CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

So I had an experience yesterday that caused me to need to come here and vent. Mynagirl and I work for the same company in a downtown Houston office building, and our building has a cafeteria. It is a garden variety corporate cafeteria, with food that is neither really good nor really bad, and fairly reasonable prices. They typically have four or five general areas for food…a mexican line (tacos, burritos, taco salads, quesadillas, etc), traditional food line (chicken breast, meat loaf, fish, turkey, vegetables, etc), sandwich line (sandwiches), grill line (hamburgers, grilled chicken sandwiches, chicken fingers, fries, etc), and twice a week a pasta line where they make pasta to order.

There is also a salad bar, dessert area, frozen yogurt machine, Starbucks cofffee, fountain drinks, bottled drinks, and fresh fruit.

So, not bad for a corporate cafeteria.

But yesterday when Mynagirl and I sat down, there was a man and woman at a table not really that close, but close enough for us to have to endure the guy pontificating for 20 minutes. The subject of his sermon? He ranted and raved and railed about the fact that the cafeteria was “ripping me off” because they charged him for the extra cup of gravy that he asked for and for the cup of ice and water that he got.

Now, some of you are saying, “Yeah, brother, right on…fight the power!”, while the majority of you are saying, “Man, what a cheap bastard.” I fall squarely into the latter category, and find that as I get older I am beginning to have less and less patience for people who have an entitlement mentality. These are people who somehow expect the world to be “fair” and somehow perceive that large organizations like businesses and governments should somehow have bottomless pits of money that they should be used to make life easier for cheap bastards with a sense of entitlement.

In the specific example of the guy yesterday, here’s what happened from my perspective:

• Cheap Bastard (CB) orders chicken fingers which come with a little plastic cup of gravy. CB asks for a second little plastic cup of gravy, thereby taking more gravy than is built into the food costs. CB then is surprised and offended that the cafeteria wants to charge him $0.25 for this cup of gravy.
• CB comes into the cafeteria empty-handed, and has not bothered to purchase and schlep his own bottled water with him (which the cafeteria allows), nor has he filled his own cup with water from one of the many water fountains available all over the building. Instead he grabs a cup that the cafeteria provides, goes to the ice machine that the cafeteria bought and maintains and fills the cup with crushed ice from the crushed ice machine provided by the cafeteria, then moves to the push-button water-dispenser that was purchased and is maintained by the cafeteria and fills the cup (with water that the cafeteria pays for), then grabs a lid provided by the cafeteria, then grabs a straw provided by the cafeteria, then goes and sits at a table in an area provided by the cafeteria, finishes his water, throws the remaining water and ice, along with the cup, lid, and straw into a waste receptacle that the cafeteria maintains and pays to have emptied. And then CB complains that all of this convenience costs him another $0.25. He truly is a CB.

And I think that’s where the major disconnect is between the CB’s with a sense of entitlement and the rest of us. I truly don’t think that CB understands that his cup of gravy or that cup of ice with water are a very real, hard cost for that cafeteria business. And although he may not think it’s worth $0.25 to have the luxury of extra gravy or he doesn’t think that it’s worth another $0.25 for the convenience of having cups, lids, straws, crushed ice, and water available, he should realize that it is not the job of the cafeteria to give things away. The cafeteria is a business, not a charity, and so has every right to charge for these things, and it appears to me that they are charging very fairly. CB is free not to eat there and/or not to get extra gravy or a cup of ice water if he doesn’t want to pay for them. However, paying for them and then complaining that they are not worth it are just plain stupid. The fact that CB paid for them proves that they were worth it to him, unless he was forced through the line with a gun to his head, or something.

In yet another example which also happened in the last few days, I was traveling home from a business trip and was in the Seattle airport, and was going through a fast food line to get some nachos to nosh while waiting for departure. The couple in front of me got a taco plate, a salad plate, and two medium drinks (trust me, I remember exactly). After they ordered the wife went off in search of a table, while the husband kept tabs on the progress of their lunch order. The girl who was checking them out was obviously new, and rang up his total. She told him “$12.97, please!”, to which he responded, “No, that can’t be right” and directed his gaze to the menu. The girl double-checked her figures and claimed it was correct, but the guy insisted it was too high. He then ran through the pricing from his perspective. “First we have the taco plate meal, then we have the salad plate meal, and those include drinks so the total should be eleven fifty-something” he says.

At this point the new checkout girl was completely paralyzed by what to do, as you could tell she didn’t agree with him or his math, but wasn’t sure enough to say so. So she summoned a more senior lady from the back, who reviewed the tab and pronounced it correct. Mr. Man continued to dispute the charges, and pointed out to both of the ladies that there was a handwritten sign that said that the two dishes they had ordered were available as a meal for price X as opposed to the a la carte pricing where the drinks were added separately. The senior lady finally acknowledged that he was correct and rung him up for the displayed price.

