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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

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The ‘Purple Corkscrew Ladies’ Steffini Bethea and Racquel McCreary Are Creating a Community Haven for Atlanta Wine Lovers

Steffini Bethea is the founder and owner of the Purple Corkscrew Wine Shop & Tasting Room in Avondale Estates, Ga. She’s also a former Democratic nominee for Georgia State Representative who left her political aspirations (along with a former career in pharmaceutical sales) behind to pursue her dream of building a career in wine. In the spring of 2012, she realized that dream when she opened the Purple Corkscrew.

One year later, during a visit to the wine store, Racquel McCreary, now wine manager of the Purple Corkscrew, recognized that Bethea was doing something unlike anyone else in the Atlanta area at the time. She believed in Bethea’s vision for the Purple Corkscrew and wanted to assist her in building a wine business greater than any other in the area. Bethea hired McCreary as wine manager in 2014, and both business and friendship have grown since then.

With the help of a dedicated team of wine professionals on staff, Bethea and McCreary have created a community haven for wine enthusiasts of all levels. The part wine store, part tasting room serves as a popular lounge space for the surrounding community, offering a place to discover a new bottle of wine while indulging in a glass of your favorite; a place to prepare a presentation, or read a book, or simply unwind after a long day at work.

Whether patrons have questions regarding charcuterie pairings, up-and-coming grower wine brands, or wine tariffs (both are in strong support of reversing the current tariffs on wine), Bethea and McCreary have a knowledgeable and informed answer. Follow along as Bethea and McCreary (a.k.a. the “Purple Corkscrew Ladies,” or simply “the Purple Ladies,” says McCreary) share top strategies for running a successful wine shop, their experiences as women in the wine business, and who their dream drinking partners would be.

1. Steffini, why did you decide to open a wine shop?

Years ago, my mom and I took a trip to Spain to explore and drink wine. During this trip, I fell in love with Tempranillo. That was the first varietal I had really experienced outside of the noble grapes. I loved it so I kept trying different varieties, seeking out more wines and tasting opportunities in order to grow and develop my palate. You know what? I really enjoyed it! Eventually, my husband sat me down and said, “Listen, if you’re going to drink this much wine, you have to figure out a way to make money doing this.” Well, I knew that I loved wine but I just wasn’t sure about which direction to take within the industry.

2. That’s quite a story. Did you have any previous experience in the wine industry?

I had a career in pharmaceutical sales but was laid off. After deciding that I wanted to open a wine bar, I got a job at a wine shop here in Atlanta. Soon after, I convinced the owner to let me run the wine bar. I worked hard, studied wine, and anything I didn’t know. … Well, let’s just say Google was my best friend. I did that for several months before I felt it was time to step out on my own. I don’t know if I was smart or stupid but I found a spot and just went for it. So just for laughs, I enjoy telling people, “I went from selling drugs to selling wine.”

3. Racquel, how did you step into your role as wine manager of the Purple Corkscrew?

I was a member of a local group named “The Sipping Sisters.” Every first Saturday of the month, we would meet somewhere new and immerse ourselves in wine. I found out about a new wine shop opening called the Purple Corkscrew and chose the location as our monthly meeting location. It was just a great and wonderful space to experience wine!

At that time, Steffini had both an on-premise wine lounge and a retail shop adjacent to one another. She just happened to be looking to hire someone to run the retail wine shop part-time while her business partner was on maternity leave. Over time, my role transitioned into a full- time managerial role and seven years later I’m still here.

4. What has been your experience running your business in the male-dominated wine industry as Black women?

RM: Luckily for us, in Atlanta, the retail wine and wine-bar business is fueled by women. As a matter of fact, being two of the few Black women in this business in metro Atlanta, we stand out. You may not remember our names but people always remember the “Purple Corkscrew Ladies” or simply “the Purple Ladies.” Whether we are talking to a winemaker, attending a trade show, meeting with a distributor or traveling the world, once people realize that our wine knowledge is solid, we suddenly become less of a novelty and more like kindred spirits in the wine arena.

SB: Being two of a few Black women in the retail wine industry has had its challenges. Sometimes we’d be the only Black people at the trade shows, and it would be so hard to get the attention of the winemakers, our wine reps would have to step in and make introductions … and it’s not like that for others in the room. We would face some of the same challenges when dealing with distributors. We’ve had distributors bring us what they thought we should have versus what we wanted. This year we’ve been offered allocations of wines that we were not offered previously. So basically, I think our greatest challenge has been getting people to take us seriously.

5. What is one of the greatest lessons you’ve learned when it comes to the relationship between a distributor and a retail wine business?

SB: In order to be taken seriously by distributors, you have to be excellent in sales. Our distributors and suppliers recognize our growth and knowledge and our strength in sales, which has translated into access to greater wine choices and allocations. This didn’t happen instantly. Women have to work harder than our counterparts, and as Black women, we have to work even harder still. It has taken years to gain the respect and consideration of distributors, but we are wine buyers and we know wine. People tend to take us much more seriously these days.

