Wet Seal employees left high and dry

Nearly a decade ago, I remember being shocked by Radio Shack’s decision to use e-mail to let a bunch or workers know that they were being let go.  (And what if it went into your spam folder?)

These days, with the full frontal embrace of impersonal, at a distance, modes of communication, this wouldn’t seem so shocking, and it’s pretty easy to imagine folks getting laid off via IM or even tweet. (#pinkslipped)

It was so much more personal in the old days, when you were told face to face or via phone.

Not that lay offs always happened smoothly and professionally. I’ve seen some real horror shows, and heard about plenty of others second hand.

Still, it is always somewhat surprising that with all the experience that’s out there – dumpers and dumpees – that a handful of methods haven’t emerged that can be declared best practice, and that minimize the pain factor for those losing their jobs. (Nice if it could minimize the pain factor for those doing the lay offs, too. Figuring out who you’re going to lay off, and then telling them, has to be one of the most difficult things I ever had to do as a manager. Some people claim not to be bothered by this. I even worked with one a-hole who bragged about loving it. His favorite lay off was the one where he decided to let a fellow go while that fellow was sitting in the NICU with his wife waiting to learn whether their newborn was going to live. When D got off the phone, he remarked to a colleague, “I really enjoyed that.” D aside, it would be a good thing to extend some pain reduction to the managers who had to do the deed. But most of my sympathy is reserved for those being let go. Sometimes it really is more blessed to give than to receive.)

Anyway, teen-girl outfitter Wet Seal has not gotten the word on how best to let folks know that their jobs are doing a disappearing act. At least not as evidenced by their current lay-offs.

On Jan. 2, employees at the Wet Seal store in Gulfport, Miss., received a large package in the mail. “It was wrapped in green bubble wrap, and it said ‘Store Project’ on it,” says Sonya, 38, the store’s assistant manager, who’s been with the company for a year and a half. When employees opened the package, they found instructions to pack their iPods, registers, music player, and credit card scanners into the box by the following Wednesday, Jan. 7. (Source Business Week)

Sonya wanted to know how the store was going to operate without those credit card scanners, so she called her boss, and also sent an e-mail to corporate HQ to see if she could find out what was up.

Finally she got a call from a store in nearby Hattiesburg. “That’s when we were told we’re closing down.”

The plans have been afoot for a while, and investors were informed in December that approximately 60 stores (a bit more than 10% of Wet Seal’s outlets) were going to be shuttered by the end of January. But they never told employees, most of who probably don’t read the Wall Street Journal or subscribe to Bloomberg.

Rather than telling store managers and clerks that they were being closed, Wet Seal blew smoke up the employee mini-skirt, informing them that their stores were going to be renovated.

Employees claimed they were assured that they shouldn’t be looking for new jobs, only to find themselves laid  off with no notice – and no payout of accrued sick and vacation time.

“It’s one thing to not tell us something, but they told us specifically not to look for jobs, that everything was fine, and that we had low inventory because they were just going to remodel the store,” says Victoria, 20, who until this week was an assistant manager at a Wet Seal in Dayton… “Oh, and they haven’t answered our e-mails in two weeks.”

This is, of course, pure chicken-shittedness on the part of management.

Oh, I’m sure that they were afraid that their “associates” would create their own severance packages by making off with shopping bags full of shirts and leggings. Or that they would destroy those credit card swipers. But I think it’s pretty hideous to let people know that they’re losing their jobs in such a non-professional way, even if half of those losing their jobs are probably high school kids working at Wet Seal for the clothing discount. Which, of course, means the other half were people actually trying to make a living working retail. Lordy, lordy.

It may, of course, be that Wet Seal is just in such drain-circling disarray that they can’t think straight. As it happens, it isn’t 50 stores that just closed, but more than 300. So maybe it’s more a case of chickens running around with their heads cut off than it is of chicken-shittedness.

Whatever the case, there are now nearly 4,000 out of work who, as of last week, thought they had a job.

I passed the local Wet Seal just yesterday on my way home from the gym.

It didn’t look like it was going out of business but, then again, I wasn’t really looking in their window. It’s not a me store to begin with, plus, with a wind-chill factor below zero, I just wanted to get into CVS and buy a supply of Kleenex.

But I will have to notice tomorrow, when I walk by again, whether “our” Wet Seal was one of the dust-biters.

I do have a small vested interest.

I support a charity that provides Christmas gifts to homeless and poor kids, and I always take a few names. Generally, I’ll ask for teenagers, as their names are less in demand. Three of the teenage girls I got this year asked for nail decorating kits.

Well, nail decorating kits were apparently the Tickle Me Elmo of 2014.

The only ones I could find were Disney themed, which was way too young for teenagers.

After not finding any kits, I figured that I could make my own kits up. Alas, I discovered that half the components I wanted were back-ordered until mid-January.

So it was on to the second choice gift, which was a gift card.

Someone suggested that Wet Seal was the place.

Anyway, I hope the kids went shopping the day after Christmas.

Bad enough that Wet Seal bagged all these stores and employees so coldly. I’d be really ticked if the gift cards I got turned out to be worthless.

Next year I’ll check the financial pages before I buy any gift cards for a teen clothing store. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and be able to get some nail decorating kits. Of maybe I’ll take teenage boys, instead. They’re easy enough: MP3 players or something sporty.

Not that I know jack about White Castle, but veggie burgers?

I don’t think that there were any White Castles in Worcester when I was growing up.

We did have a White Tower.

Like pretty much everything else I associated with Worcester, I assumed that White Tower was the second-rate, the cut-rate, version of the real thing. Johnny Carson could make a wise-crack about White Castle, and we had to pretend we got it.

If something wasn’t in Worcester, it was inherently more sophisticated, more interesting, more authentic than what we had on tap. Real life happened in Boston, in Chicago, in New York City. Blah life happened in Worcester.

All we had to show for our troubles was the Smiley Face and Dr. Robert Goddard, pioneering rocket scientist.

Oh, and the fact that Elden Auker – a retired professional baseball player that no one other than my father had ever heard of – lived in a Worcester suburb. (Since there was nothing else to do in Worcester, our family went out for a lot of “spins” – my father loved to drive and take his family for a ride – and some of our “spins” took us by Elden Auker’s house.)

In my imagination, there was a parallel, more sophisticated and interesting universe in which “spins” took you by the home of someone you’d heard of – like Ted Williams – or by a White Castle, not the singularly depressing White Tower on the corner of Main and Chandler, in a ratty and rundown part of town.

I have never eaten at a White Tower – nor a White Castle, for that matter.

My first foray into fast food was at the McDonald’s in Main South – over one billion served! Much glossier, much cleaner, much safer than that seedy White Tower.

And, of course, as a grew up and continued to define and redefine the world, I began to think that while a White Tower might be a White Castle manqué, a White Castle might be  pretty much manqué in its own right. I imagined both Towers and Castles as the sort of places that bums, drunks, loafers, ne’er do wells supped. Or maybe just plain old lost souls. The kind of place that Edward Hopper had in mind when he painted Night Hawks. (Can you imagine Hopper painting a McDonald’s, with its garish red and yellow, and with Ronald McDonald flopping around in his outsized brogues, with that creepy grease-paint grin leering at you?)

But, clearly, I didn’t really know anything about White Castles.

I’ve never even seen one. The closest you get to a WC in these parts is a 7-11 or CVS that sells frozen sliders. (As for WT, it’s pretty much out of business as far as I can tell. Next time I’m in Worcester I’ll lock the car doors and cruise by its old location and see what’s up.)

White Castle, on the other hand, stills seems to be hanging on.

And it has a pretty interesting history for itself, having invented the hamburger bun, popularized the hamburger, created the concept of fast food, and came up with the slider.

Its founding fathers decided not to franchise so, unlike McDonald’s with its tens of thousands of outlets, White Castle has fewer than 500, mostly found in the Midwest. The reason someone like Johnny Carson might have joked about them was that, for some reason, there were/are a number of White Castles in the New York area.

Anyway, White Castle is in the news these days is because they’re coming out with veggie burgers:

Late-night burger chain White Castle announced this week that it will start offering a 99¢ veggie slider, essentially a vegetarian version of the mini beef burgers the chain is known for. Coming from a company that sells sacks (and even crates) of tiny cheeseburgers to the munchie afflicted, the move is something of a surprise. Especially because veggie burgers and other fare marketed as "healthier" than typical fast food have barely moved the needle at other chains so far.  (Source: Business Week)

Really now, who goes to a fast food burger joint for a healthy alternative?

Sure, I’ve been trapped on the NY State Thruway and have gotten a McDonald’s salad, but I always end up with salad-eater’s remorse. Those suckers tend to have the same amount of calories as a quarter pounder with nowhere near the satisfaction.

Would I have been tempted by a veggie burger? Probably not.

Anyway, other than Burger King, none of the biggies – BK, McD and Wendy’s – offers them. At one point, McDonald’s tried a veggie burger experiment in Southern California, but only averaged about four sales per day per store. And that was in Southern Cal! Imagine if they’d tried this in a meatier locale.

