The Man in the Alley

Another day buzzed to life and all the characters were all in place on Third Street in Seattle between Pike and Pine.  A man appeared from the alley, squinting through a light drizzle misting the buses that endlessly drove by, clearing the ringing in his eardrums from the blaring siren that awakened him from a restless slumber of fears and delusions.  His parched face sagged off his bone structure, yellowed and pitted teeth last knowing the taste of real food 3 days past.  Vomit stained the front of a ragged brown sweater, recently given to him at a shelter, with the distinct odor of stale whiskey.  His ragged khaki pants, also gifts from the homeless shelter, hid his spindly legs and reeked of stale urine.  The man did not own socks and his shoes were only shoes in a sense that they were on his feet, but 3 sizes too big.  The blisters wore his feet to the bone, yet he could barely bleed as the scabbing from repeated blistering had hardened his skin to a mix of cartilage, pus and callous that prevented blood and oxygenizaton.  He raised a shaky, blood spotted hand to wipe the rain off his face and his first thought of the day entered his mind.  It was the same first thought he had every day and had had every day for as long as he could remember.  How was he going to get high or drunk?

The man remembered a dream a few nights back, or was it a month back, he did not know. Time had since stopped and had become as meaningless as his existence.  In this dream, there were people who didn’t have to live like this.  People that went to work and had a family, and smiled with each new day.  People that weren’t ravaged with the constant mental obsession to escape reality and to put the world on hold while squeezing every last ounce of the mind bending tilt of whatever drug he could get his hands on.  He asked himself if he ever had this life.  He was not sure and frankly, with all the problems that God had laid at his feet, a bit of drinking and drugging here and there seemed reasonable enough.  He was certain that it wasn’t his fault that life had dealt him this shitty hand.  He vaguely remembered it was the government’s fault for him not being a very smart man, and certainly he had tried to please his boss when he did work.  Was that last year?  If he remembered correctly, his boss had it in for him because he would not allow him to come to work at 11:00, after he was able to sleep off a normal hangover.

He stood there for a moment, people moving around the ant farm of the city, as oblivious to him as he was to them, pondering the word obsession.  The word had no meaning to him, not the way it had been described to him.  What he knew was that he needed to be high, to live and to survive in this world that had wronged him.  There was no other way.  Was that an obsession?  He thought not, for others needed air to breath and water to drink.  Although he must admit, that he felt that something was wrong today, obsession or no obsession.  The dim light of the day was refracting through the raindrops causing a faint effect on the people around him, like they were apparitions unable to hear him speak or notice his presence. 

He remembered a woman, a woman slight in build, dark hair flowing over her right shoulder, almond shaped face red with anguish, yelling at him, crying and begging him pathetically to stop.  She kept asking him how he could do this again, after he promised he wouldn’t.  In his mind, she asked this question a thousand times replaying the scene until the man’s head wanted to split in two, the pain of the question searing his soul.  “Stop what”, he would innocently ask, while sitting at an oak dining room table in a sunlit room.  He noticed his face in this vision was not the face he had today.  It was fuller, healthier, if not a bit red from good cheer.  He was wearing a tie, loosened at the neck, and stained.  There was lipstick on his collar.  He faintly remembered that this was nothing; he had been hugged by someone at an office party who had given him a quick kiss.  But she kept accusing him of ruining everything, and even had the nerve to call him a drunk.  He immediately felt a rush of self-righteous anger at this thought and buried it completely.  There was no such woman, and if there was, he certainly wouldn’t be answering to her caterwauling. 

The rain now was worsening and he wanted a cigarette, and just a sip of whiskey.  The voices and imagery in his head was moving in fast forward, or fast backward, he couldn’t tell, and he needed a drug for it to stop.  There was a glaring set of fluorescent lights blinding his eyes as the man gasped for air, searing his lungs as if he has never breathed before.  Men and women in white were bustling about, their voices in a muffled din.  The man in white said, “We saved him, he is alive again.”  A woman in white asked why they bothered to keep saving him, that he would just be back in the same condition next week.  She had the same sad eyes as the women who called him a drunk.  He hated himself and wished himself dead, that he seemed to be wasting these people’s time.  They could let him die, that would be OK and would show everyone once and for all that he didn’t matter.  The next day, he found himself sitting in front of the downtown hospital in Seattle, in a wheelchair, where the nurse had so unceremoniously dumped him.  He would be drunk again by 1:00 that afternoon.  The dreams never seemed to end, even on awakening.

