Newark airport is a bit of a shock to
anyone who's grown accustomed to Eastern European (lack of) customer
service. As soon as I got off the plane, I was almost immediately
attacked by an army of red coated customer service professionals.
“Can I help you, sir?” “Do you need help finding something,
sir?” “Can I be of assistance, sir?” It is also striking that
the majority of these customer service professionals are people of
color, which makes me wonder if that's all they hire or if that's all
that apply, since the ole American white folk seem ill accustomed to
the more traditional service roles. Or maybe there just aren't that
many white folk in the Newark area. Was that a white guy over there?
Nope, I was mistaken, he was a Hispanic guy with medieval looking
tattoo writing crawling up his neck, reading something in Spanish
like “Los Lobos reprazent!” Anyways, this blog isn't meant to be a
critique of Newark's affirmative action program or a list of possibly
racist jokes.
As I approached the door to the bathroom, I found another attendant. “Let me open that for you, sir,” he said. As I approached the urinal, I let out a sigh of relief. Not because I was pissing – which was relieving – but because nobody asked me if I needed assistance. I left and found my way to the tram, and waited underneath the sign to the SkyTrain. “Where are you going, sir?” a customer service representative asked.
“The SkyTrain,” I said.
“Just wait here, the train will be here shortly,” she said.
The electronic ticker next to the sign said two minutes. “Yeah, thanks,” I told her. When I got to the SkyTrain terminal, I found that the army had occupied that area as well. I was unsure what to think of all this, but I had a growing suspicion that maybe I was expected to tip everyone. In which case they looked at me and whispered behind my back that I was another cheap Eastern European bastard. Ha! Little did they know that this cheap bastard was one hundred percent, Grade A, Prime American cut.
The SkyTrain came in and I took it to New York. I got off at Penn Station, though at first I wasn't sure if it was the Penn Station in New York or the Penn Station in New Jersey. I looked around for some maps and all I could find were maps of the New Jersey metro system. I was a bit confused. I looked around for some red jacketed gentlemen, but just as I needed them, they were no longer supplied. Only in a well marked airport are they hired to offer directions. Granted, would someone really trust a red jacketed, “customer service” professional in the New York metro? Probably not. So I went to the customer service desk. “I just got off at Newark and am trying to get to Penn Station. Is that where I'm at?”
“Yes, it is,” the fat lady behind the counter said.
“Which one? New Jersey or New York?”
“Where are you going?”
“To Penn Station.”
“Which one?”
“The one in New York.”
As I approached the door to the bathroom, I found another attendant. “Let me open that for you, sir,” he said. As I approached the urinal, I let out a sigh of relief. Not because I was pissing – which was relieving – but because nobody asked me if I needed assistance. I left and found my way to the tram, and waited underneath the sign to the SkyTrain. “Where are you going, sir?” a customer service representative asked.
“The SkyTrain,” I said.
“Just wait here, the train will be here shortly,” she said.
The electronic ticker next to the sign said two minutes. “Yeah, thanks,” I told her. When I got to the SkyTrain terminal, I found that the army had occupied that area as well. I was unsure what to think of all this, but I had a growing suspicion that maybe I was expected to tip everyone. In which case they looked at me and whispered behind my back that I was another cheap Eastern European bastard. Ha! Little did they know that this cheap bastard was one hundred percent, Grade A, Prime American cut.
The SkyTrain came in and I took it to New York. I got off at Penn Station, though at first I wasn't sure if it was the Penn Station in New York or the Penn Station in New Jersey. I looked around for some maps and all I could find were maps of the New Jersey metro system. I was a bit confused. I looked around for some red jacketed gentlemen, but just as I needed them, they were no longer supplied. Only in a well marked airport are they hired to offer directions. Granted, would someone really trust a red jacketed, “customer service” professional in the New York metro? Probably not. So I went to the customer service desk. “I just got off at Newark and am trying to get to Penn Station. Is that where I'm at?”
“Yes, it is,” the fat lady behind the counter said.
“Which one? New Jersey or New York?”
“Where are you going?”
“To Penn Station.”
“Which one?”
“The one in New York.”
“That's where you're at, sir,” she
said, smiling. This wasn't the first time she had been confronted
with some poor, lost, non-New Yorker trying to find the right Penn
Station. I followed signs to the metro, now comforted that I was on
the correct side of the Hudson and went to find where Jose lived. As
I approached his neighborhood, the Upper East End, I saw that I was
early. I went about finding a cafe that had both wifi and coffee.
