What's A Reuben Sandwich Really Made Of?

When I start out for workday lunch downtown, I am, invariably, kinda lost.

For some reason (okay, advertising and the salt on the fries and my fascination with the Mayor McCheese mascot from my north-end youth) my first thought is McDonald's in Commerce Place. But, after all these years, I am now pretty good at tranquilizing those happy thoughts. And so, I wander by, looking and remembering and weighing.

I remember that that place over there never has the salad rolls they say they have, and that other place across the way asks me mindlessly, every time, if I want a cookie with my individual pizza. As if I have ever once bought a cookie with my individual pizza.

And, so, slightly agitated by the tickingtocking clock, I end up in Manulife Place in front of Zenari's. Like today, when I walked into the din and pointed to the remaining Reuben sandwich, smiled my transactional smile and forked over a $20 bill. I got my change and said my transactional thankyous and waited for the sandwich to come out grilled from the rotational oven.

And then something else happened.

A woman who works behind the counter (not the one who took my order) asked if I was feeling better.

"Your voice?" she said, pointing to her chest.

For a half-second I was asea, but then recalled a conversation with her the week before when we had commiserated over the symptoms of the bronchitis (or whatever the hell it is is living in my throat) we shared.

"Better," I smiled. "A little better."

"It took me a month."

"I think that'll be me."

"I hope you feel better."

"Thanks."

Transactions make us lonely. No, that's not quite it. We are lonely. Not sad and lonely, but keenly aware at some level that we are alone in much of this. And I sense the truth is we don't even know what we need or what we are looking for until we receive it as a gift. Like the gift of that simple remembrance, those points connected into a line of conversation that bent into a smile.

The simple gift today was the instant the woman at Zenari's, by remembering, lifted me out of a transaction.

Today we call this the science and art of customer service. We use customer relationship software to aid our outsourced memories. We write books and plan strategies and summon great energies to transform the transaction.

But it's an old story. Only connect, said Forster. Your voice? asked the kind woman at Zenari's.

The Reuben was very good. And that cleared the way for the thought that, maybe, I wasn't even looking for a Reuben.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughed ab
Read more

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve
Read more

On the way to and from Coffee Outside

Image
I have wondered about the the flight to artifice when natural beauty is encountered. Standing in front of a mountain vista, I will routinely offer some version of, wow, it looks like a painting! Or like a postcard. Or that is just out of a movie! This morning as I pedalled in the MacKinnon Ravine the April snow felt etched onto the limbs of the trees. I have often felt dissatisfied with this transposing of the beauty out there into the key of human making.  But, maybe, painting and photography and engraving and the rest of the human arts are as natural to us, as lovely, as nature itself. Or, maybe, so entwined that it is hard to tell nature and art apart. My bicycle has certainly transported me to feelings of freedom I would not have achieved were it not a piece of technology.  Who are we, really?                                                                           At the turn at the bottom of the ravine, a plastic orange fence encircles a soggy sink
Read more