What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Saturday, May 31, 2003

DOUBLE OR NOTHING

Danielle and I went to see Down With Love this past Tuesday, which was fun and fluffy but too strange to recommend. Was it a loving homage to 1960's romantic comedies or a oddly synthetic parody of them? Or both? We were too busy fighting over who gets to claim Ewan McGregor as their future husband and marvelling at the $8.25 price tag for our "cheap Tuesday" movie.

See, there's a phrase people have got to stop using -- Tuesdays just aren't cheap anymore. When a woman who's still under the age of 30 says, "Whatever happened to '$2.50 Tuesdays'?", we have a problem. And it's not just the movies, either.

It's been over a decade since I moved to Toronto and I've realized that, in that time, movie tickets have more than doubled, the broccoli at the supermarket has gone from one dollar to two, my phone and cable bills have increased by well over 40% and my rent-controlled (controlled!) apartment costs, yes, more than double what I was first paying when I moved here.

Life in the big city, I suppose, until you ask yourself what you were making ten years ago. Is it now twice that? Probably not, I'm guessing. And will it be double ten years from now? Probably not, I speculate. We can safely bet, however, that our expenses will be. In the meantime, let's go catch a movie on "Horrifyingly Expensive Wednesday to Mondays."

Labels: friends, money - lack thereof, movies, Trawna

ONE DOOR CLOSES...

My roommate Jerry's been unhappy these last couple weeks because one of his friendships has soured. Hurtful comments have come from both sides and a rekindling doesn't appear likely. Nevertheless, he's been desperate to talk to this person again so he can achieve "closure." This strikes me as futile and a bit sad. "As painful as it is," I told him, "this person has said he doesn't want to talk anymore. That's closure." Jerry doesn't agree, and maybe I'm being too hard, but I've never understood that desire for a tidy ending. It seems to me that life is a series of endings, most of them untidy.

My stint at the record store, for instance -- which I'd hoped would be good for me -- appears to be winding down. While I love working in a retail environment, I'd forgotten about the penny-pinching soullessness that infects the industry. In response to the SARS hysteria driving away half the customers from downtown Toronto these last many weeks, the record chain's head office is threatening to fire the manager of our store for not meeting their imposed sales targets.

What's especially upsetting about this is that these sales targets are based on the fantastic job that this man has done for them. Having come in and nearly doubled their sales last year, he has been rewarded by the demand to produce the same gains this year or be fired. That lack of gratitude, of simple fairness, is appalling yet so common in retail circles. Every day is a study in human greed.

My boss is a wonderful guy -- knowledgeable, decisive, honest and funny -- and as this chain has no respect for him, what hope is there? Why stay on and work to make money for them when they care so little in return? If he's fired, I won't want to be there anymore but they'll barely notice if some lesser employee leaves OR stays. And where's the closure in that?

Labels: Trawna