When I passed a T-Mobile store, I decided to go ahead and get a new
sim card. I purchased one for 10 dollars, with 15 dollars of credit
for 1000 minutes. It seemed pricey, but I knew that I was going to
feel new rippage in my anus around the wallet area after I left
Ukraine anyway.
“Do you know where any cafes are with free internet?” I asked the clerk.
“There's no such thing as free internet. You gotta pay everywhere. It's in the price of the coffee or whatever. That's all that marketing and shit.” The guy was clearly an MBA fresh out of grad school.
“Yeah, no kidding, that's just bullshit,” I replied, attempting to speak New Yorker. “So holmes, where's it at? I mean, where can I log in for free? For the price of a joe, you know?” I decided I was sounding less like a New Yorker and more like Sarah Palin trying to score votes with the youth, so I quit that jive and switched back to normal English. “I mean, is there anyplace I can log in?”
“I get you man,” he said. “No man, nowhere for free. They used to be all over the place, but not no more. Listen man, you can go on down to Starbucks and log in.”
Were those funeral bells I heard in the quiet void leftover from his utterance of the Enemy of All Private Coffee Shops? “Surely you jest!” I said. Well, no, I'm not that stiff and proper, and I think I had said something actually a bit more coarse and to the point. “Last I was in the States, you had to pay for internet access at Starbucks. They had a deal with – ah, T-Mobile. But I do remember they shut down all their stores for some strategic meeting, just before I left, and one of the results was that they needed to offer free internet. Yes, I remember. So they did?”
The proof was in the pudding, as they say. I walked down the streets of Upper East Manhattan, where last I had been three years ago, had at least two or three private coffee shops every corner where you could log on for free, now there were diners you could drink coffee but not surf the net, and it was filled even more with sushi shops, Apple stores, Starbucks and “Famous” pizza parlors owned by different guys named Mike. Whoever says Capitalism brings individuality hasn't been to New York. I surrendered and went to the next Starbucks, which was on the next corner. I felt as though I had walked into a zombie movie. Everywhere I looked, chairs were filled by people in business suits with Apple computers, typing away on their Facebook and Twitter updates and talking on ear-sets that plugged into Apple iPhones. It was an Orwellian nightmare of consumerism.*
As I sat in the Starbucks, sipping my steaming hot mocha, I realized that the interior of the shop was devoid of power outlets. I had used up my laptop juice in the airplane and was unable to login to check my own Facebook and update Big Brother on my whereabouts. Unable to do this, I had to settle on watching all the people around me, looking for the minute differences that sometimes abound in-between any two people. There were three black folk sitting on the opposite side of the room, two of them males with Yankees baseball caps turned backwards, chatting with a girl who had an Erika Badu fro with tight pink sweats. One of the boys had an iPad out, sharing whatever latest meme had come to his attention. Directly across from me was an Asian girl, who was jotting down words in her notebook, occasionally glancing around the room, as though she were doing the same thing I was doing but was actually physically taking notes. Next to me was another Asian girl, typing on her iBook. Some white people were seated next to the window, each of them talking on their iPhones, even though they had clearly come to the coffee shop to spend time together. In the corner was a large man with a kid in a wheelchair who seemed to have Down syndrome, indicated from his stunted growth and his weak neck that kept his head permanently turned. These people were all the same.
It was interesting to me that many Eastern Europeans strove so much to be like Westerners when they themselves were the last bastions of modern individuality. Starbucks hadn't yet entered Kiev, exchanging all the locally developed Kofe Hauz and Coffee Life stores, as well as the smaller places like Lviv-style coffee houses that have become mainstays of Ukrainian life. But as much as Ukrainians lust for a place in the supposed modern world, they'll find themselves lost soon enough in the ubiquity of the Starbucks Galaxy – though, to be honest, none would notice the difference between Starbucks and Coffee Life, and McDonald's had already become a mainstay on most busy corners in Kiev.
Back out to New York. Maybe I should have gone to Brooklyn. Isn't that where everything is cool? But in truth, I was terrified of Brooklyn. I was terrified that I'd step out of the metro stop and find everyone had somehow transformed into dancing robots and Jesuses, wearing shiny clothes with oversized, brightly colored glasses, everyone shuffling and shuffling, like in the LMFAO videos. I don't think I could have handled that culture shock. I needed baby steps. But then, there was always Little Odessa, where I could witness Eastern Europeans of the 90s sort, who were still listening to Malchishnik and Nautika, sporting mullets and wearing track suits like they were straight out of an Italian mafia movie. But then, I could have just gone back to Armenia for that.
I had enough of my five dollars mocha coffee at Starbucks. It was time to find Jose.
