Recently, I’ve come to more and more and more and more get in touch with my inner old lady. My old lady hates the young whippersnappers and their bad manners and lack of civility. She hates how courtesy is dead and people hide behind email to front their rudeness. She is downright and damn cranky.

Here’s the first hint of my self revelation on this score. It starts with a wander down memory lane. Way back when in the dark ages when the internet was still capitalized as Internet, and Ronald Reagan and just about everyone else but the geeks had never heard the initials TCP/IP, I worked in a warehouse instead of embarking upon my not completely illustrious collegiate career. All sorts of folks worked with their hands back in those days. It was the only job I could get, and from morning to afternoon I packed school and office supplies into boxes for shipping.

In so many places you might work, in all sorts of fields, but maybe especially in the soul-crushing, bone-breaking gigs for low pay, long hours and without white collars, invariably there is a crusty, crotchety, seasoned player who becomes both a nagging voice of begrudging mentorship and an invaluable ally. For my warehouse gig, there were multiple such souls; it was the entire crew of the “mother’s shift,” working the same hours as their kids were in school from cradle to quite possibly grave.

The ladies oriented me to all sorts of deep insider knowledge. The key pieces of information were to place the lid back on your glue can when you left for the night to avoid cockroaches floating in mucilage come the morning and NEVER, EVER, NEVER go to the paper aisle alone if Phil was working.

The positions at the warehouse broke down on gender lines. Men in the warehouse drove forklifts and shipped the heavy stuff, women picked items off the shelves to fulfill orders and packed the boxes of smaller items. We women folk also managed the paperwork, so it was up to us to make sure the heavy stuff for any order was in stock and set aside for delivery. This last little bit necessitated walking down the long, lonely rows of warehouse lanes, walled in by ceiling high stacks of every sort of paper or paper product imaginable, folders, bond of every shade and weight and the trusty elementary school staple of manila drawing paper in every size, to check off inventory with a stub of a pencil.

Like a spider in a paper box web, Phil rode his forklift back and forth stacking and reordering and order fulfilling, waiting for his moment. To go into his lair alone was at minimum a litany of sexist catcalls, at worst a too close forklift blocking your path for the possibility of an uninvited grope. Phil also kept porno mags in a desk drawer for break time. Nice.

I never fell into his trap. I heeded the chorus of older women and their sage warnings. I never walked alone.

It was a hard but good and invaluable lesson to learn early in my life that those women who were there before me knew shit I didn’t. In every single fucking job in the known universe, the people who were there before you got there know stuff. They just fucking do. When I learned the job, I too could share my experience with a newer comer than me.

Come to realize I am now the crusty vet. Here’s the twist, and I believe it true even if it does smell of the completely trite canard of “When I was your age…,” the difference is now the damn fucking kids don’t listen. It’s exhausting and annoying.

I blame the computers.

Awhile back and probably more than I can remember, I have commented (or whined) about the current kids bringing my workaday world down. This week, though, I thought of those old ladies showing me how to pack boxes and stay safe in the warehouse and had an epiphany. While I aspire to them, I can’t be them, because common courtesy, etiquette if you will, has gone the way of the buffalo (and likely those ladies given their serious addictions to Marlboros and other sticks of tobacco).

Increasingly, I have been getting into conversations where I end slack-jawed, unbelieving that manners don’t exist where I work. I exaggerate, they do, but not for a whole lot of folks with whom I must toil shoulder to shoulder. Daily, there are few pleases and thank yous and many more unbidden demands and full-on interruptions.

It breaks on age and class lines. People with long resumes or a varied work history tend to open interactions with (1) some kind of greeting; (2) eye contact; (3) some kind of acknowledgement if you’re in the middle of something and end with (4) a polite remark of closing with warm regard or thanks, you know like “yo homes smell you later,” or even a head nod. It ain’t much, but it’s a conversation.

Far more of the people without work experience or life experience figure cc’ing you on an email is acknowledgement enough. The double whammy of ignorant, rude stumbling is the one-two punch of shooting off an email with a cc followed by a casual encounter. Here’s the order I fucking hate. HATE.

