Online Interview & Manners

My website gets a lot of visitors every day, and every now and then one of those visitors writes to me about something he or she has read on the site. I'm a big believer in responding to email (I used to include the words "within 24 hours" at this point, but of late even responding at all is apparently worthy of mention). Often when I respond (yes, within 24 hours), a little dialogue begins; less often, an actual business relationship or friendship blooms.

That delightful result happened with Tiffany Yu, a market strategy and business development specialist on the other side of the country from me. We've been emailing and talking on the phone for a while now, to our mutual benefit. I love mentoring younger business women, and Tiffany loves sharing her creative marketing know-how, an expertise that couldn't have popped into my life at a better time given that I have a new book out.

Tiffany is active in Women In Parking, where she serves on the Leadership Board and as Secretary, and when Lost Wyoming was published, she suggested we do an interview for WIP Matters, the organization's newsletter for members. Please click here or on the Women In Parking logo below to read the resulting interview, which is not only a great bit of publicity for my new book, but also a great reminder of why it's worth it to answer those emails.

When a Necktie isn't just a Necktie

Florida has a new business slogan designed to promote job growth in the state.  The slogan, "Florida: The Perfect Climate for Business," features a necktie in place of the "I" in the word "Florida."  I am baffled as to why there is any dispute over whether this slogan is sexist.  How is it NOT sexist?  Is a necktie an article of clothing worn by anyone but men?

This necktie flap may seem like a small point, but I would argue that it is not.  It is utterly tone deaf to the realities of the business world (eerily, in exactly the same way so much of the Republican Party's rhetoric was tone deaf to the realities of the electorate in the 2012 election).  The state of Florida could not have said more clearly that it considers business to be a male-only club.  The likely fact that this was entirely unintentional makes it worse, not better.

According to the article, Florida is home to more than 587,000 female-owned businesses, which ranks it 4th of 50 in the country.  Yet the slogan-creators, apparently unaware or uninterested in that truth, chose as their logo a male-only article of clothing.  Let's look at it the other way: what if they'd chosen a business suit with a skirt instead of pants to stand in for the "I"?  That would be sexist, wouldn't it?  It would also strike everyone as weird.  "Why exclude men from the equation?" and "Why pander to PC feminism?" and "What the hell could they be thinking?" would echo loud and clear from every corner of the rafters.  And the detractors would be right - logos should not exclude huge swaths of the population unless they are designed to do so for some legitimate business reason.  (Tampons don't need to be marketed to men; testosterone-replacement therapies don't need to be marketed to women.)

Why wasn't Florida's logo gender-neutral?  One of the commenters in the article suggests a briefcase or a smartphone.  I'll suggest an office building, maybe an iconic Miami or Tampa or Jacksonville office building.  To anyone inclined to object, "But lots of businesses aren't in office buildings," I'll reply, "Really?  Does using an office building suggest big business in a way using a necktie doesn't suggest men?"

This kind of casual, throwaway, in-all-likelihood-unintended sexism drives me nuts.  It bespeaks a mindset about how and what the world is that relegates women - in this case, women in business - to an inferior position.  It's not merely tone-deaf.  It forces women into an inaccurate political and economic box.  It diminishes opportunity.  It intimidates, it succors discrimination and limiting definitions, and it perpetuates antiquated negatives.  For men as well as for women.

Casual sexism of this ilk is particularly infuriating because there is arguably no realistic recourse once it occurs.  Anyone who points out and attempts to address every instance looks like a tiresome, obsessed crackpot with no sense of humor or perspective whatsoever.  You can't be a vocal, hard-nosed activist on every little thing if you want to be able to influence some real change.  But being a good sport is equally wrong.  Sexism is like any other prejudice.  Letting it go lends it an acceptability, even a validity.  It amounts to tacit approval and inures people to the harm.  When we keep quiet, we have to cope not only with outrage and frustration, but also with the discomfort that comes from knowing that our silence effectively constitutes consent and makes us collaborators.

So, Florida, unless you intended to demean women in business, change your slogan.  And next time, think harder about what and whom you're trying to attract.

Maine, Boston, Perspective & Hindsight

Last summer, we spent a couple weeks in Maine and Boston. We like to travel to cold climes in the summer and, although we knew it wouldn't be exactly cold in New England, we figured being right on the ocean would make it pleasant. Wrong. It was disgustingly hot and humid all but a few days, which made everything we wanted to do less fun than it should have been.

The trip wasn't a complete disappointment. We enjoyed extraordinarily delicious lobster - my favorite food and one I planned to, and did, eat daily - along with a few other local delicacies (including Ipswich clams in Ipswich and tender, rosy roast beef sandwiches in Boston), some excellent boating, lots of nice people with highly entertaining accents, and the stirring historical thrill of the Freedom Trail (made no less stirring, but a lot less comfortable by the triple-digit heat and humidity index the day we walked it). Still, the trip was not what we'd hoped and it left us wishing we'd gone somewhere else.

That sense of disappointment clung to the photos I took.  When I looked at them soon after taking them, they, too, struck me as pallid. Culling through them today, however, I realized that there were some lovely moments amidst the disgruntlement and general stickiness.

A lobster pound where I lunched on an enormous lobster so bright, so fresh, so altogether delectable that rays of sunshine seemed to brighten the piles of gloomy gray clouds surrounding the open air patio on which we ate:

One of the northeastern edges of the United States, at Acadia National Park (these aren't bad photos; the water and air really were this foggy:

Different northeastern edges and a bluer Atlantic on a much nicer day:

An American eagle in her aerie (she's just above and slightly to the right of the center of the photo; click on it to see her more clearly):

A ground-bound bird ready for its close-up:

One of many evocative headstones in the venerable Granary burying ground adjacent to the Park Street Church on the Freedom Trail in Boston:

Sign of the times, also on the Freedom Trail: the Old Corner Bookstore is now a Chipotle Grill:

Boston from the water (the only tolerable place to be when the temperature is nearly 90 and the relative humidity is even higher):

Sunday Night Outrage

Most on-air football commentary is bubble-headed. Lowering the volume so you don't really have to listen to it usually suffices; in extreme cases, there's always the mute button.

