Bets & Regrets

Yesterday I returned to the uni to buy a hideously overpriced parking decal. My righteous indignation was compounded by the fact that the place was crawling with bright eyed and optimistic soon-to-be first years touring the campus for orientation week.

Damn them with their youth and promise and... youth.

Our uni vice chancellor is an out-of-touch former tech company CEO who decsended from on high to take over the management of our little institute of higher learning after the quakes.

What I first learned of him was detestable to me; he tried to stop my friend from speaking out on rape culture because he said some people with ovaries had already talked about women stuff earlier that year and that was enough.

He also decided to jack up the student parking fees to $400 a year.

He said it was to encourage us to use alternative means of transportation.

Some of us have children to deal with and can't just load them all up on a bike.

Some of us also live more 30 minutes away from campus with said children.

He also claimed the hike was to improve the current parking situation.

I call bullshit.

I've been at the uni for three years and there has been no work to improve or add to the current parking offerings.

The decal doesn't give you the right to park it merely gives you the "right to hunt" for a place with hundreds of other stressed out students who have all arrived at the same time.

And woe betide you if you should visit the uni without this decal. Your vehicle will clamped by our overzealous security staff, a large infraction notice will be taped to your driver's side window and you will be required to pay an immediate  ransom of $50 to have it removed.

 This will involve a walk of shame back to your car and a short wait while the security staff disembarks from their golf cart and fumbles with the clamp.

It's bad enough when it happens to students but it has also happened to several distinguished resident scholars and visitors who were never informed of parking protocol or provided with any visitor parking. It's a very bad look for our school.

But none of this bothers VC Rod Carr.

He doesn't have to worry about such things and he earns far and away more than anyone at the school so even if he did...he wouldn't.

A huge poke in the eye was an article in The Press the other day where they interviewed Rod and he mused over the lack of radical action from his students nowadays.

At the beginning of summer I met with a professor who challenged me to research Rod's authority and write a letter of complaint to him about the price hike of the fees. I was to request a lowering of the fee and if that didn't work, the professor and I would seek a judicial review.

I spent hours pouring over city statutes and ordinances. I came to the realization that Rod was pulling rules out of his ass and betting that no one would challenge him on it. The fees the uni is allowed to charge the students for levies and tuition are legislated, the fees for parking are not. The control of such things rests with the University Council of which Rod is a member.

The fees that Christchurch City charges for the most egregious parking violations are $10 less than the get-out-of-clamp fee charged by the uni. Also, the city penalty is payable in various methods over a period of time unlike the uni where you must pay then and there or have no access to your own vehicle. I seethe when I think of all the emergencies and health and safety issues this might raise.

Most of all I resent having to take this on by myself.

I'm already trying to fight against a wrongful conviction that a friend of mine is dealing with and researching parking issues and running the risk of pissing off the man who controls your school is emotionally exhausting.

Basically, wah wah, why does it have to be me?

I know I could do it but it's so much work. I need to start a Facebook movement but I hate Facebook, Twitter and all the rest, refuse to use them and so I'm cut off from potential support.

I just wish I could sit this one out while someone else takes the wheel but in this respect Rod seems correct- there aren't a lot of students ready to take radical action (or any other kind) against the wrongs of the uni.

Can't someone else have an epiphany that the school is there to serve us and not the other way around?

Damn it!

Why don't some of these damned youthful kids get in there and let an old timer like me take a knee?

Also, get off my lawn, in my day we did thing better, the kids today don't know, etc.

Tiny House Anger

Each month I look forward to the new issue of NZ House and Garden. I love getting lost in the sumptuous interiors of other people's houses.

Occasionally, the homeowners will say something mildly pretentious but mostly the magazine is enjoyable from cover to cover.

I don't know why I got so worked up over this month's issue but I have a theory that I've actually transferred my ire from the "Me Too" backlash onto an unrelated subject.

I think I've reached a point where I can't handle one more French second wave feminist saying women should do more to defend themselves and that in their day it was all just harmless flirting and sexy fun. The fact that Bardot and Deneuve want to construct an alternative reality where all the groping and objectifying that happened to them was flattering doesn't mean the rest of us have to go along with it. If we did, the same behavior would be allowed to continue unchecked and that's simply not an option anymore.

