaky bladders, adult acne, inexplicable sadness, wrecked feet – which they fight by gymning, slimming and, yes, keeping their hair nice.

READ MORE: There’s a new book on Karens written by two Karens

Karens are helpful neighbours, “do-gooders” for charity and the first person people call in a crisis.

They reliably keep drawers of medication, treats, and fluffy laundered towels. They just want everyone to be happy.

Yes, even when they themselves are not. The thing is, Karen doesn’t want to watch the world burn but sometimes she’ll set fire to a little corner of it.

And the rest of the time she’s just ordinary, dependable, exhausted Susan, Michelle, Annette, Belinda, Jennie.