6. What tools or strategies have you found work well for you two in business?

SB: Knowing this business and continuously learning. Fostering positive relationships with suppliers, winemakers and our clients. Developing good relationships with the delivery drivers. They actually have helped us tremendously because through them we know what’s being delivered across town. We get information on new wines on the market, how many cases are being sold or allocated. Because of this we now know what to ask for and/or order for the store.

RM: I believe being hospitable and being able to read our customers are both our secret weapons. While we would love to sell the more expensive bottles of wine, it’s more important that we recommend a good wine that closely matches a customer’s needs. Also, organizing the store in an easy-to-shop format. Old World, New World, and Bubbles. This also makes it easier to explain the wine’s nuances to the customer as well.

7. Owning a wine shop is hard work and certainly not for the faint of heart. Can you name a few small yet often overlooked details that may contribute to a wine shop’s success?

RM: Impeccable stemware, a good playlist and a very friendly staff. Glassware should be of good quality, clean/dry, free of perfumed soaps, and polished to a brilliant finish. A playlist establishes a certain vibe in the shop and if curated correctly, encourages your clients to linger and shop longer. Lastly, hiring staff that enjoy helping people and are able to read a client’s mood.

SB: When hiring, Racquel always says, “We can teach you wine, but you have to be up to the challenge of offering exceptional customer service.” There is a famous quote that says, “People may not remember what you say but they will remember how you make them feel.” This is so true, especially in this business. We also pride ourselves on establishing a great ambiance through a curated playlist. We always receive lots of compliments about our curated playlist, too. A great playlist makes all of the difference in the world in the retail business. Also, impeccable stemware goes a long way.

8. Steffini, you’ve been very active in spreading the word about the effects of tariffs on American wine businesses. What were some of your strategies for educating wine professionals and consumers? Also, how have the tariffs affected your business?

The currently enforced, as well as the threat of future tariffs, forced me to play an active role in highlighting the issue with my elected government officials. I joined a coalition and we scheduled meetings with our senators and congressmen, stressing how dangerous these tariffs were to American businesses. We mainstreamed the information and created awareness for people in the wine world. As a result of the hard work of many people, we are looking forward to the tariffs not being an issue in the upcoming months. As far as the tariffs affecting our business, we did see an increase in wine prices. We also found some wines were difficult to get, but again, with the new administration in D.C., we are feeling very optimistic.

9. Who would you love to share a glass of wine with?

SB: I’d love to sit along the Seine River and share a bottle of wine with James Baldwin.

RM: I would love to share a bottle of wine with Langston Hughes. The rhythm of his words are akin to wine swirling in a glass.

10. What does the future hold for the Purple Corkscrew? Any big plans you’d like to share?

SB: We’ve got big plans and there are so many great things coming up for us. I don’t want to say too much right now, so you guys will just have to stay tuned. We’re feeling great about our future because our wildest dreams are coming true.

The article The ‘Purple Corkscrew Ladies’ Steffini Bethea and Racquel McCreary Are Creating a Community Haven for Atlanta Wine Lovers appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/purple-corkscrew-wine-shop-atlanta/

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johnboothus · 3 years

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The Purple Corkscrew Ladies Steffini Bethea and Racquel McCreary Are Creating a Community Haven for Atlanta Wine Lovers

1. Steffini, why did you decide to open a wine shop?

2. That’s quite a story. Did you have any previous experience in the wine industry?

3. Racquel, how did you step into your role as wine manager of the Purple Corkscrew?

4. What has been your experience running your business in the male-dominated wine industry as Black women?

5. What is one of the greatest lessons you’ve learned when it comes to the relationship between a distributor and a retail wine business?

6. What tools or strategies have you found work well for you two in business?

7. Owning a wine shop is hard work and certainly not for the faint of heart. Can you name a few small yet often overlooked details that may contribute to a wine shop’s success?

9. Who would you love to share a glass of wine with?

SB: I’d love to sit along the Seine River and share a bottle of wine with James Baldwin.

RM: I would love to share a bottle of wine with Langston Hughes. The rhythm of his words are akin to wine swirling in a glass.

10. What does the future hold for the Purple Corkscrew? Any big plans you’d like to share?

The article The ‘Purple Corkscrew Ladies’ Steffini Bethea and Racquel McCreary Are Creating a Community Haven for Atlanta Wine Lovers appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/purple-corkscrew-wine-shop-atlanta/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/the-purple-corkscrew-ladies-steffini-bethea-and-racquel-mccreary-are-creating-a-community-haven-for-atlanta-wine-lovers

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northamptoncouplestherapy · 3 years

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Psychologists Drs. John and Julie Gottman of The Gottman Institute separate couples into two major groups: the “masters” and the “disasters.” Masters remain happily together, while disasters either break up or are chronically unhappy. In Masters of Love, couples share thoughts about marriage and tell us what they have learned along the way.

