Longing for a Forced Smile

One of the things that I know puzzles many of my peers is America’s taste for chains. And I agree that their sameness, contrived quality (Welcome to XXXX, how may I provide you with excellent service today?), and unrootedness to the community frustrate me as well. But nowhere is the service and friendliness ethos more deeply ingrained than in the USA. In the UK, they refer to overtly friendly and helpful service as “American-style,” and it’s not always meant as a compliment.

But I just spent a week in Florida and was reminded why Americans like chains. We were in a part of Florida where most of the merchants and restaurateurs were mom-and-pops. And frequently we were treated to sour, snippy, exasperated service. Yes, it was a holiday week in a holiday part of the country, but that’s not my problem. I’m paying your bills.

My daughter got sick and I had to get her a prescription. I had a choice of a large chain retailer or a local druggist. I know how beleaguered independent pharmacists are by chains, so I direct all my hometown business to our neighborhood pharmacy. I decided to do the same this time round. After waiting for over a half-hour for the meds, as the pharmacist shot the breeze with locals, I became pretty sure he didn’t value my business the way I valued his existence. I could have saved more of my vacation by going to the chain store.

The local market was selling turkeys and I went in to inquire about what was on offer. “We have twelve- and fourteen-pound turkeys. That’s all we have" . . . Sigh . . . "No, we’re not making crab cakes this week. Do you know how busy we are? No, we cannot"—Don’t you love it when an independent merchant states that he cannot do something? Who’s stopping him?—"take orders. We cannot pre-reserve. We cannot guarantee anything will be here at any given time.” That’d drive me to Whole Foods pretty quick.

At one beachside lunch spot, the menu board noted “no refills,” “no substitutions,” “no checks or credit cards,” and “food that is not picked up when your number is called will be discarded.” Translated, that’s: “we’re greedy, unaccommodating, penny-wise, and contemptuous of you.” I guarantee TGIFriday’s will not throw out your to-go order if you’re late picking it up.

Now, I did encounter friendly service as well, but the protocols, service standards, and enforced customer relations of the chains can be reassuring in the face of local businesspeople who know you’re not from “around here” and treat you accordingly.

I understand it’s a two-way street, and a lot of customers, especially tourists, act like cretins. But spend enough time around ungrateful merchants and you may find yourself grateful for the canned servility of chained-up America.

Terminal Insecurity

I boarded a plane the other day at MSP. If you haven’t run the TSA gauntlet yet this month, and perhaps you are about to for Thanksgiving, you’re in for more than you bargained for. New additions to the security gauntlet include flashlight examinations of your driver’s license and new handling rules for any electronic device bigger than an iPod.

Here’s my step-by-step inspection:
1. Show boarding pass to TSA agent. Remove ID from wallet sleeve for flashlight examination at screener’s podium. (Told this new procedure is now applied to everyone.)
2. Remove jacket and shoes, place in plastic tub 1. Add coins from pocket and place in shoes.
3. Remove laptop from case and place in tub 2. Nothing else can go in this tub.
4. Remove camcorder from case and place in tub 3. Nothing else allowed in tub.
5. Remove liquids/gels and place in tub 4. Nothing else allowed in tub.
6. Place camcorder and laptop case in tub 5. Nothing else allowed in tub.
7. Place carry-on bag on belt.
8. Walk through.
9. Return all items to cases, put on jacket and shoes, return coins to pocket, liquids/gels to suitcase.

When I shook my head, a TSA screener said I should have “come prepared.” I told him that was impossible when the rules change every sixty days.

The only way I could have streamlined the process would have been to place the coins in my coat pocket before I reached the checkpoints. Sure, I could have checked my toiletries, laptop, video camera, etc. But who in their right mind does that? You end up with thousands of dollars in broken/stolen goods or conditioner all over your clothes.

Perhaps you saw that TSA got another poor report card last week from the latest independent tests conducted on them. They missed a lot of “bombs.” The response has been to add even more steps to the process and more contraband that needs separate analysis. Five plastic tubs and one carry-on bag for one person!