And I'm over a certain type of man who whines that he won't be able to go anywhere near women anymore because he won't feel safe. As if we are the problem- a nest of pit vipers waiting to strike over the slightest glance. In fact, the problem is with the men who have for far too long been able to touch without consent, physically and verbally abuse, leer at and demean women with no consequences. Many of these actions have taken place in the office where there is a distinct power imbalance. To stand up for oneself is to risk retaliation.

What these men are moaning about is a social change that will require them to quit acting like creeps.

Fucking boo hoo.

The February issue started out solid. The first featured home was filled with mid century modern furniture imported from Denmark and had some clever use of Orla Kiely's stem print.

Then I noticed the wall art. There's a print by JH Lynch hanging in the dining room. It features a topless woman with bouffant hair lounging in the crotch of a tree. It has a sickly green blue tint to it and appears faded, as if it were left in the sun too long.

Why? Why would someone ruin the beauty of their home with a print that looks like it was first used in a Bordello in the 70s to "class up the joint?"

But the real outrage came on page 34 where I discovered the uber pretentious Guittenit family. They were notable for building a tiny house and squeezing five people into it.

The words "minimalist aesthetics" and "harmonious interactions" are used by the writer.

Paterfamilias and native of France, Francois said "It's a pleasure to have constant connections with each other, always showing an interest in each other's lives. It works really well."

Noticeably absent from this conversation are the voices of the Guittenit's three children Poppy, Francis and LouLou.

No one asked them how they liked being stacked into three tiered bunk beds next to the tiny bathroom where the place reeks every time pa Francois does le shit.

Francis' bed is partially covered by one of his sisters so it's like a little coffin.

Directly above the children is a loft where their parents sleep. I wonder if the poor children "take pleasure" in the interactions of their dad rocking the mattress above and muttering, "Oh oui, oui! Tu aimes ca?" to their mother.

I'm struck by the fact that the potted plant in the living room/kitchen/creative hub has more personal space than the three human children.

On the same plot of land which was perfectly able to support a larger home, Francois and Sarah have an ample workshop where they can pursue whatever crafty white person wellness activity takes their fancy.

Both Sarah and Francois describe their spaces as "honest." Francois says of the house, "It's an honest space that is just as much the children's as it is ours." Sarah says of that the workshop is, "busy, honest and slightly chaotic."

I suppose the house does have a sort of honesty. From the outside it looks like it's too small for five people and the interior photographs confirm this. Honesty!

The workshop tells an honest story about two people who selfishly crammed their entire family into a tiny joke of a house and then made sure they had plenty of personal space to escape to. Honesty!

If you hadn't yet realized that the Guittenit family is better than you there is the helpful Q and A box where Sarah says, "In the next ten years I'd like to reflect on the meaningful and enriching season of balance; embrace our children's home-based education with our work/life balance."

What she should really be thinking about is what will happen when her two daughters hit growth spurts, get their periods and still have to sleep in shoe box-sized beds in a room they share with their brother.

There's limited storage space in the tiny house but I'm betting that in one of the drawers Sarah keeps a jade yoni egg that she ordered off of Gwyneth Paltrow's website "Goop."

A photo caption informs us that the house has a hidden television screen so the children can watch documentaries on line.

The young Guittenits require a carefully curated upbringing where any stray thoughts such as "is living this way normal?" and "are my parents batshit?" are kept at bay.

So my question is this: Am I really angry at these smug bastards and their minuscule homestead or am I projecting my rage stirred up by a long overdue movement?

It's so hard to tell. 

Frisky Reminds Me Of A Past Shame

Today I watched an indie film set in San Francisco called "Frisky." 

It was a delightful film that gently mocked a bunch of California stock characters (artsy faux spiritualists, tech bros, couch surfers, etc.) but the thing that struck me was that the film was made by a company called "Cliff House Productions." 

From the get-go all I could think about was the last time I visited The Cliff House and Sutro Bath ruins- I performed an unscripted, spectacularly embarassing feat of acrobatics.

I went back to my old blog "The Eventual Mexican" and recovered this little chestnut from the event:

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Last Monday, A and I went down to the old Sutro Baths in San Francisco.

What was once a fantastic bathing center housed under glass by the seashore now lies in ruins.

