Thank you for your patience

Back in the early year of this century, I was riding a London Underground Piccadilly Line train home from Heathrow. The driver announced some deficit in service, which I don’t now recall. But a fellow next to me said, “Why do they insist on referring to us as ‘customers’?” I asked, “As opposed to ‘victims’?” and he responded, “They should call us passengers.”

Oh. Right.

Using the District They Call Columbia’s Metro system with some greater frequency than I did the Tube, I’m very often reminded of that somewhat fluid distinction. Between customer and victims, I mean.

Thursday afternoon, for example, my Blue Line train parked with doors open for some minutes at Arlington National Cemetery while the driver repeated something about scheduled (and schedule-impairing) repair work, and eventually got to the point: in addition to the single tracking between Van Dorn Avenue and Franconia stations for the scheduled repairs, they were also suddenly single tracking between National Airport and Braddock Road because of some incident. So we were holding until…well, I’m not sure how long. I just carried on reading my book.

Eventually the doors closed and we got underway. Not before I began some rough calculations about whether I should just get out there and walk home. That actually is an option, although you do not want to have to avail yourself of it at 1700 of an August day.

But yesterday morning my Blue Line train made it to Foggy Bottom, in the District, and then the dreaded open-doored non-movement came to my consciousness. After some time the driver announced that there was a switching issue at the Smithsonian station (five stops up the line) and we were awaiting instruction. Alas, when instruction arrived it was to abandon ship: the train was “out of service” and would be returning to Franconia, in darkest Virginia.

Sorry, suckas.

Well, at somewhere around 0615, of course, Metro staff were thin on the ground. I caught one next to the fare machines and asked the best way to get to Metro Center (which is both an area and a station). He looked at me like I’d ridden in on a turnip truck (which, in a sense, I had done) and gestured to the place whence I’d just emerged. I informed him, no, no trains; nada.

Oh—that was news to him. When he did not feel moved to give me information on getting where I needed to go, I asked again—how do I get to Metro Center. On a bus or walk? Oh—I could take a number 30 bus; cross the street outside and catch the bus.

Well, okay, except that the buses listed on stop across the street did not include a number 30, and (as it happens) any bus stopping there would be headed to Georgetown. Kind of the opposite direction from my destination.

I flagged another uniformed Metro staffer at the corner, asked her how to get to Metro Center, got the same village-idiot look and explained that, no, the train, she no go there; she stop, go back. So this woman directed me to the bus stop across the street (meaning, on the same side as the Foggy Bottom station entrance), and get on any bus. “Any” bus, because she didn’t have any specific route number in mind.

Well, by that time, I lost all faith in any information I was getting, and just decided that I’d go via shanks’ mare. I was unclear about the best route to take—I haven’t walked that area, and it was dark. But I figured that if I was at I Street and 23^rd, I could head in the general direction I thought would take me to 12^th and H. If I seemed to be going astray, I could correct course. But, as it happened, I’d chosen well. When I got to Saint John’s Church and Lafayette Square, I knew I was okay.

In the end, it took me perhaps twice the time that the train ride would have done. It’s around 1.5 miles, and there’s some interesting scenery. So here are my takeaways:

I know I can do it, although I do wish I’d had better walking shoes. Also, I need a bigger smartphone, one that will display a map large enough that I can read.

Metro really ought to train its staff on giving directions on how to get around the city by alternative means, because it seems like the alternatives are increasingly what we need to use. Because Metro is utterly reliable in its unreliability.

As an aside, I notice that—like London Underground—Metro also refers to people who are attempting to get from one place to another on one of their conveyances as customers. I still think it’s odd—passengers might be too hopeful a term for fare-payers, but why not riders?

Finally, I can’t decide whether “Train will be moving shortly” or “We thank you for your patience” should be the official motto of Metro.

#DoYourJob

Y’all know what a fan I am of the Founding Fathers and how they built the framework of this bold experiment in self-government based on their experience with Mother England. Checks and balances in the distribution of powers; separation of church and state; protection against unreasonable search and seizure; the absolute right to trial by jury—careful provisions for creating a country that would not perpetuate the elements they'd seen in an unjust ruler.

They were products of their times, so, yeah—they built human chattel slavery into the firmware of the state, and it never occurred to them (Abigail Adams to the contrary notwithstanding) that women would expect to take part in political dialog. I suspect they also never imagined heavier-than-air flight, AR-15s or breakfast burritos.

But even as they struggled with constructing this new nation they anticipated that things might come along that would require adjustments, the specifics of which they could not predict; so they included provisions for adapting the government of the people to be truly for the people. And over the years, we as a nation ended slavery, experimented with teetotalism, then decided that wasn’t working and revoked it. And blow me if there’s not a woman running for President these days.

