The busiest online shopping day of the year.

"I went to the mall," Uncle Slappy began without even saying his customary "Hello, Schmendrick." "I went to the mall," the old man continued. "Sylvie dragged me. She said the sales were not to be missed. So we went on Black Friday to the mall."

"Good morning, Uncle Slappy," I interrupted.

"If you have an enemy, if there's someone you detest, abhor, can't stand, to the mall on the day after Thanksgiving you should send them."

"I'm surprised you actually left the condo, Uncle Slappy. Why didn't you just shop online? I got you the MacBook Air last Hannukah so down to the pool you could bring it. Is there something wrong with your computer."

"No," the Old Man said ruefully, "I misunderstood. The Mac, like a top it runs. But here's what happened."

I interjected a pre-emptive "Oy," and let the Old Man run.

"You remember two years ago the schmuck down three condos said I parked in his space. To the condo board he goes accusing me of trespassing, a Rabbi, trespassing in his exalted parking space."

"I remember," I said, "it was quite a tsimmis."

"Yes, it was a fight with a schmuck by the name of Si Berg. A dermatologist from Hewlett, a pimple-popper, if you will."

"I will," I answered.

"Well all over the radio all weekend long, I hear about some big event honoring Si Berg on Monday."

"And event honoring Si Berg?"

"Yes, every news story I hear has something about Si Berg Monday. How everyone will be shopping on Si Berg Monday. I said to Sylvie, if everyone is honoring that putz Si Berg, if they're naming a day after him, let's go to the mall on Friday and avoid Si Berg on Monday and every other day."

"I see," I responded, my voice barely audible over the shaking of my head.

"Si Berg Monday, my tuchas," Slappy spat.

I thought about trying to explain but I thought better of it.

"So, listen to me, Schmendrick," the old man concluded, "Stay out of the store today. Si Berg don't deserve your money."

I said goodbye. And walked to work feeling like I had gone three rounds peppered with jabs and crosses from a crafty welterweight, bruised and more than a little worse for wear.







 

A problem with my Time-Warner.

Over the years we have all been folded, spindled and mutilated by various marketers. These marketers have set up oxymorons they call "Customer Service Departments." In fact, these departments have nothing to do with customers or service. There's no customer hue and cry because for the most part, there's no one to complain to. Besides, most of the large companies we have in our lives are part of an oligopoly--so even if we could switch, customer service has been a steady race to the bottom. Everyone sucks.

In fact all these companies really do is shuffle you between surly subcontinent representatives and labyrinthine phone trees. We plug in our phone numbers, we're subjected to banal music and sales messages and long wait times. At the end of the morass, there's a 50-50 chance that your original issue was ever resolved.

I have a technique for dealing with ISP issues, or cable issues, or power issues or phone issues. It's wrong, but I do it.

I tell the reps that I have some kind of disfigurement that makes the restoration of the service I am paying for especially indispensable to me.

Just now my internet was working at "American infrastructure" speeds. Something about 50% slower than dial up.

I called Time-Warner. And finally after about twenty minutes of phone tree, I got a "customer service rep," from a land where my last name is considered unpronounceable.

I explained my problem.

And then I hit him right between the eyes.

"I need my service restored quickly," I said. "I have no arms or legs."

There was dead silence on the phone.

"The internet is the only way I stay connected with the world. I can't get food without the internet or communicate."

"Oh, Mr. Tafjwmnwifuuwm3mlkhdy, I am terribly sorry."

Despite their sorrow, they can't get anyone out to my apartment before Tuesday. Even though I am on something they call "Priority Priority."

Bastards.

Jew.

Contrast in New York.

Tonight is the night before Thanksgiving. And if you're a New Yorker, it's the night they blow up the balloons for the Macy's Day Parade. It's an event, seeing the balloons being inflated, and since my daughters were small enough to perch on my shoulders, I've been taking them to the spectacle.