But White Castle is counting on vegetarians to come through for them. It’s hoping that those who order a sack (or something called a crate) of sliders will throw in a couple of veggie burgers. It will also let them appeal to groups that have a vegetarian or two among their ranks.

Ah, well.

If I want to give a crate of White Castle sliders – with veggie or not – a whirl, I just need to hoof it over to a 7-11 and look in the frozen food section.

God, solo eating a crate of frozen White Castle sliders.

Sounds even more depressing than a guest appearance in Night Hawks.

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Info source on White Castle: Wikipedia.

What’s with ice cream parlors anyway?

If you like ice cream, it is good to be a New Englander. We’re above the national average as consumers and producers of ice cream, and there’s a lot of ice cream to choose from.

Why, less than a 1 minute walk from my home there’s a gelato place, and if I’m willing to walk 3 minutes, there’s a J.P. Lick’s. A bit farther afield (i.e., less than a 15 minute walk), I have a Ben & Jerry’s and an Emack and Bolio’s. No need to head over to Cambridge to Toscanini’s, let alone to Belmont for Rancatore’s.

And those are just what’s top of mind…

Although I don’t eat ice cream everyday – who wants to end up on My 600 Lb. Life? – if I could, I would. Because, let’s face it, happiness really is a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and a spoon.

Anyway, because New England is such a hot bed (cold bed?) of ice cream, competition can be fierce.

In the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, there were a couple of ice cream stores on Charles Street – the main drag in my ‘hood – that got into a war. A real war. One guy was killed while trying to blow up his rival’s store.

Apparently ice cream wars continue to rage, and the latest skirmish was waged on Cape Cod.

The Cape Cod Times reports that David Ariagno, owner of Lazy Sundaes Ice Cream in Bourne, was released on personal recognizance this week after pleading not guilty to charges including malicious or wanton damaging of property, malicious destruction of property and contributing to the delinquency of his workers. (Source: AP on boston.com.*)

I’ll have to check with my cousin Babs, who has a summer place in Pocasset, which is the capital of Bourne, but I believe I’ve been to Lazy Sundaes. This, of course, makes me feel like I’m almost part of the story although I would not, of course, contribute to the delinquency of a worker, or wantonly and/or maliciously destroy property.)

Anyway, the Cape Cod Times had more of the scoop.

Apparently, there had been a “string of vandalism incidents” at the Somerset Creamery – maybe that’s the one I’ve been to with Babs – which is barely more than a stone’s throw from Lazy Sundaes.

And that stone’s throw was precisely what was happening, as the Somerset kept getting its windows broken by rock-throwers. (Rocky Road throwers?)

Detective John Doble said police eventually determined that teenage employees of Lazy Sundaes were behind the vandalism. Police then learned after interviewing the three suspects that Ariagno’s interest in disrupting a competitor was ultimately driving the behavior, Doble said.

Ariagno, who allegedly smoked marijuana with his teenage employees, also urged them to puncture the tires of staff and customers at the Lobster Trap restaurant on Shore Road, Doble said. But the teenagers refused. (Source: Cape Cod Times.)

Talk about how I spent my summer vacation.

Scooped ice cream. Smoked a doobie with my boss. Broke some windows at an other ice cream store. Drew the line at puncturing tires at the Lobster Trap.

(Why pick on the Lobster Trap, which, as far as I know, doesn’t sell ice cream? I’ve been in there a few times, and I’m pretty sure it’s mostly live lobsters and stuffed quahogs.Maybe Ariagno’s blunt brought about the fog of war.)

Ah, think of those parents who encouraged their kids to get a summer or after school job at Lazy Sundaes.

You’ll make some spending money. Learn the value of hard work. Figure out why you need your education. Have something that looks good on your college application.

And the subtext for summer and after school jobs: you’ll stay out of trouble.

Not if your boss is David Ariagno, apparently.

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*Okay, okay. I know that yesterday I pretty much swore off – and swore at – boston.com. But I grabbed this article before I took the pledge.

And if you’re interested, here’s a Pink Slip ice cream post from the archives.

Okay, Boston Globe, you win.

For decades, pretty much from the time I could read, I was a daily newspaper reader.

Our family had morning and afternoon papers delivered: The Worcester Telegram and The Evening Gazette. (When I was in high school, and changed buses down city – which is what we called downtown in Worcester – there was a newsboy hawking papers who would repeatedly holler ‘Final Gee-zeh-eh-ette. Final Gee-zeh-eh-ette.’ Fifty years on, I can still hear that ear-piercing voice.)

On Sundays, we augmented the Sunday Telegram with a couple of the Boston papers, The Record-American (for its sports pages), The Herald (or was it The Traveler?) and, at some point, The Boston Globe. These my father bought  after Mass at the Sunday newsstand set up in front of our church. I only ever remember one person running this newsstand, and that was my somewhat older second cousin Jimmy who, I believe, manned it throughout his high school and college days. (He went to Holy Cross.)

I remember thinking that it was the height of sophistication to read a big city paper, even one as crappy and lurid a rag as the Record-American.

In college in Boston, I was a regular Globe reader (although probably not every day). In my one grad school year in NYC, I read The Times and The Post, which in those days – the early 1970’s – was the progressive/liberal for the city.

Back in Boston, I was back with The Globe, daily and Sunday, and, off and on,  The Sunday New York Times.

I did this for years. Decades.

Then the Internet happened, and I started getting my daily dose online.

This worked fine for as long as the free content on boston.com (an online something-or-other run by The Boston Globe) pretty much paralleled the paid content on bostonglobe.com. Okay, you didn’t get all the columnists, but, as a news source, it was fine.

Over time, however, the content on boston.com got worse and worse. It’s not quite the level of the Daily Mail, but it’s a screamer, with some of the most idiotic (and appallingly written) news articles imaginable, lots of AP stories (at least readable), and links to articles from crapoid sites like Newsmax.

For one indication of the journalistic level of boston.com, it’s worth looking at a recent headline having to do with a college student who was run over, while lying in the road, in the wee small hours of New Year’s Day.

Here’s how the more journalistically mature and high-minded Globe treated this story:

Student killed by cruiser had been drinking, Cape DA says

Here’s how boston.com framed it:

Student run over by Cape cop was drunk, high

Worse than the terrible content are the terrible comments.

Racist, misogynist, sexist, jingoist. Name that ‘ist’, and I can guarantee it shows up in the comments section on boston.com.

Now, I’m not expecting the online comments to be the second-coming of The Essays of Montaigne. Still…

Whatever the article is about, there’s a brigade of commenters who manage to bring it around to an attack on the president (or, by proxy, our outgoing governor Deval Patrick, who – no coincidence in terms of the venom sent his way,  is African American, and has a lesbian daughter to boot.

Unleash the furies!

But most of the viciousness is directed to Barack Obama. Or, as the boston.com commenters would have it, Obongo. Obama bin Laden. Obola. Obammy.

Call him Dear Leader. Call him Barry. Call him Obamessiah (which is actually pretty good).

But most of the names that get tossed around are racist at the core.

Not funny. Not clever.

Just awful.

I’d hate to see the comments that get removed, because the ones that are published are doozies. Sometimes they’re so awful that I come away believing that they were written by misguided liberals trying to make conservatives look bad.

(Not that there aren’t nasty lib commenters. But they’re a) in the minority; b) are more likely to take nasty shots at the GOP or the Catholic Church than they are to froth out with racist, misogynist, jingoist rants.)

But I guess the hairballs with nothing better to do than heave up ridiculous comments are also ‘eyeballs’ that help goose boston.com ad revenue.

And so it goes.

But, as no doubt was The Boston Globe’s marketing strategy all along, I eventually got sick of the sucky content on boston.com, and got sick of letting myself get sucked into reading the sick an sucky comments.

And so, as of New Year’s Day, I am an online subscriber, paying $3.99 per week to have The Boston Globe at my fingertips.

So I’m back to being a daily newspaper reader again, more or less.

I feel better already.

How Jason Best did not have a jolly, holly Christmas

I don’t go to a lot of movies. It’s not that I don’t like the movies. It’s just that, over the years, there have been fewer and fewer that I really felt I had to see in the theater. Waiting for them to become available on Pay per View, or even regular old on demand, has seemed good enough.

From a regular movie-goer, I drifted down over the years into a decided irregular, maybe seeing one or two movies a year in the theater.

So for most of the movies I don’t see in the theater, it’s nothing personal. It’s just ‘meh.’

But if there were one movie that I was definitely not going to see, it would probably be “The Interview”, which from the get-go sounded like a couple of hours of not very funny, puerile stupidity.

It’s not that I’m not curious about/interested in Kim Jon-Un. He’s certainly horrifically fascinating, as is North Korea.

And, sure, pretty much everything’s worth making fun of, so this jamoke is certainly not off limits.

Still, this is a jamoke who’s wildly paranoid, extremely violent, vicious beyond belief to the citizens of his country, and armed with nuclear weapons. So maybe there are better jamokes out there to make fun of, at least for the time being. Or how about making it about Kim Jon-Un but not directly about him. Change the name to protect the guilty, sort of, giving everyone ultimate deniability.

