Leaning in to the boycott market, the new biggest lies in business, and the Olympic sport where I’d win gold…among other ramblings this week.
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I think I’ve gotten over this whole tipping thing. I used to think it was a great idea, rewarding someone for a job well done and not quite rewarding them when they forgot your seventh martini. (Yeah, she said I only ordered six, but who ya gonna believe here????) It all seemed very free-enterprise-ish, with scrappy young workers scrambling to earn their pay and beneficent patrons rewarding them with ample largesse. (Fun fact: Ample Largesse is from the Latin for big butt and it referred to British lords who sat at the club and complained about the work ethic among the servants who fetched their cigars.) Anyway, I thought of tipping as a much better approach to compensation than simply including everything in the overall cost of my purchase, but I’m beginning to come around to the idea that tipping is really, really stupid. First, this is a dumb way for people to earn a living. So much of any worker’s compensation is in limbo until it’s too late to change anything, and many cheap bastards don’t tip at all. Meanwhile, the rest of us are assessed according to the final price, rather than the actual work involved in providing the service. But why tie it to prices at all? It takes no more effort to bring me a $25 glass of wine than a $5 beer, but the wine calls for five times the tip. And it gets very awkward when the service is so bad that I’m only leaving a symbolic $1.00, because the waiter might show up with a point-of-purchase device to ring me up in person. It was easier when I could just write down the tip on the receipt and run out the door, but now I have to enter the amount while the really bad server is watching me. Second, nobody can explain which people should get tipped and which ones should just work for wages. I understand tipping the waiter who brings me my meal in a restaurant, but now I’m supposed to tip the cashier who took my order at the takeout counter, as well. Does that mean I’m supposed to tip the cashier at the drug store? Why am I tipping the woman who brings me a slab of ribs, but not the butcher who does the same? Neither cooks it, but one gets paid. If things keep going the way they are, I’ll need to tip the bus driver for letting me off at my stop and the screener who pats me down at the airport. If I need surgery, I’ll be tipping the anesthesiologist, in advance, in hopes she’ll remember the antidote. (Fun fact: TIP is actually an acronym for To Inhale Post-surgery.) It will only get worse as AI takes over more of the jobs now handled by people, because AI is both very smart and very, very amoral. The robot arm that delivers my coffee will spill it if my tip isn’t generous enough and I’ll need to swipe my credit card if I don’t want the elevator to stop between floors. My self-driving ride-share will keep the doors locked until I cough up my ransom and the slot machine at the casino will demand its vig if I ever want to see another cherry. Worst of all, the robots will eventually decide how much they need and simply transfer it from my account to theirs. The only way to stop this disaster is to tip everyone with cash. It won’t fix the mess we've already created, but it might convince the robots that there’s no money to be made by demanding tips. If there are no extra payments showing in the databases, we can trick our future masters into phasing out tipping forever. We can only hope. Many people have asked us how much they should tip us after clicking here to subscribe to Dad Writes. We suggest a minimum 42% of the price you paid for this briefing, and thank you for your ample largesse. At some point in my life, more than a few people suggested that I was an introvert. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but it was around the time that everyone started getting caught up in psychology, Rorschach tests, and the color of their parachutes. None of the people who diagnosed me was licensed to practice psychology, or even yoga, but that’s what they said and I believed them. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly the life of the party. I’d been sick as a kid, missing out on those socialization skills you pick up in adolescence, and I was more interested in schoolwork than extra-curriculars. When people told me I was hard-wired that way, it seemed to fit. Even better, it gave me a reason to conclude I couldn’t change and didn’t need to try. So I lived my life as an introvert, with solitary hobbies like bike riding, photography, and coin collecting. Later, when I was around 45, I took a Meyers-Briggs test and the results were pretty shocking. According to the test, I wasn’t actually an introvert. In fact, the test concluded that I was comfortable across a broad range from Intro- to Extro- on the -Vert Continuum. As a result, my filter began to change and I saw the world, including myself, just a bit differently. Slowly, over many years, I became more outgoing, more sociable, more comfortable with strangers. I’m okay with traveling or dining alone and I still enjoy biking and photography, but I would rather be paired up with somebody, or somebodies, to share the experience. The teenage me would be surprised to see how much I enjoy being with people, engaging with them, entertaining them, and learning from them. Or, maybe, the teenage me would remember the sadness of being alone far too much. Because, in fact, I was sad to be alone as a teen and I was mistaken in my belief that sadness was the inevitable companion of introverts. Instead, it was the inevitable result of a faulty diagnosis. I simply accepted what other people said about me and followed their prescription to guide much of my life. