Saving Seats

 Saving seats. When is it okay? When is it not? When is it a sign of douchebaggery? I'm thinking about it this morning because I'm sitting in a locally owned coffee shop, and across from me is a man who has been here for at least an hour, "saving" four tables for friends who have not arrived yet. (As I was typing this, one friend showed up) I've seen him do this before (in fact every time I have been in here on a Sunday morning). On this particular morning it hasn't caused any problems, since there are other booths and tables available, and no one has been unable to find a seat due to this man's actions. In this case no harm has been done by the seat-saving. Everybody gets a seat and Mr. Early-Bird-Seat-Saver has been able to ensure that all of his friends will be sitting together. But I've been in here during other times when there were absolutely no other seats in the place, the only unoccupied chairs were the fifteen that were being saved. Now, in this case, if I was to walk in, and find no seats available, I would not feel guilty about grabbing one of the "saved" tables, but I would surely be risking a confrontation. In a case like this, you have to be willing to take the bull by the horns and tell the saver that you're taking his "saved" table and damn the consequences.

While looking for some images to accompany this post, I came across several articles about saving seats on Southwest Airlines. As anyone who has flown on Southwest knows, you don't get assigned seats. You can pay a premium for early boarding, but it's first-come, first-seated. But some people, travelling with their family, have found a way around this. They pay for one premium early boarding ticket and then save as many additional seats as they need. Southwest doesn't have a policy against doing this, and their website is full of complaints about the practice. I wonder what the flight crew would do if a fed-up passenger simply sat in a "saved" seat and refused to relinquish it? Just like in the coffee shop, you'd have to be willing to risk some confrontation and act without asking permission.

A lot of the images that I found dealt with seat-saving in church. That reminds me of an incident a few years back when I was at a week-long event put on by a Christian group. The evening service took place in a giant tent and went on for several hours; it included not only the sermon, or teaching, but music, announcements, and awards presentations. This usually meant that the need for a bathroom break would be assumed. The rule was, that if you had to get up, your bible saved your seat. One evening my family and I decided that we wanted to try to sit up front, so we were close to first in line waiting for the doors to open. When they did, we were surrounded by a stampede of people racing to the front to claim their seats. Somehow we safely made it to the front of the tent, just as a man, loaded down with about a dozen bibles, pushed in front of us and slammed down a bible on every seat in the front row of that section. When the dust had cleared, the tent was only about 10% full, but miraculously, every seat was saved.

My final example involves my favorite live music venue. There's a guy, who because he has the time to do so, saves a table for his friends most nights. This is not usually a problem, since by show time the table is usually more than full. But for some of the more popular shows he has been observed saving multiple tables. If that isn't bad enough, he then goes to the bar, taking up a bar stool as well. More often than not, he'll go across the street, where they have a wider variety of beer. I have to admit that I've saved tables and bar stools myself, but (1) I stay with the table; I don't leave the bar for hours and (2) if the people I am saving the space for don't show up by show time I give the space up to someone else. I've actually made a lot of friends by inviting last minute arrivals to sit with me. It's frustrating to show up for a band an hour before the show and find out that every seat is saved, but that there's very few people physically in the bar.

Let me propose a few seat saving rules:

1. Saving more than one table is prohibited
2. If the seats are not at tables (i.e. bar stools, theater style seating) saving more than one seat is prohibited
3. At least one person must stay with the table (exceptions: bathroom breaks or quick runs to get something to eat - food must be brought back to the saved seat or table)
4. Once the event (concert, church, movie) starts, all claims to saved seats expire
5. In all situations where you pay a premium for early admittance saving seats in prohibited (see Southwest Airlines example above) - this would also apply to situations where purchasing tickets prior to a deadline gets you early admittance (Exception: you may save seats for any others who are also eligible for early admittance

Show up early or stand!

Whiteness

Ooh...let's talk about racism...and white privilege...and rape culture...said very few people...ever.

