Where Do You Eat?

People have definite…and strong…opinions about food. And often, they don’t realize that these opinions are simply opinions…they way they feel about something…and not objective fact.

I have friends who turn up their noses at the idea of going out for dinner at Applebee’s or Friday’s because it’s “chain food,” which, by definition, is of a lesser quality than what you can make at home. These people have obviously never eaten a horrible homemade meal. I have friends who argue with me about my choice for favorite Italian restaurant in Syracuse (Spaghetti Warehouse, if you must ask), because Dominick’s or Angotti’s are soooo much better.

These people don’t understand that you like what you like, and that there is no objective standard of what’s better food. Places like Applebee’s and Friday’s…and even Spaghetti Warehouse…give me the meals that I can’t make well at home. And if you like the lasagna better at Dominick’s, that’s fine for you, but as for me and my palate, we’ll be going to Spaghetti Warehouse.

And as far as homemade food goes, I grew up on my mother’s macaroni and cheese with the breadcrumbs on top. I didn’t even know that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese existed until I was at least a teenager, and maybe not even until I was in college. My mother’s macaroni and cheese was the standard that I measured all other mac and cheese by, and Kraft doesn’t even place a distant second.

My two daughters, however, learned to love the stuff in the blue box at an early age…most likely from daycare…and absolutely hate the stuff I make from my mother’s recipe. It is what it is. You like what you like because it’s what you grew up with; and you shouldn’t have to feel guilty about not liking something “more sophisticated” or homemade. Food snobs drive me crazy.

I love the Glove and Boots series of videos, and there’s one about visiting New York in which Johnny T says that if you’re gonna visit New York, don’t eat at the same restaurants you’d go to at home. This is accompanied by a graphic showing the logos of many national chains.

I have friends who feel this exact same way…if they’re visiting a new city, they make a point to avoid chains, and only eat at local restaurants. But I figure that after you’ve been on the road for hours and hours, there’s something comforting about food you recognize, and eating in a place where you know exactly what you’re getting…or can get a particular favorite that you can’t make at home.

Besides, despite what Johnny T says, some chains are local…or at least don’t exist where we live…so going to them is eating something different than what we’d get up here. Even though I grew up with them in Jersey, there are no White Castles anywhere near Central New York; so going to one when we’re in the NYC area would be something different. Eat’n Park and Steak ’n Shake are local to Pennsylvania and parts of the Midwest. And while we used to have them here, Bob Evans and Big Boy left the area before we ever had a chance to visit one.

Now this doesn’t mean that we only eat at chains when we’re on the road. We’ll eat in almost any Chinese or Italian restaurant, but we don’t feel a need to avoid chains when we’re traveling, just to make our experience more “legitimate”...and neither should you.

Just eat what you like.

Now, we have to make a special pilgrimage to one of the three remaining Howard Johnson’s.

What's So Bad About Double-Dipping?

This comes up in conversation every now and then…usually because of a newspaper article about someone doing it. But when it came up a few weeks ago in a conversation at work, I decided that it was time for me to write about it…double-dipping.

Now, for those of you who’ve never heard the term before, we’re not talking about getting a two-scoop cone from Applegate Farm or Friendly’s. No, what we’re talking about is a person retires from one government job, and goes to work for another government agency…while collecting their pension from the first job.

“Unfair!” cry the masses.

“Not so!” say I.

The masses, who don’t understand how the system works think it’s unfair because they’re paying this person twice. But they’re not. This person put in the time needed to earn that pension, and is getting that pension without any more being paid in toward it. In fact, one could argue that the person who is double-dipping costs the taxpayers less, because we don’t have to pay into their pension plan.

But there’s still this emotional response that it’s unfair that you can officially retire from a job on Friday, get your retirement benefits, and come back to work for another…or even the same…government agency on Monday, bringing home more money than you did before, because of the combination of the pension and salary. And this emotional response is probably based on jealousy that they couldn’t get such a sweet deal. So let’s take a look at this by breaking it up a little differently.

I had a Gym teacher in high school, who I’ll call Mr W. Mr W had been in the military for what they call “20 years and a wake-up,” at which point he was eligible to retire with a military pension. And I don’t care what any of the rest of you say, he earned that pension. Anytime you stay in a job for 20 years where you know there’s a likelihood of your being killed, you have earned that pension in my book.

If he went in at age 18, he was a relatively young 38 when he retired. He was young enough to start a new career, which he did…in teaching. Was it double-dipping for him to retire from the military, collect their pension, and then start working for the East Orange Board of Education? Should it matter that because of his military pension he brings home more than the average teacher? I don’t think so.

And then when he retires from teaching 20-odd years later, is there a problems with him collecting pensions from both the military and the East Orange Board of Education? I don’t see one. He earned both of them fair and square.

And in the world of regular business, Donald Keogh retired from the presidency of Coca-Cola, where he was in charge of the “New Coke” disaster, in 1993, and became chairman of the investment bank of Allen & Company the very next day…while probably still drawing his Coca-Cola pension. Do we see a problem here? Is he double-dipping?

So then why is it a problem for someone to retire after 30 or 40 years in a public service job on Friday, and come back part or even full-time on Monday? Why does this elicit cries of “double-dipping”? Especially when that “double-dipping” is saving the taxpayers money.

As I said earlier, I think it’s jealousy, pure and simple. I think that the people who complain about it being unfair are jealous of a deal that they couldn’t get from their current employers…but would gladly take if it were offered.

