Restaurant Racism

The results of this study of expensive (i.e. lucrative to work at) restaurants in New York were just released.

"The tests showed:

- Nonwhite job applicants were 54.5 percent as likely as white applicants to get a job offer, and were less likely than white testers to receive a job interview in the first place.

- The work experience of white job applicants was less likely to be subject to scrutiny.

- Accents made a difference — with white candidates. White applicants with slight European accents were 23.1 percent more likely to be hired than white testers with no accent. However, accents in nonwhite applicants made no difference."

This is New York? Massive Fail.

One quibble with the writing here: the reference to "white testers with no accent." No accent? What does that sound like? Are they using sign language? The New York Times should know better.

Thanks to Cory for referring me to the article.

Recyclerant

Ok, time for just a wee rant on the way the dayjob handles recycling. Not in any grand industrial fashion (I don't have the info on how that gets handled), just good ol' office-style recylcling: paper, bottles and cans, that sort of thing.

It's pretty much an open secret that the cleaning crew dumps the 'paper recycling' at the desks and the 'all round garbage' into the same bag, which then heads, presumably, to the truck to the barge to the landfill. My fellow cubicle-dwellers bitch about this from time to time, but I'm inclined to do a little finger-pointing of my own here: these same people can't manage to separate the 'garbage' from the bottles and the cans in the kitchen recycling bins (the contents of which, I allow myself to hope, actually find their way to recycling facilities). Came from lunch to see the food bags in which my peeps had got their lunch delivery tossed in the recycle bin (which even required lifting the lid that has the little bottle-sized holes in it.)

One especially self-righteous Greeny is among the offenders, which is extra-special annoying because he has a tendency to go off about how tiny his carbon footprint is (may not be the only tiny thing about him). This is the same guy who is pissed about the company's intention to phase out bottled water in favor of using filtered water from a cooler: "What do they expect us to do? Fill a cup? Then we're wasting cups?!" Um, dude, maybe re-use one of the 14,000 bottles you've gone through already. "Oh, so I'm saving old bottles, that are going to fall apart?" Well, I guess they will fall apart eventually, but... yeah. Maybe even wash them once in a while if you can live with the shame. Or, if they're really too flimsy for you, how 'bout one of those hard plastic Nalg*ne things: we've got those with one of our brand logos on the side, for fuck's sake. "What about when there's a conference? Do we get bottles of water for that? Or are we supposed to have our vendors go into the kitchen and fill up a paper cup?" I guess you're right, bro. Some people are too important to drink water from the same cooler as the rest of us. Sorry to have made you step down from the high horse (that somehow fits in your hybrid car) to have this conversation. Go back to Star*ucks, and whatever you do, don't bring your own mug.

Stupid thing to get upset about? Wouldn't be the first.

Ok - the company pays very good lipservice to environmental concerns, and is of the 'continuous improvement' school. They/we claim to be Greenifying at the industrial level, and maybe it's the case. They/we claim to have safe, fair labor practices, which is certainly true here in the States; I haven't been to the plants in Malaysia to check on them. And yes, yes, alright - I get the irony in the fact that I am perfectly happy to cash the paychecks this job provides. But it drives me a little bit nuts to wonder: if we suck so much at the easy stuff, how can we ever possibly tackle the hard stuff?

See, this is what happens when I am at my desk waaaaay too late on a Friday.

Maybe next week I'll write a few words about some of those 'improvements' that corporate has come up with...

Use Traveloshitty to book your next flight on Northworst Airlines

Ok guys, ready for a rant?

Big family reunion in the old country last weekend. BIG one - Grandma turns 85 this year; Grandpa turns 90; they just celebrated their 65th Anniversary. Not only that, but mom and dad both turn 60 this year and are celebrating their 40th anniversary. So it's a big year for the fam, and a bunch of the extendeds came from far and wide to a park near what remains of the family farm in Wisconsin (not to be bucolic about it all, that's just what it is).

Booked my flight through Travelocity, which I've used several times and had no problem with. This time however, they didn't email me the itinerary, and every time I tried to get it from the website I'd get an error page. Every time. Finally navigated voice mail to the tune of half an hour to get the info. So, ok, inconvenient and bad service, but nothing serious.

The night before my trip, I get a voicemail from Northwest Airlines: my flight connecting through Detroit has been cancelled, but not to worry, they have rerouted me through Minneapolis, and I'll only arrive about 45 minutes later than I would have. Fine. Good to know. I appreciate the call.

I even sign up with Northwest for frequent flier miles when I do the online check-in the next day.

But when I get to LaGuardia that evening, just after I call my friend in Madison to let him know things are going swell, they cancel the Minneapolis flight too. Huh. I look at the Departures monitor and notice they've cancelled an Indianapolis flight as well. So I look at the weather monitor: there's some storm action going on down south, and maybe a bit near Cleveland, but the Midwest is looking pretty clear. Call the 800 number and get a person who seems helpful at first.

"Yes, that flight has been cancelled, but we've already rescheduled you."

"Great! When's the new flight?"

"Tomorrow morning leaving at 11:30, arriving Madison at 5"

See, here's the thing. The party starts tomorrow at 10 a.m. It's a 2+hour drive from Madison. And we're talking about some elderly folks; they'll be wrapping up around 5.

So I try to impress upon my increasingly unhelpful customer service agent the importance of arriving in Madison tonight.

No flights available. Maybe they can get me into Milwaukee on Midwest Airlines. Hold please.

So I do, for about 20 minutes.

I should mention that at this point, the reasons given for the flight cancellation have been: 1) no crew available, and 2) air traffic control has forbidden the flight (no reason given)

When customer service gets back to me, she explains that her supervisor won't approve purchasing me the ticket with Midwest because the cancellation was weather-related and thus out of their control.

"What weather? I am looking at the radar - it's clear. What invisible weather system is reaching from Indy, up through Detroit and over to Minneapolis, but allowing the Midwest plane to land in Milwaukee? Plus, it looks like other airlines have been flying to this part of the country just fine."

She stopped even trying to be helpful at this point. Told me I could get a full refund, and that I'm free to book that last-minute fare on my own, at my own expense.

After many more minutes on hold with Midwest, I found out what that expense was (suffice to say: it was high), and tried Northwest again. This time, after even yet still more time on hold, I got someone more contrite who offered to find me a trip in on a different carrier, but by this time that evening's Milwaukee was totally booked (hmm. wonder why?) Best she could do was put me on a plane next morning at 7:15, through Kansas City, getting to Madison at 2:30.

So ok, that's what we did. Stayed the night in Astoria with a friend, cabbed at the crack of dawn back to the airport and slogged into America's Dairyland in the middle of the afternoon.

45 minutes away from the park I get a call from my folks that the party is in fact breaking up.

Shit.

Still had a good time with the immediate fam, thankfully, but missed out on the many 2nd and 3rd cousins and such, the barbeque (complete with corn on the cob that had been picked that morning!) and the games in the park with the kiddos.

Oh, and the true reason the flights were being cancelled? Northwest has been trying to schedule too few pilots for too many hours, and the union is responding with sickouts. Why not cop to that? Well, oddly enough, labor disputes aren't on their list of reasons it's ok to cancel flights without being liable to the customers. Guess what reasons are on that list: being forbidden by air traffic control, and weather.

Pretty lame, guys.