The Sunday night announcing team (formerly the Monday night team, but times change) was about as good as it gets. This isn't saying much. In fact, it isn't saying anything other than that the commentary did not customarily have to be reduced to gentle white noise or muted altogether. Al Michaels, while utterly dorky, knows the game pretty well and has some ability to watch the proceedings as opposed to blathering inarticulately about unrelated matters (a distressing habit shared by too many of his colleagues). John Madden was enthusiastic and, if occasionally incoherent, also incredibly knowledgeable and never mean-spirited. Cris Collinsworth, who has taken Madden's place, has been bland so far, but he may settle in and be as good as he was in his previous broadcasting gig.

Tonight, however, both Al and Cris achieved new lows. In a blast of vulgarity, Cris crowed, carefully enunciating each word, "The Pittsburgh Steelers are kicking their stinkin' butts!" Nice. Really elegant commentary.

Worse - far worse, if you ask me - was Al's casual, gratuitous and highly offensive sexism. As he went into raptures like a teenager with a crush over Mike Tomlin (the Steelers' coach, for you readers who aren't football fanatics), Al gushed that the day before the opener against Tennessee, Tomlin had spent four hours attending his kids' teacher conferences. "Of course," Al enthused, "it's easy to tell the wife to go do that. But [Tomlin] was there."

My husband and I turned to each other, aghast. "Tell the wife to go do that??" The wife?? Leaving aside the dismissive nomenclature, let's count the offensive implications of Al's statement: (1) wives are subordinates who exist to be ordered about; (2) attending school conferences is women's work; (3) fathers who choose to attend their own children's conferences are doing something exceptional, noteworthy; (4) there's no way Mrs. Tomlin might have a career that would preclude her being dispatched to handle this child-related matter; and (5) it's perfectly OK to express sexist sentiments such as these to the Sunday night football audience because, of course, we're all guys and all guys are sexist pigs, right?

I think Al owes the actual Sunday night football audience an apology. I think NBC does, too. This kind of throwaway sexism is outrageous. Its time has long been past. Even dorky football guys in their 60s should know it no longer flies, whatever their personal opinions may be. It's indisputably harmful - to the women, the men and the children it presumptively shackles in stupid, confining, restrictive, gender-limited boxes. For shame!

A Howl at the Moon

How I wish it were possible to meet other people's behavior in kind without having to think of oneself as equally churlish. It irritates me to feel obliged to take the high road, even though I know it's the right thing to do, and the only realistic option, when others are ignorant, unresponsive, unreliable, rude, ungenerous, thoughtless or so wedded to their own agendas that the mere hint of a differing viewpoint pushes them to dizzying heights of defensive anger and uncivilized restatement or to awkward depths of sulky withdrawal.

I would give a lot never again to have to deal with people who, as William James put it, think they are thinking when all they are really doing is rearranging their prejudices. I'm tired of "you scratch my back; I'll refuse to acknowledge you even have a back" behavior. I'm weary beyond belief of people unwilling or unable to keep their promises, people who don't follow up, people who ask and take but don't listen or give, and people who don't mean what they say (or maybe they do, but it doesn't matter because what they say has no apparent influence over what they do).

When did breathtaking inconsiderateness become something basically decent people allowed themselves to indulge in with nary a blush or pang? Get back in touch with me after a decade to request a personal reference, but via a note that makes it plain that you didn't even bother to look at my profile on the LinkedIn/Plaxo/Biznik/Facebook/Twitter route you took to find me and so have no idea that I no longer live in Chicago or that I've written books or have a website. Request that I send you something, then fail to thank me for it or even acknowledge that you received it. Call me when you need something; live the rest of your life in blithe indifference to my existence. Ask me to be your friend, your fan, your follower, to vote for you in some contest, to comment on your blog, to read your book, to attend some event, all with no attempt or intent (or, as far as I can tell, even any awareness that it might be possible) to do the same for me. Yammer on about how relationships are important, engaging is important, generosity is important, then treat everyone else as if they are nothing but numbers who can boost you in some way.

I'd love to be able to make the decision to become a "me first, me only" jackass and still live with myself. The high road is often a lonely, windswept, howling place. I've learned from experience, though, that taking it exacts a lesser cost from me than does grubbing in the crowded mud of ill-mannered, uncharitable, self-absorbed ugliness. But oh how I sometimes wish it were otherwise!

Hysteria

I don't understand the impulse toward hysteria. There's also nothing much to like about the phenomenon. Starting with the word itself, which derives from the Greek hystera, meaning uterus, "hysteria" was originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women. With those misogynistic roots, one would think the term had nowhere to go but up.

But no. Instead, hysteria became a social phenomenon, nowhere more evident than in this recent ridiculous mania over swine flu. As I understand it, statistically speaking your chances of contracting and dying from swine flu are significantly less than your chances of choking to death on a ballpoint pen (which 100 people do every year). They are a tiny fraction of your chances of dying in a car accident (43,000 annually) or from assorted gun violence (17,000). "Normal" flu kills around 36,000 people every year. And these numbers are just for the U.S. The swine flu hysteria is even sillier when considered in terms of global numbers.

So what prompted it? Why were/are people with about as much risk of contracting swine flu as someone living alone on a mountaintop all hysterical at the thought of going to school or getting on a plane or eating in a Mexican restaurant? Why were/are they flocking to already overcrowded ERs because they imagine their tummies hurt?