Anyway, all this is the long-winded, Pink Slip way of saying that, even if I lived in Clifton, Ohio, I wouldn’t have jumped up to see “The Interview.” And, thus, I wouldn’t have jumped up to take a ticket to see it at the Empire Theater off the hands of scalper Jason Best.

Best is the Ohio fellow who, instead of having visions of sugar plums dancing in his head, had visions of scalper riches. Which prompted him to spend $650 on 50 tickets to Christmas Day showings of “The Interview.”

"I saw all the hype about 'The Interview' on the 23rd and thought, 'hey, folks are selling these tickets in other cities and it seems like that's the thing to do right now so why not give it a shot so see how it goes,'" said Best, adding that he planned to use one ticket for himself. (Source: WCPO)

And then Sony put some coal in Best’s stocking by releasing it on streaming services.

On Hulu, on YouTube, on Netflix, on Google Play.

With the streaming release, the limited theatrical release was no long so grand and glorious, not the special event that Best was counting on. Demand plummeted. So Best forgot all about trying for the big score, and started thinking about getting his money back. Thus he tried to return the tickets – kind of like a Christmas giftee trying to get a store refund on the hideous Christmas tree sweater from Aunt Bertha.

Unfortunately for Best, the theater doesn’t allow for refunds for special events, which was what “The Interview” Christmas showing was defined as.

While the theater could have made an exception, it was a bit huffed because Best had been planning on scalping his tickets. Which is a no-no.

The company's president, Gary Goldman, added that Best is not considered a customer in this instance because of what he planned to do with the tickets. He said he's a businessman who was trying to recoup a loss at the theater’s expense.

I’m actually someone who thinks that scalping should be legal. There are, after all, plenty of legal ticket resellers out there, scalping away online. In Boston, that would be Higs and Ace. So, yes, if the little guy wants to take the risk of buying up inventory, and if there’s someone out there who’s willing to pay an exorbitant surcharge to get some of that inventory, well, I say have at it. If it’s good enough for Higs…

The only thing I don’t like about this process is that the event folks – like, say, the Boston Red Sox – let the legal scalpers like Higs and Ace grab up mega-blocks of ticket, leaving those of us who just want a couple stuck with paying those exorbitant surcharges.

But, hey, no one’s putting a gun to your head making you buy a ticket to a game you can watch on TV, a concert you can catch later on YouTube, or a movie that’ll end up available via Netflix.

Unsavory as the practice may be, if the scalper takes the risk that he’ll find a willing market, he gets the reward.

Apparently, Jason Best got the reward part but not the risk part.

As of this writing, he’s stuck with a bunch of past-due, unsellable tickets.

Not such a jolly, holly Christmas.

Hope he enjoyed the show…

New Year’s Day, 1990. (New Year’s Day, 2015.)

I suppose I should be starting the new year thinking about the new year. God knows I’ve been looking forward to turning the page on the annus horribilis that was 2014.

But as one year ends and another begins, and you start looking back…

Well, especially if you have more reasons than usual to look back, and keep looking back…

So I thought I’d write about where I spent New Year’s Day in 1990, on what was one of the best trips of my life.

In November 1989, while we watched the Berlin Wall fall, my husband decided that it might be fun to ring in the new year in Berlin, a city where neither of us had been.

Even back then, Jim was a frequent flyer maven, so he used our FF miles to cobble together a trip (first class) that took us from Boston to Newark to Heathrow to Gatick – or was it Luten? – to Hanover to Berlin. And back.

Berlin was fascinating.

We stayed on the West Berlin side, but the borders were pretty fluid by then. You had to go through Checkpoint Charlie, but once you queued and showed your passport, you were automatically passed through.

West Berlin was prosperous-feeling, lovely, and thronged with Ostis, East Berliners come over to ogle the differences between capitalism and communism, which were writ large in every store window in the West – even shops like Woolworth’s. (Yes, there was a Woolworth’s there.) It was easy to spot the Ostis, in their drab, shoddy clothing. You saw them with noses pressed, like the poor little match girl, up against shop windows. And in the food halls of the KaDeWe – Berlin’s answer to Harrod’s – their eyes and tongues were nearly popping out of the skulls.

While the Ostis were gaping at what the west had to offer, we were making our way around East Berlin, shocked by just how rundown everything was. And this was the showcase of communism?

We went into a grocery store, where the apples were mottled and rotting. At home, they would have been destined for the cider mill, not on display in the produce section. The fish counter was appalling. (I’ll have the least decayed fish carcass, bitte.) A bottle of beer, as I recall, cost the equivalent of a nickel, which explained how the good citizens of the east had been able to put up with everything.

We went to a couple of markets. In a toy stall, there were actually dolls with missing limbs for sale. We fingered some “fine” lingerie. It felt like it was made out of sandpaper.

We ate a couple of times in East Berlin, always mindful to leave an over-tip in US dollars or Deutschemarks. No one wanted the local currency, which was rapidly approaching worthless. Worthless though it might be, visitors were required to purchase a certain amount to gain entry to the city, and you had to spend it there. One our final day there, we stopped at a pub, The Volga,  near the Russian embassy. There Jim had a rum coke (undrinkable) and I ordered a grog, not knowing what it was. I was thinking that it would be the liquor equivalent of a Butter Rum Lifesaver. Instead, it was something so foul that I felt my liver wither just by smelling it. Grog may be terrible everywhere – I never ordered it again – but it was absolutely horrific at the Volga.

At one point, Jim started to laugh and said, “Not only are the drinks awful, but up until last month, the people at the next table were spying on you.”

Food and drink were far better in West Berlin, although you had to get to a restaurant early and do a gulp and go before the smokers showed up and started puffing away.

We spent our first few Berlin nights at the Hotel Intercontinental, a modern-ish place near the Tiergarten and the Zoo.

The first morning, when we woke up, our room had a marked sulfur-ish smell. I (politely) asked Jim if he had had a gas attack during the night, but the smell turned out to be from the dirty coal that was used for fuel in East Berlin, and throughout Eastern Europe. When we got on the streets, you could see it in the air – a brown miasma. I imagine that the air quality in Beijing is similar. Yuck!

After a couple of nights at the Intercontinental, we up-scaled to the Hotel Kempinksi Adlon, which was closer to the action, right near the Brandenburg Gate.

On New Year’s Eve, we wandered around the area, ducking – literally – from the fireworks that folks were setting off in the streets. (The hotel clerk had given us an odd look when we asked where the fireworks display was going to happen. New Year’s Eve was one of the only nights when fireworks were legal in Germany – and ubiquitous. Wherever you were, folks were shooting off Roman candles and bottle rockets, hollering “achtung” to passersby. I swear that one bottle rocket nearly passed between my legs. It was actually quite scary.

We made our way to the Brandenburg Gate, and got quite near to the front, not far from the American TV crews. Unlike Americans, Berliners don’t arrive early to mass events, so we were really going to be close to the action. But when we turned around after a while, we saw that enormous crowds had built up behind us. Crowds that just by dint of their size were actually quite scary.

We decided to make our way out of the crowd to see if we could find a place to have a late dinner.

On New Year’s Eve? Without a reservation?

Silly us.

We went back to our hotel and ordered room service. (Ham sandwiches.)

We then went down to the lobby bar for a glass of champagne (or two), where we celebrated the arrival of 1990.

Back in our room, we sat in the window and watched the crowds – wired, noisy, energized – make their way back from the Brandenburg Gate.

Throughout our trip, we were never that far from The Wall, and as you got near to it, you could hear a steady plink-plink-plink as people  - twenty-somethings, families with kids, old folks who must have seen (and survived) everything - chipped away at it.

We chipped, too. 

All I had was a nail file.

At one point, I learned by head and torso through a hole so that I could get a better chipping angle.

An East German soldier – equipped with a machine gun – made his way over to me.

‘Swell,’ I thought, ‘I’m going to get shot, the final casualty of the Berlin Wall.’

Instead, the soldier – just a kid – smiled and gestured to my nail file. “Zu klein,” he said. Too small.

What a thrill to be there, to watch the people armed with chisels, small axes, nail files, bare fingers tear down The Wall.

On our travels, Jim and I never took pictures, something that I now regret.

Not that I need them to remember, but I wish I had a shot of us standing in front of The Wall where someone had graffiti’d the words ‘Hey Moe!’ I wish I had a picture of us at the Volga. Of someone setting off a bottle rocket while he hollered ‘achtung.’

But it’s all in my head…

We’re not much for souvenirs, either.

A couple of days after New Year’s, we bought this poster from a street artist. It has held a place of honor in our home in the many years since.

We went back to Berlin one more time, enjoying it. We had squishy plans to get back there again. Maybe I will, someday.

Nothing’s the same anymore.

But what a great trip…

Anyway, Berlin’s where I spent my New Year’s Day twenty-five years back.

What a lot of wonderful memories…

Meanwhile, I’m planning on a happy and healthy new year. How about you?

Christmas, 2014

It’s been a year, that’s for sure.

Last Christmas, my husband was dying.

He was still doing well enough that we could get out to lunch once in a while. We did our traditional thing and watched White Christmas, finally admitting to each other – after all those years – that it is a truly awful movie.