The concrete pools still remain only now they are filled with algae and seagull poop water.

I was trying to show A the ruins when I came upon a sort of concrete ramp. B asked me if I wanted a hand in getting down to the concrete wall that ran between the main pool and the edge of the beach but I only stuck my nose in the air and shooed him away.

On my first step I realized that the concrete was what we in Alabama would call "slick as owl shit." 

I went skiing down on one foot with the other stuck out straight in front of me upon hitting the concrete barrier I was catapulted forward. I struggled to regain my balance with precipitating speed. 

For one sweet moment, I thought I was going to pull it off then I realized that my head had become parallel with my knee caps.

I skidded to a stop with my hands out in front of me and with my legs bent at the knee with my feet in the air. 

My first thought was: Omg, who just saw that?

I turned around and the nice young man was rushing to my aid. He tried to pull me to my feet but I lost balance again and rolled off the concrete wall onto the concrete surface beside it.

I looked to my daughter for support but she was too busy pointing and being doubled up with laughter to notice. 

It's still true that pride goeth before a fall. 

So yeah, I'm still haunted by an event that happened almost a decade ago. But on the bright side, at least I don't use the term "Omg" anymore.

Why I Quit

I found the asshole standing by himself down the last isle in the shop where I work.

I didn't know he was an asshole at that time, just that it looked like he needed help finding something.

So I asked him if he had been helped yet and he said no, of course not, no one at my place of business ever helped him.

I went to help him unload an item he was returning and he immediately started sarcastically commenting on how I was carrying it.

I got out my notebook to write down the product number so I could look the item up and give him a credit when he said, "why don't you put down that notebook and help me get what I need."

At that point an internal conversation had started in my mind- "Did he really just talk to me like that? Am I going to let him get away with it?" And then in the background another voice was saying, "Walk away now."

But I didn't. I watched as he crawled up into the metal shelving where no one is allowed to climb and hung there like a rhesus monkey pawing vaguely at a long piece of weatherboard.

I have helped hundreds of customers carry long, unwieldy pieces of construction material and it's always the same- they get one end, I get the other. We negotiate our way carefully around all the turns and load the item on their vehicle as a team.

But asshole wasn't playing the common sense game.

I took my position on the opposite end of the product and he began addressing me in a voice you would use with someone of limited mental capacity who had worn out your patience.

"What are you doing? That's not how you carry that is it? You grab it in the middle, don't you?"

No, you really don't. But hey, I thought, if I get this thing loaded and paid for I can get rid of this asshole so I'll play along.

While I struggled to pull the boards down and carry and load them onto the top of his truck by myself he continued to hang onto the metal rack and rain down abuse about my carrying skills.

He then handed me an invoice for the returned item but the product code I had written down and the ones on his invoice didn't match. I made the mistake of trying to explain this to him and was subject to more abuse about my abilities to figure things out.

At this point I looked off into middle distance and thought, "I'm about to lose my shit and say something far and away more severe than what is called for here. The job has been fun but no job is worth this sort of treatment."

Instead I turned on my heel and walked off to the nearest computer with his invoice in my hands.

There was another young, male coworker of mine standing beside me then and another customer was standing in front of us when the asshole came over to join us.

He launched into a screed about how useless my place of business was (so why not just fuck off and take his business somewhere else?)

Then he looked at the young man standing next to me and said to the other customer that he was lucky he had ended up with someone who at least looked competent.

Then he said, "My son is 6ft tall and applied for a job here and couldn't get it and yet they hired her and she's struggling to lift two pieces of weatherboard."

(Fun fact: His son applied for a Saturday-only position and then told them he couldn't work most Saturdays because of rugby practice.)

"That's it," I said picking up the invoice and walking away from the counter.

"Aren't you going to finish my order?" the asshole called out after me.

He was clearly surprised that I wasn't going to stand there and let him shit on me.

I walked around the corner to the next isle, found another co-worker, told him I was fed up with being verbally abused by the customer, handed him the invoice and walked away through the main store and up into the safety of the employee break room.

Whilst there I battled with the urge to return to the scene and tell asshole it wasn't my fault that his micropenis didn't work properly and that, of course no one ever wanted to help him because he was a verbally abusive fuckwit.

