The Casual Cruelty of Debarahlee

This young lady has a lawyer who figures he can get her a decent payout from Citibank because they told her she shouldn't wear clothes like these she's pictured in. The other female staff weren't given attire guidelines because, she says, "they were short, overweight, and they didn't draw much attention, but since I was five foot six, 125 pounds with a figure, it wasn't appropriate".

I'm not going to comment on the lawsuit. What's interesting is her remark about the other women. It's an accurate description of them: it's an accurate description of most women in offices. But is it me, or is there a casual cruelty about it when it comes from someone so clearly above the Pretty Line?

This is connecting with a thing I'm writing where two of the characters are discussing clothes.

ADAM: What about the guy in the baggy cargo shorts and sandals walking round the supermarket? What's he signifying?

LUCIE: That he has no taste, or he wouldn't be wearing shorts, and no manners, or he wouldn't be wearing sandals around food.

ADAM: So why do people dress like that?

LUCIE: No-one really knows. And fewer people care. Harsh truth? If you're above the Pretty Line, you just will dress becomingly, and if you're below it, nothing you wear will look good. Also, the High Street is full of cheap junk and very few people would take to time to thrift a blazer like you did.

The way I've written it, it's not coming across as a "harsh truth". If it did, I wouldn't have to call it one. Maybe it should be...

ADAM: So why do people dress like that?

LUCIE: You're assuming they could wear something that would make them look good.

ADAM: I didn't know I was, but now you put it that way, there isn't?

LUCIE: Clothes don't make people look better, people make clothes look better. People are born pretty or not. I was. You were. They weren't. Those are the breaks.

ADAM: And somewhere in their heads they know this and stop bothering?

LUCIE: And, to be professional for a moment, High Street shops are full of made-in-Honduras junk with twisted seams. Which is what happens when everyone buys on price.

ADAM: I buy on price.

LUCIE: That blazer might have been cheap, but you spent a long time thrifting for it. You have an eye. You're one of us.

(You have no idea how many different options I tried before that.)

London Snapshots Part 226

Views from Ladbroke Grove underground station. This isn't going to turn into a photography blog, but it was summer and I have been text-heavy recently. The third one down is a real cliche, but who can resist it? It's what God made zoom lenses for.

I was reading Andy Hunt's Pragmatic Thinking and Learning pretty intently over that weekend, and there will be some reflections from it later.

Breakfast in Notting Hill

Saturday 5th June was the last morning of Summer 2010 and I was out bright and early. Fed up of rock-hard fruits in the supermarket, I went off to Notting Hill for breakfast and a little light shopping. I had scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage at the Kitchen and Pantry, sharing a table with three ladies who ran stalls or shops and were having their morning conference before opening. I was there so early there were empty couch spaces - get there at 11:00 and see if you can sit down.

However, this fine example of homo macbook cafeterius had arrived before me and was there when I left. After I took the photo, he plugged his transformer into a mains socket somewhere. I can only wonder what his flat must be like.

This next is a little blurred, but actually it gets the feeling across...

The toilets were an example to all cafe-owners everywhere...

and this is the place.

I did my shopping and was on my way out by 11:00, just as it was getting really hot and the last hour or so of sunshine was in full effect. Ah. Summer 2010 - I was there!

London Snapshots Part 225

Which idyllic railway station is this?

Railway photography is a genre all its own and one day someone at The Photographer's Gallery should choose a railway photographer to give a show to. Or the Tate Modern could mount an exhibition. The thing is, that unless you have a shot of a brand new train, railway photos always have an air of nostalgia and romance. Even if they are of this station, in one of the least romantic places in West London.

London Snapshots Part 224

This is underneath the tangle of roads and paths by Blackfriars bridge on the north side...

... while this is one of those monuments to over-managed transport policy on Temple Avenue.

Looking onto the South Bank: Sea Containers House on the left with the National Magazine Company tower behind it, the OXO Tower and Wharf, the Thames Television building, Shell Building and London Eye.