I've wondered about this personalization of peril before. I was doing some work for a company in Los Angeles right after 9/11. For a couple weeks after those horrific events, a few of the people in the LA office - none of whom had been personally affected by the attacks - were "too traumatized to come to work." Was this their way of empathizing? Of honoring the dead? Or was it an exploitation, however unconscious, of someone else's loss? I hate to think it was anything other than empathy - how dishonorable to attempt to make events like those of 9/11 about oneself!

Why join in the hysteria over something that, if you weren't hysterical, you would plainly see poses no imminent threat to you? Does feeling in peril make people feel important? Or maybe it's the opposite; maybe it makes people feel like they belong, like they're part of the community.

If so, too bad the hysterical community in question is such a silly, self-centered and wasteful one. If we could inject all the energy behind the swine flu hysteria into a community bent on improving healthcare for the poor - or, for that matter eradicating gun violence or fatal car accidents - we'd actually accomplish something important and lasting. Not to mention communal.

Ersatz Wisdom

I'm feeling bombarded by bumper-sticker wisdom (an oxymoron, I know). It's everywhere! On the aforesaid bumper stickers. On coffee cups and paperweights. In email. Embroidered or stamped on those tacky framed homily things that hang in touristy stores full of kitschy crap. And littered all over social media sites, the online equivalent, it occurs to me, of touristy stores full of kitschy crap.

I guess it's OK for people to take inspiration wherever they can find it, but it's beyond me how anyone could find the following drivel* inspiring:

"If your goal doesn't make you just a little bit sick, then you are not reaching far enough."

"Act as if you have already achieved your goal and it is yours."

"If we set our attitudes by the days of the week, then our actions will remain the same continually."

"Knowing what to do is different than actually doing it."

"I act with balance in my heart. I speak with balance on my lips. I walk with balance in my feet."

"By thought, the thing you want is brought to you. By action, you receive it."

These little gems range from total gibberish to the sort of lame piffle only someone resolutely opposed to employing gray matter could find meaningful, inspirational or worth passing along. There is no legitimate response to this garbage, if you actually think about it, other than a bewildered "Wait. What?!?" or a sarcastic "Really? Ya think??"

I haven't even included coddling codswallop like "Mistakes are the route to success" or treacly tommyrot like "Just as the sun sets & we must find a way to let go of another day, the sun will rise with the promise of a new day & a new beginning." (I also haven't yet used all the synonyms for "nonsense" I can think of without consulting a thesaurus.)

Contrast all this balderdash, if you will, with the following pithy, profound and thought-provoking aphorisms:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein

"Example is not the main thing influencing others. It is the only thing." Albert Schweitzer

"The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself." Rita Mae Brown

"Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think." Alexander Pope

"Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?" Sai Baba

And if we must have some treacliness: "The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is." Erasmus

I rest my case.

*I'd attribute these quotations if I could, but I've been scribbling them as I see them and, really, who would want his or her name attached to any of them anyway?

Ever the Iconoclast

I've decided to buck the social media trend and reduce the number of people in my online crowd.

I was never in it to rack up numbers anyway. My goal was and is conversation, not reach. I also don't mind the amount of time it takes to interact with my SM community even though it often takes more than I expected to spend.

No, my problem is that the prize isn't currently worth the price. My cost-benefit ratio is off. I'm irritated and annoyed too often. Sometimes, I'm actually angry. There may or may not be an upward limit on how many people one can legitimately befriend/follow/interact with, but too many of my folks aren't holding up their end of the bargain I thought we were making.

I want conversation. I want reciprocity. I want to read interesting, humorous, intelligent updates and click on thought-provoking, well written articles and blog posts. I want to be acknowledged and treated courteously.

I don't want to be bored. I don't want to be told the same thing 20 times. I don't want to feel obliged to read back in time to make sure I haven't ignored a friend, knowing and resenting that the friend has never once extended the same courtesy to me.

I don't want friends who recommend sophomoric or banal content. I don't want to read the work of writers who are evidently unaware that "it's" and "its" are not interchangeable, who think "lot's" is a word, who don't know the difference between "affect" and "effect," who can't spell. (I'm not talking about typos; I'm talking about people who "die" their hair or seek "resoprosity.")

In short, I want intelligent, interesting friends and requited friendships. Not numbers, not users, not talkers who never listen, not nonstop profferers of the self-congratulatory social media Kool-Aid, and not illiterates.

But wait. Who the heck do I think I am?

In social media, as in life, there's no percentage in holding other people to my personal rules of engagement. For one thing, it's not fair. One size doesn't (and doesn't have to) fit all. For another, no one died and made me king. Other people aren't wrong by reason of not defining friendship the same way I do. They're absolutely entitled to their own definitions, their own rules of engagement. The only person I get to be in charge of is me.

As I see it, I have three choices:

• I can roll my eyes and wonder what's wrong with people. Resent them for not having the kind of manners, writing style, intellectual sophistication or attention to detail I'd consider ideal. Feel ignored, unacknowledged and taken for granted as I meticulously read everything they offer even when it's obvious they are not doing the same in return. [Insert loud "Wrong Answer" buzzer sound effect here.]
• I can accept people as they are. Enjoy what they do bring to the party. Adjust my expectations and meet them on their terms. [Ding, ding, ding.]
  
• If my crowd includes people whose terms I can't manage to meet without excessive teeth-grinding and tongue-biting, I can walk away. Social media is to friendship what Las Vegas is to blackjack tables; it's always possible simply to get up and move to a more agreeable and satisfying table. [Ding, ding, ding, ding.]
  

How stupid of me to have spent even one minute choosing Option 1! How arrogant to hold others responsible for not making my choices while I blithely ignore my own responsibility for making them. How nice to have woken up!

So I'm culling my list. No judgment, no hard feelings - it's just a matter of placing the responsibility for tailoring my experience squarely where it belongs. On me.