In scanning Third Street, he saw the usual suspects:  the dealers, the users and the people actually waiting for buses.  The buses were the key.  This is where the drugs would come with the runners and would quickly change hands so that the dealers only had possession for minutes at a time.  But for the madness of this economic cycle to work properly, it was necessary for an endless amount of loitering.  This always shocked the man, because the police were often seen but did nothing, other than write an occasional jaywalking ticket to an office worker.  It seemed that the mayor of this city was far more concerned with honest citizens getting hit by the number 7 bus than fixing the scourge of the city.  The constant loitering led to the constant conversations about power, control and the endless ego and self-importance of the dealers and the relative pecking order of the users.

Two of the dealers were arguing about the same bullshit they had been arguing about for 2 years.  Pride and street cred were flaring up as one dealer was defending one of his ho-es (whores) right in front of her.  She was pregnant, her teeth in disrepair from significant methamphetamine abuse and teemed with a sense of controlled insanity that was fueled by her man sticking up for her.  It made her feel good that it seemed she was forgiven for getting out of line last night.  She deserved the beating for not having his beer cold when he got home from work, work being a day standing on Third Street dealing death.
A few of the users were having the same conversation that they had been having for 3 years running.  So and so was screwing them out of a fix and they would pay, dearly, for this oversight.  The government was screwing them because they were considering taking away their welfare checks if they kept spending them on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and lottery tickets.  They had a lot of nerve telling them how they could spend their money!  Did everyone hear that Tanya was in the rehab hospital again?  That Tanya, she is a trooper.  Not sure why she keeps trying to quit, everyone knows that all of us our locked into this fate, this lifestyle.  There is no escape.

The man approached his two friends to bum a cigarette, and was considering how to finagle a hit of meth or crack, or just a sip of whiskey.  His nerves were frayed and the din of city life this morning was especially head-splitting.  But he could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.  He approached his friends and noticed that Jerry was holding a bottle of Jack Daniels in a paper bag.  Super nice, the premium stuff.  Hopefully he would share.

Jerry took a swig straight from the bottle and looked at Kelly; his red eyes already glazed from the sauce, and said “It’s a shame about Toby, choking on his own vomit last night and dyin’.  They found him in the alley this morning.  I took his $15 secret stash before they found him though, figured we could celebrate, and toast him.  He would have wanted it that way.”

Kelly added while taking a hit off his pipe, “Yeah, dumbass should know not to drink and fall asleep where he can’t puke out freely.  I also told him last night not to be mixing the crack and the booze like that, but he wouldn’t listen”

Jerry raised the bottle for another swig, “Well that’ll never happen to us, we is much smarter than that.  I knew that smart rich boy would never make it on the street.”

The man approached his friends and in a fog, the refraction of the rain on the city life getting progressively worse, making everything seem distant.  The noises of the buses racing by and the throngs of people heading to work were becoming more muffled and the man sensed that he could no longer smell, anything.  He reached into his pocket and in a final instant of clarity realized two things:  He was missing $15, and his name was Toby.

Delta Airlines -

I thought that this recent letter that I passed on to Delta Airlines customer service was blog worthy.  They suck.  Period.

Delta Airlines Customer Service:

This is the third trip on Delta this year and my last ever.  I would like to tell you about my 360 customer experience on this round trip flight from Seattle to Minneapolis.  What I tell people now when they ask about my vacation is the same as I told them about my last vacation.  It was a wonderful time bookended by 2 crap flights on the worst airline in America.