Dan from Seattle, Washington met Nancy from Fort Worth, Texas in the fall of 1971 on Orientation Day at Richmond College in a suburb of London, England, where the two were studying abroad. They were married two years later.

After living in the Pacific Northwest for 26 years, they joined the State Department, which took them to nine separate tours of duty across five continents in 18 years. Today, Dan (69) and Nancy (69) are retired and live in Seattle, WA. They have two adult sons, Robert (31) and Michael (29).

We asked them about how they met, how they decided to live abroad, what the most rewarding and challenging aspects were, and their best advice for couples living overseas.

On their first meeting

Dan: We met on Orientation Day at Richmond College in a suburb of London, England, in the fall of 1971. We were both enrolled in a Junior-year-abroad program that had students from throughout the United States. We were both working part time. Nancy was going to work for a family as an au-pair in central London, and my roommate, Jim, and I were the program’s mini-bus drivers. We asked Nancy and another young woman from Texas to join us at a riverside pub that evening. It didn’t take long into the conversation before Nancy and I connected as if we were long-lost friends.

We connected at a basic value level that allowed me to feel completely safe in our conversation, and I was sharing feelings, hopes, and fears that I had never shared with anyone. We were together from that evening, although I tried to put up walls to avoid a commitment to her (and my own feelings). We continued to fall deeper in love the more we discovered about each other.

As a right-brain person and introvert, I love leading groups, but keep individuals at a distance. Nancy has a full spectrum of left-brain skills including math and science, organization, and planning. She is very extroverted, has no fear of mixing in new groups, and develops close friendships. We have found that we are an amazing, decisive team when we respect our different “lanes” in getting things done together.

Nancy: Dan was very talkative and sharp. We were immediately comfortable with each other and on our first date and we shared our secrets openly. We bonded and trusted each other immediately. We came together with core values in common, but our interests, skills, and abilities could not have been more different.

I believe opposites do attract. The Gottmans talks about how it’s not who you are or what you do that will help you find “the one.” Rather, it’s how you speak to each other, how well you get along, and how you move through time together. After 50 years together, we couldn’t agree more.

On deciding to live abroad

Dan: We met overseas, each with the intention to live and study in London for the school year. Nancy then returned home to live with her parents for the summer and work in her parent’s church. I stayed and worked for the college in London and made money to allow me to spend three weeks in the Soviet Union with a small British student group (I had taken Russian in high school). We each returned to school in the United States in the fall—me in Seattle and Nancy in Green Bay.

Our relationship endured the distance and the time apart, but after the first term back at school, I asked Nancy to come to Seattle and marry me. I was nervous and fumbled the proposal badly over the phone, but she said yes and I drove to her parent’s home to meet them at Christmas and brought her back to Seattle.

We were married 10 weeks later and three months after that accepted an offer to move back to London for a year and work for the college we attended. We saw this offer as an opportunity to travel more in the UK and on the European continent while having a place to live and flexible jobs to support ourselves financially. We loved the couple that we would be working for.

After this second year in London, we continued to travel overseas on vacations, but lived in apartments and houses in Washington State and Oregon that were close to various schools we attended and jobs we held. After 15 years of marriage, we decided to start a family. We had two boys a few years apart and they became part of our overseas travel adventures.

When they were both in elementary school, the state of Oregon passed a massive property tax rollback that slashed school funding. Nancy was doing her student teaching, having completed coursework for a Master’s Degree in teaching. At the same time, the business we had owned for 15 years was in the middle of a technology shift and we had decided to sell the assets. We agreed it was time to leave Oregon.

We went to London where Nancy interviewed for teaching jobs in International Schools, and I sat for the State Department Foreign Service Officer Exam. The process was long and involved, but when offered a position with the State Department that required relocating to Washington, D.C. in six weeks, we said yes, then went to work to get it done.

Nancy: I remember as a middle school student in Fort Worth, Texas dreaming of living in other countries and of working in different jobs for a year or so. My father was an armchair traveler who read and watched TV specials about other countries, music, and art. My High School French Teacher led a group of students to France and I went with her when I was 16.

Dan and I lived in London for two years at the beginning of our relationship and traveled around the world many years before joining the State Department after 26 years of marriage. We joined the State Department after deciding to sell our business and I had finished a Master’s Degree in teaching.

We were at a turning point of looking at new opportunities and breaking away from our life in Portland, Oregon. We decided that we wanted to show our two sons a larger world than Portland offered us. We have moved 25 times in almost 50 years together, including nine times in 18 years with the State Department.

On the rewards of living abroad

Dan: As a couple, there are huge rewards to be gained by stepping outside your comfort zone and learning new things, not only about the local culture and people, but about yourself and each other as you face new challenges. Tourists never get the chance to burrow into local peoples’ lives, compare differences in the way we look at the world.

