Why Patrick Kane Still Deserves Your Hatred

From June 2007 to August 2010, I worked as a seasonal employee at McDonald's. The reason is very simple--I was going to college 3 1/2 hours away from home and I needed somewhere I could easily jump in and out of. And I wanted money enough to not be too picky.

For anyone who didn't know me during stretches where I was working at McDonald's, words cannot do justice to how much I despised it. I thought at the time that maybe it would be one of those things that you hate at the time but you remember fondly with retrospect--the opposite has proven true. Every job I have had since McDonald's has done nothing but reinforce that my opinion was completely justified.

And the thing that I hated above all else with McDonald's wasn't the hours, though they weren't pleasant. It wasn't the wage I was paid--while I empathize with fast food workers with families and actual financial responsibilities, it wasn't of the utmost concern to me. It wasn't even the actual job in and of itself--I enjoy routine and did not mind repeating the same menial tasks every day. It was the people.

Society treats lowly paid workers as something other than human--if somebody makes less money than you, it insanely becomes okay to not treat them as a human. It wasn't uncommon to be angrily questioned about tiny things (how much change I would return to a customer, the menu at the restaurant at which I worked) and it wasn't uncommon to have status pushed upon me. I won't soon forget being told by customers how much money they made, not because it had any relevance whatsoever to me doing my job but as a way of projecting importance. I won't forget being told after mishearing an order that "this is why (I was) working at McDonald's." It doesn't matter that it was a very temporary thing and that I eventually moved on to "better" things--it's no more tolerable to talk down to a single mother about how she isn't wealthy.

One week in particular stood out to me. It was in the Summer of 2009, around the point where I was really getting sick of McDonald's. I actually kind of enjoyed it when I started and 2008 was when I felt some minor annoyance but then in 2009, I was completely jaded. By the time August rolled around, I was bordering on depressed. And after a long day in which a clearly intoxicated man threatened to kick the asses of both myself and an on-duty manager because we would not give him change for paying with a $20 bill instead of a $10 bill, after having counted the cash register two times each and found it completely in balance every time, I went home trying to maintain some kind of internal composure.

When I got home, I found this.

I was immediately irate. Who does this piece of shit think he is? Patrick Kane was the same age as I was, just a few months older, and while I was busy dealing with self-important, entitled pricks...Patrick Kane was the self-important, entitled prick. Now, I was already years removed from having inherent anger towards people wealthier than I am. Unless, of course, a person's economic status gave them the kind of disregard for humanity that being a highly paid hockey player gave Patrick Kane.

Nine days later, the little man with a temper issued apologies.

Patrick Kane apologized to his family, Buffalo, Chicago, the Blackhawks, and Blackhawks fans. You know who the asshole didn't apologize to?

Jan Radecki. Jan Radecki is the 62 year old Buffalo taxi driver whom Kane and his cousin, aged 20 and 21 respectively, beat indiscriminately over twenty cents of cab fare. Radecki's glasses were broken and his clothes were ripped and all the while, hockey's equivalent to Chris Brown cited his hockey accomplishments. To this date, even after having plead guilty to beating up Mr. Radecki, Patrick Kane has never apologized to him. And thanks to the delusions of both himself and homer Chicago Blackhawks media, the Buffalo cab incident is treated as a blip of immaturity. A blip of immaturity would have been sucker-punching a cab driver and then immediately apologizing and accepting responsibility for his actions. But Kane's level of premeditation, malice, and years of utter denial are not signs of a 20 year old's immaturity. They are signs of a 20-25 year old's sociopathy.

Patrick Kane is a sack of shit. He is a little boy not worthy of my respect. I rooted for the St. Louis Rams while they had Leonard Little, who committed vehicular manslaughter in 1999 (and, unlike Kane, was punished with both jail time and a league suspension) and then somehow managed to get a second DUI in 2004. Leonard Little was a deplorable man, and I knew this, and I still rooted for his team because he came after the fact. Because of this, I don't mind Blackhawks fans who tolerate Patrick Kane's on-ice success. But I do have a problem with those who bury their heads in the sand and pretend that what Patrick Kane did was at all acceptable. Like, people buy Patrick Kane jerseys for their children. What does that tell the children? That Kane is a hero? That he is somebody worth admiring? Jonathan Toews and Marian Hossa may annoy opposing fans because of their immense talents but they aren't inherently miserable people. They're just good hockey players. And there are plenty of athletes I dislike but have no problems with as people. I find Richard Sherman and Lebron James to be obnoxious egomaniacs but I fully recognize that at their cores they are decent, or at least not terrible, guys. Kane is not this. If he wants to try to prove otherwise, he can start the process by apologizing. Not to me, not to his teammates, and not to his fans. But to the old man he dehumanized in Buffalo before being forgiven by countless many for being good at using a stick to hit a small rubber object into a net.

I have never met and will likely never met Jan Radecki. I have never been to Buffalo and I have never even been in a cab. But even years later, as I no longer work in a position in which status is constantly cited to cajole me, it is Mr. Radecki with whom I relate. But in the end, it has less to do with who I was in the summer of 2009 than with who I am in the summer of 2014--a human being with capacity for empathy.