I always know that the lousy Delta customer experience begins right upon arrival at the airport and Delta did not disappoint.  I was asked to check my duffle bag, so that Delta could collect the $25 bag fee, even though it was smaller than the ten people who had not checked their rolling luggage.  When I complained to the Delta employee at check in, she said and I quote "I just work here".  The other Delta employee told me that if I continued to complain about the bag check fee, that he would get TSA and get them to kick me off the flight.  It is nice to see that Delta now utilizes the government for customer service complaints.  This is quite possibly the most shameful customer service behavior I have EVER experienced.  I almost forgot to mention that I paid $400 for the airfare and that the next day I saw the airfare advertised for $270.  Delta, of course, would not refund the difference.

I then spent 3 hours crammed in a seat designed for someone 5 feet tall.  My six foot-two thin frame would not fit in the seat, even remotely.  One day I am going to consider suing Delta for the long health risk that flying in a cramped position causes me and the 2-3 days of pain in my legs and back that follow every flight.  But you do have the shareholders to consider and those fat executive compensation packages to consider.  I get it, I am a CFO.  You see, choosing and rating customer service on airlines is like picking the better looking pile of dog crap.  They all suck, some just suck worse.

On my flight home, I was scheduled for a 7:30 pm flight from MSP.  I asked Delta if I could fly on one of the 5 earlier flights to Seattle that day.  I was charged a $50 stand by fee to fly on the same day on a plane with plenty of available seating.  When I complained about this to the gate agent, she told me to "get medallion status so you won’t be charged or sit in the airport for 4 more hours to take your original flight".  Stellar customer service there.  My solution is to continue having awful flight experiences until I have flown enough that my flight experiences can become just a little less awful.  I naturally had to pay another $25 to check my duffle bag.

I rejoiced in the fact that this was the last $50 that I was giving to Delta in my lifetime.  I also am rejoicing in the fact that I am changing the travel policy where I work, and manage a $2 M annual travel budget to exclude Delta Airlines from an option on our travel site.  I estimated that in 2012 we spent $400,000 on Delta Airlines, and given that we are a consulting firm with people constantly travelling, I will not ask our consultants to continue to experience the customer service that I have experienced on 3 Delta flights in 2013.  I might add that the Delta flight to and from China in 2012 wasn't much better.

Regards

Gary R. Beebe Jr.

Former Customer

Coffee, It Must Be a Seattle Thing

So I walked into my local Starbucks recently (actually that is like saying I met a Japanese guy in Tokyo, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Starbucks in this city) near my office in downtown Seattle. Truth be told, I went to the one that is actually in my building but I could have easily walked across the street out any door of the building and gone to one as well.

I ordered a Venti Decaf Caramel Macchiato, triple shot, double pump vanilla, soy milk extra hot, extra caramel with room and paid for it with my Starbucks preloaded gold card. Actually that wasn’t me at all, that was the woman in front of me. I just sat there and gawked, eyes glazing over, as confused as if she had just casually explained the theory of relativity to the bright eyed and bushy tailed 18 year old barista. For those of you that are unaware, people that work in coffee shops in Seattle are not waiters and waitresses, they are baristas, and don’t tell them otherwise, and they expect tips.

I ordered a large decaf. I tried to order a large decaf. The same barista who was smiling and happy and got the previous order exactly right was now looking at me as if I had summarized Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason and was asking for her take on the western hierarchical thought process. I now had a 10 minute conversation about what type of coffee I wanted to drink. She asked me:

• Do you want room? I answered that I have plenty of rooms at home, confused.
• Hot or cold? I said, it’s coffee, not a beer.
• Americano or drip? My jaw slacked. She explained, at least I think she did, I had tuned out completely at this point.

This is not exactly the deep thought process that I need to delve into before even hitting my office. If I wanted this level of difficulty first thing in the morning, an 8:00 a.m. calculus course at the local university would be more appropriate. I did not have a Starbucks gold card and was summarily frowned upon by everyone in sight. There was genuine disappointment among the throng of office workers waiting for me to finish my order. The people directly behind me were visibly alarmed at my inability to get this right. I felt the same level of discomfort that occurs when accidentally passing gas in an empty elevator only for it to stop halfway up to my floor to allow 4 more people to get on. I then forgot to tip the barista.