For our sons, it was a chance for them to begin to realize all the things we have at home that we take for granted as normal: clean drinking water, electricity that runs all day, schools for all kids, good hospitals, ambulances, fire hydrants and fire trucks, flush toilets, and toilet paper (and what it was like to do without some of those things). For Nancy and I, rewards included learning to cook and eat new foods, attending ceremonies like weddings, church services, funerals, and local holiday celebrations, listening to local music and dances. Looking back at the US from abroad, through local eyes—discussing world events through a local lens.

Finally, sharing these experiences with each other, encouraging each other to keep learning, because at the same time it is exciting, it could also be exhausting.

Nancy: The most rewarding aspect to me was the interesting people and cultures that we learned about and the relationships that we developed. I love to learn new things and living abroad gave me that opportunity constantly.

On the challenges of living abroad

Dan: Managing the stress of constantly adjusting to new ways of getting things done. Each home leave we would disembark and welcome each other back “to the land where things work.” As much as we complain, the United States works. Customer service, efficiency, product quality, endless public services, fire departments, and ambulances that take you on good roads to a decent hospital.

In so many countries, life is just much harder. Expats living abroad typically have the resources to secure items they need or want through the mail if they are not available locally, but in many countries basic services are lacking or simply don’t exist. Government corruption can lead to many services being available only to those that pay a bribe. Public safety on the streets, safe construction of buildings, roads and electrical systems can be sketchy at best. The challenge is to get to know your complete environment and all its limitations. Always be prepared for the unexpected.

Always be prepared for the unexpected. When the unexpected happens, and it will, that is when the trust, mutual respect, and good communication skills you have built as a couple is a lifesaver. The challenges will test your bond as a couple. Having the right tools to fall back on will help turn the challenging times to ones of growth for your relationship.

Nancy: Keeping our family and work life balanced and making sure that all of us had the resources and support that we needed through the constant changing environment.

There can also be a lack of support of family and friends when you need them. The guilt and sadness weighs on you when you miss important events at home, like weddings and birthdays of loved ones, or worse, funerals and memorial services. I lost my mom when we were on our first overseas tour. Dan lost two of his three brothers and a sister-in-law while in Okinawa, a brother-in-law while in Geneva, and a sister while in Kigali. Those losses were so much harder when not surrounded by loved ones.

Their advice for couples living abroad

Dan: Our relationship faced different pressures in Geneva than it did in Abidjan or Kabul, and still different in Okinawa. In every environment, however, what we learned from the work of John Gottman was the importance of “fighting fair” as a multitude of stresses affected our day-to-day lives.

Ultimately, it comes down to treating each other with love and respect, even when we disagree. We had to learn the skills to resist the defensive reactions and simply listen, and to not discount each other’s feelings. We’re always on the same team.

Nancy: Constant change can be exhausting, but can build on the bonds in a marriage if you work on every transition together—always looking for solutions that meet each of your needs. The effort itself strengthens the lines of communication and builds trust and mutual respect, both elements that allow love in a relationship to thrive.

When two people have very different ways of approaching problems, you each have to respect and allow the other person’s approach. And even the best laid out plans can have different results than expected. You have to continue to work together without judgement and blame when things don’t turn out.

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At NCCT, our licensed experts offer 100% secure online couples therapy for couples living outside the United States. Click here to learn more and book a free consultation session today.

Like what you’ve read? Sign up to receive my musings filled with heart, concrete tools, and cutting edge resources via my blog: Loving Well.

#couples therapy

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dippedanddripped · 4 years

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With so many direct to consumer brands out there, launching one seems like something anyone can do.

However, founding and building a company comes with many challenges that can spur rushed, oftentimes ill-advised decisions. While in hindsight the mistakes made can seem easily avoidable, startup founders say that making them helped eventually steer them in the right direction. This can include the commonplace lapse in judgment of taking on too many roles at the company or choosing the wrong fulfillment strategy.

These are six stories, edited and condensed for clarity, about the missteps DTC founders made early on in building their respective company.

Parisa Fowles-Pazdro, founder and CEO of Max-Bone From the day that I launched Max-Bone in 2016, I have had an incredibly clear vision for the company. In the early days, my vision and overwhelming passion for the brand that I was building led me to take on too much work for myself. Over the years, I’ve grown to recognize that one of my biggest mistakes in the beginning was not delegating enough work to my team. It’s critical to recognize that no one can scale a successful business on their own. At Max-Bone, one of the things that I am most proud of is building a team that is really committed to our goals. Hiring employees that I can trust to uphold our brand’s values and mission made delegating an easier process for me. This helped me recognize that we would never experience the exponential growth that we have achieved thus far without it.