This year, I carried on and watched it solo.

It is, indeed, a truly awful movie – so awful that I cried during the entire thing!

But, oh, that Bing-Rosie rendition of the eponymous song…

Meanwhile, life – and Christmas – go on.

This year, I found out that it is indeed possible for me to single-handedly get a 7’ tree in the stand, and make sure it’s upright and stable, by myself. And it only took me about 5 minutes, which was far less time than it ever took us to do it together. I will not be counting on a Miracle at Beacon Street next year, and will be ordering one of those foot-levered stands that promise you an upright and stable tree, even if you’re putting it up on your own. We’ll see.

Pink Slip has a couple of traditions, and one is showing a picture of my Christmas tree.

So, thar she blows. Not my best photo ever, but you get the point. Next year’s shot will be taken with something other than an aged Blackberry.

It’s not exactly a perfect tree, and it’s not exactly perfectly decorated.

But if I live by one rule in my life, it’s my grandmother’s: if a man on a galloping horse wouldn’t notice, then don’t bother with it.

So I could have done a better spot of placing that bare spot to the rear. And making sure that the lights and ornaments were more precisely placed.

But, since a man on a galloping horse wouldn’t notice…

What matters more to me is the ornaments themselves.

Some were picked up on our travels. So I have ornaments from Ireland, Paris, Prague, Budapest…Some are New Yorky – the yellow cab, the Empire State Building.

I have ornaments that my mother made, and ornaments – they take pride of place – from my parents’ first Christmas tree.

A lot of my ornaments were gifts, and when I hang them I enjoy thinking about the friends and family members who gave them to me.

Some of my ornaments commemorate pets, living and dead.

I have a number of angels, a number of pigs, a few sweaters, and an awful lot of VW Beetles.

I have some that are family in-jokes: the Jell-o mold, the sock monkey. And some that I just think are funny. (E.g., Groucho nose and glasses.)

Out my kitchen window, I can see a neighbor’s tree. Perfectly lovely, perfectly boring. All red shining balls.

No handmade felt cat (the late and much lamented Emily, the most dog-like cat in the history of catkind). No first-Christmas-after-The-War Santa in the sleigh drawn by the reindeer with the broken leg. No Irish Post Office (Oifig Phoist).

Imperfect as it is, I love my tree.

Tonight I’ll be enjoying it with my perfectly imperfect family. (Or is it the other way around? Whatever, they’ve made this past year one whole hell of a lot easier for me.) We will drink wine, eat too much, and belt out Christmas in Killarney, Good King Wenceslas, and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Our Yankee Swap will the best – or worst – ever.

We will talk about Christmases past (a bit), and Christmas present.

We will miss old friends and relations. (That’s for sure.)

Anyway, Pink Slip wishes you all a very Merry Christmas, a very Happy Holiday (if yours isn’t Christmas), and a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year.

Pink Slip is taking the week off, and will return next week to ring in the New Year.

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Well, I’m all for Christmas presents for pets.

This year, the pet in my life – my sister Trish’s black lab – is getting a box of Greenies and some fancy treats that quite literally have his name (Jack) on them. Greenies are dental chews, and, while I don’t want to imply that Jack should be doing a better job brushing his teeth, he did just see a pet dentist, and we all want Jack to keep his fine white choppers in good shape.

Plenty of people get their pets gifts:

An estimated 50% of dog owners will buy their dog a gift, spending an average of $10, and 36% of cat owners, spending $7.80 per gift, the group says.  (Source: WSJ Online)

An average of $10? Guess I went overboard. And my gifts to Jack will by no means be the only presents he receives. By dollar value of the total swag Jack gets at Christmas, I’m guessing he’s something of a one-percenter.

Pet gifting is extending beyond dogs and cats:

Now, more families are trying to include other types of pets in their Christmas festivities, including guinea pigs, ferrets, hamsters and rabbits.

Some 28% of owners of these “small animals” are expected to buy their pet a Christmas present this year, spending an average of $16 per gift, according to the trade group American Pet Products Association.

Sixteen bucks for a rodent vs. ten for a canine? I know it’s all in the eye of the pet-holder, but I’ve yet to meet a hamster that’s worth 60% more than a dog. But if it’s your little guy, and it’s the most wonderful time of the year, etc., it’s hard to restrain yourself. And there’s plenty of stuff out there to spend on.

New items include gingerbread houses and scuba-diving Santa decorations for fish tanks and reindeer antlers and Santa hats for guinea pigs.

Hamsters are harder, Mr. [Steve] Chattin [VP PetSmart] says. “You try to put a hat on a hamster and their natural instinct is to take it off,” he says.

Red, green and white shredded-paper bedding to line animal cages is a big seller to “pet parents,” PetSmart’s term for its customers.

Santa hats for guinea pigs, eh?

On Christmas Eve, I’m sure that Jack will be sporting a holiday collar.

But that’s about it.

Other than an assortment of collars, the only clothing Jack owns is a Thundershirt, which is supposed to calm a dog down when it’s scary outside.

But if you do want to dude your pet up:

Many dogs happily sport Christmas sweaters, hats and bow ties, but persuading other species to wear clothing over their fur coats isn’t always easy. Petco says its new holiday stoles, made for rabbits, guinea pigs and ferrets, were designed in consultation with a veterinarian to be sure the fit is safe and comfortable, especially given the animals’ propensity to chew, burrow and squirm. Ms. [Jennifer] Loesch  [VP Petco] says “the stoles have Velcro closures for a quick breakaway if they want to wiggle out of it.”

For those less likely to wiggle, Ms. [Cindy] Breninger sells Santa hats for tortoises online.

Not content with a Santa hat, Ms. Breninger crafted up a little Christmas tree for her little critter to tote around. (Question for K&R: What Would Sluggo Do?)

I suspect that most folks don’t deck out their turtles.

But ferrets, now there’s another story altogether.

Ferrets are, apparently, the new dog.

Not only does Marshall Pet Products make all  kinds of Christmas gear with which to deck the ferrets:

Demand for holiday-themed ferret hats is so strong that next year Marshall, based in Wolcott, N.Y., plans to add a witch hat for Halloween, a party hat and a top hat for black-tie events. The Uncle Sam hat, sold for over 15 years, has become increasingly popular as more people involve ferrets in Independence Day parties, Ms. [Linda] Cope says.

As. More. People. Involve. Ferrets. In. Independence. Day. Parties.

We the ferrets of the United States…

When in the course of ferret events…

All ferrets are endowed by their creator…

Would the average ferret include being dressed up as an elf under the “pursuit of happiness”?

Is this a great nation (or at least an imaginative one) or what?

Meanwhile, back to the holiday at hand.

Dara Foster, a pet stylist based in Port Washington, N.Y., advises pet owners to remain calm and loving when trying to dress any animal, but especially hamsters and guinea pigs. “They don’t understand voice commands, but they’ll pick up on your energy,” she says. “And avoid anything with sleeves if you possibly can.”

Ms. Foster mostly dresses dogs on behalf of private clients and pet-product companies and for media events. But she anticipates her client list soon will include other types of animals as more owners seek ways to humanize them.

Hmmmm.

Rather than trying to figure out how to make pets more like humans, maybe we should be figuring out how to make humans more like pets. (Or at least like dogs…)

Anyway, they may not know it’s Christmas, but Merry Christmas to critters every where.

The Company Holiday Party? Come on, most folks would rather have a Dunkin Donuts gift card.

There was an article the other day on boston.com on the return of the company holiday party. The news that companies that had put the kibosh on this mode of torture were roaring back party-wisesurely dashed the hopes of those reluctant party-goers who’d been enjoying the respite brought about by the economic downturn.

I’m all in favor of celebrating the holidays with colleagues.

In fact, a few weeks ago, the marketing department of one of my local clients invited me to their group outing.

The outing was held in a bowling alley on a workday afternoon. We had drinks and bar food; bowled one game; and did a Yankee Swap.

It checked off all the boxes I like to see checked off for a company event:

• Small
• Low key
• No spouses
• Business hours
• Regular clothing

Despite the fact that I’m a horrendous bowler, it was tremendous fun. (And despite the fact that I’m a horrendous bowler, my score of 83 put me right in the middle of the pack. I might have done better if the chargé d'affaires hadn’t laughed off the request of several bad bowlers to put the bumpers up,  removing the possibility of throwing any gutter balls. And, yes, for the curious, this was “big ball” bowling, not candlepin, so 83 is really nowhere near an acceptable score.)

In the past, I worked for companies that made an extraordinarily big deal out of holiday parties: fancy venue, weekend night, party clothing, spousal drag.

I learned to get in and get out quickly, making sure that I at least nodded to everyone you needed to nod to.

No way did I want to come in on Monday and have some Mr. Big or other tell me he hadn’t seen me at the big do.

But these parties were definitely not my thing.

And I don’t think they’re most anyone else’s thing, either.

I’ll exempt from this the twenty-somethings (and the odd full grown up) who want to dress up, get blasted, and have a raucous old time, blithely unworried that they’d gotten in the grill of the company president and told him what you think of the way the company’s run.