Sexism Hurts. So Does Rudeness

Yesterday, I was unpleasantly surprised by an unexpected and ugly instance of demeaning sexism in an email. Not an email just to me, but an email sent to a large distribution list. The offending two paragraphs were written in a joke-y, "of course we all think this way" tone, and they reinforced demeaning stereotypes about relationships between men and women that were already outdated in the 1960s.

Anyone attuned to these things has no trouble finding them everywhere. From the clods on the campaign trail who yelled "Iron my shirts!" at Hillary Clinton to the ignoramuses who write magazine articles insinuating that men are incapable of being nurturing parents (the kind of sexism, like the two offending paragraphs in my email yesterday, that manages both to degrade men and to define women in a limiting way), there is no shortage of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination on the basis of gender in our everyday lives.

I hate having to be a good sport about sexism, knowing that my silence amounts to tacit approval and makes me a collaborator. Still, I understand that you have to pick your battles unless you want to be battling all the time. I also recognize the need for a sense of humor. Sexism is unfortunately so embedded in our society, our lingo, and our consciousness that even people who do not promote it sometimes find themselves contributing to its continued existence.

As strongly as I feel about this issue, I want to battle it effectively, and I've concluded that taking on every casual instance I run across is not the way to do that. I tend to nod and smile pleasantly and change the subject when people assume my husband's income was what funded our early retirement or ask me who's going to take care of him when I travel on business, or even when someone tells one of those ubiquitous jokes that portray women as for sex only and men as lumbering buffoons.

But yesterday's email came from someone who is widely known and admired. Whether he intends to be or not, he is a role model. I stewed over his sexist paragraphs for a while, then decided that because of his reach, I didn't want to let this one go. I wrote a polite 3-sentence response that gently objected to the sexism. The last of the 3 sentences read: "I seriously doubt you really think this, and hope you won't mind a friendly reminder that stereotypes don't help anyone."

Once my email was written, I thought it over, bounced it off a couple people whose opinions I trust to rein in my more knee-jerk reactions, and then sent it. It's now 24 hours later and he has not seen fit to respond. This rudeness further offends me. We're dealing with someone who is always hooked in, who never lets his cell phone out of his sight, who communicates frequently and well. I have the ability to call him out publicly. Shall I?

2/9/09 Update: Sincere thanks to all who've commented on this post, either below, on Facebook or via email. There was nothing private about the email with the paragraphs that offended me. It went to a distribution list that I understand exceeds 50,000 people. There is also nothing private about my reply to the sender. So here they both are.

The paragraphs I objected to opened the 2/3/09 afternoon HARO email. HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out, an innovative free subscription service that connects reporters with sources. HARO emails go out three times per day on weekdays, and each edition is sponsored. As far as I know, Peter Shankman, whose brainchild HARO is, writes the opening paragraphs. In any event, he is the "I" referred to in them.

The edition in question opened as follows:

This HARO is thanks to those words no guy wants to hear: "Why hasn't he proposed yet?!" Well, celebrity relationship experts, TV personalities and husband/wife Matt Titus and Tamsen Fadal have the answer for women who can't get their man to pop the question in their latest book, "Why Hasn't He Proposed?" Go From The First Date To Setting The Date. A real married couple, they have the answer to how you can land the ring on your finger with their fool-proof six week plan to get him to commit without saying a word! This book comes on the heels of their first book, "Why Hasn't He Called? and their Lifetime show, "Matched In Manhattan," a reality show based on their lives as married relationships experts and a real life couple. Plus, Matt and Tamsen are giving away the chance to win a free diamond ring with the launch of their new book!
[Links & contact info deleted].

The above book, which virtually every female on HARO is now buying, is enough to scare me into having absolutely nothing to say in my opening monologue. :)

Here's the text of the email I wrote in response:

Hey, whoa, ease up on the sexism, OK? This female would not only not buy this book if it were the last book on earth, but is disappointed to see someone so evolved playing into outdated notions that women are all about trapping men and men are all about eluding women. I seriously doubt you really think this, and hope you won't mind a friendly reminder that stereotypes don't help anyone.

I should also note than I'd previously emailed him to inquire how one went about becoming a HARO sponsor, and he responded to that email immediately.

Question du Jour

I don't go to the Post Office very often. I think my experience is sufficiently randomized to be statistically significant and, based on that, I find myself wondering why virtually everyone in the inevitable line is either: (a) ancient; (b) evidently a newcomer to the wonders of the USPS and desirous of an explanation of every available service; (c) mailing 20 or more items of various sizes and bulk, each one seemingly via a different method and to somewhere exotic that requires a separate (and not-filled-out-in-advance) form; or (d) entirely unsure why he or she is even at the Post Office and apparently in need of USPS personnel assistance to figure it out.

Just like at the cashier windows in casinos, everyone in front of you always seems to have an incredibly complicated transaction. Mysteriously, when it's finally your turn, it takes all of 45 seconds to cash in your chips or, in today's case, send a Priority Mail package to Seattle. Wouldn't it be great to end up in a line behind 45-second-transaction people instead of always being the first such one? That's the dream...

Adventures in Air Travel

The whole airline business is a mystery to me. I'm not sure why it wouldn't be susceptible to the same business principles that govern every other business, but it seems to have some enigmatic ability to swallow money. What other business would lose money when it routinely sold out or oversold its market-priced product? I have been on a couple dozen or so flights in the last year and every single one of them was packed to the gills. In most cases, the time I spent waiting at the gates was punctuated by the now-familiar "We need a volunteer to take a later flight" plea - always entertaining since no one volunteers and, somehow, the flight boards and departs anyway. Are the extra people stowed in baggage? Vaporized?