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s pretty common for people to shove you into a box and put a label on it, even though they aren’t going to move into that box with you or help you to work your way out of it. And if they make the wrong diagnosis, they’ll give you an ailment you didn’t have already, without offering a cure. I can’t go back, of course, and my regret is softened by the knowledge that painful experiences teach us how to cope later in life. The people who put me in the wrong box when I was younger did me no favor, but they did give me an insight I can pass on to another generation. I’m not exactly gleeful for the lesson, but perhaps someone can benefit from my education. Now that I’m not afraid of people any more, I’m happy to invite you to join the party by clicking here to subscribe to Dad Writes. I had just finished digitizing Volume 5 of the family photo albums and I was feeling a sense of accomplishment when, suddenly, I froze. Fourteen hours in, maybe another hundred hours to go, and exactly why was I doing this? My first thought was that it’s all for the kids, or the grandkids, but that’s just one of those things I tell myself to make me sound like I’m a devoted family man. Mostly, I’m like the guy who works nonstop to build a company and never spends time at home, but consistently claims it’s a “family business” and tells his kids he’s doing it for them. Well, at least he says that to his kids during the weekends when he has custody. I’m pretty far from that extreme, or so I tell myself, but the pattern is the same. I get driven by some need of my own and I don’t want to feel selfish about the whole thing, so I make up an audience that will benefit from my unique brand of obsessive compulsive disorder. Once I asked myself why I was digitizing the photos, the rest of my world started coming into focus, and it wasn’t pretty. I’ve saved copies of every newspaper article I wrote in college, and elementary school, along with my first license plate and essentially every photo or video I ever shot. I’m preserving all my “We try harder” buttons from Avis and my official membership certificate from the Merry Marvel Marching Society and the keys from almost every hotel room where I’ve ever stayed. Meanwhile, more than a third of our apartment is dedicated to the two times a year when we have people over, and by “people,” I mean humans who aren’t in my nuclear family. For the nukes, the kitchen table is good enough. No, the living room couches and dining room table are for “company,” all the people who are so much more special than my wife and kids and grandkids. I’ve written before about my challenges with the relics left behind by my own parents and grandparents, but I have not learned from their mistakes. I’m just more organized about it, having assembled boxes of “heirlooms” that nobody is going to see until after I’m gone, leaving them to wonder what the heck I was thinking when I decided to honor them with these gifts. I’ve actually thought about putting labels on the things that are on display in our apartment so the kids will know how important they are. “Oh, look, this tiny birdcage with a little chirping bird is actually a clock that was once owned by someone we’ve never met, and dad never thought it was important enough to actually wind up,” my heirs will say. And then they’ll spend decades in court, battling for possession of all my priceless collections. OTOH, this is going to be really important when the Rosenbaum Historical Center opens in Chicago and millions of visitors line up to learn about my fabulous existence. Yeah, that’s it. If I can save up enough stuff, the Rosenbaum Historical Center will be a giant success, a family business, if you will, and it will provide all the funds needed to support my descendants for many generations. This will be my finest achievement, establishing a dynasty that will last into eternity, all built on a chirping clock and 20,000 digitized photos. So, really, kids, I’m doing all of this for you. While my kids are feeling ever so lucky about their upcoming inheritance, this would be a good time for the rest of you to click here to subscribe to Dad Writes. Also, make your reservations for the Rosenbaum Historical Center, because tickets are going fast. I still don’t know what Sherry thinks about the border wall and I never found out whether Neil favors our current tax treatment for carried interest. I probably should have asked, but the conversation never went in that direction and then the opportunity slipped away. So I went up to Hudson’s Bay a couple of months ago to take pictures of migrating polar bears and I ended up living with two dozen strangers from four or five countries. None of us could leave our makeshift hotel because polar bears get hungry while they’re waiting for seal-eating season and, fun fact, they run much faster than humans. I’ve never been more isolated. We had no television, no internet, and almost no cell reception. You had to stand near the window next to the space heater and hold your phone high above your head to