Good times, good times.

One of my favorite company holiday party memories is that of one of my colleagues introducing her spouse to the COO.

The COO was a career military man who had grown up in the Midwest, and he and his wife were famously conservative and completely stood out in our hippy-dippy left-bank tech-weirdo environment.

Anyway, my colleague who was introducing her spouse was gay, and although this was more than a decade before gay marriage became a reality, she introduced her partner as her wife.

Our COO did a fairly good job of containing himself, but I thought that his wife would fall off of her pumps.

So the company holiday party is not necessarily devoid of entertainment and fun.

Still, I don’t actually know anybody who enjoys a full-blown company blowout.

But I, of course, don’t know everybody.

Somebody must be enjoying these blessed events – at minimum the folks planning them:

The Boston branch of an international financial firm hired an aerialist to pour champagne into people’s glasses from the ceiling. A local pharmaceutical company put on an elaborate “Alice in Wonderland”-themed event with life-size chess pieces, 20-foot hedges, and chairs hanging from the ceiling. The Somerville entertainment company Paint Nite rented a trolley with a disco ball and took its employees on a pre-party shoe-shopping spree. (Source: boston.com)

Okay.

A drug company ran a party with an Alice in Wonderland theme? Hope they at least had the wit to play Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit. (“One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. Go ahead. You know you want to.)

As for the pre-party shoe-shopping spree, it all depends on where the spree took place. Big deal if it’s Payless.

“They’re going over the top,” said Ken Barrett, executive director of BG Events and Catering in Boston, noting that his holiday party business is double what it was five years ago.

Large financial firms, banks, and insurance companies in particular are going all out this year, event planners say, and the price tag for some of the most lavish galas can reach $150,000 or more.

Maybe I’d feel differently if I’d ever gone to a corporate “gala” that cost $150K. I’ve been to some pricey weddings, and I’ve got to say you can have a pretty darned good time even if you have to get dressed up to do so.

But nice as some of the corporate functions I’ve attended have been, I’d still rather have half of what the per capita spend was in cash. Or a Dunkin Donuts card.

Fostering this type of camaraderie can have benefits: It increases trust and boosts productivity in an age of nonstop work when there is little opportunity to socialize at the office, said David DeLong, a Concord workplace consultant.

On the other hand, where there’s free booze to foster the camaraderie, things other than trust increase.

Anyway, there were plenty of fun touches written up in boston.com article. Among other goodies – in addition to the aerialist pouring champagne from the ceiling - some holiday gatherings have hadtarot card readers.

Tarot cards, huh?

What could possibly go wrong when the reading suggests poor judgment, stagnation, missed opportunities.

Here’s to a swell 2015!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to my sister Trish – still enduring the company holiday party, unless she can avoid it – for sending me the link to the party article.

If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can solve the virtual reality vomit problem

Me? I’ve got enough reality-reality in my life to worry about without going out and larding on virtual reality (VR).

But for those who prefer their reality virtual, there is a problem: VR makes some folks sick.

Well, reality-reality can be pretty darned sickening, too.

The Taliban slaughters a bunch of school kids.

But even when I’m reading the racist, misogynist, just plain cretinous comments on boston.com I don’t tell to become dehydrated, get the sweats, and lose my cookies.

While most VR producers and aficionados have declared the motion-sickness, nausea, headache problems solved, others – brimming VR sickness bag in hand – insist that there are still many folks who suffer from what has to be one of the more peculiar 21st century maladies.

Joshua Brustein, who writes for Business Week, is one of them:

The unconvincing quality of the virtual experience is what makes people such as me take ill. If the eyes register one thing while the inner ear encounters something else, the result for some people is nausea. Much of the sickness comes from the lag that occurs with motion observed inside the VR headset: You move your head, and the virtual world takes a fraction of a second to catch up. (Source: Business Week)

Help may be on the way. It will be coming from Oculus, the VR gamer acquired by Facebook early this year. (To the tune of $2 billion. Remember when we used to think that $500 million, or even $1 billion was a lot of money?  Chump change!) Sometime within the next year or so, VR-ites will be able to buy new VR headsets, which does the trick:

Oculus has been adding sensors to its new headset to eliminate that lag just as it improves the software that converts the sensor input.

Make that does the trick, more or less. Brustein gave an Oculus Crescent Bay headset prototype a tryout. He found it an imperfect improvement:

After 10 minutes, I felt only the slightest bit dehydrated, with no need to heave. Count that as real progress for virtual reality.

Oculus CEO Brendan Uribe admits that:

…It will likely take years of consumer-level products, he says, before the motion sickness issue is completely solved.

I’m sure that there will be plenty of things that virtual reality will be great for: training simulations, especially in dangerous simulations; therapy; design. And maybe I’ll benefit from it some day. (Probably not the dangerous situation training; maybe in kitchen design; most likely in old geezer therapy.)

I will admit that I am pretty darned certain that I’ll never be a VR gamer.

I’m more of a Parcheesi kind of gal, I guess.

But on behalf of VR gamers everywhere, I sincerely hope they solve this problem for once and for all.

Surely, if we can put a man on the moon…

It’s nice, you know, to kiss your beau…just watch for the drone-bearing mistletoe

Not scary enough that the skies will sooner or later be filled with drones bearing whatever we order from Amazon. Not sufficient that we’ll be trying to duck and cover while walking down the street and a drone overhead loses altitude while delivering something heavy: a canoe, a fridge, a side of beef. Not unnatural enough that so we’ll be observing chevrons of drones where we once observed chevrons of geese. (With luck, Canada geese going elsewhere fast. One thing in a drone’s favor is that they don’t leave nasty turds behind.)

Maybe none of these bad drone things will happen.

Maybe we’ll all have 3D printers and will be able to print up that canoe, fridge, side of beef.

But what if 3D doesn’t work out, and all these private, unregulated drones start colliding with real planes? What if they start peeking through our windows? Stalking us?

It’s raining drones, alleluia…

Well, as nerve-wracking as the idea of drone-filled skies is, we apparently won’t be safe from them when we’re indoors, either. At least if you’re supping at the TGIF in Sheepshead Bay, New York.

That’s where, a few weeks ago, someone got the bright idea of having a mistletoe drone do a fly-about version of the kiss-cam, hovering over couples until they locked lips.

To cover the TGIF event – a powerfully irresistible combination of schlock holiday and cool technology - Courier Life’s Brooklyn Daily sent a reporter and photographer over to TGIF. Unfortunately, photographer Georgine Benvenuto lost a bit of her nose, plus got clipped on the chin. I don’t believe that these sorts of things are generally associated with mistletoe, but it’s been a while…

The operator, David Quiones, claims the accident wouldn't have happened if the reporter didn't flinch when the flying contraption landed on her hand, sending the drone hurtling towards her companion. (Source: Engadget)

Well, if something with whirring, uncovered blades landed on my hand, I might flinch, too. Maybe Courier Life’s Brooklyn Daily needs to equip its reporters with falconer gauntlets, and its photographers with hockey masks.

Despite drawing blood from someone's face, he doesn't believe the incident will affect business: "If people get hurt, they're going to come regardless. People get hurt in airplanes, they still fly. There is a risk involved -- anything flying, there is risk."

Actually, I don’t believe that most people who get hurt in airplanes still fly. I’m guessing that, statistically speaking, the majority of folks who get hurt in airplanes get hurt hurt. As in BIG HURT. As in die. So, other than flexing their angel wings, their flying days are over.

As for TGIF, well, a spokesperson told Brooklyn Daily that the company isn't worried about more customers getting injured. People generally steer clear of the drones on their own, she said, adding that they do not let consumers touch them.

TGIF may not let its diners touch the drones that are flying around, but what happens if a drone stalls and crashes into your nachos or potato skins? Drops into your pitcher of margaritas?

The world is a dangerous enough place without having to worry about a drone attack at TGIF.

Talk about you better watch out…

That sinking feeling I always get when the package is coming via UPS…

Trust me on this one. If you live:

• On a main thoroughfare
• In a large city
• In a small condo building that does not have a concierge or doorman or whatever
• In a small condo building that has a locked front door such that the only way into the vestibule (where a package could be safely left, as opposed to on the stoop, where you take your chances) is to have someone buzz you in – unless, of course, you are the good old fashioned USPS mailman with the passkey
• A life that is busy enough that you do not want to sit at home all day waiting for a delivery

YOU DO NOT WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING DELIVERED VIA UPS.

For years, I had my UPS packages sent to the home of one of my sisters.

And then I discovered MyUPS, a service you can join – I think it’s about $40 a year or so – that will let you direct packages to a UPS Store for free (once you pay the $40 a year or so).

Since there is a UPS store about a two minute walk from where I live, this has worked out famously. Mostly.

There are a couple of flaws in the system as far as I’m concerned.

1. You can’t use the UPS Store address for your delivery destination. You have to wait until you get the shipping notice, then go in and make your choice of diversion online.
2. Once you make your choice of diversion, it can take a couple of days to reroute the package, even if the place where you want it delivered is about a two minute walk from where you live.

I understand why there’s a delay.

