A Bar from the High 210s (II of II): Hipster customer service.

So, at the same bar, I ended up having some shitty customer service.

After I get the wine/beer lists, from this smarmy (white) guy with big curly brown hair and a blue long-sleeve shirt on unbuttoned to show chest hair, I make my choice, then close the list book and catch his eye.

"Just one minute," he says, "I'll be with you."

Then, he does some stuff - so far so good - but then he sets a beer bottle on the counter by the customer next to me (who I do not yet realize is Catalan), and the Catalan asks him what it is, and the guy just sits up at the counter telling him how it's this new beer, and where it's from, and what it's like, etc., when I still have no drink and am obviously watching him chit-chat with a customer who already has one, and who he could have told, "Wait one sec, then I'll tell you," and gotten my order from me.

Whatever, but at the end of the night, I go to pay my bill for the $8 beer (it was a very very good craft beer made in small batches from a Brooklyn brewery, and totally worth the money), I ask if they have a credit card minimum, and the same smarmy (white) guy is like, "No, but for eight dollars? We appreciate cash," which is understandable, but he could have said that in such a nicer, non-snotty way.

So, I paid cash, but left no tip, even though he was one of the owners, it turns out, and was the reason why the Catalan goes there (he knew him as a waiter at a wine bar in a different part of the city, and every once in a while stops by the business he and friends started).

...the worst customer service across the city is from places run by hipsters, I'm thinking of writing up a review giving 5 recent examples and trying to publish it in a free newspaper here in the city... that'd be kind of awful, but I'd have funny anecdotes, and the businesses kind of deserve it...

A Bar from the High 210s (I of II): The customer next to me.

So the other week I went to this yuppie wine and beer bar in the gentrifying edges of the Puerto Rican neighborhood.

It was a very nice place, with a very nice, interesting craft beer selection (I know shit about wine and can't judge the winelist).

The bar was pretty full - 0nly 3 empty seats - and I took a place next to this mid-40s well-dressed (tanned white) gentleman at the bar.

After I got my drink, I started chit-chatting, and it turns out that he was a radical Catalan socialist who had been working the U.S. for like 14 years as a social worker employed with the city's public school system.

"Yes," he was like, "I am full of contradictions, I work for the state so one day there will be no state, when the workers own the means of production."

We talked for quite a while, and I asked him among other things about the Spanish prime minister Zapatero - "He has done some good things, but he is a tool of international capital" - and about the impending visit of the pope to Spain - "He is a fat pig with too much power."

He also told me that the Spanish Civil War was started by an uprising of the Catalan people, but history doesn't tell you that, and that for several years they had the only true socialist state that the world has ever seen.

Later, I asked him how he became a socialist, and if his parents were socialists, and then he started telling me about when he was 9 years old, and it was the time of year when gypsies came to his village to pick the olive crop.

"People made fun of them, 'They are so dirty, they are so filthy," but I feel sorry for them. 'Why?', they say, 'They are stealing!', and I thought, and I said, 'No, it is the land-owners who steal from them.'"

Rinds of watermelon.

I slice very close to the green when I carve out watermelon, since I like the way the white can taste.

I had some friends over the other week and I cut up some watermelon for them (giving them the pink), and they noticed my bowl full of white rinds and were confused, though they ended up trying some and saying it wasn't as bad as they had thought.

I'm *not* a Wisconsinite.

Whenever I'm in Wisconsin, I feel like I really don't belong there.

A good portion of the population is just plain suspicious of anyone not from the state.

For example, when I was at the campaign office, some people were friendly, but a few people (notably guys) wouldn't keep up small-talk with me, even though they would do the same with other volunteers they didn't know. For example, one guy was telling me about how he came to the city I live in with his photography club, etc., and we were talking about public transportation cutbacks, etc., but the conversation was very stop-and-go and very stilted, and I had the feeling that he was sizing me up as an outsider the entire time, and that's where his thoughts were, not on the conversation.

A friend who now lives in Milwaukee and has for a few years said it's hard to break into (late 20s/early 30s) social circles there, since most of the city is people who went to high school together and then to college and then all moved there together as well.

Keeping my tutorees interested.

I got the Latin text of the "Ratio atque institutio studiorum societatis Iesu" ('the system and plan of studies of the Society of Jesus' - a 1599 text detailing how Jesuits should set up universities) and pulled out headings from the different sections.

Then, I had the lawyer who's re-learning Latin sightread the 3-6 word phrases, asking him to identify what declensions the words definitely or potentially belonged to.

It was fun and he did a great job using all of his knowledge of the paradigms he's re-learned so far, and now he's hyped up and wants to read some actual sections from the text, once he's able to.

How fun! I'm def. earning my wages for this job.

Fighting the Man!

I researched my insurance policy and wrote an appeal for the charge they gave me.

According to my policy, I didn't need a referral to a clinic during schoolbreaks, so I printed out the school's schedule and relevant part of my policy and wrote up a letter and sent it out.

If they don't give it to me, I'm going to submit it to the state-run insurance appeals board. It's a matter of principle.

Tough job market.

I met a recent Northwestern undergrad who was telling me about the job market...

He sent out 700 apps, and for his final job (a job with the federal govt. in the city), there were 400,000 applicants for an online listing, and he was 1 of 3 people chosen for an interview and then he finally got it.

He said he's luckier than a lot of his friends, too.