Work. Death. Denial. Upper Middle Class?

I've never wanted to write about work, because for one thing, whenever people write about work it's boring, unless they're a teacher, a prostitute, or a farmer. Another thing--it seems awfully ungrateful to bitch about a company whose mission and values I admire, and the company has been good to me. Hell, they changed the word "minorities" to "people of color" on our website when I bitched about it, and they give me responsibility and training.

'Course, there are always people at any workplace who are awful. There's one person I find particularly awful, and I try to avoid her as much as possible. She's so awful and weird that I have to break my code of silence to write about her. Her mother died yesterday and she said she needed to "get things done", that there wasn't a lot she could do for her family, and that she was coming in to work. I was horrified. Thankfully, I left before she arrived. But she came to work again today, wearing a red blouse, lipstick and with curled hair, for God's sake. She never wears lipstick and she never curls her shapeless, iron-gray-and-black hair. She smiled serenely through her day, got on the phone, made lunch reservations for the weekend, chatted with her two underlings, asked one of them whether she feels she gets enough positive feedback, and sat at her desk answering a bunch of e-mails.

My co-worker said that it's because she's a Scorpio, and they don't deal well with death. Is this true?

My mom wasn't even close to my grandma; in fact, she was disowned for about five years before my grandma died, and she still went to my grandma when she was dying; in fact, my grandmother fell on top on my mom at the last, and literally died on top of her. Then my mom handled all my grandma's legal stuff for her dysfunctional siblings and took in her coddled younger brother, who at age thirty-six is incapable of taking care of himself or of holding a job. I'm only using my mom as a counter example because she's the only person I know whose mother has died recently. I just don't get a person who would curl their hair, apply some garish lipstick, and come to work like nothing happened the day their mother died. Don't you have some siblings to support?! Some papers to sign? Some cousins to call? Some feelings to feel?! Some filial piety, sheesh. Or is filial piety only for us, because we're Chinese?

I'm sure this is horribly unfair of me, but whenever I truly just don't understand people, it's usually because they're a heterosexual upper middle class Christian white woman (yes, she is one). They're like the Stepford Wives. Donna Reed with a hatchet and a handful of prescription pills. Oddly cheap, for all their financial security. (This woman plans to make her daughter save money for Lasik eye surgery. "But why not pay for it?" I asked. "She inherited her terrible eyesight from you, and you and your husband can well afford it..." ) Prim and proper. Fake and phony and high-pitched and chipper. Evil inside and saccharine outside. Manipulative and passive-aggressive. She is all this and more, and I find her truly revolting. But it is just a cultural disconnect?