Unsustainable Hype

Events which take a long time to plan can be pretty amazing when executed well. Think:  awards galas, major sporting events like the Superbowl or the World Cup, ceremonies like weddings, and even major conferences with national or international organizations.  I recently returned from the ASHE Project Design and Construction (PDC) Conference, an annual conference for anyone involved in the physical realm of the health care industry.  The attendees included nurses, hospital administrators, facilities directors, architects, doctors, vendors, consultants, engineers and construction companies of all flavors.  The PDC is not the largest or longest conference by any stretch, but it is a big deal in the health care industry.

It was my third time in attendance, but I am constantly amazed at the scale of everything at a large conference:  entire hotels booked solid and people occupying every available open spot—lobby, hallways, pool, bar, lounge, restaurant, gym—and likewise at the convention hall; every table, booth, computer, patio chair, hallway or bathroom seemed filled with people.  I thought about the manpower it takes to get one of these things to run smoothly, and San Diego was a great host. 

When it comes to big events, it is hard not to get a little amped up.  The sheer scale of everything can be overwhelming at times.  If you are not a people person, it would be torture on a massive scale.  If you are the gregarious type, you would be giddy to the nth degree.  Folks who travel probably see it as a break from their hectic schedules to stay in one place for three or four days.  The rest of us totter between awe and annoyance, depending on the event and time of day.

I then thought about each individual’s job who works at any convention center spot.  For attendees, even for those whom it is old hat, it is hard not to get a little juiced because of the buzz of activity.  I recognized it would be very difficult for me to work in an environment which took a lot of adrenaline to execute, expecially if it happened all the time.  For conventioneers, you might attend one or two or a few a year.  For hotel employees, especially in San Diego, it happens almost every week of the year.  Imagine that:  your job is responding to a series of humanity floods; just as one convention ends, you are checking in the next set of guests.  Similarly, the convention center cleans up after one mess only to make things pretty for another onslaught.  And maybe the second shift janitorial staff would not feel the rush associated with the crowds and the hype, but surely greeters, counter staff and servers would.

This strength would be hard to maintain, like always being happy.  You would like to be happy all the time, but it would wear you out.  And besides, it is normal to have emotional fluctuations.  Status quo for daily living is not ecstasy for most of us.  There are probably a handful of jobs that are constantly hit with wave after wave of large scale stuff that needs dealing with judiciously, and with particular verve or aplomb.  I think of waitstaff at certain restuarants, and there are others but probably not as many as you think.  To always have to work at a supercharged level with no down time to recover.  It would be like Superbowl Sunday or Election Day every day, or the lunch hour rush that never flagged.  But maybe they see it as old hat, like an air traffic controller or  a soldier at war must approach their jobs.  The only way to survive without cardiac arrest at a young age would be to be calm, but that would fly in the face of the energy or pace required for some of these jobs. 

I was a banquet waiter at the largest hotel in my hometown for a summer.  It was a demanding job most of the time because during the summer months, most Saturdays and Sundays we hosted four wedding receptions each day (we had two banquet halls).  There were basically two rounds:  the 1pm-to-5pm reception and the 7pm-to-closing reception.  Even servers like myself were affected by the charged atmosphere.  The music, people, emotions, dress, history, families, relationships and potential for nearly anything to happen all fed the hype.  I would come in at 11am and immediately work on setting tables and cleaning silverware knowing the place would be nuts in less than two hours.  After the first wedding we tore down everything, cleaned, and built it back up again as quickly as possible.  The later reception would often go past midnight, which meant sometimes I would not leave for home until after 2am.  On Saturdays I would have to get up and do it all over again the next day.

This kind of pattern only worked because I was off most of the rest of the week, except for the odd Kiwanis Club luncheon or class reunion.  Surviving the hype was all about resting up for the big weekend.  I could not do it every day or even five days a week; there was just too much energy invested to recover quickly enough to repeat the effort daily.  When I was at the PDC, I imagined how the convention city employees do it without amphetamines of some sort.  It is a tiresome topic on which to think.

The daily sine wave of life’s activity is my recourse for without the lows, for perspective, there would be no highs.  So hats off to all those who work at a very high energy and attention levels, every day, every week.  You earn a pampered vacation of some sort in my book.  In a world of hype, you sustain the unsustainable.

You Know the Economy’s Bad When…

…McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s all have coupon booklets mailed or in the Sunday paper in the same month (February), with buy one get one (BOGO) free offers

…Self-storage units are offering three months free with sign-up

…Eighteen-wheelers on Interstate 95S, which I travel for 22 minutes each way on my daily commute, are so scarce I rarely see more than a few out-of-state license plates each day, when it is not unusual to see a dozen or more foreign tags in one morning

…Toyota is offering 60 months (!) free financing on new car purchases

…Gyms, social clubs and other membership-driven organizations are waiving pricy intiation fees

…Bars are having pink slip / layoff drink specials (present one to get your discount) similar to rejection letter specials in college towns right around this time of year

…Winn-Dixie has a menagerie of wines, including high-end bubbly ($50 retail), on sale every week, sometimes 30% off