Never Apologise, Never Explain... Except

No-one knows where this comes from. In England it's supposed to be a working principle of the Royal Family. So what's wrong with apologising or explaining? You're late for a meeting because the public transport broke down - where's the harm? There isn't. Unless you have a boss who says things like "Why didn't you take an earlier train? You knew this was important." If your regular train journey has a little slack time in it, the guy's a jerk. If you're regularly making it with seconds to spare, he may have a point.  Now you get home and your partner gives you the "you always do this" speech about something you did that morning. Maybe you left the toilet seat up - who knows and it may not matter. "Why do you do it?" is an essential part of it. She doesn't want to know, of course, and she could care less about the reason. You know that, right?

Have you ever been asked why you did something right? (Except as a prelude to having that right action contrasted to several wrong ones?) When someone asks you to explain why you do something, it is because they think you should not be doing it, that they will be the judge of what you should and should not do and they will set the rules about what is and is not an acceptable excuse. That is why you cannot win an argument with an angry woman. She doesn't want to understand why you did it, she wants to be mad at you. Nothing you can say will make any difference, because she's not interested in anything except her own feelings.

The same thing applies to campaigners for any cause. They are not interested in arguing facts, interpretations, alternatives and policy, they want you to feel like a bad person and stop doing it (whatever it is). They already know what is right and wrong, they know what you must do and they really don't care about your opinions. Why do you eat meat? What justification do you have for that foreign holiday? Why haven't you given away ten per cent of your salary to a charity?

And then there are times when explaining does not help. Like why the surgeon couldn't save your husband. What she says may be true, but what does it matter? Indeed, if they aren't careful they could come across as blaming you for not getting the poor guy into hospital faster ("He was too far along"). And their legal department are not going to let them say they screwed up, even if they did. A simple expression of sympathy ("I'm sorry for your loss") is all that's needed and appropriate.

Apologising puts the other person in the position of forgiving you ("that's okay") or being seen as not  forgiving you and thus being a grudge-meister. So they pretend to say it's okay and resent you for putting them in that position. Explaining just lets them know you weren't deliberately jerking them around, and anyway you should have called when you knew were going to be late.

Never apologise and never explain, except in business when you're calling ahead to explain why you can't keep you promise of whatever it is. That's just courteous. And if someone keeps on at you for reasons and apologies, consider that one or other or both of you may be a jerk. And take action as needed.

Happiness Is Not Enough (Vodafone Caring Dad / Sobbing Daughter Advert)

There's a Vodafone ad in the cinemas now in which daughter calls father who drops his company social ("let's hear from our new Director") and takes a very expensive cab ride to some suburban high street where daughter is crying in her car. "He" has left her. She has no idea why. She "just wanted us to be happy. That's not asking too much is it?"

My reaction? It's not asking too much, it's not asking enough. Because when anyone say "I just want you to be happy" it means one of several things. At worst it means "I want you to stop upsetting me by being so restless and unhappy". At its most mediocre it means "I want us to be content". ..... What it does not mean is "I want you to be happy".

To be happy, in the immortal words of the very English philosopher Gilbert Ryle, is to be doing what you want to be doing and not wanting to be doing anything else. Happiness requires a huge chunk of self-knowledge, so that you know what you want to be doing, and a huge amount of luck, so you can do it and not have to do a day job where you can earn money. There is no guarantee that "following your bliss" will earn you any money at all. Happiness is just not a realistic option for most of us working folk.

You know that the daughter did not mean this kind of happiness because she says "just". In that context, it's a diminutive. She just wanted them to be happy, as if you could be happy somehow independently of what you did with your life. What she wanted was for him to be content being with her.

That's not enough. It might be enough for her, now, but it won't be in a few years. I'd love to be happy, but it's never going to happen: I have a day job I happen to be good at but it's not why I get out of bed. That would be fear makes me do that. Plus at my age I can't turn over and go back to sleep after I've woken up. Contentment is the anti-depressant of the emotions: you don't feel bad, but that's because you don't feel much at all.

The point is that happiness, like profit, is not something you can aim for. It's a by-product of doing something else well. You can't "just" be happy. It's way more difficult than that.

And I don't get the ad. If I use Vodafone, my relationship will break up? My daughter's relationship will break up? Vodafone is the Bad News Network? I know they want you to think it's the Network For Caring Fathers, but there are other more positive events they could have used. And if I let my staff use Vodafone, they will walk out on meetings the moment their dysfunctional but grown-up children call them for a shoulder to cry on? I bet it sounded great in the pitch, but it doesn't hold up.