Despite my observation that Twitter can be a real sewer, partly because you can't delete nasty things that people say to you, I've learned a lot about racism and misogyny and their nemesis, privilege, white, or male, or hetero or cisgender or anything else that is ascendant in our culture.

Let's start with white privilege.

No, let's back up and start with whiteness.

Whiteness is an invented concept. Go back far enough and people didn't talk about being white. The ancestors of today's white people, the inhabitants of Europe, didn't consider themselves a homogeneous "race". The Germans would be very insulted to be equated with the Italians and everyone would be insulted to be put in the same category as the Irish! It wasn't until coming into contact with people with less-advanced military technology, who coincidentally had darker-hued skin color, that the concept of whiteness as a characteristic of superior peoples came about. This differentiation between white and non-white was used as the pretext for colonizing and enslaving the "lesser races". It is interesting to me that to the early European-descended Americans, who were largely from the British Isles and Northern Europe, not only were Native Americans and Africans not white, but Italians and other Southern and Eastern Europeans weren't white either. Amazingly, the Irish who came over in the late 1800's weren't white either, despite the absolute pallor of the typical Irishman.

Even when slavery was outlawed, there was an assumption that former slaves and other blacks were somehow inferior, and that the Indians were just savages. It took another hundred years for non-whites to be legally granted equal rights, and then after a long fight. So there was a long history of white privilege in this country, it is in our national DNA.

White privilege doesn't mean that you didn't work for what you have or that anybody handed anything to you "for free". It also doesn't mean that you're county club privileged either. What it does mean is that just because you are part of that vast, amorphous category dubbed "white" you are the cultural default. No one assumes that you're breaking into your own apartment because you're white, you aren't pulled over in certain neighborhoods because you're white, you don't have to demonstrate that you're "one of the good ones" because you're white. This doesn't mean that you won't get pulled over for unfathomable reasons, or you'll never get fired from a job or shot by the police or wrongfully convicted, but these things will not happen simply because you're white. You aren't the victim (or recipient, if you don't like the "V" word) of racism, defined, for the purpose of this blog post, as institutional and systemic bigotry and prejudice against a group. It's more than just "I don't like people from that group", it's "I don't like people from that group and I'm going to use my power and influence to prevent them from getting any influence and power themselves". It goes even further than that. When the foundations of a society are rooted in racism, it doesn't go away because people say it's gone away. It doesn't even go away in individuals, not completely, when the surrounding culture is steeped in so many racist assumptions.

Something very specific that I've learned is that for a white person who doesn't consider himself to be a racist, the response "but not all white people" is not very helpful. (Similar to the "not all men" battle cry that many of us men reflexively throw out when we hear about the Kavanaughs of the world). The other response "how is that racist?" is similarly unhelpful. It implies that you are dismissing the perception, solidified by years of similar experiences, of the person of color who sees what you said as racist. Something to remember is that you can say or do racist things, even if you do not believe yourself to be a racist. The fact that what you said wasn't intended to be racist doesn't mean that it wasn't. Humbly, without defensiveness, ask to have it explained to you, or at least do some introspection and see if you can figure it out for yourself. Pro tip: just because you framed it as a joke doesn't make it less offensive!

Of course a common rejoinder is that some people throw out "the race card" when it's really their behavior, without respect to race, that's the problem. Sometimes the wielder of that particular "card" just wants to excuse their bad behavior by putting the onus back on the white person. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find out why they think the way they do. Are your hurt feelings over being called a racist more important than a person's day after day being treated as less than a person? It's pretty easy to assume racism when it's not when most of the time it is.

Racism won't go away by wishing it away, or by pretending that it's not structural, or thinking that it hasn't infected us, or that most white people haven't benefited from it.

