Well now, just how bad is it, down here in sunny Puerto
Rico?
As always, it depends on who you ask, if, indeed there is anyone
to ask since where is Jorge, who should be making me coffee and comparing notes
on the cute tourists in the shop next door? Well, Jorge is now in Miami, along
with 334,000 other Puerto Ricans, at least according to the BBC, and would the
BBC lie? Of course not.
So it’s beginning to feel like my old days in Madison,
Wisconsin, since among all the other hardships of starting a relationship, the
process in a college towns has a distinct challenge: People graduate. That’s
great, of course, but then they go off to get an advanced degree somewhere
else, or their dream job happens to be three states away in some unspeakable
town. Do you follow camp or start over, hoping for a better outcome?
Well, Jorge had in a sense graduated, as well, since his
brother had been an earlier statistic in the 334,000 departing Puerto Ricans,
and the brother has a café or restaurant or anyway something involving food,
and that means that Jorge can ply his managerial skills for the benefit of his
brother.
“Man, I needed a change, ‘cause I just can’t stand this attitude
thing they have down here….”
It was another curious example of identity shift, which
takes place in our lives somewhat like continental drift. Because Jorge had
been born up in the mountains, and both his mother and father were the real
deal: They had the mancha de plátano
(that’s the stain of the plantain, and the mark of a real Puerto Rican)
indelibly on their hands.
So Jorge had grown up in coffee country, but had lived for
years in San Francisco and then New York.
“Man, that’s when I learned: You got to work on time, and
your costumers didn’t care about who you were. So at first, it felt really
strange, but then I got to see, it was really the best way. So a customer comes
in and he knows just what he wants, and he orders it and you make it, and
that’s it! But the people here?”
Notice that “the people?”
“First they come in and half the time there’s nobody around
to greet them or serve them, since Raf crashed his car and somebody else is
sick so that means there’s only one person, not two, and that person is making
a sandwich in the kitchen. So the customer—maybe—waits until someone appears,
but does that person look up, smile, and say hello to the customer? Nah, he
gives the sandwich to the other customer, and then goes back into the
kitchen, since he’s pissed that the other costumer gave him attitude.”
“Wouldn’t work at Walmart,” I told him.
“And then, the customer who has been waiting for five
minutes calls out to get some service, so the guy walks out and the first
question is, ‘do you sell coffee?’ Like, how retarded is that? She’s been
standing in front of a big sign that has all the coffees, all the sandwiches,
all the food we sell, and what has she been doing? Checking her cell phone,
because her cell phone is the most important thing in her life, so now we have
to go through the entire menu, drink by drink, and she has to ask a
million questions, like do we have any natural sweeteners like blue agave and
do we have soy milk? Then, after about three changes of government, we finally
get her order, but does she want the agave and the soymilk? No she wants plain
black coffee!”
“Frustrating, I know.”
“But gringos know
just what they want, and they order it, and they pay for it, and they leave! No
attitude, no waste of time, no nothing! It’s so much simpler.”
“Tell me,” I said, “since just going to the grocery store….”
“Super-Hell,” he roared, though the real name is Super-Max
or occasionally Super-slow. Jorge can’t go in there, since he once got into a
fight with the manager, and they all but threw him out.
“I mean, I told this guy, ‘I don’t know what you do?
Do they pay you just to sit around and watch your cashiers, as they desert
their customers and go running through the aisles looking for the price of
items? Aren’t you supposed to do that?”
So now we’re grumbling, since Super-Whatever is about as
popular as a condom at the National Council of Catholic Bishops.
“You know how they hire them,” I told Jorge. “They have them
sit in a big room, and then someone runs in and shouts FUEGO and FIRE! Then, anyone who has just sat there with their
mouth open looking vacant—well, those are the ones they hire…”
“Very likely,” he said. “Anyway, the first thing I do is
shout servicio when I walk in
the door, since it will take the manager ten minutes to respond, and by then
I’ll have found what I wanted, and joined the line where everybody is just
standing around, not doing anything, and if you try asking what’s up, you’re
the one with attitude! You’ve got the problem! Because it’s not about
helping you, it’s just about putting in your hours so you can get paid!”
So Jorge has had a fight with the manager of the grocery
store next door, and is now persona non
gratis and probably can’t go into the store now, but no problem, since he
is now in Miami. In the meantime, he is missing the lovely spectacle of an
island sinking under a colossal debt, and a governor who is wrangling with the
six members of his own party who voted against his cherished plan of a 16%
Value Added Tax.
So now the governor is threatening to shut down the
government, and the creditors have given the power company a fourth
extension, and the students are in the streets—or at least threatening to—and
the unions are closing down the access to the Minillas Building (where all the government agencies are), and oh,
did I mention the water situation? It hasn’t rained, and so now we’re going to
have no government AND no water. I know all of this, since Mr. Fernández
snoozes through the radioed recitation of all this misery, while I contemplate
which is worse: Just staying in bed and refusing to get up and deal with
anything, or get up and face and hopefully resist the temptation of the kitchen
knives. Not to mention the bottle of Scotch next to the television.
But I don’t stay in bed: I get up, I take my walk, and then
go off to the café, where I immerse myself again in all this awfulness. Then it
occurs to me: Birds! Since there is utterly, absolutely nothing I can do about
any of the woes afflicting us, so why don’t I do what the birds do? That’s when
the BBC came through, and what respectable blogger could fail not to read the list
of the ten sexiest birds?
Well, first I had to take a gander at the wattle of the
long-wattled umbrellabird, and then gaze at the satyr tragopan, and then look
at the ribbon-tailed astrapia, and guess who long the ribbon is? Three feet,
and you try flying through the forests of New Guinea with a 3-foot tail
floating after you! Though it is undeniably sexy….
Then I came to the superb lyrebird, and here I can tell you:
The world is in perilous state, since close to 15 million people have been
driven to watch this lunatic bird, as it imitates car alarms, cameras clicking,
and chain saws! It does occur to me, though, that while there might be female
drivers and lady photographers, well…
….what’s the likelihood of a woman lumberjack?
