, weighs in at
8.1 megapixels, and cost me just under two hundred bucks, a bargain when you consider that I never leave home without it, and always come back with at least 150 photos from the day's adventure. The L
series is even easier on the pocketbook. You can find L14s with 7.1 MP for around a hundred bucks. No one will mistake you for Ansel Adams, but you can have a lot of fun with it.
Reverse Apology
Henry Alford, author of the forthcoming How To Live, has been trying to get people to be polite to him, with decidedly mixed results:
When the ebullient young woman behind the cash register at the grocery
store dropped my apple on the ground, she smiled nervously, picked it
up and put it in my bag, but said nothing. So I offered, in a neutral
tone of voice, “Oh, I’m sorry.” This did not elicit the remorse I hoped
it would — she simply grimace-smiled and said, “That’s O.K.” So I
added, “Sorry about that — I really didn’t mean for you to drop that.”
At which she stared off into the mid-distance as if receiving
instructions from outer space.
The problem with his approach is it's too subtle, not to mention it can be taken as passive-aggressive, which, best-case scenario, will garner indifference, worst-case: a drubbing. I find that the way to shame people who have behaved badly is to feign a disability, if you can. (Being differently-abled will also work in most situations.) I have found that a feigned exotic accent will also intrigue people into apologizing sometimes. (Other times it will only make matters worse.)
Whatever your method, I think we can all identify with the struggle, although it's probably human nature to take offense while remaining oblivious when we carelessly give it.
I had a tricky situation the other day coming out of Filene's Basement on Boylston. As I left I noticed an out of town teenager or early twentysomething grilling an elderly couple under the awning. It was raining, so I paused to open my umbrella.
"Sir!" He shoved them aside and hollered at me, urgently — as if I'd dropped something and he was calling my attention to it.
I looked down at my feet to see if I had.
"Sir!" He shouted again.
There's a tone people use that triggers your flight response. Clipboarders use it. Beggars and panhandlers. Hustlers. Preachers and politicians. It's a tone of urgency without real distress underlying it. It's a species of predatory solicitousness. This kid was using it.
A little voice in my head said, "walk away. He probably wants your umbrella."
But he cornered me before I could make my escape.
"Where's the Apple Store?" he demanded, as if both our lives depended on it.
"That way," I motioned down Boylston, making to go off in the opposite direction.
His eyes narrowed as he backed me up against the wall.
"That way?" He seemed suspicious.
"Yeah, that way," I repeated.
"You sure?"
"It's across from the Prudential Center," I said.
"Well, where's that?" he asked, stopping just shy of adding "asshole" or some other epithet on the end. Like if he didn't know where the Apple Store was, how would he know where the Pru is?
Not really my problem.
"That way," I said, motioning with my head.
He seemed reluctant to take me at my word, or to head out in the rain without an umbrella, but I felt our business was over. I opened my umbrella, and looked in the other direction.
"But the T is right here, on the corner," I added, helpfully. "It'll take you there."
"That's not what I asked you," he sniped. "How far is it?"
I could not give him an exact figure. I'm not Google Maps. And his aggressive posture and tone was not making me want to help him out.
"It's a ways," I said.
"How far?"
"A few blocks," I said. "But the T is right here."
I couldn't understand what was keeping him. I was offering him the option of the T as a courtesy, and because he seemed hesitant to dash out into the rain. Again, I felt like my job here was done.
"So it's that way?" he asked again. "Which side of the street?"
"This side," I told him.
He stood there glaring at me.
"The T..." I offered again.
He shook his head and rolled his eyes at me and dashed off. No "thanks!" Or "have a good night!" Far from it. It was more like he was thinking, "What's wrong with these people? They can't even give simple directions!" Hopefully his iphone will be GPS-capable.
What troubled me was how unnecessarily assaultive the exchange had been from the beginning. Regardless of how impatient you are to get where you're going, no one is under any obligation to help you get there. It's only our civility that obliges us to help one another in these situations. And whatever a person is able to honestly offer in the way of directions when you're lost should be met with gratitude, as it's offered in the spirit of simple goodwill.
There was no levity in this exchange. No humanity. It was as if he was pushing buttons, aggressively, insistently, trying to get the information he sought, clearly frustrated that I couldn't produce step-by-step GPS instructions for him, or spit out a personalized Google map. He was looking for a life-size TomTom, although I have to say people are generally nicer to their Tomtoms than he was to me.
Maybe I should have used the Henry Alford Method, and thanked him as he dashed off. Or, better yet, pretended from the beginning to have a serious stutter. That usually does the trick.
I've run into a couple of those. One was a besuited guy and his becoiffed wife in a top-of-the-line Mercedes who shouted at me on the sidewalk saying "MISTRAL!" (all people like this are be-somethinged.) I said "it's a restaurant". He looked at me with something like contempt and said "where is it?" He was pointed the wrong way on Columbus, so I sent him to Roxbury and told him to turn right at the police station.
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That's what I always like about NY. The second hostile follow-up question would have generated a hearty 'Go fuck yourself' and that would have been honest, justified, and fully in compliance with NYCE, the New York City Etiquette.
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Ugh. It's amazing how rude people can be. I think you hit a goodly portion of it in your penultimate paragraph. Some geeks have no idea how to behave during an actual face-to-face meeting with another human being.
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I find that rather than take their part of the conversation, which only confuses them or makes them feel like maybe they are entitled to be thanked by me for their rudeness, I act as if they had in fact complied with social conventions and basic manners and say "You're very welcome!" with a big smile on my face. Sometimes, it works, because they know something is missing, that a piece of the exchange is missing. And sometimes, but not always, they realize what part that is, and go back and fill it in with the appropriate "Thanks."
And I agree that a lot of these people are New Yorkers, because a true Bostonian would rather die than interact with a person they don't already know ("Who are your people? Where are your papers?"), never mind admit that they don't know where something in Boston is. Hence the lack of proper signage. "If you don't know where you are, then you surely don't belong here."
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There's a T stop near FB on Boylston that takes you to another T stop closer to the Apple Store?
Which T stops are these?
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I'm not sure you're serious, but I'll indulge you. If you know the area at all, you know the green line runs along Boylston, where the new Apple store is located. Filene's Basement is half a block from the Arlington T stop on the green line (the entrance is on Berkeley). From there you go outbound to Prudential, walk through the mall, and the Apple store is right across the street. Which is all a bit much when the weather's nice, but when it's raining cats and dogs, you only end up walking about half a city block in the rain, rather than four. It'll probably take you twice as long waiting for the train to come, but at least you won't get soaked to the bone.
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Ah.... you were trying to keep him dry. I was reading this while half asleep, and I was just thinking, "Why doesn't he just walk the few blocks up Boylston."
Never mind :)
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