Krishna Kaliannan, founder and CEO of Catalina Crunch The biggest mistake I made was thinking that “bigger is always better” when it came to co-manufacturers. The first company we worked with to package our Catalina Crunch Keto cereal was the largest food packager in the USA. These guys package over one million bags of product each day. We were a young company with lower volumes at the time, and soon they decided to part ways with us. That was a painful lesson, and I considered shutting down the business right then and there. But stubborn as I was, I then decided to set up a manufacturing plant from scratch myself, so we did not have to rely on anyone else. This was extremely hard to do, but it paid off.

Jessica Honegger, founder and co-CEO of Noonday Collection By 2015, Noonday Collection was growing at a record-setting rate and we were having trouble keeping our best sellers in stock. While this sounds like a great problem to have, we responded by placing record-high orders with our artisan business partners, followed by additional large orders placed in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season. We also launched a new company website and changed some of our policies. As a result, we were sitting on excess inventory to the tune of $1 million. Panic set in and we decided to take out a line of credit to prevent a cash crunch and give our stakeholders time to plan for handling the situation. By the end of the summer, the overstocked inventory became a full-on crisis. Rumors were spreading through our artisans and ambassadors, and they were losing faith in Noonday. Instead of running from the problem, we decided to be transparent with everyone and it worked. We set up a conference call to share our go-forward plan with everyone, which helped band everyone together and become stronger as a community. This moment was pivotal in growing Noonday Collection and its impact across the globe, and we couldn’t have done it alone. We really are better together, even when relationships get hard.

Jordynn Wright, co-founder of Insert Name Here When you first start building a brand it can be overwhelming to think of all the core structures and processes you need to build out and implement. I found myself obsessing over the nitty-gritty of getting exactly the right copy and exactly the right imagery for things like email flows, social posts, etc. A couple months in, on round three or four of reworks, I realized that in reality my perfectionism was only creating missed opportunities. Something live was better than having nothing live. My going forward approach has been: “Just get it up and then you can refine and optimize afterwards.” Done is often better than perfect.

Jon Bostock, co-founder and CEO of Truman’s We launched Truman’s a year ago with the goal of simplifying the cleaning industry, which until now was a mess of confusing products, single-use plastic bottles and fragmented brands. In deciding how to approach customer service, we had to guess whether consumers were conditioned to not ask questions or whether they were just waiting for someone to listen. Considering cleaning to be essentially self-serve and certainly a rather unemotional industry, my co-founder Alex Reed and I decided to tackle customer service ourselves. We were so wrong. Within just a few weeks, customer inquiries became so demanding that it consumed all of our time, and keep in mind we had started with just a customer service email address and social network accounts. When we later turned on our website’s live chat feature, we were inundated by even more customer questions, covering everything from ingredients to how to clean the messiest of messes.

That feedback has been valuable in helping refine our products. In hindsight, we would have gathered more of it from the start by having a full customer service team on-hand at launch and also done a better job integrating the many ways we talk with customers into a single technology suite. In less than a year, we’ve had nearly 20,000 conversations with customers across live chat, social media, email and every avenue imaginable. We aim for each one to be helpful but, above all, authentic. We got into the cleaning industry because it needed real faces and voices, but we made the mistake of underestimating just how many consumers craved the same.

Ann McFerran, founder of Glamnetic The biggest mistake I made along the way was not delegating quicker. I was so used to doing everything by myself since I started Glamnetic from the ground up. I was the only employee in the company for the first five months, working 24/7. At the point, I was doing everything from taking product shots and editing them, to running social, to customer service and product development. All this, even when I was doing $500,000 a month in sales. At that point, I realized I was just being stubborn. I needed to work smarter, not harder. That’s when I also realized it’s ok to invest in help and relinquish control for the sake of not only your sanity, but your headspace in thinking of the bigger picture and scaling. Being self-aware and a fierce delegator is vitally important in scaling a brand.

Nicole Staple, co-founder of Brideside Upon closing Brideside’s Series A, I wish someone had told me to go slow before I could go fast. By that, I mean: prioritize people investments for scale as emphatically as you prioritize pure growth investments. In the past nine months, we have doubled the size of our team, expanded the business into several new physical showrooms and accelerated our private label bridal gown and bridesmaid dress collections. With that comes the first-hand experience of understanding that people investments take money, time, executive focus and are critical in unlocking your team’s potential to sprint. The return is exponential if you scale with a team that feels cultural passion and belonging.

#dtc #direct to consumer #streetwear brands #fashion blog #streetwear blog #business

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colorguardian10 · 7 years

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Response to Mike Rose’s “Blue-Collar Brilliance”

I said I wouldn’t share this if another post didn’t show enough interest, but @yoursinfulsister asked to see it and I didn’t really need a strong excuse anyway.