Macy's takes over two wide blocks--two two-way streets on the north and south sides of the Museum of Natural History, as staging areas. Here's where they park their equipment and begin the long, slow inflation process. The crowds teem through heavily guarded police iron saw-horses to get a glimpse of Charlie Brown or Sponge Bob. Pokemon or Spiderman. And probably a dozen or two more.

As a lifelong New Yorker, I refuse to wait among the crowds. I pick out a cop, walk over to him and say, "This is the worst day of the year if you live here." Then I tell him I live in 25 W. 81st or 40 W. 77th, and they shoo me in ahead of the masses.

Unfair, I know.

But there have to be some perks in being a native. I guess brass balls is one of them.

Tonight my kids are in town for the holiday and we got them tickets to see "The Book of Mormon" on Broadway. After the show we all met up at a Starbucks on 75th and Broadway and walked over to 77th Street to see the balloons.

The noise of the crowds, the flashing bulbs, the police lights, the kids screaming, the kleigs illuminating whole blocks was intense.

New York as the world's playground. Stormed by a million tourists. The crush. The vibrancy.

And then, my wife and I headed east, toward home.

The streets were barricaded off and no traffic was running. We walked across an empty Central Park cushioned by a billion fallen leaves.

There was quiet. And there was more.

It was a cool, vividly clear night and the lit skyscrapers looked like towers out of a 1930s silver gelatin print.

It was noisy in New York tonight. It was all pushing and shoving and laughing and gaping.

It was quiet in New York tonight. The quiet of emptiness accentuated by a million people just a block or two away. The quiet of hooves on cobblestones. The quiet of footsteps in the park.

Both New Yorks were my New York.

Maybe I won't write.

It's the Wednesday before the American holiday of Thanksgiving and after a long hard year of work I am taking my first day off in a long time. Of course there are a couple things to do for the office that I will do from my living room. And the crush of my burgeoning and lucrative freelance career continues to vise my time.

Thanksgiving is a nice holiday. A time to bring family and friends together and cook and eat and, hopefully, laugh. My kids are home from their respective universities and no matter how often I see them, it's not often enough. They are older now--25 and 21--and it's been a pleasure to see them grow and flourish.

I had read somewhere that a parent's job is to give his kids "roots and wings," and I think I've been successful, so far, in doing that. They are soaring, yet they come home.

With all this going on, having written over 400 posts this year, I thought I'd maybe take the next few days off. Maybe in that I'm away from the office, I'll have nothing to write about.

But writing is what I do. It's who I am.

It's my work. But it's not work for me. It's mental exercise and I love it.

So maybe I won't write the next few days.

But maybe I will.

The joy of work.

Work, so many months upon months, days upon days, hours on top of hours sucks. We have to deal with trivialities. Politics. Fractious personalities. Bullshit. Stupidity. And on top of stupidity, arrogant stupidity.

That's just the way it is. There is no place where "it's better."

That, in fact, is the way so many things are.

But there's another side to work, too.

Right now I'm in production on one project and post production on another. Along the way I have been privileged to deal with the best of the best. People who aren't just good at their jobs, they're like Leonard Bernstein. Masterful in every aspect.

But mastery is only one part of being great.

The other part is loving what you do. Bringing a crazy clear-eyed enthusiasm and energy to the work.

The final part is the toughest to come by.

It's the experience and knowledge of knowing the right ways of doing things and sticking to your guns.

That's what great people do.

They know their craft.
They love what they do.
They do what's right.

Hang around people who follow those precepts and you might just fine some joy in what you do.

Conference calls.

Since 97% of all agency business is, these days, conducted by conference call,
agencies should "listen in" some time as to what clients actually hear during a conference call.

I'm on the listening end of one now and the chattering sounds like chipmunks in a blender.

Then and now.

The phrase used to be: "If you can't do, teach."*

Today it's: "If you can't do, call a meeting."


--

* Woody Allen updated it thusly:
"If you can't do, teach.
If you can't teach, teach gym."

Writing, Philip Roth and us.