Happy Holidays

Probably as a result of unfollowing people who consistently post idiotic things on Facebook,  I saw only a minimum of posts about how there's some ill-defined War on Christmas. This supposed war allegedly prevents people from saying 'Merry Christmas' or at least shames people who say it. The problem with this so-called War on Christmas is that it's entirely fictional. It's true that some retailers ask their employees to say "Happy Holidays" around this time of year, rather than "Merry Christmas", but it's to be inclusive, not out of some hatred for Christmas. Some of the few comments on social media that reflected a belief that this "war" existed were not from people with whom I'm personally acquainted. One guy commented that he was tired of not being able to say "Merry Christmas", another related questionable information about how in his neck of the woods, Minnesota, there's an all-out frenzy against all aspects of the Christian side of the holiday season. I guess I must be sheltered from the worst of this anti-Christian intolerance. In my whole life I have only once encountered someone who was offended at the words "Merry Christmas". This was about fifteen years ago when I was spending my Monday nights down at Duggan's Pub. A drinking buddy of mine, a devotee of Asatru, Norse Paganism went on a rant one night when I said "Merry Christmas", not because the words themselves offended him, but because he thought that I, as a pagan, was being hypocritical by wishing him, another pagan, good wishes in regard to a Christian observance. Literally no one else that I have met in person was offended by the words "Merry Christmas", and I know many non-Christians.

What I have experienced first hand, and heard about second hand, was people who have been offended at the words "Happy Holidays", or who, when hearing the words "Merry Christmas" from a businessperson, went on a rant about they're sick of no one being able to say "Merry Christmas". My youngest son, a convenience store clerk, has several times this year been the recipient of verbal abuse for saying "Happy Holidays". A few years ago I fielded a call at my place of business from someone who was so happy that one of our holiday ads said "Merry Christmas", taking the opportunity to disparage anyone who said "Happy Holidays". When I worked for UPS I encountered something similar. So, in my own experience, even saying "Merry Christmas" triggers some of these people into an often abusive rant about people who say "Happy Holidays". One of the stupidest things I've seen online was a tweet by the big-haired recent college grad who's claim to fame was posing with a semi-automatic weapon on her campus. This morning she posted a video of herself saying "It's 'Merry Christmas', not 'Happy Holidays' PC libs" and shot up a sign that said "Happy Holidays". Aside from the weirdness of shooting up a handmade sign, the mindset that thinks that It's "Merry Christmas" as if there are no other midwinter holiday observances tells you all that you need to know.

No one, outside of a few nut-jobs is literally offended at the words "Merry Christmas", is offended that you are saying them to him or her, is trying to ban them from store ads, or to stop people from publicly celebrating Christmas. What some people are doing is insisting that the religious aspects of Christmas (and c'mon, if you don't realize that Christmas has had it's religious roots largely commercialized out of it over the last few generations isn't paying attention or is living in a "Christian Nation" fantasyland) be kept out of official government displays and observances and that retailers consider other groups and be inclusive by saying "Happy Holidays".

Christmas, while still a religious observance for Christians, has become a secular holiday, and has become filled with secular and pagan traditions that have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. The secular traditions have swamped the traditions and observances of other cultures (Hanukkah is a great example - Jewish parents have long had to battle the influence of Christmas traditions overshadowing Hanukkah observances - it's not "The Jewish Christmas") and even minimized the Christian core in favor of gift-giving, trees and Santa Claus. If you're going to get righteously indignant, get worked up about that.  

Customer Service

Recently during a conversation about a situation where I had received indifferent, if not terrible, customer service, a former co-worker bemoaned the need to have to provide good customer service. Understand that, as someone who toiled for many years in the retail world, I have no sympathy for rude and unreasonable customers. My patience for people who are insulting and demeaning to retail workers ran out long ago. The flip side of that is that, as a customer, I don't expect retail clerks to be overly attentive, to fawn over me or even to pretend to like me, but I do expect a business to provide the goods or services that they are in the business of selling at the price advertised and for their employees to treat me with a modicum of respect. Part of this involves taking responsibility for what goes on within their four walls. Of course, there are things that happen that are outside a store's control: availability of stock, weather, dependability of suppliers and the like.