For my Writing Seminar course, we were supposed to write a five-page response to this article. He wrote about how a lot of workers in low-class jobs are considered to not have intelligence, and about how it’s a gross misconception. I recommend reading it for the full context of this paper. Here was my response to his article:

Mike Rose speaks on the concept of most jobs fitting into one of two categories: the intellectual or “white-collar”, and the physical or “blue-collar”. Hearing these groups, examples come to mind: accountants, lawyers, teachers propped up against steelworkers, construction workers, or plumbers. We immediately categorize work differently in order to treat it differently. I’m not sure my first job could have been a more fitting example of this divide.

While I was in high school, my school district decided to try something new. Every student is given a laptop assigned to them to help with schoolwork and develop technology literacy skills, and every summer, they hire a few professionals to deal with the hundreds and hundreds of computers needing maintenance over the break. This year, they planned to hire a handful of mildly tech-savvy, and cheap, students instead. They also knew that they were short on janitors for cleaning each building while the students were out.

So, in the main library, applications were put out: you simply checked which of the two positions you were applying for, why you wanted to work there, and how many hours you would be available.

This turned out to be a grave mistake on their part. For starters, through some form of miscommunication, 12 “technology interns” were hired for the five open slots. For another, not a single person applied to be a janitor. Having relied on a boost of students to fill out their gaps, they were now even more short-staffed than before.

A solution was reached: the interns would rotate between the job they had applied for, and being janitors, to help even out the balance in each. Anyone unwilling to accept this could leave. (One quit, one threatened to sue for the position, and an additional two were later fired for committing crimes at work.) As much as I wasn’t happy with the arrangement, I knew that the administration was doing its best in an unusual situation, and certainly preferred it to not having a job at all. I stayed.

Working as an intern was repetitive, but concerningly easy. Our first task was to update the software on every laptop in the school and set up the school’s network (a process called “imaging”), which required first wiping them of personal data as a matter of policy. We simply had to memorize a series of hotkeys and administrator passwords and wash, rinse, repeat. All the interns of the day did for weeks was sit at a desk with two or three laptops in front of them:

ctrl + alt + D / ctrl + alt + D / ctrl + alt + D

Are you sure you want to reset to factory defaults? If so, provide credentials and press enter:

qu@k3r / qu@k3r / qu@k3r

Do you wish to download the latest software?

yes / yes / yes

You are using a private network. Please log in as a network administrator to continue:

qu@k3r# / qu@k3r# / qu@k3r#

Put them back in the computer carts, pick up three more from the “unimaged” cart. Repeat.

Certainly, it required basic computer skills, but it was pretty obvious why they didn’t bother to ask for previous experience on the form. Later, we were tasked with fixing broken hardware, which at least required the ability to unscrew the casing, identify and replace sensitive parts, and put the casing back on in one piece.

On the other hand, being a janitor was exhausting. Every summer, the entirety of every single building is cleaned from top to bottom: every desk, every chair, ceilings, walls, and cabinets alike. Furniture has to be removed so that all floors can get a new layer of wax. Outside maintenance is done, too. I was spared by only having to fill cracks in the tennis court with wet asphalt in the summer sun for just a few days. I was “accidentally” placed in the rotation for twice as much time as any other intern, though, so maybe not. I became very familiar with Laura, my immediate supervisor in this department.

I said it was exhausting. This was in part due to the fact that they were still short-staffed, and a quarter filled with unwilling teenagers to boot. I never got to stop. We had our 30-minute lunch break and two exactly-fifteen-minute breaks. The other eight hours were nonstop, moving, scrubbing, mixing solutions, lifting desks and slate tables, carefully picking up lamps, and putting everything back exactly how the teachers left it - they might complain about having to shift the desks again, I was told. Third floor to bottom floor, stripping the wax floors and re-waxing every room and hallway as we went. I could barely even interact with my family when I got back home from how mind-numbing it was on top of barely being able to move. I was given the “easy” jobs because I was young, and a student, and the other workers didn’t want me to “break something”. Laura had been working at my school longer than either of my parents have been alive. Despite this, I had never even heard of her.

My personal experience would support the notion that jobs come either physically taxing or mentally taxing (or perhaps physically or not at all). I might even have argued against Rose’s claims that they’re not so divided, but I have the sense to see that my examples are pretty far on either end of the spectrum, and that one came with very different pressures than the other. I know that the majority of “physical” jobs, such as a waitress like Rose’s mother, do require mental effort as well as physical.

Mike Rose mentions the complexities of something as externally simple as taking orders, one of many basic skills of a waitress - “Waiting on seven to nine tables, each with two to six customers, Rosie devised memory strategies so that she could remember who ordered what. And because she knew the average time it took to prepare different dishes, she could monitor an order that was taking too long at the service station.” (47) He goes on at length about the massive cleverness needed to keep your head on straight in the restaurant business.