But over the past few years I’ve come to the very disheartening conclusion that there’s one horror that the Founding Fathers failed to provide protection against. Because it would not have been possible, on the darkest night of their deepest winter of discontent, for them to imagine that there would come a time when the men (and women) entrusted by the people of this nation with the honor and responsibility of representing us in the legislative branch would not do their fucking jobs.

That we would witness via every channel of mass media senators and congressmorons declining to bring critical legislation to the floor and instead spending months and millions on spurious “investigations” into events that don’t suit their ideology? Refusing to even begin the process of considering an appointment to a vacant Supreme Court seat and presenting that refusal as a matter of principle? Pouting like teenaged girls who didn’t get picked for the cheerleader squad, and spend their resulting free time passing around vicious gossip about the ones who did? Performing political theatre like marionettes on strings jerked by corporate puppetmasters?

Can you feature Jefferson, Monroe, Hamilton, Jay or Adams sitting down in a tavern together, lifting a glass of claret and suddenly bolting up to cry, “I say, chaps—should we make some provision for the possibility that those elected go completely gaga and don’t fulfill the duties of office for, oh, days at a time? Or what if senators and representatives just—I don’t know—use their office to line their own pockets? Should we…?” There would have been such a roar of laughter as to shake the walls of buildings three streets over. That kind of dereliction would have been inconceivable to them.

In the days following 9/11, there was a joke circulating that went approximately like this: Osama Bin Laden is killed and arrives in paradise to be met by George Washington, who punches him in the nose. Then Patrick Henry gives him a knee to the groin, followed by John Randolph of Roanoke, who jabs an elbow to the ribs. Then Monroe, Madison, Jefferson and…

Bin Laden lies writhing on the ground and whimpers, “This isn’t what I was promised. What’s going on?”

An angel tells him, “I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you. What were you expecting?”

Would that those Virginians and their comrades could visit the Capitol and perform a bit of head-shaping for those disgraceful, worthless, craven occupants who—between all 535 of them—couldn’t come up with enough of a backbone to support the principles embodied in the first five Amendments to the Constitution.

Or, as this video (created more than four months ago, but still accurate) puts it:

On the beach

So, I was on Twitter, minding my own business, when one of my Euro tweetmates fired something across my feed. And, warning:

Because:

Well, this sparked a couple of thoughts.

First, I suggested that my pal might want to consider the whole waxing issue before he shells out for this, erm, item. Because I’d think bikini waxing would be a showstopper for most males.

Then I pointed out that he’d better not cough while wearing it. Or possibly even walk.

But on the other, uh, hand—as long as it’s not a burkini, he’s good to go as far as the French authorities are concerned.

P.S. Yes, I know you cannot unsee this. But I did warn you.

Rag trade

This piece ran in Sunday’s Washington Post Opinion section, and it sparked a veritable storm of comments. Because it points out a fact of contemporary life that is blindingly obvious to every woman over the age of 30: the ready-to-wear clothes we’re being offered everywhere from Banana Republic to Ann Taylor are ugly, over-priced, shoddy and not designed for actual female body shapes. And the buying public are therefore declining to pay good money for schmattas that pill, rip, shrink, fade and otherwise fail to fulfill their function.

Ergo the more than 2000 responses from WaPo readers who do not want to wear low-riding jeans, transparent knit off-the-shoulder or sleeveless tops, mini-skirts or other garments that make you look like you’re on the game. Especially when worn with the four-inch heels that seem inescapable in either shoes or boots.

(Seriously: I get the feeling that the fashion industry thinks that the only women with money to spend on clothes are stick insects with the sophistication of Hannah Montana. What makes me really uncomfortable about this is that “the look” is decidedly sexualized, like tweens on parade on websites that I don’t really want to think about.)

Sales are down noticeably in these retailers, but evidently not enough to get them to start asking what women actually do want, which is an interesting business model. Because what they want are clothes that fit a variety of body types (some of which encompass curves), in colors that flatter and realistic sizes, and that don’t start falling apart the moment you walk out of the store. Quelle idée!

Here’s une autre idée: the retailers might consider the buyer experience. Because that, too, is clearly targeted at the younger millennial. You walk into any store in a mall, from Forever 21 to Nordstrom, and ear-damagingly loud music of some indeterminate origin assails you. It’s basically screaming (um): “We don’t want your money! Go away! You can’t handle the hipness!” When Nordstrom replaced their live piano with ersatz head-banging crap throughout the store, I recognized it as a sign of the End Days. So I just don’t go in there.