Now, there are those of you out there who are again saying, “Yeah, brother…right on….fight the power!” while the rest of you are again saying, “What a cheap bastard!”. Again I am in the latter camp. I can hear all you CBs out there reading this and finding it incomprehensible that I can fault Mr. Man for fighting to get the correct price, but I do, with extreme prejudice. Because while Mr. Man argued with these oblivious cashiers, he made the rest of us poor, tired, huddled business travelers wait for 5 extra minutes (while our already-prepared food was cooling on their counter), all to save about $1.50. I was literally at the point of handing this schmuck $5 and asking him to get the hell out of everybody’s way, because enough was enough. The restaurant was obviously not purposely ripping him off, and the amount in question was trivial, but Mr. Man stood there making everybody wait to make his point. Now, I know that he had every *right* to do that, but it was still rude to everyone else in line, and Mr. Man should have said to himself “Close enough” and moved on.

Now, if Mr. Man had been buying a car and the price was off by $5,000? Go ahead and make a stink. If he paid for his groceries at the store with $100 bill, but only got change for a $50, stand your ground, and more power to you. But making a stink in a busy airport line making everybody else wait in order to make your point about $1.50? That’s just beyond the pale and begins to border on a disorder. Let it go, pal, you’ll get it back many times over in good karma (or the avoidance of bad karma), trust me.

I’ve known many CB’s personally, and one thing I’ve found is that most of them have never actually run a business themselves, or worked in a job where they were responsible for profit and loss. Either that, or they see money simply as a game that they must always win, not matter what the stakes. These are the same dorks that will drive across town to save $0.05/gallon on gas, burning up any cost savings with their meanderings but not caring, because they get to “win” with the lowest price.

When your imperitive is to maximize the bottom line, such as with your own business or running a product line within a larger business, you realize that you can’t afford to give things away, or to waste time making sure the accounts balance to the penny. The for-profit enterprises that do seem to give things away actually don’t, because they either charge you for them elsewhere and hide that cost, or know that they’ll get future sales/profits from you by investing in providing you with an incentive.

For example, that home security system that they install for free? It’s the minimum system and they know you’ll almost certainly add on additional sensors and things, plus they charge you a monthly recurring fee for monitoring the system, and that’s where they make the money. The restaurants that *do* give away extra gravy and cups of water? They’ve built those expenses into their food costs already, so you and me and everybody else there is paying for that “free” stuff.

Remeber, as it says in the abstract up there, TANSTAAFL, which means, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, and that is a truism that is very true indeed…steeped in truthiness, in fact.

Based on the little I know about CB from his rantings, I’ll bet he’s also a bad tipper (BT). And I find that BTs and CBs both have an entitlement mentality. The world owes them something. It owes them what they think they deserve, regardless of they they’ve actually earned it or lucked into it. Dammit, I just *know* I’m supposed to have a big, flat-screen TV to watch the Super Bowl on, and the fact that I don’t means either that my company isn’t paying me enough or that the companies making the TVs are charging too much for them. It couldn’t possibly be that I can’t afford one, because that’s just not right.

Don’t you know people like that?

Are *you* a person like that?

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Your money is "safe" with him

After seeing this movie it became clear to me what low expectations I have from Hollywood films these days. This film was a solid, well written, well acted, intricately plotted action flick, and I realized I hadn’t seen anything like it since…well…since a very long time. It’s not quite as good as Die Hard, but it’s better than Collateral, to give you an idea of where I’d put it in this genre. It’s a bit unfair to compare anything to Die Hard, since that’s the film that both defined this genre and has ruled as the best intelligent action picture ever made ever since, IMHO.

However, Inside Man is right up there. First of all, it was astonishingly refreshing to see Denzel Washington not play Denzel Washington for the first time in a long time. Here he plays an NYPD hostage negotiator who gets pulled into a Dog-Day-Afternoon-like standoff at a bank robbery that isn’t what it appears to be. Denzel’s character is extremely competent, but he’s not a super-sleuth or a John McClane-like bad-ass. However, he uses a combination of his instincts, street-smarts, and determination as he attempts to unravel the mysteries with which he is presented.

Also refreshing to see is Jodie Foster, looking exactly her age, playing a character her age, showing wrinkles and laugh lines and looking spectacular doing it. Not only that, but she plays an amazingly amoral “consultant” who helps people’s problems go away. Her character can be summed up by noting that after she has blackmailed the Mayor of New York City into doing what she wants, he responds by saying “You, my dear, are a magnificent cunt.” And she is.