Even being a janitor, which I’ve already stressed the physical effort of, came with its tips and tricks: solution #20 for the desks and the walls, #8 for the windows, but dab some #16 on first for stickers. Zizz-O® gets off permanent marker and mop in that white gunk to strip the floors – but if you actually touch it head straight for the chemical shower. And by the way, pour in some extra #20 in your bucket, here’s a bottle we popped with a screwdriver - the mixing machine dilutes it too much.

You might take Rose’s statements and counter that, obviously, waitressing must be a strange exception that really requires knowledge rather than endurance. He prefaces these remarks by describing her additional efforts simply navigating the restaurant, describing her as walking “full tilt through the room with plates stretching up her left arm and two cups of coffee somehow cradled in her right hand” and “weaving in and out around the room” when not holding dishes as a constant part of her work, “flopping” into a booth to take a break with him (Rose 46).

However, while I do solidly agree with Rose’s argument that the perceived division of jobs is untrue, I do not agree with the way he makes it. He states that physical jobs include a mental aspect as a way of giving them value. I believe they should deserve it regardless. Certainly my experience would suggest giving even more respect to physical work.

I do not agree with the notion of intelligence garnering respect, and the corresponding notion that roles not requiring it are not worth respect. To again apply it to Rose’s thinking, I agree that jobs are often divided into mental and physical, but I believe that this is an applied devaluing of jobs in the latter rather than a quirky misconception with side effects. Work not requiring a formal education is frequently devalued based on not requiring “intelligence”. Rose applies this to waitresses and argues that they deserve respect by showing that they need smarts to do their job well. I believe that he is trying to rise something up with an idea used to bring it down, and accepting his argument completely, to me, simply leads to the same problem he is addressing - just for other people.

The superintendent told us we might be getting paid less while janitors - for the same qualifications, for the same hours, technically even for the same job title! Why? Because it was “unskilled work”. So what kind of “skills” are we really talking about when considering pay scales? Rarity of required skills, and compensation of effort in gaining said skills, may be one factor, but who decided that removing an LCD screen was harder than removing an entire classroom? While certainly some work is worth more than others, efforts to funnel money out of working people’s hands has only been hitting those least able to get it back, resulting in a drastically unfair imbalance. Instead of trying to help each other, our society climbs over each other to get at the precious “fair” work left, and people who can’t compete with one-dimensional standards get work that’s even less valued. It’s not about “skills” or “effort” at all. It’s about your rung on the ladder.

Rose does make good points. He clearly shows through his examples that stereotyped categories of work (he also includes “pink-collar” or creative/empathetic work in his comparisons) are defective and out of touch. He gives examples of foremen and waitresses having aspects that obviously contradict the social divide. He even admits that intelligence doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with formal education – and then says that many jobs require intelligence even if they don’t require formal education. Even Rose can’t seem to separate himself from the root problem enough to denounce it. Most likely he is not conscious of this – few people knowingly perpetuate issues – but that doesn’t mean that I can suddenly agree with the underlying notion.

I believe that we should hold ourselves accountable when we notice ourselves keeping harmful ideas alive, at the most basic levels we can. That means, yes, don’t belittle work based on the perceived intelligence needed, but it also means don’t belittle work based on the actual intelligence needed. The original purpose of jobs and specialized work is so that everyone can provide for the needs of the populace. Roles are needed because no one can be their own doctor, and banker, and cook, and technician, and janitor. People simply can’t independently fulfill their own needs in modern society. We work to help each other. If someone is working in a position socially lower than you, then they are doing you a service. Respect them.

“Respect them.” What does that even mean? I know what I think that looks like, but I grew up in a rich neighborhood. I have more concrete examples of what respect for workers doesn’t mean. Do you remember Laura? I never even knew she existed until I had met her. When people are giving their time and effort for the sole purpose of making your life easier, we should appreciate that. Instead, we say these roles are “insignificant” or “low-level” and push them under the rug.

Have you ever had to wait in line at a fast-food restaurant because the service is slow? Think about this instead: the people behind that wall are working even harder than normal. Service isn’t being slow, demand is simply too high to keep up with. You have to stand still for a few minutes. They can’t stand still until everyone in there is gone, and probably haven’t for a while. I know far too many people who take a situation like this and complain, or leave pitiful tips. After all, you had to wait a long time to receive food you normally don’t have to wait for. To me, it always seemed that it meant the people serving you are doing an even better job working to fulfill your needs.

Part of recognizing that all roles aren’t divided into definite categories, as Rose and I argue against, is recognizing that work also can’t be categorized into quantifiable worth. The person making your Starbucks, the person making your sandwich, and the person wiping your floors are all working at least as hard as you are, and to your direct benefit. Treat them as such.