Then there’s the third-world feeling of shabbiness you get when you walk into a store with jumbled merchandise on tables and overstuffed racks, the entirely predictable outcome of corporate stinginess in staffing. A friend of mine in the Valley They Call Silicon used to pick up some extra cash working at Macy’s in the Stanford Mall during the holidays. Stanford Mall draws upscale shoppers, but that Macy’s looks like your average Kohl’s: clothes littering the sales floor (not just the dressing rooms), racks so crammed you can’t pull something out…ugh. Beth had a completely Sisyphean task of trying to make things neat, because she was the only one covering several departments.

And it’s not limited to that one store. I was in the Macy’s in Pentagon City at the weekend, with a 25% discount card. Between the fashion offerings and the slightly grody environment, I could not get out of there fast enough. I handed off my discount card to a trio of British tourists coming in as I was leaving.

Also—the industry’s humiliating approach to sizing might be worth a revisit. Marilyn Monroe was a size 12. These days retailers disdain to carry any double-digit sizes, even though it’s not a very well-kept secret that the American population is expanding in waistline as well as numbers. Why would clothing manufacturers and retailers basically fat-shame women by telling them that if they want something above a 10, they need to take their money and go online?

Moreover—these days a Size [whatever] is not a Size [whatever] across the board. Even from a single manufacturer, since the label goes on hundreds of items that actually come from factories wherever labor is cheapest, and China, Mexico, Ghana, Vietnam, Bangladesh and other places are not standardizing cutting templates. Nor, let it be noted, are the label-owners interested in paying for standardizing, since every nickel they shell out means that much less profit.

This means that trying to buy anything without trying it on first is a crapshoot with the odds decidedly not in your favor. Who has the kind of time to burn that allows you to take three sizes of everything into the dressing room until you hit lucky? Or to return items bought online in the vain hope that your guess on size would be right?

When I posted the WaPo story on Facebook someone said, “That’s why Goodwill is the way to go.” Well, except that thrift and consignment stores are hit and miss: Yes, you can find some good quality things, but the retail gods must be smiling directly upon you for you to strike while there’s something you like in your size. Plus, when you factor in their usually limited hours, if you’re working a 9-5 M-F gig, you only effectively have Saturday to make the rounds of second-hand stores. I, for one, don’t have that kind of energy or time.

If any retailers or manufacturers were reading the comments to the WaPo piece, I hope they were wearing protective eye gear, because there were floods of caustic words flowing. I also hope they take on board some of the sentiments: Holy crap, people: don’t treat the money-wielding market like we should be ashamed to want apparel that suits us, whatever we look like. This is pretty basic market awareness; think you can manage that?

Oh, and for the love of God, would you give us pockets?

Gratitude Monday: Reading mayhem

Oh-boy, oh-boy, oh-boy—I picked up the newest release in the Commissario Brunetti series by Donna Leon Saturday at the library. Then I spent the weekend tearing through the canals and cuisine of Venice, and it’s promising to be one of Leon’s better outings. (The last one, famed around an opera singer, was, como si dice, lame. It happens.)

But I’m also on the waiting list for Tana French’s latest in the Dublin Murder Squad series, and ditto Louise Penny’s newest featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Penny’s is published this week and French’s in October, so I’ll be drip-feeding the mayhem.

I really wish that Penny had chosen a different name for her hero, because I continually “hear” him as ganache, and I get distracted by thoughts of couverture and the like, particularly since, like Leon, she spends a lot of time describing meals the various characters eat. Although I get a little tired of the maple sugar-cured bacon, and I frankly doubt how a small, albeit quirky, village could support both a bistro and a boulangerie. 

(Guilty secret: I'm afraid that when I'm deep in one of these puzzles I don't eat nearly as well as the characters. This weekend I subsided mainly on plain Greek yoghurt, with some granola and blackcurrants mixed in.)

However, even though last year’s Gamache was a disappointment, I know that Penny at her best is worth waiting for. And French frankly writes the hell out of every story she comes up with, and I love the fact that each outing has been from the perspective of a different member of the Murder Squad. Last year’s, The Secret Place, is one of those books that you call in sick to work so you can finish it. (Although you don't spend time in any of her stories on food. Her cops may grab a doughnut or a bag of crisps on their way to the underside of Dublin, and that's about it.)

So today I’m grateful for having well-written police procedurals to provide respite from the political silly season, and a slight change from my usual heavy-duty history reading. Also—hurrah for libraries!