And don't I remember that the incentives used to grow in value the closer you got to departure time? Said offers from Las Vegas to Chicago, then Chicago to Albany, last Thursday were evidently fixed at a free round-trip ticket for the future and a later flight for the moment. But the later flights were 9 hours later from Las Vegas and over 24 hours later from Chicago. What the heck did they think the volunteers (had there been any) would do in the meantime? Well, OK, 9 extra hours in Las Vegas would be a kick, if potentially expensive, but who flying from Chicago to Albany on a Thursday evening would likely have the flexibility or the interest to wait until Saturday morning?

I usually fly Southwest. Although the flights are tightly packed, at least some of the other amenities of flying are still intact. My US Air and United flights on Thursday were a rude awakening to the new realities of non-Southwest flights. To check a bag now costs $15. This may or may not be an offensive nickel-and-diming of customers, but the upshot is that people now haul on board everything they possibly can, either to avoid this fee or to avoid the potential hassle of lost baggage. But the plane is packed, the aisles are too narrow for rolling suitcases to be rolled, and the overhead bin space is insufficient. So the unfortunates who board last end up having to check their bags anyway. I presume there is no $15 fee in this case - the flight attendant didn't mention any fee in her oft-repeated "If there's no overhead space, bring your bag to the front and we'll check it for you." This bringing the bags to the front business was also ludicrous - the aisles are TINY and packed with people organizing themselves into seats evidently designed for a species much smaller than most adult travelers. Suppose the extra $15 actually collected on bags checked in the terminal is enough to offset not only baggage-handling costs, but the extra fuel it takes to cool the plane during the now even slower boarding process?

Airlines obviously are saving money by deferring decor maintenance. Both my Thursday planes showed all the signs of hard use. I guess the mechanical maintenance is kept up to snuff (we got where we were going without incident), and I'm a firm believer in "first things first," but do the seats and seat pockets have to be falling apart? Do 10-20% of the tray tables, lights and air vents have to not work? Do the wings and wing flaps have to be adorned with what look (alarmingly) like black skid marks? Does the whole experience have to be so much like taking the bus, but at 5-10 times the cost?

On the US Air flight, I was charged $2 for a bottle of water. This is OK, I guess - it would have cost at least that much to buy a bottle of water in the airport - but the collecting of money and making of change was a ridiculous waste of flight attendant time. And how does the money process work? Do the poor flight attendants have to account for every can, bottle, styrofoam cup and dollar to make sure it all matches up at the end of every flight? Does some idiot in accounting think this effort is without cost? Why on earth don't they just charge $5 more for each ticket and keep the complimentary soft drinks, the customer appreciation that goes with free stuff, the extra $5 from everyone, including people who get no drinks or buy alcohol, and the flight attendants' focus on quick service and safety? What passenger wouldn't pay $329 instead of $324 for the ticket? Is whatever the airline manages to net from the airborne-convenience-store approach worth making me think they're cheap bastards with whom I'll not fly again unless there's absolutely no other option?

The flight attendants on the US Air flight were also incredibly cranky. This might be because they're also now functioning as sales clerks or maybe it's because of the dowdy uniforms they still have to wear - the contrast between their 1950s "air host and hostess" apparel and the "I could comfortably sleep in this" clothing of most passengers is hilarious. Or maybe it's because they don't get paid enough or treated with respect. Who knows? But it seems to me that any business that "recognizes that you have a choice in air travel, appreciates your business, and hopes to see you on another [insert name of airline] flight again soon" might also recognize that it would be a plus to instruct its customer service personnel to treat the customers like fellow human beings instead of annoying scum.

Having said all that, both my flights arrived early. I was resigned with my usual air-travel serenity to the connection being a problem, but the only difficulty I encountered (if you don't count feeling like a sardine in a seen-better-days tin) was the distance I had to trudge between the two gates at O'Hare. Obviously, it was my lucky day. Too bad I couldn't stay home and use that luck at a blackjack table.

Oh, Boo-Hoo

Articles about the so-called "empty nest syndrome" drive me crazy. Conversely, I love that I received this one from my own 26-year-old daughter, who sent it along with a note that read "Here...this will get you all riled up. :)"

The linked article isn't as bad as some. It includes a melancholy dad in with the weepy moms, a rarity for empty-nest commentary, as well as some women who are more exuberant than misty-eyed about their new "childless" status. Still, even leaving the deeply anti-feminist subtext of articles like these aside, all this moaning and wailing over the growth, development and departure of one's children mystifies me. Isn't their maturity the point? Why would it make anyone "sick with sorrow?"

I saw my daughter off to college and through graduation with delight and pride. Ditto with her younger brother, whose departure created the much-ballyhooed empty nest at our house. I can honestly say my pride and delight were wholly undiluted by either grief or relief. (A little smugness maybe, over everything having turned out so nicely.) And I never once wondered who I was or what I might do with myself once I was no longer a resident parent - just as I never considered being a resident parent my raison-d'être or my justification for the space I take up on the planet.

Any parent who believes, as I do, that a parent's duty is to guide his or her kids on their way to happy, productive, independent adulthood ought to be thrilled to see them go off to college and then on into life. Of course, there are nostalgic moments - and in hindsight it's amazing how fast the years seem to have gone by, especially when you remember those interminable afternoons of nonstop infant fussing or the four years of siblings at each other's throats or the terrifying (and blessedly rare) hours of waiting for medical situations to resolve safely. But what's with the "I need them to pace my work life," "I'm so lonely and cranky" and "My life is too far on its way to over" baloney described in the article?

And it's not like this "it's all about me" attitude toward child-raising does kids any good either. Anyone looking forward to hiring or managing the college student in the article who thinks the best way to find Pilates studios, dentists and the meaning of words is to call her working mother in another state?

Senescence

When I was 15, I tore a ligament in my right knee. The ER doc barked, "You would have been better off if you'd broken your leg" and the medical treatment went downhill from there. As I recall, everyone paid more attention to my mother, who was green around the gills and in danger of fainting. (Medical stuff always made her woozy.) And the science of dealing with torn knee ligaments was apparently nowhere near as sophisticated as it is now, at least where 15-year-old girls were concerned.