But do I feel any safer? It’s been six years since 9/11. Where is the new technology? Where is the smart profiling? And we still don’t x-ray cargo. There has got to be a better way.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m thankful America has not been the victim of another terrorist attack. But if our airport security checkpoints are indicative of our overall efforts to combat terrorism, we’re winning through sheer luck and lack of determined opponents. This system is broken.

Capitalist Tools

The news is rife with stories of impending airline mergers, all centered around number-three carrier Delta, and the thinking is if Delta and United combine, as an investment fund is urging, a whole chain reaction of airline mergers will follow. What makes this story so interesting, and dispiriting, is that the merger momentum is being driven largely by hedge funds and other Wall Street manipulators. And Delta’s management, for one, seems to be paying close attention.

The mergers are driven by the premise that consolidation will take airline seats out of the skies and that reduction in supply will drive up the cost of air travel, thus increasing airline profitability, currently threatened by high oil prices. Problem is, this theory has not been borne out over the last thirty years of deregulation

The hedge funds, investment bankers, and brokerages are in it for a quick buck: the pre-merger run-up in the price of the stock they hold and the massive transaction percentages reaped doing the deals. It’s the same logic that has fueled the boom-to-bust American economy for over a decade. Are we better off for it? Look at the strength of our economy, currency, and infrastructure and compare it to Europe’s, the UK’s, or Canada’s. It’s not pretty. When we short-term greed-fuel the future of our transportation infrastructure, which needs to grow, not shrink, we put our economic health at even greater risk.

It’s been more than two years since America West bought US Airways, a transaction dwarfed in size and complexity by the mergers being advocated today, but US Airways remains dogged by terrible operational and labor problems brought on by the merger.

The Twin Cities relies on Northwest Airlines for the vast majority of its transportation lift. We have an interest in seeing it remain healthy and stable as a stand-alone or merged carrier. I doubt Pardus Capital Management cares what happens once it earns its multiples.

Airline mergers face Justice and Transportation Department scrutiny. (One of the factors driving the current merger mania is the perception that the Bush administration would look more favorably on airline mergers than a Democratic administration that would take office in early 2009.) North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan (D) has already spoken out against such mergers, but it’s not clear that Congress has the power to intercede.

There may well be airline industry mergers that make good sense in the years ahead. They may even involve Northwest. And the outcome may be a net plus or minus for the Twin Cities. What matters is that they take place for reasons that are in the broad national interest as well as the interest of the financial services industry.

What Do American Cars, Smokers, Splenda, Alice Waters, Overhead Bin Abusers, and Soggy Buns Have in Common?

I feel a rant coming on:

+ Smokers are uniformly some of the most inconsiderate narcissists around. We’ve driven them all onto the streets with clean-air regs, which is good, but try walking down the street or waiting for a bus without inhaling somebody’s nicotine exhaust. And why do smokers believe the entire world is their ashtray? They flick ash without regard for where it goes or who’s downwind, and then they dump the butt on the sidewalk. Maybe when the Minneapolis City Council is done saving the elephants it can do something about the 500 cigarette butts on every block.

+ There is a special place in hell for people who board airplanes before their row is called and then use the tactic to put their humongous bag in an overhead bin above someone else’s seat before they head back to row 34. And no, you don’t need an ID when you board. You haven’t needed it in more than five years! Five years! Put it away!

+ Why do about 20 percent of all the restaurants in town not offer Splenda with beverages? Yes, that’s you Ike’s at the Airport, yes that’s you D’Amico & Sons, yes that’s you Punch Pizza. C’mon boys, this is the first artificial sweetener that doesn’t taste like chemicals and you’d think it was foie gras. I know it’s a little more expensive, but it’s the one you need to have.

+ Another baseball season has come and gone and they are still precooking hot dogs and brats at the Metrodome and storing them in warming ovens for hours. Even my hot dog–loving kids won’t touch the tepid things after the gummy, wet bun has been peeled off. Please, Twins (the concessions at the Dome are under the domain of the Sports Facilities Commission, not the teams): don’t let this horrible concessionaire get anywhere near the new ballpark. Twenty-eight years of wiener abuse will be quite enough.