Woman wonders

Mixed feelings about Women’s Equality Day, which is today. As a commemoration of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution on this date in 1920, well, hurrah.

(Hello? The Nineteenth granted women the right to vote across the nation. Only 131 years after the implementation of the Constitution itself, and 50 years after certification of the Sixteenth Amendment declaring “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”)

Basically, the Nineteenth Amendment certified that, yes, surprise, surprise: women are full citizens and therefore cannot have their right to vote denied or abridged by the United States or any state. The campaign for female suffrage had its beginnings at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and the push for a Constitutional amendment to sort it out once and for all began in 1878, so as you can imagine, there was considerable discussion of the matter. And you might have thought that with its implementation, we’d be ready to accept that equality in citizenship should imply equality of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and move on.

But you’d be wrong.

Ergo the creation of Women’s Equality Day in 1971 by Bella Abzug. And my dismay about it. Because even 45 years after that attempt to keep the issues of equality before our eyes, we still seem to be unclear about the fact that this includes equal opportunity in the workplace, in housing, in access to healthcare and education, and…like all that.

Some very depressing global statistics on these issues here. And I’ll just close my eyes and throw a dart at the myriad posts I’ve written about some of the ludicrous events in the worlds of business and politics. Because this sort of resistance to making room at the table is more ubiquitous than Starbucks, and even more pernicious. It’s as though we were demanding at gunpoint some revolutionary upturning of all that’s held sacred.

Oh, wait…

I get it: if you have a scarcity mindset, you think that the pie that comprises all worldly (and possibly unworldly) things is finite. Money, status, power, space on the bus, love—whatever portion someone else has of any of those things means there’s less for you. And every alteration to the status quo becomes a threat to your existence, to your happiness. That scarcity mindset is what’s been driving marketing and political campaigns for…well, a long time.

But what if you consider a different proposition: by allowing women, non-white folks, people with disabilities or indeterminate gender to join the enterprise on an equal basis, and contribute to their full capabilities—what if that expands the pie, and creates more for everyone? What would that world look like?

Also consider how it would reduce the stress that all that anger, fear and bile puts onto your system.

In a conversation I had with a colleague about the variety of attacks made on female political candidates (Clinton, Fiorini, Palin, Pelosi—all the way back to Geraldine Ferraro, and probably to Margaret Chase Smith), I pointed out that it didn’t matter which side of the political spectrum either the candidates or the attackers were on. Right, left, progressive, conservative—the slime thrown is almost universally tied to one's chromosome configuration. She’s had cosmetic “work” done! Her glasses! Her pantsuits! Her hormones! The same holds true for women having the nerve to take leadership roles in business or the military or other fields.

And said no one ever about a male candidate, commander or CEO. Ever.

I told my colleague I really hope that by the time his daughters (one in high school, one in elementary school) hit the workplace some of this will have diminished. I could see him processing the idea and rejecting it based on what we experience today. That saddened me.

So here’s my fond wish: that we can hold out the ideal of true women’s equality, and that we won’t just think of it one day a year, but that it’ll be so commonplace that we can look back and say, “Hey—so glad we don’t have to deal with this anymore, and can focus all our considerable capabilities on solving sustainable energy and delivering safe drinking water to all homes globally.”

Ah—a girl can dream.

Plated up

As you know, I love sussing out stories from my surroundings. And as a fourth-generation Californian, I look to motor vehicles as extensions of people’s personal narratives. Whether it’s stating practical capabilities, asking the big questions or going Mitty, your vanity plate is more than just an tag. It’s like a DMV equivalent of a hashtag, actually.

In the Old Dominion, of course, people are somewhat less inclined to be, um, freewheeling than on the west coast. Long after Californians had been pushing the envelope for raging against the Man (or whatever), Virginians were spending extra to have their initials on their plates. If they were making long-term bets on their marriages, they’d have his-n-hers initials.

These days they’re opening up some, as I’ve noted before. And you're more likely to find sweetness and light, as in this nature lover:

But here’s someone living on the edge:

And I’m thinking that the guy who let this one get out of the state pen didn’t know anything about Aleister Crowley. Probably thought it was the applicant’s mama's name.

Even so, the award for taking the piss goes to this person back in my home state:

That’s what I call making a statement.

Paper tiger

Well, alrighty then: my long personal nightmare is…

Following an extended project involving the unwilling being led by the blind (or possibly mushrooms being cultivated in a guano-rich environment), my fellow “tiger cub team” (and no, I’m not making that up. Tiger teams were bad enough; calling the breakout groups “cubs” was just a business bullshit bingo square too far. I suppose I should be grateful they didn't call us "tiger moms") leads and I gave our after-action report to the executive sponsors.