After the initial injury, my knee more or less returned to normal. It occasionally locked up and made me limp for a day or two, but not very often and it never hurt. People who played tennis with me quickly learned that I wasn't much of one for running to the right, but otherwise the knee was a non-issue. Then, when I was 35, it locked up at a shallow angle and refused to bend further or straighten all the way. If I was insistent about moving it within its limited range, it made nauseating popping sounds that could sometimes be heard even by other people. Clearly, something had to be done.

That something was knee surgery to remove a chunk of cartilage that was jaggedly and irreparably torn, probably as a result of the original ligament tear, the healed scar of which was visible - and quite interesting - on the TV on which I watched the surgery. The recovery from knee surgery featured the worst pain I've ever endured, and I've endured a tonsillectomy, two C-sections, two herniated vertebral discs, migraine headaches, and the removal of my left inner ear. (This is an astonishing list, isn't it, for someone who's essentially been healthy all her life.)

Anyway, the 1989 knee surgery was a success. Once the initial 10 days of agonizing pain were over, I was again back to normal. Until last Tuesday, that is, when I stood up from my desk chair and realized my right knee hurt. There was no wrench, twist or other calamitous triggering event. The soreness continued, neither better nor worse, all week. No problems with strength or mobility, but the sucker really hurts. When I asked my husband what he thought was up, he very calmly, cheerfully even, told me the ligament was probably just degenerating - surgically repaired soft tissue degenerates more quickly than intact stuff, he explained - and maybe even torn again along the scar.

What the hell? Just degenerating? I don't like the sound (or feel) of that at all. I've never had a problem with my age, mostly because I like having already had the happiness and success of kids and career and having arrived at a stage where I can contentedly sit back and enjoy the fruits of both. But at least a little of why I like being 54 is that I look and feel younger. Or I did until I was callously informed that not only might my knee be degenerating, but that's not even big news for "someone my age."

Of course, my husband got more sympathetic the minute he saw the shocked look on my face, and the anti-inflammatory medicine he recommended is already improving things. If the pain goes away and I have no further problems, we plan to go back to ignoring my poor old right knee, whatever may have happened in there. But I have to admit I suddenly feel if not 54, then certainly older than I did before I had to accept that, where my own body is concerned, I no longer get to be alarmed or outraged by a phrase like "soft tissue degeneration."

Back in the Humidity

My God – did we just forget? The humidity is like a tangible presence, a malevolent organism that is seeping into our skin, our bones, our cells and, unfortunately, our patience. We’re both so sticky and soggy that we’re short-tempered and headachy.

I remember disliking humidity, but I don’t remember it being impossible to get on with life. Counters feel sticky. Clothes are limp within moments of being removed from drawers and put on. Paper takes on the soft, wet, repulsive feel of some gross worm-like thing. Towels are useless when you get out of the shower, but nevertheless somehow absorb enough water to be still-wet hours later. Air conditioning makes interiors cold, but does nothing for the dampness. Your choices seem to be hot and sticky or cold and damp. And the insects are vicious. They’ve clearly taken over the world in this neck of the woods and they do as they please, inside and out.

My hair dryer makes me incredibly happy because the hot dry air feels like the desert. I consider whining like a child that I want to go home. I go ahead and do it. My husband smiles, as if it's a joke, but he looks pained and equally unsure we can actually stay here.

OK, we decide. We’re being ridiculous. We’ve always liked Door County. The home we’ve rented a few feet from the shore of Green Bay (the actual bay, not the town that’s had enough of Brett Favre) is gorgeous. We’ve gone to the grocery store for basics and to little gourmet markets for cheese and chopped cherry jam and artisan bread. We have enough bug repellent and anti-itch remedies to stay a step or two ahead of the bugs (we hope). The Internet connection works. Although the router doesn’t (so much for wi-fi on my laptop), there’s an adorable bakery/restaurant/gift shop with excellent wi-fi and coffee just two miles away. I pull myself together and whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. While they bake, I work on my new book. The words flow and the time flies and the cookies are delicious.

This is going to be fine.

The Need for Speed

Las Vegas is the only place I've ever driven where people routinely drive under posted speed limits. This probably isn't the result of an excess of caution or a desire to save fuel by going slower - on the highways, people dart all over the road as speedily (and as blindly) as maniacal bats out of hell. But on main thoroughfare streets, nearly all of which have six roomy lanes as well as wide, convenient and separate left- and right-turn lanes just about anywhere you might think of wanting to turn, drivers tool along between 30 and 35 mph even though the speed limit is 45. Often, there is one such stately driver in each of the three lanes going your direction. It's like being behind the front phalanx in some sort of boring parade. You're just stuck.

I've been trying to figure out why anyone, faced with a stretch of open road, wouldn't promptly accelerate to the speed limit. (I don't wonder why the slowpokes can't just get themselves the hell into the right lane where they belong. It's plain when you look into their windows as you pass them that they are simply oblivious, sometimes because they're gabbing animatedly on cell phones, sometimes because they just have that look of a person who might as well be living alone in the world for all the consideration he/she shows for everyone else.)

I think the explanation may have something to do with how people react to wide open spaces depending on whether they've always had them or never had them. Those of us who spent most of our driving time on narrow, crowded Eastern or Midwestern streets where the traffic usually moves like molasses if it moves at all, can't help feeling a surge of joy, followed instantly by a surge of acceleration, whenever we see in front of us a stretch of open road. Is there anything more wonderful to a Chicago commuter, for example, than a sudden multi-car-length open space after an hour of crawling along on the Kennedy behind the same bumper? I don't think so.