The specific incident that caused our disagreement involved a rebate offer. Of course I was aware that the product that I bought was supplied by a local distributor who in turn bought it from the manufacturer and that the rebate was processed by a rebate processing center. I bought several items based on the store's advertising that I would receive a $10 rebate for buying a certain product & mailing in the UPC codes and my receipt. My rebate request was denied. Since I had spent my money, not a the redemption center, or with the manufacturer or even with the distributor, but at the local store, it was the local store where I lodged my complaint. In over four months and multiple emails complaining I never once heard from anyone at the local store. To be somewhat fair to them (even though I'm not naming them) they evidently had contracted the manufacturer since eventually I received by $10 (plus some free stuff) from the manufacturer. However, I shouldn't have had to wait four months and be treated as if this was not the store's problem.

Good customer service starts with assuming, not that the customer is always right, but that an individual customer, when presenting a complaint, has a legitimate grievance and that it is the duty of the retailer to "fix it". Good customer service continues with taking total responsibility for what goes on in your store, not by passing the buck to suppliers or delivery agents.

Years ago one of my supervisors pointed out the tiny percentage of sales that refunds represented, and assuming that refund requests that weren't legitimate, i.e. scams, were a small percentage of that, we concluded that the odds were overwhelmingly small that a refund request was a "rip-off" attempt. Unless we were absolutely sure that what the customer wanted was fraudulent, they got what they wanted. We reasoned that getting stolen from occasionally was a small price to pay to avoid making angry a customer who had a legitimate complaint.

Another idea that this same supervisor had was to guarantee that our shelves would be full during the holiday season. The easy way was to just accept the excuse that "the warehouse was out", instead we called every other store in the chain to see if they had any excess of what we needed and even went to competitors to clear out their shelves!

If you're in the customer service business you shouldn't be resentful that you "have to" honor your commitments to your customers. By all means be angry that you have to put up with the rude people, the nasty people, the people who treat you like an indentured servant - no one should have to put up with any of that. But if providing people with the goods and services that you say that you're providing is a chore, perhaps you're in the wrong business.

Sports

One of the things that has long perplexed my allegedly rational mind was the way sports fans looked upon team loyalties. Most people root for their home team, or the team representing their local college. If there are multiple teams in one area, however, things can get interesting! When a sports fan moves to another city, their loyalties go with them - even thousands of miles away. To use a hometown example, a Nebraska football supporter will still cheer for the Huskers even after moving to Texas, California or North Carolina. But a strange thing happens when die-hard fans encounter people who have moved from elsewhere into their city: the outsiders are expected to jettison their out-of-town fandom and become cheerleaders for the local team. No one seems to notice this inconsistency.

Another item on my "sports fans mystify me" list is the fact that it is socially unacceptable to not be a fan. I encountered this the other day. A man whom I had never met asked me if I "was going to watch the game". Besides growing up in another state and not having absorbed the local football fever and fervor, I'm just, in general, not a sports fan any more. There are several reasons for this, none of them particularly earth-shaking, but I just don't care about sports any more. Well, I replied to this stranger with "No, I'm not a fan". You would've thought that I had impugned his mother's reputation or shot his dog. Some years back I turned off a game at work because people weren't working, and ended up getting an ugly phone call from a customer threatening to shop somewhere else if the game wasn't on the radio at the store because I "was in Nebraska now".

Now I do understand the attraction and the fun of rooting for your team. I get that tailgating on game day and attending the game itself are fun experiences (I've done both). There's no harm in memorizing team statistics or expressing your opinion about the coach or players. (Yes, even college players - if they can accept the adulation and hero-worship when things are going well, they can accept the criticism when things are going badly - and no, the fact that you yourself cannot perform at that level of athleticism should not prevent you from venting about shitty football). What I don't understand is when fandom (and I'm not just pointing fingers at Nebraska football fans, I'm sure that in Texas, fanaticism begins at the high school level, or younger) becomes the most important thing in a person's life. I've worked with people who, without a second thought, would have quit their jobs if forced to work on a "Football Saturday".