And since, as you know, over the months the project in question had descended from the surreal to the celluloid-real, I think it’s appropriate to mark the occasion with a clip.

I really hope this signifies the light at the end of the tunnel. And not of a train.

Legal notice

Periodically the Chief Legal/Financial Officer of my employer runs training on, well, legal and financial stuff. They send emails to all staff, you reply that you’ll go, mark your calendar, and Bob’s your uncle.

Because we have a publishing division, and a lot of people run public-facing social media accounts, there’s a big push to make sure we don’t violate copyright and other intellectual property protections. They also give an overview of what constitutes slander and libel, which I really wish the staffs of political candidates and serving congressmorons would bring to their attention.

And, you know, financial reporting and other governance things; they’re important, too.

But evidently they haven’t had a lot of people respond to the email that went out a couple of weeks ago, because flyers started appearing in the kitchen:

And on the mirror in the ladies’ room:

Also, I’m reliably informed that one’s posted in the men’s room, but I didn’t go in there to get photographic evidence.

I’m not entirely sure about the flyers-in-the-loos as a marketing strategy. But I still don’t have a handle on this crowd, so maybe it works.

Gratitude Monday: Davey's gift

Last month the son of a colleague of mine was killed in an auto accident; he was 24. I didn’t know Davey, and only learned of his death through Facebook. To honor his life, his family asked people to perform an act of kindness as Davey’s Gift.

Well, as I say, I didn’t know the young man, but I have been consciously trying over the past few years to step out of my tight, defensive stance in life, to not take everything personally, and (in the words of a friend) to “come down easy when you could come down hard.” To let the little (and even some of the large) irritations slide off me and consider that the perpetrator might be having a worse day, week or month than I am.

But I’ve learned that I’m often caught off-balance when opportunities to display that kind of grace present themselves. It takes me a while to recognize and process what I’m seeing or hearing. That person who’s weaving through the crowd on the Metro platform trying to get to the place where the last car will stop and paying no attention to anything else? Me. The driver disinclined to reward you for gunning along the exit lane and then trying to cut in front? Me. That anxious, impatient person in the checkout line glaring as you wait until all your items have been rung up to fumble for coupons? Me.

So I’ve armed myself with the wherewithal to step out of that mindset. One of my weapons of personal kindness: a bunch of McDonald’s gift cards.

They’re easy to carry around in your pockets so you can disperse as the spirit takes you. Yeah, I worry about the nutrition, etc., but in the kind of weather we’re having, you can at least get something cold to drink and have a legitimate reason for sitting in the air conditioning for a while if you really need it.

I gave the first one to a guy I see regularly at the Metro Center exit at 12^th and G Streets. You never hear him saying anything, or even see him approaching anyone. He just stands or sits on a ledge (the tables and chairs outside are reserved for Cosi customers). In the winter he’s covered with what looks like an old Army-issue grey wool blanket. These days he’s got a towel draped over his head.

One recent morning I noticed him as I got off the escalator around 0630. It was one of those days that was going to have a heat index of 110. I turned as usual toward work, then stopped, dug into my bag and pulled out one of the gift cards. I didn’t say anything, just stood in front of where he was sitting. He pulled back his towel, saw the card I was holding out, took it and thanked me. I told him the value of the card and wished him well.

And I went on to start my day feeling better.

The next one went to whoever it is who cleans our offices, empties the rubbish bins and attends to the rest rooms. For most white-collar workers, clean environments and empty trash cans are just…there. It’s easy to never think about the people who do the actual work of scrubbing toilets, vacuuming carpets and all the rest of it. But because I like to work early, I’ve often run into the cleaning crews, especially the out-sourced contractors who keep companies like Cisco and Microsoft humming no matter how many layers of vendor management skim off their percentages.

And I well recall how, earlier this year, my employer’s cleaners were on the job during the snow storms that kept the office workers home.

So I wanted to show my appreciation to the person who does that for me every working day. I taped one of the cards to the inside of my recycling bin, along with a note saying thank you. Next morning it was gone.

In addition, these days I’m more likely to be the person holding the door for someone whose arms are loaded, or to make way for families on the Metro or to listen with attention to a story I’ve heard a few times before.  

I didn’t know Davey, and I don’t know the people I’m to whom I'm giving in my small way. But it doesn’t matter. I’m just passing on the kindness, and finding that in doing so, I feel better, even on the very bad days. 

You might consider doing so, too. You can do it for Davey, or for someone else in your life, or just for your own self. See if it doesn't make you feel the same gratitude I do.