Of all the great American writers of the second-half of the 20th Century, perhaps the most important (and prolific) is Philip Roth. Not only did his productive period last more than 55 years, from "Goodbye, Columbus" in 1959 to "Nemesis" in 2010, his output has also been of unusually high-quality.

Just yesterday in an interview in "The New York Times," Roth announced that he was retiring. Over the last eight years Roth has written six well-received books, so his announcement came to many as a surprise. You can read the Roth interview here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/books/struggle-over-philip-roth-reflects-on-putting-down-his-pen.html

Roth is no spring chicken. He'll be 80 in March, so when Shakespeare was his age, he was already dead for 28 years.

Here's what struck me most from the "Times'" interview with Roth. "On the computer in Philip Roth's Upper West Side apartment is a post-it note that reads, "The struggle with writing is over." Roth claimed, "I look at that note every morning and it gives me such strength."

"I can't face anymore days," he said "when I write five pages and throw them away. I can't do that anymore."

I am not 80 like Roth. And not successful like Roth. I've had just two fiction pieces published in my life. Both when I was in my 20s. None for almost 30 years.

And I'm lucky. I try to write this incidental writing everyday. It's given me a discipline I never had before. And it's allowed me to write about the world, the business I love and also given me space to develop characters like my father--about whom I've posted a dozen or so pieces, Uncle Slappy who makes more appearances and me and Whiskey as walkers in New York.

Of course, I'm not Roth. I am to Roth was Bazooka Joe is to Eliot.

That said, like Roth, I define myself by my writing. I struggle with it and try to write at least five days a week. Witness my over 3,000 posts. Not to mention the copy I get paid to write.

My struggle with writing isn't over. I hope it never will be. I want to spend my old age writing corporate communications--annual reports, corporate speeches and the like.

And maybe I'll finally take to fiction again. Or write a history of Grand Central Terminal. Or my little patch of Manhattan. Or something.

Writing is a struggle because it is a commitment.

There is something there for people to aim at.

The words don't disappear once they are written, the way talk does when it's uttered.

I will continue my struggles.

With work.

With life.

With New York.

With writing.

Thank you for helping me with them.

Duane Reade and advertising.

For all my love of New York there are times when I fear it will push me over the edge into insanity or violence. Last night I experienced one of those moments.

In the wake of Super-Storm Sandy, I bought a small halogen lantern through Amazon. To power it, I needed three D batteries, which were not included.

Just about the only place left that sells batteries in my neighborhood is the drugstore that ate New York City, Duane Reade. The Duane Reade store started a few decades ago and thrived because their prices are low. Over the years they drove virtually every other drugstore/convenience store out of business. Now they are ubiquitous, with over 150 stores in Manhattan alone.

I walked into the Duane Reade on 79th and York on Friday night and somehow, almost magically, found the battery section without having to ask nine people. They had no D batteries.

I asked the woman behind the counter, "Do you have D batteries?"

She grunted a "no" and suggested I ask the manager.

I did. They didn't.

And of course he couldn't care less.

I began steaming.

How do you run out of D batteries. They seem like a fairly basic thing. Something a store should never run out of.

Worse, was the attitude. The people who work at Duane Reade are not affected at all if Duane Reade serves customers well or not. They couldn't give a rat's ass if you walk out disappointed. They'll make the same $7.85/hr. regardless.

As I walked home battery-less I wondered not where I could find batteries, but if and how much "customer service" from agencies resembles "customer service" from Duane Reade.

After all, we are both owned by absentees.

For both agencies and Duane Reade there is no reward if you serve a client well. Your pay stays the same.

I guess the big difference between Duane Reade and agencies is that they serve many customers, so if they piss me off, no big deal. Whereas even the biggest agency has only a couple dozen accounts, so there are more consequences if you fuck up.

That said, if I were running an agency, I'd think about this.

The lack of customer service.

The disconnect between pay and performance.

The failure to instill a culture that cares.