At least that’s the way I see it…and maybe I’ll be one of those “double-dippers” in a few years.

And I think I’ll have some ice cream while I’m at it!

Slow Down Your Email

I’m doing a couple of things differently in my digital life this year. You already know that one of them is to unfollow all of my Debbie Downer friends on Facebook, and I have to say that that has improved my quality of life immensely. But there’s another thing I’m doing, that I think should benefit not just me, but the people I interact with also.

I’m slowing down my personal email.

What do I mean by this? Well, I mean that unless it absolutely requires an immediate response, I’m slowing down my response time to personal email.

Remember back in the old days of letter-writing, with envelopes and stamps, that once you wrote the letter, it would take about two days for it to get to the person, then they’d read it and spend another day or two writing a response, and then it would take another two days after that for the response to get back to you? It was a nice, leisurely six-day cycle that gave you time to do other things between letters.

But nowadays [and would someone please tell my 12-year-old daughter that it’s nowadays, and not nowendays?] we’re so accustomed to the ability to get an almost instantaneous response from someone, that we get all bent out of shape if we don’t hear back from them in the next hour. And if we haven’t heard from them by the end of the day, they’ve forgotten all about us, and we’ll never hear from them again. And the pressure’s on us too, to respond in a timely manner…where “timely” means “right now,” and without really taking the time to think about what we’re saying.

And to this, I say “Stop!”

It started with a conversation on Facebook that I had decided was taking up too much of my time and effort, as I tried to respond to every post by this one person the moment it appeared. So instead, I deliberately sat and wrote my response in Microsoft Word, went back to edit it a few times, and then posted it at midnight. He got one response from me a day, and suddenly, my life seemed to be back under control. I wasn’t responding to his posts every 20 or 30 minutes. Instead, I’d take a look at what he had written all through the day, write a one-page response in Word later on, go back and look it over a few times, and then post it. It slowed the pace of the interaction down, especially since it gave me time to look things up; and I got what felt like a large portion of my life back.

And so I decided to do this with my personal email too. But here there were two reasons. The first was to slow down the pace so that neither one of us felt under pressure to respond immediately (and poorly). The second is so that we’d each have email to look forward to on another day. You know…sort of like waiting to get a letter?

It’s funny…people say that the art of letter writing has died with the advent of email. They obviously haven’t read some of the messages I send to my friends. Yes, it’s true that many of them are really the electronic equivalent of postcards…just bringing you up to date in 25 words or less…but many of them are full-fledged letters that rival anything from the old quill pen days. The difference is that now I have copies of both the letter I sent as well as the one I received.

And…I don’t have to hunt down an envelope and stamp when I’m ready to send it

But, in any event, unless it’s something that needs an immediate reply, and some things do, I’m giving myself two days to reply.

And maybe we all should.

Why Does It Always Have to be About Winning?

It was the regular argument over whether or not Cheryl was too sick to go to work. You see, for me, there are two things going on here. The first is the fact that nurses and teachers are the worst two groups for admitting that they’re sick and calling in. I know from my 19 years as a teacher that it’s often easier to be wheeled in on a gurney and teach than to write stand-up for someone else…especially in a class that’s largely personality-driven, and has no textbook. With nurses it’s always the knowledge that they’re understaffed to begin with, and not wanting to “let the team down” by calling in with the plague.

The second is Jim Henson. I remember very well that Jim Henson “wasn’t all that sick” and didn’t want to put anyone out of their way when he died at age 53. I live in constant terror of Cheryl being “not all that sick.” I’ve told her that if she dies from not being willing to admit that she’s sick, I’m gonna be soooo pissed. Jim Henson was a general tragedy. Cheryl would be specific and extremely personal.

But then she said something that made me change my mind about her going in to work when she obviously wasn’t well:

I work in a hospital. If I’m that sick, that’s the best place to be, because I’m already there.

Oh.

Excellent point.

I hadn’t thought of that before.

And then I said the three words that are the reason that I’m writing this:

OK. You win.

I wasn’t expecting what came next. I was expecting her to graciously accept the fact that I had conceded defeat on that point. Instead, she said, “Why does it always have to be about winning and losing for you?”

Whoa! Wait a minute. My sister asks me the same thing. Thing is, though, that it’s not always about winning and losing. Many things, in fact, probably most things are simply differences of opinion where it doesn’t matter either way. Can you really win or lose over whether Applebee’s or Chili’s is the better restaurant? It all depends on your personal taste; although, you can win or lose the coin toss over which one to eat at that night. However, in the things where it is a matter of winning and losing for me, they notice, and think that I’m that way about everything.

But I’m not. This one seemed like a very simple case of someone being right and someone being wrong. She was right about the hospital being the better place to be if you’re sick in the first place, so she won. Makes sense to me. Had we been talking about going to work in a salt mine when you’re sick, I’d be right, and I’d win. Or at least I should win.

As I said, not everything in my life is a matter of winning and losing, but the things that are, clearly are. What are some other examples?

How about when you’ve been emotionally abused, stabbed in the back, had your heart ripped out and stomped on, been thrown under the bus by people you trusted; or any combination of these…leading you to be left as metaphorical roadkill…and then not only merely survive, but thrive? To me, that comeback, that being able to say, “Ha! You thought I was down for the count, but now I’m doing better than ever!” is a definite, and much-needed win. I’ve had my share of those, and I suspect that it’s my talking about those wins that make some people think that for me it’s always about winning or losing.

But they’re wrong.

And if I can convince you to agree with me about this, then I’ve won.