Wealthy matriarchs exercised casual command over hotel service staff

Evidence

With underlings, Grannie Cohen was flashingly imperious. After her husband died, she moved with her maid, Susan, into a suite in the fashionable Windsor Hotel, on Fifth Avenue between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets, and sent out invitations to a “suite-warming” luncheon. On the day before the luncheon she decided she didn’t like the chandelier in her living room. Marching down to the front desk, she ordered a new chandelier, told the clerk it must be installed by the following day at 10 A.M., cut off his protestations with a curt “I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer!” and swept out the door without waiting for a reply. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 117

Categorization

• XREF: The imperious entitled-colonizer habit echoes the colonial administrators’ assured command over ‘underlings’ in the architecture of white-settler privilege readings.