After all, I could be diverting the package from delivery to my home to delivery in, say, Ocean Park, Washington. And I know that can’t happen instantaneously.

Still, one might hope that there’s a way that “the system” could be configured such that, if the delivery point of your desire is about a two minute walk from where you live, the reroute only takes a day.

Mostly the day of delivery doesn’t matter.

If I don’t get the navy blue LL Bean turtleneck right away, I’ll live.

But sometimes it does matter

As when my lawyer overnighted the tax filing for my husband’s estate, and it took three days to arrive. We had enough leeway that this worked out, but if it had been time-critical, I would have been sunk. (Or had to schlepp up to his office on the North Shore.)

And the latest – well, debacle is really too strong a word, so let’s just say – annoyance has been receipt of a toy for a homeless kiddo that I really do need to have wrapped (the gift, not the kiddo) and ready pretty darned soon.

Here’s what happened.

As I do each year, I took a few kids from a charity run through my gym. As I do each year, I took older kids. I do so because most people would rather by fun stuff for the little ones than gift certificates to Wet Seal for teenagers, while I – who live in a toy store challenged city - find it much easier to bop into Wet Seal and pick up a bunch of gift certificates, or bop into Radio Shack for an MP3 player, or bop into City Sports for a basketball.

When I picked up my assignment this year, I took three teenaged girls, and their younger sister.

The gift request for the younger kid was something LeapFrog-ish.

So I went online and ordered something LeapFrog-ish, and sprung for two-day delivery (nearly half the cost of the item I purchased), figuring that would translate into four-day delivery, but would still get here in enough time that I wouldn’t be having a nervous breakdown over it.

Four-score and seven days ago…

Okay, it wasn’t that bad. But five days after I ordered it, it still hasn’t arrived on my doorstep the doorstep of the UPS Store that’s two minutes away.

Anyway, here I sit, fingers and toes crossed that the Leapster shows up in the next day or so.

I do want to say that everyone I have ever spoken with at UPS customer service, and everyone I have dealt with at the UPS Store that’s two minutes away, has been a paragon of efficiency, helpfulness, charm, and follow-up.

And the ones on the phone clearly don’t hold it against me that, the minute I hear that Valley Girl voice that’s on their voice response system, I go bonkers and start muttering both under and over my breath. (Why is it that the prompts speak Valley Girl, but when I attempt to answer the prompt in my best Valley Girl version of “track a package”, the voice recognition system doesn’t seem to recognize a superlative imitation of its very own voice? Is it because by the second time around, I’ve attached the f-word to my input?)

So here’s hoping that the package gets here in time.

I’m pretty confident that it will.

Still, it’s no wonder that, every time I see that the delivery method is UPS, I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

When it positively, absolutely has to get there overnight, just hop in a Zipcar, drive out to the ‘burbs, and get it.

An app for everything, and everything for an app

Last week, I decided to get a bit more organized in the hall closet.

Sick and tired of pulling out armloads of mixed up scarves, gloves, and caps and sorting through the mass of everything every time I have to head out, I thought I’d get a few storage containers. So I’m now the proud owner of a tub full of scarves, a tub full of hats, a tub full of gloves, and a tub not so full of umbrellas.

Oh, I suppose there would have been other ways of organizing things – by color, by frigid-weather level – but I chose a pretty basic approach.

It works for me, and now I know – and can remember in my own little brain – where my outdoor accessories are. With outdoor accessories at my fingertips, I hadn’t thought that I also might want to have information about the whereabouts of my outdoor accessories at my fingertips, too.

But if I did want to know exactly what was stored in each of my clear plastic tubs, I could have downloaded the free Homz Smart Storage app. (That is, I could have downloaded it if I had a new-fangled iPhone, rather than my retro Blackberry.)

I suppose that there are people who really do need an app to tell them where everything they own is stored. But those would be folks with a lot more stuff on their hands than I have, and a lot more places in which to stow it than the paltry 1240 square feet I call home.

Sure, I sometimes do lose track of my stuff – as in when I discovered a few months ago that I owned eight pie plates. Given that I might bake a pie once a year, this was quite a revelation. I solved to surfeit of pie plates pretty easily by donating four of them – okay, I didn’t exactly donate them; I left them out on trash day in an open bag and someone picked them up – and have the remaining four where I can keep an eye on them. Just to make sure that they don’t go replicating themselves again.

But mostly I know where things are.

When you don’t have all that much room, there’s a place for everything and everything has a place.

Anyway, there is at least one major benefit to having not all that much space: it’s just plain tough to keep acquiring things. (Pie plates aside, I’m pretty good about getting rid of stuff I don’t need. Mostly. I still can’t part company with a batik quilt I got 40 years ago, a quilt I loved even when I was watching Charlie’s Angels one night and saw that one of the angels had the same quilt (only she had the all-blue one, rather than the much more sophisticated,  interesting and attractive brown-blue one) on her bed. I think it was the angel that Jacqueline Smith played. Or maybe Farrah’s sister. And there are a few other things I could definitely part company with. Maybe I’ll give everyone a door prize on Christmas Eve…)

In any case, even if I did have an iPhone, I don’t think I’m quite at the stuff level where I need to keep tabs on everything I own with an app.

I’m not anti-app by any means.

But the apps I could really use don’t seem to exist.

How about an app that could find – and fetch – the juice oranges (vs. navels) I prefer for my orange-chocolate pound cake. None to be found at Shaw’s or DeLuca’s. Off to Whole tomorrow…

How about an app – a press button app – that I could press to my forehead and, based on some sort of app mind-meld. pAnd immediately – in real-time, as they say - df’s with design specs for my do-over kitchen and bathrooms would spring forth.

Which, of course, suggests another app that I could really use: the line up the contractors to get the kitchen and the bathrooms done. I’ve got a great painter and a great electrician – at least I did a decade back when I last used them – but for a really big job that entails pulling up tile and sledgehammering cabinets that were completely cool in 1979, I need help. Is there an app for that? And I don’t mean Angie’s List of Yelp. I just want it done. Pick out the appliances while you’re at it, why don’t you.

How about an app that will polish up my scratched up furniture. Sure, shabby is chic, but…

If there’s an app that’ll take about ten pounds off if I put it under my pillow, I’ll even buy an iPhone.

But I really don’t need an app to tell me that the Liberty shawls, the wool infinity my sister Kath made me, and anything else that goes on the outside of the coat, are in a clear plastic tub in the hall closet, while all the indoor scarves are in drawers two and three in the tall chest in the bedroom.

Rats are never in vogue

As a city dweller – make that a city dweller dwelling in reclaimed ocean – I am no stranger to rat sightings.

Sometimes they’re scurrying in and out of a sewer. Sometimes they cross my path while I’m strolling on posh Newbury Street. Sometimes – and these are, rat-wise, the best of times, even with the blood and gore – I see one flattened out in the middle of the street. One down, I always tell myself, another couple of hundreds of thousands to go.

There are few things I despise more than rats. Perhaps even worse than bedbugs, they’re the stuff that my nightmares are made of.

City’s are full of them, but mostly they’re out of sight. And, blessedly, out of doors.

The only place I’ve experienced indoor rats up close and personal was when I was a waitress at the Union Oyster House.

Screaming when one ran over your waitress shoes was a firing offense. If the rats came out while we were cleaning our stations, we could leave the dirty plates right there. And on one memorable day a dishboy known as The Animal unclogged a sink by pulling a drowned rat out of it. Our hero!

This was, of course, decades ago. I’m sure that there’s been an exterminator or two on site since I hung up my waitress shoes and served my last platter of cherrystones. (“Whaddya mean these are uncooked?”)

Outdoor rats are bad enough – and plentiful enough in these parts.

But, inside rats.

Nasty business, that…

Blessedly, while my workplaces may have had an occasional mouse, they have been four-legged rat free.

Those who labor to make the world safe for fashion, however, are not so lucky – at least those who call Vogue home. The magazine recently moved from mid-town to the new World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. What happened when they began occupying their new digs is downright Condé Nasty. I mean, there you are working with fashionistas, dressing to the nines, and asking yourself the big questions like “does the devil really wear Prada?” – and here you go: a bunch of fashion-forward rats are peering over your shoulder to see what’s in this month’s fashion spread.

According to the New York Daily News (excerpted in Jezebel):

"A bunch ate through the ceiling of a sports editor's office and crawled all over his desk and left poops on his keyboard," said a different source. "They ate through his rug to fit under his door."

We're told that Conde has sent a memo to their staff in the building telling them that "they cannot eat at their desks" and that a complaint to the city's health department is next on the agenda. (Source: Jezebel)

Rats, as it happens, are almost always found found where there’s new urban construction.

Their burrows are dislodged when the digging starts, and they eventually find their way inside of the structure, where they hunker down as squatters until the paying tenants come in and – eventually – evict them.

But you’d think that the owners of the building would try to do a bit of rodent control before the human occupiers move in, wouldn’t you?

It apparently didn’t happen in the new World Trade Center.