+ The auto workers are on strike as of Monday against GM and the American carmakers are all teetering on insolvency. I always argued that the millions of Americans who bought Fords, Buicks, and Dodges solely because they were American were only hurting the car companies. Today, the U.S. manufacturers make much better cars, but after years of turning out the lowest common denominator, huge swaths of Americans won’t even consider an American vehicle. Truth be told, I’m one of them. A poor reputation will haunt you far longer than a bad product lasts.

+ Is it just me, or has Alice Waters gone from a national culinary hero to a sour polemicist for a cause that she’s basically won people over to anyway? If the mark of success of the California-grown local foods movement is when kids choose beet salad willingly and their parents spend two hours preparing dinner after working ten hours, then there will be no victory. There’s idealism, and then there’s fantasy. The latter is just not sustainable.

Feasting on Alton Brown

I usually find the rest of the country’s take on Minnesota, particularly when it airs on TV, clichéd and vapid. Food Network gives us a fair shake typically, and I didn’t even mind Rachel Ray’s recent foray in her Tasty Travels series. (Yum-O.) And I have great expectations of my colleague Andrew Zimmern’s season two Minnesota-based episode of Bizarre Foods on Travel Channel. (It will air in 2008.)

But possibly the best nationally produced Minnesota show I’ve seen is the current episode of Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt series where he motorbikes across America in search of the regional food and food culture. Brown is one of the most knowledgeable TV foodies out there, he’s funny, and because he lives in Atlanta, he’s not NY/LA-centric.

But I did not expect the episode “Lutefisk Express”—the final episode of season two, in which Brown biked up the Mississippi—to be quite as entertaining as it was. He starts in Alma, Wisconsin, at a fishing pontoon/greasy spoon, hits the Whistle Stop Café in Frontenac (gotta get there for pie, lard crust you know), restored my faith in Mickey’s Diner, did a turn at Olsen Fish on the lutefisk line, stopped at Bob’s Java Hut on Lyndale and got a tattoo upstairs at Uptown Tattoo, watched Soile Anderson make a smorgasbord, encountered some Viking-wannabes in Crosby, and ended up at Itasca State Park.

The fish platform in Alma and the Whistle Stop in Frontenac are real finds. I was shocked to learn how committed Mickey’s owners are to real food (and butter), laughed myself sick over Anderson’s Finnish accent (so thick the show used subtitles). Brown is not a camera hog and is content to let his crew share the stage, he really knows food and food science, and I find his personality to be mighty good viewing. Feasting was not a show I had on my DVR list this summer (or last) and now I regret it. Since it’s cable, I’m sure it will return many, many times.

If you’re interested in checking out “Lutefisk Express,” it airs Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 6 p.m. on Food Network.

The Full Upright Position

It’s late August, and half of America is on vacation. Odds are you are getting on a plane this month. And odds are you are going to recline your seat, sigh, and settle in. Or the guy in front of you is going to recline his seat, crunch your leg, and push even harder at the resistance.

We all know our penchant for rock-bottom–priced air travel has driven the airlines to pack lots of rows into today’s airliners. And I love those low fares. So I can’t really complain about seat pitch (the distance between rows on an airliner).

What puzzles me is why we universally revile being leaned back into, but nonetheless continue to do it to others? I’m of average height, and though I can appreciate a little recline, find the full monty pointless unless it’s an overnight flight. I no longer recline my seat more than an inch because I know how uncomfortable it is for the poor sap behind me. I know she can’t reach her bag, that her laptop won’t open fully on the tray table, and she has to keep her large soft drink in her lap, which makes her pants wet.

Yet many of you hit my knee or crossed leg and instead of pulling back or saying “excuse me,” push even harder. Breaking my knee gets you only a small additional benefit in recline.

There are devices that you can purchase to inhibit the seat in front of you from reclining. The Knee Defender is apparently not popular with the airlines. Our own Northwest Airlines has apparently banned its use; I imagine it could cause some problems in an evacuation.

But the product was invented to solve a real problem. The problem isn’t seat pitch, it isn’t cramped airliners, nor is it cheapo travelers. It’s the growing rudeness of our culture. If you’re on a plane this month and think you’re in a chaise lounge, you’ll eventually know it’s me you’re reclining onto. Because nowadays, I push back.

(Conflict of interest note: mspmag.com’s parent company publishes Northwest Airlines’ in-flight magazine, for which I occasionally write.)