Dickhead shoots off an email telling someone else what I will do for him. Then, that dickhead swings by desk to update me on what’s going on and for what I have now been involuntarily volunteered without any concern for my time or needs. WRONG FUCKING ORDER.

Same exact amount of time, much happier outcome, talk to me first. Simple.

Yeah, email has that fun 24-hour immediacy, but what the fuck maybe you could try conversing every now and again. It breaks down this way, if you tell me what’s up, and we agree on the next step all is cool. If you feel like you have to “debrief” once the horse is out of the barn and my phone is already ringing and my email boxes is getting replies to what you set in motion, you fucked up and you fucked me up. So now, fuck you.

And, you know what, when I called you on it, and you explained why cleaning out your email at night is efficient and you don’t have time for running things by me? That, honey, is just sheer blood-boiling, unadulterated bullshit. Make fucking time to talk to other people like a human, it will save you time. We wasted time by having to talk about what a colossal douchebag you can be.

What amazes me is last week and into this one, I’ve been having conversation after conversation where I’m trying to explain to someone why their behavior is rude, why the agency we use has stopped returning someone else’s dictatorial emails, or why professional, business emails should start with greetings end with sign offs and make no assumptions in the middle. It’s like that whole chapter in elementary school where you learned how to hold a fork and say “please” or “thank you” is now dropped from the curriculum.

In one such conversation, a truly Machiavellian co-worker listened to my advice and charted a plan of action. Only in that conversation what entered that person’s ears and then came back out restated from another orifice was, “Yes, to get people to do what you want sometimes you have to add civility and whatever, because then they will do more.” Here’s another thought, just be nice and respect other people and their time just, you know, ‘cuz it’s better than being an unmitigated asshole.

What really stunned me, though, is I whined to people my age or older than me, and in seconds, nay nano-seconds, they understood me. One simply said the dickhead scenario above is “not cool, who doesn’t know that.” Another just coaxed me off the ledge by reminding me that our lives with some cordiality were actually more pleasant.

I dream, though, of just being an old, whisky and cigarette-voiced broad, like the ones who taught me the ropes of school-supply packing. A drag of a Virginia Slim, a withering look, and a well placed, “I guess you could do it that way. But that would be stupid. Your call.”

Technorati Tags: life, experience, business etiquette, warehouse, work

The title is M.’s spelling, which I’m kind of questioning, which is extremely obnoxious of me. His version is pretty much the Hokkien spelling, but I’ve also seen “Kung Hei Fat Choi” lying around, and Wikipedia gives it as Keong hee huat chye. You hear a lot more of the old Cantonese or Hakka, I think because there’s a lot more of them, Gung hei faat coi, Gong hee fatt choi.

Anyway, the point is, I hope you all have luck and prosperity and what not out there in both the English-speaking and the rest of the world for the lunar new year.

When I met good old M., I never heard him mention the whole Chinese thing much. Of course, he copped to it, it wasn’t like he was lying or passing or some crazy thing. But, he’s always pretty future dreaming, so it didn’t come up. I didn’t test him at the time, but I swear to god or gods or ancient ancestors, he wouldn’t have had any fucking idea what day Chinese New Year was that year.

I never heard him speak Chinese until he called his mother from my house the minute we found out about the tsunami in December 2004.

But, now, dear M. is a homeowner. And, it’s a kick ass, rocking, beach-y, California rancher with good light, an airy feel and some space to spread out for a party with some intimacy thrown into the mix. This year, his year as a Tiger in the Chinese zodiac, he decided a party must be had.

In truth, the party was merely a delivery system for M. getting his fill of a roasted pig.

He ordered that and piles and piles of other food that he likes. The guests were an excuse to not be gluttonous, I think. Actually, they brought food and wine, too. We were hoping to make a dent in drinking our bottles of wine; we netted more bottles. We’re suffering an embarrassment of riches good food-wise. If only I was better in touch with my inner alcoholic.