*There are plenty of private shops in New York, I just don't know where they are. Ask your local couchsurfers!
“Do you know where any cafes are with free internet?” I asked the clerk.
“There's no such thing as free internet. You gotta pay everywhere. It's in the price of the coffee or whatever. That's all that marketing and shit.” The guy was clearly an MBA fresh out of grad school.
“Yeah, no kidding, that's just bullshit,” I replied, attempting to speak New Yorker. “So holmes, where's it at? I mean, where can I log in for free? For the price of a joe, you know?” I decided I was sounding less like a New Yorker and more like Sarah Palin trying to score votes with the youth, so I quit that jive and switched back to normal English. “I mean, is there anyplace I can log in?”
“I get you man,” he said. “No man, nowhere for free. They used to be all over the place, but not no more. Listen man, you can go on down to Starbucks and log in.”
Were those funeral bells I heard in the quiet void leftover from his utterance of the Enemy of All Private Coffee Shops? “Surely you jest!” I said. Well, no, I'm not that stiff and proper, and I think I had said something actually a bit more coarse and to the point. “Last I was in the States, you had to pay for internet access at Starbucks. They had a deal with – ah, T-Mobile. But I do remember they shut down all their stores for some strategic meeting, just before I left, and one of the results was that they needed to offer free internet. Yes, I remember. So they did?”
The proof was in the pudding, as they say. I walked down the streets of Upper East Manhattan, where last I had been three years ago, had at least two or three private coffee shops every corner where you could log on for free, now there were diners you could drink coffee but not surf the net, and it was filled even more with sushi shops, Apple stores, Starbucks and “Famous” pizza parlors owned by different guys named Mike. Whoever says Capitalism brings individuality hasn't been to New York. I surrendered and went to the next Starbucks, which was on the next corner. I felt as though I had walked into a zombie movie. Everywhere I looked, chairs were filled by people in business suits with Apple computers, typing away on their Facebook and Twitter updates and talking on ear-sets that plugged into Apple iPhones. It was an Orwellian nightmare of consumerism.*
As I sat in the Starbucks, sipping my steaming hot mocha, I realized that the interior of the shop was devoid of power outlets. I had used up my laptop juice in the airplane and was unable to login to check my own Facebook and update Big Brother on my whereabouts. Unable to do this, I had to settle on watching all the people around me, looking for the minute differences that sometimes abound in-between any two people. There were three black folk sitting on the opposite side of the room, two of them males with Yankees baseball caps turned backwards, chatting with a girl who had an Erika Badu fro with tight pink sweats. One of the boys had an iPad out, sharing whatever latest meme had come to his attention. Directly across from me was an Asian girl, who was jotting down words in her notebook, occasionally glancing around the room, as though she were doing the same thing I was doing but was actually physically taking notes. Next to me was another Asian girl, typing on her iBook. Some white people were seated next to the window, each of them talking on their iPhones, even though they had clearly come to the coffee shop to spend time together. In the corner was a large man with a kid in a wheelchair who seemed to have Down syndrome, indicated from his stunted growth and his weak neck that kept his head permanently turned. These people were all the same.
It was interesting to me that many Eastern Europeans strove so much to be like Westerners when they themselves were the last bastions of modern individuality. Starbucks hadn't yet entered Kiev, exchanging all the locally developed Kofe Hauz and Coffee Life stores, as well as the smaller places like Lviv-style coffee houses that have become mainstays of Ukrainian life. But as much as Ukrainians lust for a place in the supposed modern world, they'll find themselves lost soon enough in the ubiquity of the Starbucks Galaxy – though, to be honest, none would notice the difference between Starbucks and Coffee Life, and McDonald's had already become a mainstay on most busy corners in Kiev.
Back out to New York. Maybe I should have gone to Brooklyn. Isn't that where everything is cool? But in truth, I was terrified of Brooklyn. I was terrified that I'd step out of the metro stop and find everyone had somehow transformed into dancing robots and Jesuses, wearing shiny clothes with oversized, brightly colored glasses, everyone shuffling and shuffling, like in the LMFAO videos. I don't think I could have handled that culture shock. I needed baby steps. But then, there was always Little Odessa, where I could witness Eastern Europeans of the 90s sort, who were still listening to Malchishnik and Nautika, sporting mullets and wearing track suits like they were straight out of an Italian mafia movie. But then, I could have just gone back to Armenia for that.
I had enough of my five dollars mocha coffee at Starbucks. It was time to find Jose.
*There are plenty of private shops in New York, I just don't know where they are. Ask your local couchsurfers!
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