After some time had passed I went back to work and was approached by the coworker I had given the invoice. He said the customer in question was a known asshole who came in, singled out the young workers and was nasty to them. In all, seven people that day told me about his reputation or personal run ins with him and how they avoided him.

The more rank they had within the company the more they laughed about it like it was a joke and suggested "I should punch him in the face."

The casualness of this type of remark shows how easy it is to dismiss that sort of behavior when you are not likely to lose your livelihood by standing up for yourself.

I sat down with my immediate boss and related what had happened while he wrote down notes and promised to speak to the owner of the company.

I wanted to make a written record of what happened myself so I wrote the following statement:

I wanted to further address the incident that occurred Saturday in the drive through with __________.

The response to it by my co-workers was telling.

One of them told me he was a “known asshole” who specifically targeted the younger workers and was nasty to them. I learned that he had spoken to ___________ in the same way. Another co-worker said he had a similar experience with Mr. ________ and it left him angry and wary of future encounters. A third co-worker told me they avoided a customer because he was mean to them. I have not confirmed that this customer is Mr. _________ but I’m certain it is. A person who works inside the store told me Mr _________ was a known jerk and jokingly said I should have punched him. _____ said he could be “difficult” and ______ said customers like him need assertive handling.

Perhaps the extent of Mr __________ abuse is not fully understood because it has not been documented.

Perhaps the seriousness of his actions has been underestimated because much of the damage done to victims of verbal abuse goes unseen.

In my case, my first instinct was to get as far away from him as possible. His toxic behavior was incessant and there was nothing I could do that would please him and make it stop. I am still amazed I was able to walk away from the exchange without an expletive-laden confrontation. The thought crossed my mind that I would likely lose my job, but I reckoned no job was worth having if it meant dealing with that sort of cruel humiliation. I felt angry for most of the day and distracted from my work. The thought of having to deal with Mr _______ again made me feel physically ill.

This man obviously takes pleasure in belittling the most vulnerable members of the __________ staff. The power imbalance between Mr ___________ and most staff is great. For this reason, those who have been attacked by him are not likely to speak up for themselves.

No one on our team deserves to be spoken to in the way the Mr ___________ has become accustomed to speaking to us. There is no personal hardship in a man’s life that will ever make it acceptable for him to mistreat others in this fashion. I don’t know what reasons Mr __________ might claim for his nastiness and I don’t care. He obviously feels confident that he can come to my place of work, degrade me and my co-workers and then go about his life with zero negative consequences.

I know you and __________ will be considering how best to deal with this situation. As you do, please remember that most bullies are able to get away with their actions because no one ever stands up to them.

The next day I worked all the staff members who hadn't been present when the incident happened came up to me, told me their personal stories with asshole and how much they disliked him.

Not a single person in the entirety of the business had anything nice to say about him.

What's more, they all "knew how he was."

The most disturbing story was from a female manager who told me asshole had been banned from the store for six months after her threw a tow bar at her.

No one seemed to doubt he would be banned for good this time, least of all me.

But that was not to be.

My immediate boss found me and told me he had talked to asshole over the phone and used the old humanizing trick of saying "what if someone had talked to your (insert beloved family member) that way?" And the asshole had apologized. And my boss seemed to think that was good enough and case closed, etc.

Later that day when I was helping a coworker load up an expensive timber order he mentioned that it was for asshole.

"Are you serious?" one of the other guys asked.

"Yeah," he said.

I hocked up some phlegm and spit onto the load. For extra good measure I cursed over it in Spanish.

My coworkers seemed shocked.

"If you hadn't been standing here it would have been something a lot worse" I said.

I stewed for the rest of the day. Finally, in the late evening I picked up my phone and texted my boss. I said since my health and safety were obviously meaningless to the company I was resigning effective immediately.

He wrote back urging me not to leave.

I wrote back saying that one man apologizing to another man for something he said to a woman was some next level sexist bullshit.

I also reminded him as a fellow law scholar that having general knowledge of abusive behavior and doing nothing to prevent it put the company at high risk of liability in the future. (And with asshole, it's just a matter of time.)

I said in addition to the motto that "no job is so important that it can't be done safely" the company should also put up one that read, "no customer is so outrageous that he can't be forgiven after spending a large sum with us."

And so I quit.

I'm taking my burgeoning fork lift skills elsewhere.