get any signal at all and it took six days to download an emoji. It was like being trapped on the Orient Express, but with less snow and fewer murderers. I think. Anyway, we had nothing to do for three days but ride around the tundra, looking for photogenic polar bears and an occasional arctic fox. At night, we ate dinner at communal tables and spent hours in the “family room,” ‘til boredom overtook us and we began to speak. And speak we did. We talked about favorite places, travel memories, photo tips and nature. We talked about hobbies and life stories and how we chose to join the tour. We talked about food and restaurants and plays and movies and families. And in all the conversations over three days together, we didn’t debate politics or celebrities or conspiracies or crises. We didn’t choose sides or tribes or lines that we dared each other to cross. Maybe we were all afraid of getting voted off the island and thrown overboard as polar bear chum, or maybe we were just open to the idea of engaging with new people and enjoying shared experiences. Remarkably, we figured out how to meet with strangers, engage in conversation, find common ground, and enjoy each other’s company. After three days together, we were all on speaking terms and nobody got fed to the bears. Well, nobody we’ll admit to, anyway. Best of all, it felt totally organic. I don’t remember our guides issuing a warning about political conversations or any topics that were off limits for our time together. More likely, the hyper-partisan bombardments of our daily lives were generally out of reach and nobody thought them important enough to import into our refuge. It was all very refreshing and an important reminder of what’s possible when we get together with strangers. Now, if only we could do the same thing with people we already know. Now that I’ve written a blog post about the trip, it’s deductible as research, right? Follow my future engagements with the IRS by clicking here to subscribe. The girl at the train station loves, loves, loves her town, which is cold and empty and expensive and unreachable by cars. And, as an added bonus, polar bears amble down the street every so often to see the sights and forage for food, which could include incautious locals. Still, she’s crazy about the place and her decision to move there from a much bigger city with more heat, more creature comforts, lower costs and decidedly fewer apex predators. She’s young, yet, and she might change her mind someday, but right now she loves knowing everyone in town and having everyone know her. She loves the quiet and the crisp winter air. She loves conversing with tourists and then sending them on their way. It’s easy to lose track when you travel by air, especially if you’re spoiled like I am with O’Hare airport 12 miles from home and a non-stop flight going anywhere. Take a close look, though, and you realize that the world is a gigantic canvas of empty space with a few human settlements to break up the monotony. Some of the settlements have obvious appeal, but others require a footnote or two. Whenever I head out to some isolated stretch of land, I wonder about the people who choose to live there. What made them decide that this cold stretch of barren wasteland would be a great spot to settle down, maybe raise a family, maybe build a life? I talk to the locals whenever I travel and they all have their reasons for coming, or for staying, in a town that wouldn’t make my top 1,000 list of home towns. Unlike Mr. Rogers, they don’t want to be my neighbor, either. They like where they’re at just fine and there’s no way to convince them that big-city life is worth a spin. We’re all the same, at least in theory. We all have the same hierarchy of needs and pretty much identical genetics. Hair and eyes and skin and height and weight will vary all over the place, but the fundamentals are the same at birth. Our vision is shaped by our experiences, though, and the girl in the train station cannot help but see the world much differently than I do, and vice versa. In a very real sense, we live in different worlds. Both of us need to survive and thrive in the environment we’ve chosen, which can lead to markedly different interpretations of the same developments, sharply different views of normal and safe and sane. No matter how hard we try, we all end up in some form of echo chamber, relishing the reassurance that comes from familiar voices. We engage mostly with people who live near us, look like us, and share our educational/economic/religious/cultural histories. We mock the people who take a deep dive down the rabbit hole, but pretty much all of us slide into our own circles of trust, unintentionally and unaware. I have no idea if the girl in the train station is trapped in an echo chamber, or which chamber it might be. As I listened to her story though, she helped to lift me out of mine. There's another trip or two on the agenda and we'll be meeting some strange ducks, or other waterfowl, along the way. Be sure to read all about it by clicking here to subscribe. |
Who writes this stuff?Dadwrites oozes from the warped mind of Michael Rosenbaum, an award-winning author who spends most of his time these days as a start-up business mentor, book coach, photographer and, mostly, a grandfather. All views are his alone, largely due to the fact that he can’t find anyone who agrees with him. Archives
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