I snapped this picture at the street fair on Broadway in soho this past Sunday. The lady pictured in the photo is working one of the ubiquitous lemonade booths that exist on every block at these things. If you've lived in New York for more than 3 weeks, you know the drill: These street fairs are all exactly the fuckin same. It's almost like they are a traveling circus franchise- they all have the same shit at every single one of 'em, and it's been that way since I was a kid:
-Sunglasses
-Falafel
-Fried Dough
-Chicken Kebobs
-fake "down" Pillows
-"Interesting Items" - a booth with magnifying glasses and tweezers and other useless shit
-Corn on the cob
-Offensive T-Shirts that no one has ever bought
-Reggae and House-Music mix tapes that dread brothas blast so loud that you can hear that shit all the way up from the corn booth
-Crepes
Now back to the woman pictured above. If you've lived in New York for more than 3 weeks, you also probably recognize the shirt she's wearing. It's a shirt that says "Fuck You You Fucking Fuck" - I've seen it being sold at 100 different indian/arab-owned bong and "tobacco" pipe shops, in the village at gay stores that no one ever goes into, and at these damn street fairs. I've seen the shirt a million times, but I've never seen anyone actually wearing it.
Never say never- as you can see, this Latina Lemonade chick is wearing it. She's working at a Lemonade stand, at a street fair, serving Lemonade to my kids, and she's wearing a shirt that says FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCK. What the fuck is wrong with this idiot? She's employed to be the public face of a business - a business serving children lemonade on a sunny day, and she's wearing a shirt that says FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCK.
I guess that at first, I was completely taken aback by her baffling lack of work ethic, self-awareness, decency, and above all common sense. I obviously snapped the photo of her with the intention of posting it here and railing on her as I've just done... But now that I'm here thinking about it, I'm realizing that New York is absolutely filled with surly and incompetent customer service professionals (mostly Latinas and Blacks of course - thanks for representing as usual yall!) who couldn't give a rat-fuck whether a customer drops dead in front of their cash register, waiting for them to finish talking shit with other cashiers and laughin they asses off, clucking and tutting like a bunch of hopeless retards.
So I'm changing my tune - I appreciate this woman's honesty; At least she told me to my face.
2 comments:
I saw a similar thing at a Thai restaurant in Park Slope -- the one on 7th Ave, on the second floor, catte-corner to Key Food. They have a live pianist on Tuesday nights. The waitress was a 50-something rude troll of a woman, and she was wearing the t-shirt that had a couple getting married with a the bride smiling and the groom sad and the words "Game Over." This is a t-shirt for young guys. I don't know what it means exactly -- I assume that the woman didn't understand what it meant. But it was utterly inappropriate for her and for a middle-of-the-road Thai restaurant. A cleverer person than I could probably link this to the t-shirts they print up for the losing superbowl teams and then discribute in developing nations.
So I heard something like this on NPR the other day...
"In Seattle they are nice, but not kind. In New York they are kind, but not nice".
"In Chicago they are friendly, but not intimate. In New York they are intimate, but not friendly."
Not to say that alot of customer service doesn't suck. Just another take on the New York state of mind.
It's why blognigger is so wonderfully New York. Great to hear your voice.
And "fuck 'em, if they can't take a joke."
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