Since that day, I have ventured into many coffee shops in and around this city and have had the same experience. Tully’s, Seattle’s Best (owned by Starbucks, but with no market differentiation – it is still $4 for a latte, $2.50 for a drip, just slightly different coffee), Top Pot (unreal heavenly donuts that sit in your stomach for a week), Vittoria, etc. There are hundreds. My personal favorite is Vittoria on Capitol Hill and Top Pot, also on Capitol Hill. Top Pot is truly jet fuel, but tastes great. I don’t like Starbucks house as it is too bitter for me and is probably at least half of the cause of my ulcers. What I find interesting is that most of these places have their own lingo as well so when ordering, it is an entirely new learning process.

Tips on tipping: I personally don’t think that someone that pours me a decaf cup of coffee or takes 30 seconds to make me a latte should be tipped after they charge me $4.00 for it. Call me cheap, but in general the tipping in this country is out of control. They don’t have to wait on us, they just have to move less than 3 feet and operate the machine. Now I am sure that I will get a lot of flak from some people when reading this and you know who you are, but that is my humble opinion. Asking the people that serve me my morning joe this very question; they said that since 75% of the people that get coffee pay with their Starbucks card the tips end up being immaterial. Some may disagree and I only surveyed one place and one person so this is by no means a good statistical sampling.

So next time you are in downtown Seattle and see someone ordering a Venti Decaf Caramel Macchiato, triple shot, double pump vanilla, soy milk extra hot, extra caramel with room and paying for it with a Starbucks preloaded gold card, stop and say “hello” to me. Oh wait, that won’t be me, I will be the confused looking guy holding up the line ordering the large decaf.

Gary R. Beebe Jr., Seattle, WA (January 15th, 2011)

I Am

This is a story from a couple of years ago that is also posted on my web site about life in Seattle sometimes.  Well unfortunately most of the time.  The original publish date is included.

I see you in this coffee shop each week.  You are there, but distant, aimlessly searching your iPod, periodically glancing at your phone.  Eye contact with a stranger emits a strained smile and a nod.  It is fleeting, as fear and distrust have imprisoned you in your own mind.  The stranger passes and I feel a sense of relief warming a chilly soul.

Your tires come to a slow halt on a rainy day for the gentle lady walking her wiener dog, shuffling across the street without bothering to check for traffic.  Her shawl is tucked tightly about her head as she struggles to lead her dog and manage the puddles.  Wonderment creeps into your brow as you ponder the meaning of the elderly woman’s life, why she is walking her dog in this miserable weather.  How often has she crossed the street like that with no expectation of being hit? You start tapping the dashboard impatiently for the women to move along, even though you have nowhere to be.  When she reaches the other side of the street safely, your car begins to move slowly forward through the intersection and I sense faint recognition in you, that just as quickly passes. You fail to recognize your neighbor of two years.

I hear the roar of the stadium, shaking me to my foundation.  Seeing you both at the game, I believe that you are old friends, sharing wondrous moments of times past, reliving the glory days of youth and the shared birth of your sons (what a coincidence, each having a son born on exactly the same day and year).  Drinks are bought, high fives exchanged.  On this crisp and clear Sunday afternoon, the realities of the world are forgotten and only football and friendship matter.  You both depart the stadium alone, you had never met before, and will never meet again.  An opportunity for friendship wasted.

I smell the fresh coconut bath soap lingering on your skin as you prepare for a date.  It must be special as gone are the torn jeans for a revealing sun dress, open at the neckline and bare shouldered, 2 dashes of perfume instead of the usual one.  Flipping your hair back, you smile and tell your roommate not to expect you back early.  I see you in bed, your chest heaving and breath heavy by 9:00 pm, but you are alone.  What I mistake for passion is tears.

I see everything in a wide panorama of our city and its society, my touch extends from the depths of the Puget Sound to the highest snow capped peak, the pungent aroma of my bars at closing time doesn’t escape me nor does the beauty of a fresh spring rain.  I sense all and nothing, but above all I sense it alone.  I am Seattle.

Gary R. Beebe Jr. - Seattle, WA (January 25th, 2011)