(It used to take me hours to get bumper sticker slogans out of my head. Why is it so hard to stop reading those things over and over and over when they're emblazoned on something peeling off a bumper a few inches in front of your car? During my commuting years, I developed a whole theory about the mean-spirited "mine is better than yours" theme that characterizes so many bumper stickers, but that's a post for another day.)

Unlike drivers accustomed to very little in the way of opportunities to go 45 mph on city streets, people who learned to drive in the wide open west (or have assimilated it better, evidently, than I have) respond totally differently to the chance to go fast. They seem to feel no need whatsoever to take advantage of it.

The Economics of Error

Econ 101 was quite a while ago but, as I recall, rising costs result largely from inflation, currency inequalities, supply issues and demand issues. Rising prices flow in turn from rising costs and, I suspect, rampant inefficiency and the occasional irresistible price-gouging opportunity. My recent experience indicates that the cost of having to do everything twice in order to get it right might also be a significant factor here in the 21st century.

I wrote not too long ago about the trials and tribulations of an attempt to get new glasses. That finally came out OK late last week, but only after the vision center rechecked my prescription, confirmed that it was in fact wrong, and then remade the glasses. I have no doubt that the glasses for which I paid multiple hundreds of dollars cost only a fraction of that to make, but still - having to do the entire process twice must have cut into the profit margin.

We decided a few weeks ago to refresh the paint on our exterior shutters, pillars, fasciae and so forth. The painting outfit we selected to do the job had all the basics of marketing and selling down pat: good ads, great brochure, an exceptionally convivial and knowledgeable estimator/salesperson who came the very day we called and was able to do the estimate on the spot, and a quick scheduling process. They even had an owner from the East - an intangible that we've learned from bitter experience is very important. Home service people from the Midwest and East have been great; those from Utah, Oregon and Washington are also good, but to steer clear of serious annoyance, it's necessary to avoid the ones from California and Nevada like the plague.

Anyway, once the actual painting job was done, it fell short of what had been advertised. We called to request a review, the owner of the company came out, looked things over, agreed that it wasn't up to "our usual standards" and apologized profusely. The redo is scheduled for Friday.

And this morning I opened an email shipping confirm of an order I placed with a food retailer. This is a joint with wonderful foodstuffs and exorbitant prices. The prices are almost OK given the extraordinary quality of the food, but I usually get tripped up by the shipping costs. They are outrageous. (Excuse me, but things like a tin of Spanish tuna and a box of licorice do not require the same shipping protocols as live lobsters.) I rarely order, but they sent me a "How about 20% off?" email and I figured the 20% off would cover the shipping.

(I know, I know. I'm a sucker. I'm aware that these emails are based on classic drug dealer behavior: give them a taste for a bargain price and they'll be back for a boatload at full price as surely as night follows day.)

So the shipping confirm email this morning gives me a tracking number for the package, which is supposed to be delivered today. The confirm has all the right info (including the shipping address), but imagine my surprise when I click on the tracking number and learn that the package is "out for delivery to Wilmette, IL."

I lived in Wilmette, IL, until January 2005. I have ordered from this retailer three times since I moved to Nevada, twice for myself and once as a gift. Nowhere in my account information on their website is any address in Wilmette, IL. This could be a bizarre coincidence, but I'm betting they have an outdated shipping database that doesn't tie to account information or, apparently, to actual shipping invoices.

How on earth can these companies have respectable profit margins? It's not like they don't know mistakes cost money. That's the whole point of best practices benchmarking, TQM, Six Sigma and whatever new flavor-of-the-month "quality" initiatives have taken their place since I left the corporate world. I don't know which is more alarming - the possibility that companies have built the cost of redoing everything into their price structures (kind of a preemptive price-gouging) or that these constant mistakes come as unpleasant surprises that require steadily increasing prices to offset.

Life-icon

I've been invited recently by a bunch of different people to join a bunch of different so-called networking websites. Once I joined, a different bunch of people I've met over the course of my life turned out to be on those sites, too, and invitations poured in. This was exciting; I liked the idea of getting back in touch with people. The preponderance of sites is sort of annoying, and some are much better than others (Biznik hilariously proclaims itself as "business networking that doesn't suck," but it totally sucks - takes forever to load and, possibly for that reason, generates basically no activity). But how fun, I thought, to post a profile, which is easy enough, and then reconnect with people.

It hasn't worked that way. With a few notable exceptions, the people on these sites (including me after a few months) are incredibly passive. It's as if the goal were to have the highest number of "connections" without regard to quality of communication.

I was surprised by how many people request connections without writing any sort of note at all. I was even more surprised by how many accept invitations without penning anything in response to the note I wrote them. Evidently, this sort of connection feels adequate to folks with nothing in the way of personal communication other than the lame little sentence LinkedIn, Plaxo or what-have-you offers as a default. Call me old-fashioned, but when I'm reconnecting with someone I haven't been in touch with for a decade or more, I'd like to do more than add their name to my list of connections. I'd like to know how they are, what they've been up to - you know, reconnect.

In the course of browsing Gmail's new features this morning, I realized what the problem is. Gmail is now offering more "emoticons" with the suggestion that we "start sending richer expressions to [our] friends." Huh? How do generic little pictures constitute "richer expressions?" That's what words are for.

Genericism is exactly what's wrong with the connection sites, too. They're not for making connections. They're for making "connecticons," which, like emoticons, are meant to stand in for the real thing. Makes me wonder what's next in our virtual lives.

Fuzzy Vision

I haven't posted a customer service rant in a while, but today's excitement is a doozy. I got new glasses last week. I love them, but they seem to have blurred the letters in my mid-range vision, a.k.a. my computer screen, where I spend many hours every day working with happy obsession on my new book. The visual fuzziness, which disappears completely if I wear my old glasses, was still bugging me after three days with the new ones, so I made an appointment for a prescription check at the "vision center" where I had my eyes examined and bought the glasses.