In the ethnic spirit, I did get my fill of Singapore’s Tiger beer. At the ancestral neighborhood of Braintree, I’d say Bud or Bud Light was the party-sipping beer of choice, but Tiger may very well be ahead in easy drinkability.

I’d been teasing M. that he was only having the party for the pig all week. It was actually confirmed by our friends who are also from the small subset of Penang-born Chinese diaspora living in the Bay Area. Sally, whose husband Peter hatched the idea of ordering the roasted pig and having a party, had pretty much spent the same span laughing about the same food focus above actual party planning.

Appropriate to living in a beach town, the party came in waves. There were about three separate parties, when you look at the peaks. Almost every glass in the house was used, and I have a cubic buttload of glasses, but only one was broken in my clean up. I think counting kids there were about 38-40 folks.

I should have taken more pictures, especially of the spread, but you can see just the snacks were ample.

I’ll tell you what, though, when it comes to food, the Chinese can party it up hardcore. Not only did we already have tables full of food, but most of the people with Chinese roots brought more. The Chongs outdid everyone with one rice cooker of Malaysian-style sticky rice, another of the dessert pulat hitam, aka black glutinous rice with coconut milk, a large pot of chicken curry, another of turkey gizzards, which I’m sure has a better, more delicious-sounding name, and a box of oranges from their tree, keeping the tradition of handing off oranges on New Year’s alive and well and prosperous. Others brought sesame balls, more oranges, candy, wine, more sesame balls and cookies.

One of M.’s co-workers brought a friend from Malaysia, who dove into the spread like the ultimate cure for homesickness. She was fun to talk with about the homeland, since she seemed surprised that a full-on white chick from the hinterlands of Braintree, could be so hip to the local cuisine and customs. I’m practically an international bon fucking vivant and raconteur. Practically.

This next statement probably only applies to me, or lives in my head in a way I won’t be able to explain well enough to make sense outside of my head. When I look at those party pictures, I have a hard time realizing that this thing that I am currently enmeshed in is my own life I’m living. I mean that I am from Braintree. More specifically, Braintree in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. It had exactly two ethnic groups of which I was aware, and I’m not even sure they are technically ethnically distinct; there were Irish Catholics, and there were Italian Catholics. Sure the town has Protestant churches and a Jewish synagogue, but the predominance of the other two groups swamped them beyond recognition.

In school, we were all born nearby, mostly in Boston. John Feldman would be asked to give a report about driedls or menorahs in the winter. Kathy Yuskauskas would speak up about how Lithuania wasn’t “Russia,” even if the Soviets had taken it over. Other than that, diverse we were not. Hell, I even told my kindergarten teacher that my aunt’s would be a “mixed marriage” (with zero understanding of the weight of the words), when she of Irish lineage was planning to marry Italian stock.

But, here, in my house now, it’s California all over the place. At our party, few were born in the neighborhood, in fact only two that I know off the top of my head, and that might still be more like a 40 to 50-mile radius. Just a quick finger tally, and I get maybe eight countries of origin, and not just the Boston notion of Irish (who usually aren’t from Ireland) or Chinese/Oriental, as the name for all of the people with almond eyes from the land of Asia, but actually being born and living elsewhere were representing. After that, there were permutations of self-identity and different kinds of Americans all melting together, as the metaphor goes.

(As a side note, the best thing about knowing folks from elsewhere, the conversations about health care make the U.S. sound crazy.)

Like being in a happy relationship, this ethnic harmony and openness confuses me in a cognitive dissonance kind of way. It wasn’t the life I pictured. It’s a pretty good life, though. It only shows I suck at guessing.

I plan on writing another thing much more entrenched in my own Boston roots later today. I was going to write it here, but it would be a nonsensical segue. So, I will end with a not-at-all-justice-doing photo of my photo collage that now lives in our hallway. Here, M. and me and the families who made our here and now possible are represented. In the interest of space and the fact that my people just don’t do group photos, I left out a lot of important folks on my side. I hope you all know who you are.