One thing to think of trading floors and other fin-serv offices being overrun with rats. Not that anyone wants to work in a smelly, germy, scary, rat-filled environment, but if this happened at a brokerage, say, I’m sure that the rat jokes would be flying, and “the boys” would be running contests to see who could bag the biggest rat. Rat Patrol!

Quite another when it’s the voice of American fashion where no one but no one wants to step toe of their Jimmy Choos into a rat turd, or find the edge of their Tory Burch bag gnawed.

I’m betting that no one needed a memo to be told not to eat lunch at a desk where there’s dripping rat pee.

Anna Wintour, the last word in fashion, is reportedly quite a bit unnerved by the rat-festation. Not that I blame her, but it would be kind of fun to be a fly on the wall as she takes on the landlord over this debacle.

How unnerved is the Divine Miss W?

Well, she was spotted – spotted coat and all – leaving the building without the signature sunglasses she is always seen in.

I’d have thought she’d keep those glasses on, the better to block out rat-spotting. On the other hand, she might want to keep her eyes peeled, just in case one of those little critters that don’t lend themselves – or their pelts – to a good, pricey fur coat decides to cross her path.

The thought of working in a rat hole is beyond disgusting.

Hope that Vogue’s holiday party is off premises this year…

 

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Source for both pics: Daily Mail

All that and a bag of nuts

As Peter Paul Candy taught us year’s ago, some times you feel like a nut, some times you don’t.

I’m one of those folks who, most of the time, does feel like a nut. And when I do, I tend not to care whether that nut comes out of a bag, sits in a dish, or is served on a silver platter.

Like everyone else, of course, I occasionally have to struggle to open the nut bag on the airlines – or I did, until most airlines I fly on banned nuts. When the incredible shrinking nut bags were handed out, I was always worried whether I’d chip a tooth trying to rip it open with my teeth, or whether the bag would explode and send those few, those proud, those eleven salted and/or sugared peanuts flying.

And while on the subject of nuts, I do have to say that when I’m at Fenway Park sharing a box of Cracker Jacks with my sister Trish, we are generally appalled by the paltry number of peanuts. Bad enough that the surprise inside is a shadow of former Cracker Jack greatness. Wouldn’t you rather have a tiny plastic yo-yo that doesn’t work than a wash-off tattoo?

But my next round of Cracker Jacks is months away, and the nut-related subject at hand is the Korean Air exec – the VP of cabin service and catering - who reportedly went a bit nuts last week when a flight attendant served her macadamia nuts in a bag, rather than on a plate.

Heather Cho – who’s not just any old airline VP, why, she’s the daughter of the chairman – wasn’t content to just chew out the flight attendant on the spot, or write up this completely egregious breach of protocol and destroy the flight attendant’s career after the fact. No, she had to demand that the pilot pull the plane back to the gate so that the unworthy flight attendant could be bodily removed.

Here’s how the initial reports said things went down:

Local media reports said that a junior attendant had offered Ms. Cho macadamia nuts in a bag, instead of serving the nuts on a plate.

Ms. Cho, daughter of company boss Cho Yang-ho, then questioned the chief flight attendant over in-flight service standards and ordered him off the plane.

Korean Air said the plane arrived 11 minutes late, and that the decision to expel the senior flight attendant had been made in consultation with the pilot. (Source: BBC)

Ms. Cho, whose charter includes service standards – which, as the CEO’s daughter, likely translates into jetting around in first class, back and forth between Inchon and wherever; getting fawned over by airline employees; and collecting a big, fat paycheck  - was, as it turns out, just traveling as a regular old passenger when the incident occurred.

As a passenger, she had no right to demand that the plane get turned around, which got South Korean travel authorities trying to decide whether a criminal offense had occurred. I mean a criminal offense above and beyond serving macadamia nuts in a bag.

In the bag, or not?

A few days after the nut news broke, it was announced the Ms. Cho had resigned, at a meeting “presided over” by dear old dad.

“I apologize to the customers and the public for causing social issues and to those who have been hurt by my actions,” Heather Cho said in the statement. “I will take full responsibility and resign from all my positions.” (Source: Bloomberg)

She had been getting it in the neck from South Korean news, which cited her as an example of what happens when above-it-all family members of the families that run the country’s business conglomerates get jobs in the family business. Surprise, surprise.

Meanwhile, there’s a conflicting story about the kernel at the center of Nutgate. It may not have been a case of plated vs. bagged nuts, after all.

Heather Cho ordered the head of the service crew on Flight 86 from New York to Seoul to deplane on Dec. 5 after an attendant earlier had served her macadamia nuts without asking, the carrier said Dec. 8. Cho then summoned the purser to ask a question about the airline’s policy on serving nuts. She ordered the plane back to the gate and instructed the man to leave the plane when he couldn’t answer.

Given the sensitivity – life and death sensitivity, at that – around all things nutty, it does make sense to have a policy about nuts: ask and you shall receive, keep them in the bag, or do away with nuts on the plane, altogether. Much as I like nuts, I think I could live without them for the duration of a flight. (I would be less happy if ballparks banned Cracker Jacks, but I’m fine if they want to have peanut-free sections in the stands.)

What was over the top was Ms. Cho’s reaction.

From the sounds of things, the crew member that she booted off the plane is now on leave, doctor’s letter in hand.

If this were the states, I think we could safely say “law suit” here.

Don’t know what this bodes in South Korea.

Anyway, just because she’s the boss’s daughter doesn’t give Heather Cho the right to act like a boor boss to some hapless employee who, senior flight attendant/purser or not – is well down the totem pole, let alone order a plane back to the gate.

I’d say good riddance, but the betting money has it that, once things die down, she’ll be back in some capacity.

VP title, no doubt, safely on the business card.

Trendspotting for Foodies

As 2014 draws to a close – and the sooner the better, from where I stand – my thoughts have turned to what to be on the lookout for in 2015.

Will my L.L. Bean and Talbot’s duds still be on the cutting edge of fashion?

Once I get around to putting in that tempered glass counter top in the kitchen, will it turn out that the trend-meisters were wrong about granite being the new cardboard?

Will Canasta be making a comeback, or will this just be in my narrow circle?

And, most important, there’s the food front.

Will Greek yogurt still rule? Can I take kale off my learn-how-to-live-with list? Will Caprese sandwiches remain a menu staple?

None of those particular questions (except, maybe, the yogurt one) were answered in a recent piece on Huffington Post. But I did learn was what “the hottest food trends of 2015, brought to you in partnership with ConAgra Foods and Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert.”

Now I’m not quite sure I want to trust my trendspotting to the likes of ConAgra. Their brands seem to be pretty anti-trend: Swiss Miss, Chef Boyardee, Slim Jim, Reddi-Whip, and Jiffy Pop. Not to mention Peter Pan Peanut Butter and Blue Bonnet Margarine, both household staples when I was growing up, but products I didn’t know still existed.

And I wasn’t familiar at all with Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert.

I guess I’ll just have to accept that he is, in fact, a bona fide Supermarket Guru.

What do Phil and the mavens at ConAgra predict is in store for us?

Gluten free is – at last – so yesterday.  Which is too bad for folks like my husband, who had celiac disease. The elective gluten-free-ers will, I guess, move on to the next.

If there’ll be fewer new GF foods, what can we expect to see on the shelves next year? Fermented foods, like yogurt and sauerkraut.

Personally, I’d never use the words “yogurt” and “sauerkraut” in the same sentence, but, apparently, because fermented foods are such a digestive aide, and help us absorb nutrients. Looks like I’ll have start trending off of cottage cheese, and back on to Greek yogurt. Sauerkraut, nein danke.

Smoked everything will be making more appearances as well. We won’t be seeing just smoked meats, but “vegetables, cheese and even cocktails.” And if you don’t have a backyard smoker, well, you’d better be asking Santa for one.

Not a big smoked anything fan, so I have no intention of being the first person on Beacon Hill with a backyard smoker. (Let alone put an indoor version in my dream kitchen, if and when I get moving on that project.)

There are a number of generational predictions.

Us old geezers will become old grazers, picking throughout the day rather than sitting down for three squares. Boomers will be munching on snacks that are protein rich, full of fiber, and promote our bone health with Omega 3s. I don’t see myself snacking on fish oil supplements – they’re no Cheet-os, that’s for sure. But you never know.

Generation Z  - those born after 1995 – supposedly “most enjoy cooking simple, healthy meals with fresh ingredients.”

Maybe it’s just me, but the Gen Z-ers I know are either eating what their moms put on the table, what’s on offer through their campus meal plan, or cooking up a simple, not especially healthy, bowl of ramen noodles.

We also learn that Miillennials, those monkeys in the middle between the Boomers and Gen Z, will be looking for craft foods, items that are unique and of “authentic origin.”

I am going back and forth about whether I dislike the term “craft food” more than I dislike the term “artisanal food.” Decisions, decisions. If I throw in “house made”, which I increasingly see on restaurant menus, there’s no contest: worst in its class is definitely “house made.” (Artisanal gets a pass because it’s so often misspelled as “artesian.”)

More and more information will be at the fingertips of shoppers, so we can get all the skinny – and the fat – on the craft foods we’re grazing on. And, if we don’t want to lug it all home in our handy-dandy shopping carts (geezers) or our Patagonia backpacks (GenZ), same day delivery will be everywhere.