The appointment was this morning at 11:30. I arrived at 11:25 for what I imagined would be a 15-minute thing (the original exam having taken only a minute or two longer than that). I signed in and sat patiently for 15 minutes, impatiently for 15 more, and then went up to the receptionist and asked how much longer it might be. I wanted to have a little tantrum, but I kept my goal in mind and instead reminded her politely that I'd indicated when I made the appointment that I had to be on my way by 12:15. Neither she nor any of the teen-aged "optical assistants" (well, they're probably in their 20s, but you couldn't tell that from their general callowness or their styles of dress, speech or professionalism) had any idea either when the doctor might be available or how to go about discerning that fact.

I agreed to wait another 10 minutes until 12:05, despite my strong sense that I was throwing good time after bad. Sure enough, the doctor didn't appear and no one, as far as I could tell, attempted to prompt her or find out what was going on behind her closed door. At 12:08, I requested my glasses back so I could be on my way. The receptionist said she could guarantee I wouldn't have to wait if I rescheduled for first thing in the morning or "right after the doctor's lunch." I did so, then asked if the optometrist was running so far behind because people had arrived late for their appointments. "Oh, no," the receptionist said smugly. "If people are more than 10 minutes late, we require that they reschedule."

So the deal is that if I'd walked in 11 minutes late, I would have been booted, but these jokers have no problem keeping me waiting for 45 minutes or more without apology or explanation.

This is so wrong on so many levels. First, let's get real about what kind of business this joint is in. It's plainly about selling $700+ pairs of glasses rather than $35 eye exams. We're not patients in this setting. We're customers. Being made to wait for a doctor is stupid, especially in a city where you can get any cosmetic enhancement you might desire - new glasses, new teeth, permanent makeup, a fake tan, better body parts, etc. - on practically every corner.

Second, come on! What possible reason could there be for the delay? I can understand having to wait for an orthopedic surgeon or an obstetrician, but an optometrist?? It's hard to imagine an optometric emergency. And I know from my medical professional husband that being made to wait for medical professionals is largely bullshit except where said professionals have to handle unexpected emergencies. Doctors' offices can easily avoid delays simply by scheduling sufficient time per appointment and not double-booking.

So the vision center's got it wholly backward. They're double-booking the optometrist (where they make little money) and backing up the selling and fulfillment of glasses (where the big bucks are). In the process, they're driving away the customers they're lucky enough to have. Their vision is fuzzier than mine!

Technical Difficulties

It's really unbelievable how unsettling computer troubles can be. A couple days ago, a black border showed up out of nowhere and starting dancing around the cursor on the screen of my beloved new Mac. I grew increasingly upset and anxious, desperate even, as nothing I tried succeeded in making it disappear.

The black border drove me crazy on general principles, but it also alarmed me because I seem to recall that random geometric shapes appeared on an old laptop of mine before it died a punishing death several years ago. Punishing for me, that is, because the laptop took with it over 10 pages of freshly written material for my first book. To this day, I'm certain that the lost pages were better than the replacements I came up with. The incident also turned me into an obsessive backer-upper. When I write large chunks now, I typically email them to myself and store them on an external jump drive - all this in addition to the backup that automatically occurs on my external LaCie Time Machine, which has to be the coolest system there is. Everyone who knows about this compulsive storage thinks I'm insane, but I'll be damned if I'm ever again going to struggle through the crushing processes of grieving, failed reconstruction and, ultimately, less satisfactory rewriting.

Anyway, the black border on the Mac. After I failed to solve it on my own, I Googled the problem. This usually works like a charm, but evidently I used the wrong search words because the results weren't helpful. Then, I called Apple Tech Support and got a guy who apparently had marbles in his mouth. He ran through his standard Tech Support Script with me ("I already rebooted." "Yes, ma'am, I understand. Please shut down your computer and then we'll turn it back on."), all to no avail. He kept telling me to do things that took time, then muted the phone while he was waiting (to "help" another customer? to ask questions of someone who actually knew something about computers? to trade stocks?). Whenever I told him the time-consuming function was finished, he started talking again without unmuting his phone, so I heard silence until I said, "Hello? Hello?" Then, he'd come back, pretending nothing was amiss. ("I'm here, ma'am.") This happened at least a dozen times.

After 45 minutes of inserting discs and doing scary behind-the-scenes things to my computer, all of which had no impact whatsoever on the black border, my patience, never my strongest suit, was at an end. When Marbles instructed me to drag a bunch of things to a new place, then was bewildered when the computer wouldn't let me do so, I decided he and I were finished and called the only IT guy I trust - my son. He was at work, but I knew he'd get back to me ASAP with a solution. Sure enough, he did. We had a lot of guests over the weekend, one of whom had inadvertently pushed the buttons on my computer that activated the Universal Access feature - thus, the black border to highlight where the cursor was. A simple click to turn off that feature and, presto!, the border disappeared.

Both my original agitation and my relief were out of proportion to the actual events, but I couldn't be more delighted that the problem wasn't really a problem. I would have thought less of my Mac had it developed a mysterious computer ailment within its first six months. Like my father, who considered a car to be ruined once it required any sort of repair, I don't like intimations of imperfection in mechanical things. I much prefer to think of them as perfect, wonderful, and not on the brink of disaster.

Mini-Blog

I'm fascinated by how differently men and women experience and are shaped by forces like ambition, brains, beauty, work, sex, love, marriage, etc. It's one of the central themes of my novel, and I'm consistently intrigued by how it's both reflected in - and prompted by - the media. There's no shortage of illustrative articles, and I collect and comment on the ones that strike me. If you enjoy reading my blog, check out the collection on my website for more fun, thought-provoking and frequently updated commentary - mine and others. You can get to my Relevant Articles page by clicking here or by clicking on the Commentary button that's on every page of my site.