…Auto mechanics are peddling tires in pairs:  buy a pair, get a pair free

…Dairy Queen, some of the cheapest eats around, closes its only local location as it did in Fernandina Beach

…You have to pull teeth to get someone from a bank to call you back for a mortgage or refinance quote, as was my experience, because banks would rather curl fetally around their cash than try to make money

…Burger King has been “closed for rebuild” (so says its marquee) for over three months with no sign of construction

…”Negotiation” is a common-enough part of the purchasing process that it is recognized in Consumer Reports’ annual Buying Guide

…Papa John’s closed its only local location, as it did in Fernandina Beach; when a pizza joint cannot make enough dough, pun intended, to stick around…

PC Virus Reinforces Green Thinking

My blog postings have been interrupted lately because my computer caught a virus.  As I write, it is still in the infirmary being disinfected.

I suppose it was bound to happen.  I tend to think of myself as slightly more savvy than the saps that get caught in the Nigerian spam phishing schemes, but the more time you spend on the internet, especially browsing, the more likely you are to catch something.  I was informed that the particular “rogue antivirus software” that infiltrated my hard drive has been known to inhabit even the most reputable sites on the Web like the WSJ where I am a frequent visitor.  Web surfing does have a parallel to promiscuity and STDs:  if you visit the unfamiliar often enough, you will contract something you were not looking for even if you use protection.  I wanted to deny anything was wrong and sheepishly took my computer in to the doctor, as if admitting your computer caught a virus was akin to admitting you spend your web time in the dregs and dark corners of cyberspace.  Not true, my computer doc, told me. 

The thing that gets me is computer diagnostic charges now cause the consumer to make the old value assessment on service versus replacement.  I never thought I would actually weigh the possibility of purchasing a new computer for $400 versus sinking 1/3 the cost into a virus removal and operating system verification / reload on my nearly nine-year-old computer. 

As cool as it would be to chuck the Compaq dinosaur (pre-HP merge) with 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard drive for something many, many times sexier, the green side of me speaks up louder to keep something that works working for its natural life.  This is a core belief of mine, which I consider sustainable thinking.  Reducing consumerism for consumerism’s sake is being green.  My computer still works for what I need it for; why trade up?  The same goes for my car, and my clothes, and most everything else in my life.

I use things until they fail.  I wear socks until they are hole-y, then darn them and wear them out again until they develop holes in places that either cannot be fixed or hurt when I wear them.  I develop strange relationships with things that have lasted, things I initially did not care for, but because I have cared for it for so long, I begin to become attached to the item. 

My footwear is a good example.  I wear them until they truly fall apart.  I may buy a pair of shoes for work and it could take years for me to really like them, for them to finally fit my foot like a slipper.  I had a pair of Florsheims that I reluctantly bought out of need than because they were what I was really looking for.  Now nearly seven years later, they are on their deathbed and I cannot pull the plug.  Likewise, just when a t-shirt gets broken it, when it hangs on your body just so, it develops its first hole; there is no way I throw it away.  I may not wear it in public, but I cannot euthanize it.

This preservation first philosophy can be taken too far.  I held onto my last car, a Chrysler LeBaron (RIP), a little too long. My mechanic gave me a frequent customer discount card I was there so often. A part of me saw the car, which looked ok from the outside and knew it had miles left on it. However its innards, save for the battery, were gone. I had entire systems going on me—brakes, ignition, suspension—but to me it still seemed cheaper than the alternative. In hindsight, I kept it two years too long, and it cost me thousands that could have gone toward a gently used replacement machine.

Yet, economically it makes sense to toss sometimes.  I bent the fork on my mountain bike in graduate school.  It was a hybrid mountain bike ($350 new) that had seen better days.  She was actually stolen while I was an undergrad in Charlottesville and returned via a police sting to a pawn shop eighteen months later, but that is another story for another time.  The bike was beat and I sought a repair place to fix it.  When the repair estimate broke $150, I thought, no way; I can get a newer, higher quality bike for only a fraction more.  The bike repair man would not even make me an offer for parts. It hurt me, but I actually tossed an otherwise perfectly usable bike with a fatal bent fork flaw into a dumpster, and learned to leave earlier and walk faster.

I am not sure how much profit my computer virus doctor will make on my virus repair.  He has his right to his living, and I would not want to deny him that.  But it makes it a harder decision to fix rather than replace when the fix, deemed as relatively minor as far as requiring time, components or expertise, becomes such a large portion of the cost of a new, better item.  His work is guaranteed and I can imagine if I am not happy, I may end up with a new computer anyway. 

All around us consumer durables, things we buy that last multiple uses for years, like lawn mowers and cell phones are starting to cost too much to fix.  We must address the consumer aspect of the decision, but also think of environmental stewardship and figure out what the best overall decision is.  Why have our landfills overflowing with items brought to demise through minor dings just because the repair market is so expensive? In many cases, the responsible answer is to fix, find another use or find a secondary market (sell / trade it used) for it.  As you weave your way through life, weigh the green side of the story before you make your choice each time, and not just the greenbacks.