My favorite trend is that the supermarket will become spaces for socializing. And not just socializing over how to gauge the freshness of a cantaloupe.  Supermarkets will be opening restaurants, hosting seminars, running cooking classes.

Sure, if you’re Whole Foods, or Wegman’s, or some other upscale super-duper market. Not so likely if you’re a regular old grocery store where people, ah, come to by ground beef, and lettuce, and Rice Krispies, and clementines, and a gallon of milk.

Folks who shop there aren’t looking to graze. They aren’t that concerned with whether the food is craft. They just want to fill their cart, check out, and go home and make dinner for the kids. Same day delivery? They’ve already got that covered. DIY.

So much for the 2015 food trends…

“Solving upper-class problems since 1912.”

While I was thumbing through last week’s New Yorker, a couple of ads caught my attention.

One was a full-page, full-color, full-sized head shot of a man. A black man wearing dreads. The man is pulling his lips down, and on his lower lip the words PINE BROS. are printed.

Pine Brothers? I asked myself. As in those first cousins to the Smith Brothers? As in cough drops?

At the bottom of the page it read “Love your Brothers” – Waka Flocka Flame.

I suspect that, if I have one thing in common with the average New Yorker subscriber, it would be that I have no idea in the world who Waka Flocka Flame might be. (We would only know his name if there’d been an article on him in the mag, one of those articles geared at keeping old fogeys up to date on celebrities, in case we missed this week’s People or the latest Access Hollywood.)

But I was quickly able to find that he is a rapper, and that he has recently replaced Martha Stewart as the spokesperson for Pine Brothers softish throat drops.

Talk about shaking things up.

Admittedly, Martha is not without edge herself, orange being the new black and all that. But the shift to Waka. Wow. (Or, as stoners used to say, Oh wow.)

Waka is certainly an interesting dude, one who “this year started a search for his own personal blunt roller, offering $50,000 a year.”  Who said there aren’t any more solid, entry level middle class jobs out there? Anyway, Waka can afford  to pay to get his blunts rolled, especially if he’s being paid anywhere near the $1 million Martha was supposedly getting.

The Waka video ads, which were “shot the weed-loving Waka in the smoke filled house from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” were banned by NBC and CBS.

The clip shows Waka alone on a couch, surrounded by puffs of smoke. Amid the fog, he says, “Can’t live without my Pine Brothers, straight up.” Shooting a knowing glance at a plume of smoke, he adds, “Next time you need some throat relief — for whatever reason — get your Pine Brothers.” (Source: PageSix.)

While “our” ads are a bit more subtle, who knew that The New Yorker audience could be hip and happenin’ enough to be graced with the presence of Waka?

The other ad of note was for Manhattan antique dealer S.J. Shrubsole.

One might infer from the somewhat starchy name S.J. Shrubsole that the company would have an advertisement that was somewhat prim and proper.

Oh, no, they didn’t…

In fact, their ad – one-third page, black/white/greyscale – was captioned “HAVEN’T GOT A POT TO PISS IN?”

Well, you would if you had $125K to fork over for the pictured “Rare George II Champerpot made for the Earl of Warrington.”

That would be some conversation piece, but who wants to have to polish up a sterling silver chamberpot, even one that had been doused by the Earl of Warrington?

The ad doesn’t stop with the pot to piss in.

Right underneath the picture of the chamberpot is a second headline: “WIFE KNOWS OTHERWISE?”

And beneath this caption are a couple of art-deco bracelets ($75K, $82.5K) are shown.

In truth, while The New Yorker demographic is plenty upscale, I suspect it’s not exactly laden with folks who routinely spend $125K for a collectible, whatever its pedigree, or $82.5K for a bracelet, however lovely. Probably about the same proportion of readers who kick back and blunt roll while watching Waka Flocka.

Shrubsole makes no bones about its demographic.

The Shrubsole tagline?

Solving upper-class problems since 1912.

I suppose they do solve some upper-class problems – like what to get for the man who has everything, especially if he has had a secret man-crush on the Earl of Warrington for years. But it doesn’t solve other exceedingly difficult challenges that I upper-class New Yorkers have had to overcome since 1912.

Why, the very year 1912.

How would Shrubsole have helped a first class gentleman decide whether to give his space on the Titanic's last lifeboat to the pregnant young woman from steerage?

Does Shrubsole make house calls if you need your tie tied for a white tie do? Can they help you decide where to buy in the Hamptons? Can they help get your kiddo into the right pre-kindergarten? Tell you how much to tip the doorman?

Perhaps a more appropriate tagline would be “solving some upper-class problems since 1912.”

Truth in advertising, bros. To put it bluntly.

Hall of Famers: the 2014 Inductees (Toy Edition)

Well, yesterday, I took on this year’s lousy toys. Today, we’re in kinder, gentler territory, with the classics that were inducted last month into the Toy Hall of Fame.

First, the non-winners, the toys and games that made it onto the finalist list:

American Girl dolls, Fisher-Price Little People, Hess Toy Trucks, My Little Pony, Operation Skill Game, paper airplanes, pots and pans, Slip‘N Slide, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Source: Museum of Play)

I’m a big fan of American Girl dolls.

Sure, they’re a major ka-ching factory, but they’re also wholesome, age appropriate, and extremely well-made.

Not that anything this ka-ching would have made it into our house, but I would have given my eye-teeth, not to mention the eye-teeth of each and every one of my siblings, to have one of these dolls as a kid.

Which one would I have craved the most?

Kit because she looked like me, and was an aspiring writer? Molly, the little girl of World War II, much my favorite era? (That is, if an era when tens of millions of people were wiped out could actually be anyone’s favorite era. Sorry about that. It’s just a time when I would have liked to have lived. Maybe in a past life I was killed by a buzz bomb. ) Or would I have gone for Kirsten, the pioneer girl from another era I fantasized about as a kid? The big attraction of Kirsten was that she had a nifty Saint Lucia outfit, crowned with a wreath and candles. (I’m sure I would have lit the candles and burned Kirsten’s wig off.)

But much as I would have loved an American Girl doll (and as much money as I’ve spent on outfits for my nieces’ AG dolls over the years), I’m actually not that disappointed that they’re not in the Hall of Fame. They’re great, but maybe when they’ve been around as long as Barbie…

Of the other finalists, my two favorites are the paper airplane (inexpensive, skill-based, class disrupting), and pots and pans.

My Little Pony?

Just say no, neigh, never!

But I can’t quibble with the winners:

Magical, iridescent bubbles; monotone, miniature little green army men; and the colorful, puzzling Rubik’s Cube became the latest inductees to The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame.

Last year, Pink Slip was quite disappointed that bubbles had been dissed.

Bubbles! What a perfect toy! Inexpensive, “fun for all ages,” portable, and requires no ability whatsoever to make work and enjoy.

When I was a kid, fancy-dancy bubble pipes were the rage. This was the one and only image I could find of the type of bubble pipe I’m talking about, and you can tell from the b&w and the outfit on the kiddo that we’re talking ‘bout mygeneration here. In fact, this little guy looks a lot like my brother Rick.

While this was the preferred pipe of my era, I will admit that, as an adult, I have grown fonder of the simple and perfectly functional wand that comes inside the bubble bottle.

So, congratulations to Bubbles! Way to blow!

And blow they do:

Today, retailers sell more than 200 million bottles of this inexpensive and clean toy annually. 

Little green army men are also a pretty good pick. Like bubbles, they’re inexpensive. If they get dirty, they’re easy enough to clean. And you can gnaw on their heads.

We may not have had American Girl dolls Chez Rogers, but we absolutely had little green army men.

The only downside: if you stepped on one while barefoot, it hurt.

Anyway, in case you wanted to know, they were introduced in 1938, just as the US – admit it or not – was ramping up to war. Wildly popular through the early 1960’s:

 Little green army men suffered a decline in popularity during the Vietnam War, but their sales increased in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, they hit the big screen in Pixar’s Toy Story—and they appeared in two more Toy Story films. Today, multiple manufacturers produce millions of little green army men annually, and they continue to prompt narratives of heroism and daring in children’s imaginations.

When I see ads for a lot of today’s toys, my reaction is that many of them do too darned much for the kids. Everything’s scripted or mechanized, making any prompting of a kid’s own narrative optional.

But little green army men don’t do a darned thing on their own. Alpha. Bravo. Charlie.

This year’s third inductee is the Rubik’s Cube.

The colorful cubes can be arranged 43 quintillion (a number with six commas) ways and have inspired organized competitions in more than 50 countries. The current speed champ, Mats Valk of The Netherlands, solved the cube in 5.55 seconds. There are also official trials for solving it blindfolded, one-handed, underwater with one breath, and with one’s feet.

Although I was barely able to line up two of the same color squares in a row – other than by accident – I love the colors, the Mondrian look, and the fact that this toy is a nerd kid’s dream. (Maybe a nerd kid can tell me how this works when you’re blindfolded. Surely you must get to take a peek before you start twirling away?)

That’s it as far as Toys ‘R Us week at Pink Slip goes.