Clive Owen and Christopher Plummer also both shine in their roles, and the supporting cast is nearly perfect. All of this is directed with flair by Spike Lee, and also with a bit of Spike Lee-iness. There are some trademark shots and scenes that mark this as a Spike Lee Joint, but he has proven here that he can deliver the big-studio, big-budget, big-grossing ($66 million and counting) hit, while still making a great film. That skill seems to have escaped most directors today.

I’m curious if Spike was able to leverage his status as a premier director to keep control of his film and maintain the intricate and sometimes nearly opaque plotting. My take is that today’s studio execs fear films that challenge audiences to pay attention and think, and instead seem to reflexively add in slow-motion kung fu, slow-motion gunplay (with pistols held sideways in that “cool” way), techno-music-driven flash-cut montages in nightclubs run by the bad guys, any time they think a film is getting too cerebral.

In any case, I really liked this film, and if you’re a fan of action movies that challenge you to keep up and don’t mind that there’s not any kung fu or sex, then this might be a film you’ll enjoy.

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This is one of those rare instances where I read the book before seeing the movie, and the cliche holds true, the book was better. Much better. That’s not to say that the film was bad, but the pecking order is great book followed by slightly above average film. One of the best parts of the film is the performance of Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor. Nick is a lobbyist for Big Tobacco, and he hasn’t so much as sold his soul as he has failed to control his awesome power for convincing. He’s managed to convince himself that Big Tobacco is being unfairly treated and mis-characterized by the government and the press, and with his pure belief he is able to charm and sway just about anybody to open their minds, even if just a smidge, to consider the fact that Big Tobacco just may not be the incarnation of the Devil.

Now, if you’ve read much of this site you’ll know that I’m not pro-smoking (he understated), but intellectually I’ve also felt that the government is acting quite hypocritically with regards to tobacco. Since tobacco is legal, the constitutionalist in me says that it should be treated as such and not harassed and over-taxed. If we as a people say that tobacco is legal, let it be legal. Now, that’s not to say that I believe it should be ubiquitous, and in fact I would happily agree to having tobacco legal to smoke, but have it be illegal to inflict others with one’s effluvia. In other words, I won’t tell you you can’t smoke if you don’t tell me I have to inhale your blow-by gasses.

Parking high horse.

One of the things I like best about the film is that it doesn’t demonize Nick Naylor, and instead shows him to be a superstar, while also beginning to question if he’s playing for the right team. He has a young son, and the film plays up the fact that Nick is ambivalent about how to reconcile his desire to be a good dad with his desire to do a good job. This aspect of the film is what I think weakens the impact, as it attempts to humanize Nick without making him pick sides.

For example, there’s a scene where Nick’s bosses send him to visit an old, cancer-stricken former Marlboro man and take him a briefcase full of cash, no strings attached. No confidentiality agreement, nothing. Just, here, here’s some money from us to you. An implied guilt trip. And Nick not only delivers the money and the message, but he spins the interaction in such a way as to leave Mr. Dying Marlboro Man (played wonderfully by Sam Elliott, who in retrospect seems born to play a dying former Marlboro Man) with only one option – take the money (for his family after he’s gone) and keep his mouth shut (so that he won’t be a hypocrite by taking their money and then saying derogatory things about tobacco).

The kicker is that Nick has taken his son along with him on this visit. You see, his son accompanied him on this business trip to California so that he and his father could bond, and the son innocently backs his father into a corner about going along to make the payoff, because Nick admitting that he didn’t want his son along would be Nick admitting that what we was doing was “wrong”. And Nick doesn’t see himself as a wrongdoer. So Nick’s son gets to see what his dad does for a living. And, like all sons, absorbs it and learns from it.

There are other facets to the film, as well. Nick belongs to the M.O.D Squad, which stands for Merchants of Death. This group of three represent Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms, and meet once a week for lunch and spend time comparing yearly mortality rates for each of their respective masters and using that to gauge the toughness of their jobs.

There’s also a vacuous reporter, played by Katie Holmes, who does a little convincing of her own (if you know what I mean and I think you do) and gets Nick to open up to her about his job, and then writes a scorching expose of him and his cohorts. It was only afterwards that Mynagirl told me that the reporter was Katie Holmes, and I have to say she did a singularly unimpressive job, and sort of faded into the background, in my opinion. And got a little bit freaky before doing so, I might add.

The rest of the cast does a good job, with Robert Duvall as the personfication of Big Tobacco, William H. Macy as the prototypical anti-smoking (and Birkenstock wearing) liberal Congressperson, and Rob Lowe (whose porn name should be Raw Blow, if you ask me) as the stereotypically sociopathic and pseudo-spiritual Hollywood movie exec.

Put it all together and you have a fairly good film that could have been great with just a bit of tweaking and enough backbone to stay away from the Hollywood-esque ending. Still it was much more entertaining and different than the usual Hollywood drivel, and that makes it worth seeing.

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