You may disagree with my earlier ideas, that work exists to help others. Isn’t everyone just working to provide for themselves? That’s how American society at least frames it. Rose shows his mother acting very differently. He says that many customers came in with a desire for human contact, and describes how she changed her behavior to suit that. Though he also says it was all to get a higher tip, this is an outlook we disagreed on from the beginning. One of the founding principles of a capitalistic society is that everyone has to compete to “earn” their right to live freely. And so, payment is phrased as points in some great unwinnable game and not as acknowledgement for doing your part. This is where the faults lie. We can’t ever be compensated properly when our compensation doesn’t treat our work as work. Beyond that fact, not everyone can “compete”. Certainly not everyone can compete in a system where your worth is measured by a singular quality. Waitresses have intelligence? Great. Why weren’t they respectable without it?

Again, I wish to state that Rose made a valid argument. I saw his article as halfway to getting at the true problem, but for many his view may be the first time they’ve seen it that way. I can think of a couple people back in my rich neighborhood who could have used the worker’s perspective. Maybe the girl who rented a stadium for her birthday, or my mother, who thinks that most of the janitors made minimum wage because they’re too lazy to get a degree. She can carry the accursed solid slate chem room tables for decades - then she can tell me what “lazy” is.

My experiences may be extreme, and my views radical. But I said above that it is necessary to prevent ourselves from perpetuating harmful ideals. That includes calling these ideas out when we see them. I know that the teenagers typing in passwords were placed at a higher worth than the full-grown adults working themselves to death. I saw Mike Rose’s criticism of a system that put those two forms of work on different pedestals, and I wanted to express what I meant by saying that this divide is unfair. Seeing so-called “white-collar” and “blue-collar” workers in different lenses is something we should recognize, and we should also recognize why we made that divide. Rose argued how inaccurate this difference is, and I argue that the difference shouldn’t even exist.

#this is phrased kind of like it was a learning experience but I was already aware of this kind of shit I just hadn't strongly experienced it #it was hard to keep myself from going on a full communist rant for a while there #also I tried to avoid pointing out the fact that I had my first job at 18 lol #mine #paper #I highkey suspect that the administration was taking advantage of me being the only one being nice about it #'my views may be radical' I can't believe I let myself write that sentence lol #yoursinfulsister

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northamptoncouplestherapy · 3 years

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How One Expat Couple’s Marriage Has Survived 25 Moves in 50 Years

We asked them about how they met, how they decided to live abroad, what the most rewarding and challenging aspects were, and their best advice for couples living overseas.

On their first meeting

Dan: We met on Orientation Day at Richmond College in a suburb of London, England, in the fall of 1971. We were both enrolled in a Junior-year-abroad program that had students from throughout the United States. We were both working part time. Nancy was going to work for a family as an au-pair in central London, and my roommate, Jim, and I were the program's mini-bus drivers. We asked Nancy and another young woman from Texas to join us at a riverside pub that evening. It didn't take long into the conversation before Nancy and I connected as if we were long-lost friends.

On deciding to live abroad

Dan: We met overseas, each with the intention to live and study in London for the school year. Nancy then returned home to live with her parents for the summer and work in her parent's church. I stayed and worked for the college in London and made money to allow me to spend three weeks in the Soviet Union with a small British student group (I had taken Russian in high school). We each returned to school in the United States in the fall—me in Seattle and Nancy in Green Bay.

Our relationship endured the distance and the time apart, but after the first term back at school, I asked Nancy to come to Seattle and marry me. I was nervous and fumbled the proposal badly over the phone, but she said yes and I drove to her parent's home to meet them at Christmas and brought her back to Seattle.

When they were both in elementary school, the state of Oregon passed a massive property tax rollback that slashed school funding. Nancy was doing her student teaching, having completed coursework for a Master's Degree in teaching. At the same time, the business we had owned for 15 years was in the middle of a technology shift and we had decided to sell the assets. We agreed it was time to leave Oregon.

On the rewards of living abroad

Dan: As a couple, there are huge rewards to be gained by stepping outside your comfort zone and learning new things, not only about the local culture and people, but about yourself and each other as you face new challenges. Tourists never get the chance to burrow into local peoples' lives, compare differences in the way we look at the world.

Finally, sharing these experiences with each other, encouraging each other to keep learning, because at the same time it is exciting, it could also be exhausting.

On the challenges of living abroad

Dan: Managing the stress of constantly adjusting to new ways of getting things done. Each home leave we would disembark and welcome each other back "to the land where things work." As much as we complain, the United States works. Customer service, efficiency, product quality, endless public services, fire departments, and ambulances that take you on good roads to a decent hospital.

In so many countries, life is just much harder. Expats living abroad typically have the resources to secure items they need or want through the mail if they are not available locally, but in many countries basic services are lacking or simply don't exist. Government corruption can lead to many services being available only to those that pay a bribe. Public safety on the streets, safe construction of buildings, roads and electrical systems can be sketchy at best. The challenge is to get to know your complete environment and all its limitations. Always be prepared for the unexpected.

Nancy: Keeping our family and work life balanced and making sure that all of us had the resources and support that we needed through the constant changing environment.

Their advice for couples living abroad

*****

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