How Rude...?

Before moving to Copenhagen, I read a lot of accounts from foreigners living here who complained that the Danes were rude.  I argue that "rudeness" is highly relative.  How rude the Danes seem depends a lot on how friendly your home town is.

My home town?  Not especially friendly.  Let me describe it a little bit...

I grew up in a suburb north of New York City.  It's close enough that folks who work in NYC can buy homes and commute to work.  It's got its pockets of less well-off areas, but overall the whole county has a good bit of money.  And one thing that I've learned from having lived in both poor and wealthy cities is that folks with lots of money don't always feel the need to be friendly.  Conversely, when I lived in Buffalo, NY, which is known for being almost as poor as Detroit, I found that almost everyone I met was open and friendly.

So now, let me compare waitstaff and retail workers in my hometown to the same here in Copenhagen.  Back home, most of them are teenagers and 20-somethings.  It's tough to make enough money making minimum wage or collecting tips to afford a place to live there, so a lot of them are still living with parents. Think back to yourself as an awkward teenager or disgruntled 20-something, and imagine trying to put a smile on your face and be friendly to a bunch of folks your parents' age who make more money than you.  So, you'd tend to get service that was lackluster, to say the least.  Here in Copenhagen, people live a fairly private life, even when in public.  Interacting with strangers on a daily basis doesn't come easily to a lot of Danes.  That being said, even the folks working in restaurants or in retail shops make a living wage here, so they tend to be less irritated about having to be at work.

Sure, the waiters don't work for tips here, which means they don't feel the need to put in the extra effort to be nice.  But what that also means is that when they are nice, it's much more genuine.  And let's be honest, the tip money doesn't help the kids back home working at the local diner to be especially friendly.

I can certainly see how coming from a town where everyone's fairly nice to everyone else can make the Danes seem cold to the point of rudeness, but I've found that folks here are usually as nice to us as we are to them.  They don't take terribly kindly to being talked down to, as they have a culture that says that everyone should be on the same level, but my experience has been that when I'm smiling and kind to waitstaff and shop workers, they're pretty much always as smiling and kind right back.

Shuffling Off to Buffalo

I'm sitting in the JetBlue terminal at Boston Logan International Airport, waiting patiently for my short flight to Buffalo.

I'm sort of fascinated by airports.  Before last year, I never really spent much time in them.  In fact, before last year, I hadn't flown at all since 2001.  It wasn't a 9/11 related break from flying.  Just circumstance.

They're like casinos.  Little self-contained citied that try to make you feel at home, but completely miss the mark.  For example, there's a Boston themed bar at the Copenhagen airport.  Who decided that was going to be a big draw for Danes or folks traveling in Denmark?

And I always get flustered going through security, but only because I feel like I need an extra set of hands to get all of my stuff into the little buckets, and then to get them back out in time to avoid pissing off everyone behind me.  I imagine frequent flyers have that whole thing down to an art, but I certainly don't.

Now that I'm at the gate, though, and only have to sit and wait for boarding, I've started to get a bit nostalgic.  I'm heading to Buffalo for what might be the last time for a while.  Buffalo is one of the places I've lived that always felt like home.  The people are nice, there's always something to do, and with such a depressed economy, everything is reasonably priced.

This trip is a special one.  Yes, it's my bachelorette party weekend, but I see it as a bittersweet goodbye to a city that has meant a lot to me.

The Time That I Walked Out

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from my mother.  The subject line said "You have to see this..."

In the email was this link.

You may have heard the story on the news or read about it in the New York Times, where it originally broke.  Or maybe you even saw it mentioned on The Daily Show.  Pictures from a Halloween party at a foreclosure law firm outside of Buffalo, NY where the employees are dressed up as homeless people and mocking people who are going through foreclosure. 

It was a horrifying story, but that wasn't the only reason I was sent that article. 

The truth is, I used to work at that law firm.  Back in 2003 and 2004, I worked in their reinstatement and payoff department.  For a while, I was able to convince myself that since I was ultimately working to help people bring their homes out of foreclosure, that I somehow wasn't as involved in ruining the lives of so many people.

But that lie only lasted so long.  In December of 2004, I walked out.

I've never once regretted it.

Now it turns out that banks all over New York are pulling their business from the firm, and the firm is issuing layoff notices and shutting down.

I don't wish ill on any of the people laid off, as it's tough enough to find work as it is, let alone in Buffalo these days.  And having that job on their resume isn't likely to do them any favors.

But at the same time, there is a level of justice in having it end the way that it did.

Sometimes, instead of helping you rise to the top, being horrible to people will ruin your career.