I've regained my peace of mind.

I'll be listening out for mention of asshole in the future because he will continue to do what he's always done.

And one fine day, when he goes too far with the wrong person or people, I'll be right there with my law degree and bar membership, ready to volunteer my time in civil court for a worthy cause.

Golriz Ghahraman's Aversion to Truthfulness

When I first heard about Golriz Ghahraman it was from Nick announcing that she was the first refugee to enter the New Zealand Parliament. Her family had fled Iran when she was nine and resettled here.

The next I heard of her was when a scandal broke that she had willingly volunteered to serve on the defense team of those accused of atrocities in the Rwandan genocide.

Two damning photographs were also made public. One showed a grinning Ghahraman standing next to Simon Bikindi who was later convicted of inciting genocide. The other shows a still grinning Ghahraman seated next to the Rwandan defense team. (Everyone else had to good sense to let the seriousness of the matter reflect in their facial expressions.)

The scandal was noteworthy because Ghahraman was a Green party MP whose profile had extolled her virtue as a human rights advocate.

In fact, any article written on her before the information came out was suspiciously bereft of any mention of her stint with the Rwandan defense team.

The article on her in the November issue of Law Talk was one long humble brag. She went to Oxford and loved justice. Refugees, oppressed persons, unfortunates and down trodden individuals were her life, etc.

Her twitter feed features a series of photographs in which she is always the focal point. Around her are the  human props people she lives to serve.

When called out on her dishonesty she responded that anyone could learn of the defense work if they just scrolled down to the bottom of her LinkedIn profile where it was noted in an easy-to-miss location.

As for the misrepresentation on the Green's website she was happy to let everyone think that it was an oversight on the part of the party, not herself.

I volunteered for the campaign of local Labour candidate Tony Condon and I helped him write and edit his own background story. Once complete it was sent to the moderators and posted on Labour's official website.

I'm sure this wasn't the case with Ghahraman and it's only an awkward coincidence that her information wasn't corrected until after the elections when she was promoted to MP from the party's list.

Her response to the fallout has been to say that the criminally accused are entitled to a defense.

At first glance this seems like a difficult but necessary truth but it is in fact, a red herring.

Ghahraman makes it seem like she was the only person brave enough to enable the accused to have their day in court. In fact, the accused had a team of lawyers and Ghahraman volunteered to go to the dark side and help out.

With or without her, the trial would have gone on with a competent defense team.

The decision to grin from ear to ear while posing with a man accused of "inciting genocide" was also entirely voluntary and in no way necessary to the process of justice.

Recently, a blogger pointed out Ghahraman's problematic claim that she remembers the bombs falling around her during her time in Iran. The blogger noted that her hometown of Mashhad was more than 1000 miles away from Tehran and was not bombed during the war.

Her huffy response was that she never said it was but that she was often sent to visit her family in Tehran during school holidays.

So, war broke out, bombs were falling and Golriz' parents who had enough sense to flee Iran still thought was okay to repeatedly send her to the kill zone to visit family.

Seems totally legit.

As a feminist I am always happy to see women doing good things and helping others.

As a person with a low tolerance for dishonest bullshit I am always angry when people like Ghahraman try to get away with being morally repugnant.

Once, during my time with the Coast Guard I was tasked with helping a young woman who turned out to be a narcissist and compulsive liar. In retrospect I remember the way her eyes searched my face when she was speaking to me. At first I thought it was due to her sincerity of feeling. Later I realized she was scanning my face to see if I had caught on to her lies.

Even now, diligent reporters could be checking to see if Ghahraman was actually enrolled at Oxford.

I'm sure whatever they come up with will be disavowed and the responsibility of knowing will be put back on the general public.

If only we had read the fine print in some obscure document...it was right there the whole time!

*For informative and well-written stories about the political turmoil and war in Iran, I suggest reading anything by Marjane Satrapi. My favorite will always be the graphic novel "Persepolis."

World of Forkcraft

It finally happened.

I got my forklifting endorsement on my license. I am sooooo proud.

To make matters more exciting, Nick just bought himself a forklift and since I'm the only one who is certified to use it, I get to go out into our equipment yard and practice my skills.

Bro, do you even lift?

Yes I do.

Pounamu

For our fourth anniversary Nick bought me a pounamu necklace.