Being from somewhere else does not preclude me from understanding why people are sports fans; guess what? We had sports fans where I came from too. Whether your team is Husker Football, or Creighton Basketball or the Chicago Cubs, you're not unique! There are sports fans everywhere and they're all similarly crazed in their support of their team. There are also plenty of us who just don't give a shit.

Lack of Consequences

Why do people do horrible things to each other? Why do people treat other people as things? Most people have moments that they're not proud of, but what about people who are continuously and barely consciously dismissive and contemptuous of their fellow human beings? There are undoubtedly many reasons, but one stands out to me: lack of consequences.

One of the prevailing headlines this week is the accusations of attempted rape against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, events that are alleged to have happened when he was in high school and later in college. Let's establish that I believe his accuser Dr. Ford, as well as the subsequent accusers that have come forward. You may disagree with me, and I may be proven wrong, but why are these accusations so credible to many of us? Granted, some do not find them credible, basing their incredulity on their perception that Kavanaugh is a "good man" and "would never had done those things". But back to why I find them believable.

Why would someone wait 35+ years to level an an assault accusation, an accusation of attempted rape, on someone? The attacks upon the accuser, here in post "#MeToo" 2018, and the united disbelief and personal attacks from men in power, should shed some light upon the reasons why some women don't report sexual assaults. The risk that they won't be believed, that their own lives will be put under a microscope, that their attackers will be portrayed as the victims and that in the end the rapist will escape consequences.

And many of these predators know that they will evade consequences.

Boys from well-connected families, with access to effective lawyers and enough money to buy silence are brought up knowing that they have a highly functional safety net that will catch them and protect them if they get into trouble. Of course this doesn't mean that every rich kid is a rapist or that every wealthy family's lawyer's time is mainly spent keeping the kids out of jail. But it does mean that those who do choose to become abusers know that they will be protected and likely escape serious consequences.

Pair the perception of invulnerability of the rich with the systemic bias against rape victims, and actions such as those which Kavanaugh is accused of become all too believable.

So what if Kavanaugh is known or believed to be a good family man, sober and serious? That's now. It's not beyond the pale of possibility that someone who acted the way Kavanaugh is alleged to have acted when in high school and college could become more circumspect as he got older and considered the repercussions to his judicial career if he continued to be a drunken rapist.

It remains to be seen what the consequences of his actions will be. There appears to be only one or two Republicans who are wavering on his appointment and Kavanaugh could very well escape any consequences and become a Supreme Court Justice. 

September 11th - Why Are We Really Observing This Day?

It's September 11th again. What was, for the first few anniversaries, a solemn remembrance, has become an opportunity for political posturing and chest thumping pseudo-patriotism. That, and an opening for all the crackpot conspiracy theorists to trot out their idiotic slants on 9-11 that the rest of us have mercifully forgotten. I have grown weary of all the reminders of how tough New Yorkers are, how brilliant Giuliani was, how the Saudis betrayed us, and most of all, how invoking that horrible day becomes an excuse to push whatever agenda the politician du jour is braying about.

Then, of course, there's our embarrassment of a president.

An exclamation point? It's like he's announcing a celebration. Then the video of him double fist-pumping as he arrived at Shanksville, like it's a campaign rally or a victory party.

Every year we say "Never Forget", but have we actually learned anything in the last 17 years? We've been mired in a series of conflicts in the Middle East ever since. In Afghanistan we were supposed to drive out the Taliban and foster a democratic government. We toppled the Taliban government, but have managed to install a series of corrupt national leaders and encouraged the resurgence regional warlords, who run much of the country, the parts of it's not run by Taliban commanders anyway. We have lost a significant number of soldiers to attacks by Afghan soldiers and police; our alleged allies. In Iraq we intervened based on a purposeful misreading of the intelligence, and got sectarian fighting and ISIS for our trouble. We intervened in Libya with the result being no central government and a dead ambassador. We talked tough and supported rebels in Syria, and bombed a few airfields, but the Russians and Iranians have propped up Assad.

We've increased our military involvement around the world and curtailed civil liberties at home, but we have done nothing to address the root causes of the attacks in 2001.

We say "Never Forget", but we have.