Pounamu is a beautiful type of nephrite found in New Zealand's south island. It belongs to Ngai Tahu and is sold under iwi approval. It comes in varying shades of green and is usually carved into some meaningful form.

Mine was in a double twist known as a pikorua. It was a gorgeous deep forest green.

Within 24 hours of receiving the necklace it lay on the floor of my room in two pieces. My son had picked it up from the nightstand and dropped it onto the carpet from a height of about two feet.

I was upset and Nick was livid.

He said he had paid $450 for something that was supposed to last a lifetime and instead had broken in a day.

Two days later he took the piece back to the jewelry store and was informed by the manager that the breakage was our fault and that it wasn't the store's policy to do refunds. He was then told that if he wanted to buy another piece they'd be happy to give him a 15% discount.

Nick told the manager he could fuck right off and that they hadn't heard the last of us because his girlfriend was a law student.

When I heard the news first I stewed and then I turned to the law.

The Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 was my weapon of choice. It lays out the responsibilities of vendors and manufacturers in relation to their products. Section 7 had two helpful parts (a) an object must be fit for its intended purpose and (e) durable. Legal remedies consisted of a refund or replacement of the object with another of equal value. If the company refused to follow the law they could be taken to the Disputes Tribunal. Letters could also be written to the Commerce Commissioner. Notices could also be given to the local press and the consumer friendly program "Fair Go" could be contacted.

I called the artist who carved the pieces to let him know what had happened and how the company selling his work had reacted. He said the pounamu had fibers and grains just like wood and while it wasn't common to have them snap, it wasn't unheard of. A few of his pieces had even done so while he was working on them. He said he would call the company and speak with them and I thanked him.

This is the second time I've had to deal with a faulty product and dodge by the company that sold it to me.

Harvey Norman tried to say it was "user error" when the laptop I bought for my daughter had a screen separate from its frame. They wasted no time in saying our actions had gone beyond reasonable wear and tear and that the warranty was voided.

When I insisted that a brand new computer sitting in an open position on a desk for six months couldn't possibly be called "wear and tear" they pouted and said they would contact the manufacturer.

They came back to us a few days later and said the manufacturer was blaming us but that they would "escalate the situation up the chain" to get a solution.

How magnanimous of them.

In the end they replaced the faulty laptop with a new one.

It boils my blood that there are laws in place to protect buyers but most don't know where to look for them.

The default position for the retailer seems to be "it's your fault and we won't fix it but feel free to spend more money with us."

As a dear friend pointed out, this is a really shitty business strategy.

The other thing that gets my goat (to use the old phrase) is that these companies deal in hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars worth of goods from the manufacturers.

The manufacturer can't afford to piss off the retailer.

What ultimately happens in most of these scenarios is that the faulty product is sent back and a credit is issued.

Neither the retailer nor the manufacturer goes hungry or becomes homeless from the process.

*****

I returned to the jewelry store two days after Nick's visit, armed with copies of the relevant law and moral outrage.

I was fully prepared to become "loud and indignant" if the situation called for it.

I met with the manager who quickly realized he had been foretold of my coming and lo! I was upon him.

He looked at the broken pieces I placed in front of him and the air between us became pregnant with an impending dodge.

"Here," I said, "Let me show you section 7 of the Consumer Guarantees Act."

I went on to explain that he had sold me a piece of jewelry with a weakness in it that would have caused it to break sooner or later. The piece was sold as a necklace which are meant to be worn regularly and the flaw meant that it was never fit for such a purpose (section a). It also certainly didn't meet the definition of "durable" (section e).

The urge to blame the user and deny responsibility played out in his facial expression.

A battle raged within him. He could continue to play the shyster but it was risky. First my partner had cursed him out and then I came at him with legalities.

I proceeded to show him the section of the Act about the remedies of either a refund or replacement. I said I preferred a replacement.

Finally he gave in.

"We don't normally do this sort of thing but since its Christmas..."

"Whatever you need to do to tell yourself to get on the same page as me," I thought.

He took me to the window display of carved pounamu and brought out more selections for my perusal.

We found common ground in our praise for greenstone and those who carved it.

I had won but there was no need to rub it in.

I picked out a beautiful manaia and finally went home a happy customer.