It's a Look At Me World

"Small World" in 2016, my last time at Disneyland

Fellow patrons can ruin group experiences like movies in theaters and classical music concerts. The obnoxious behavior has even spread to Disneyland. [bold added]

As the lights dim in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, the famous Paul Frees narration begins.

“Welcome, foolish mortals, to the Haunted Mansion,” he intones. “I am your host — your ghost host. Kindly step all the way in please, and make room for everyone. There’s no turning back now.”

If you are lucky, you can listen to Frees’ chilling voice as it was intended. But nine times out of 10, someone talks along, mimicking Frees’ iconic cadence. This isn’t a new phenomenon — but we’re long past the point of calling out Disney guests who selfishly do this.

No one comes to Disneyland with a dream of hearing random strangers recite voice-overs. Just because you’ve been on a ride enough times to memorize the spiel doesn’t mean others have. It’s one thing to laugh, clap or otherwise quietly enjoy an attraction. It’s quite another to become a distraction.

For some, Disneyland could be a once-in-a-lifetime trip, so you may be tainting someone’s first and only opportunity to enjoy the theme park.

Talking on rides doesn’t just extend to mimicking voice-overs. It’s been years since I’ve enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean in silence. There’s always a party in one of the rows chatting about dinner plans or catching up on Sharon’s latest dating drama. First-timers are at the mercy of regulars who apparently view the experience as a moving park bench. If your conversation can’t wait 15 minutes, you shouldn’t be getting on a ride.

On a recent trip, the group behind me — full-grown adults who had met up after work — spent the bayou scene arguing about how loud they should scream on the ride’s upcoming drop. Later, on “it’s a small world,” a dad with his kids began aggressively shifting his weight back and forth to make the boat rock. Another adult in his party laughed along as he proceeded to ruin the ride for everyone else — and model terrible behavior for the next generation of Disney guests sitting beside him.

Look at me because I know the words to "small world" or what comes next on the ride. It only takes a few bad apples to spoil the barrel.

There will be no resurgence of humility and civility, as Pride, which is often regarded as the worst of the seven deadly sins, is not only accepted but celebrated in the month of June.

It's Now Okay to be a Stiff

(Illustration: Brown Bird Designs/WSJ)

Good posture is about more than looking good; there are long-term health benefits.

Beyond basic aesthetics, good posture—an erect, balanced bearing—determines the ease and efficiency with which you move your body. Less well-known is that good posture is also essential for optimal circulation, respiration, digestion and bladder function. Increasing evidence suggests it also improves cognitive ability and enhances your mood.

Moreover, when you hold yourself upright such that no bony or soft tissue is catching, compressing or straining, it sets you up to maintain your physical fitness, freedom of movement and independence as you age. Physical therapists and geriatricians agree that a stooping posture doesn’t have to be the inevitable consequence of getting old.

And don't ignore the psychological benefits:

A 2023 analysis of posture research going back more than 20 years revealed that there is a significant bidirectional relationship between depression and a slumped posture. Another study showed that participants who maintained an upright posture while in a stressful situation reported higher self-esteem, better mood and less anxiety, compared with participants who slumped. Furthermore, better posture is thought to foster a sense of vitality and pleasure, improve cognitive performance, increase rate of speech and reduce self-absorption.

Only a small fraction of Americans sign up for military service or finishing schools. It's too bad that these institutions are regarded as passé, because their matriculants do learn good posture.

Too Much Communication, Too Little Specificity

OTOH, if they say it's an emergency
but don't self-identify, it's likely a scam.

The Two Most-Dreaded Words in a Text Conversation are "call me":

For years, people have complained about receiving “call me” texts from parents, siblings, colleagues and bosses.

Much like how generations interpret emojis differently and Apple’s tapback message reactions don’t mean the same thing to everyone, the meaning—and urgency—of “call me” isn’t consistent. If “call me” comes with a GIF or an emoji, it could mean the conversation isn’t serious. Used with a period, some may interpret it as a sign of trouble. No punctuation could indicate there’s an emergency.

The deliberate ambiguity of a texted "call me," IMHO, is a power play. The recipient is forced to call on the off chance it's an emergency:

Cindy Chang, a 48-year-old clinical health, weight-loss and wellness coach in Brooklyn, N.Y., frequently spams her 18-year-old son.

She calls him on FaceTime, texts him, and then continues to do both over and over when he doesn’t answer. She calls to find out when he’s coming home, what he wants to eat or what groceries to buy—all conversations Chang sees as important enough to warrant a call (or several).

Chang says while her son isn’t a fan of her “call me” messages, she loves them because they let her “be immature and bratty” with her son.

“I try to bring more fun and joy into our relationship even though it irritates him,” Chang says.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but this boomer sees "call me" as extremely discourteous: 1) If a call is necessary, I always initiate it and don't make the other party have to call me; 2) If I do text a phone call request, I always give a short explanation about the seriousness, i.e, "X is in the hospital" or "need to discuss dinner plans"; 3) at minimum I add at least add another word, "call me please."

I'm on so many text threads that I've turned notifications off (one reason: someone sends a picture of her kid, and 10 people respond with a love-it emoji). One benefit of being over 70: I can claim (feign) tech ignorance: "I'm sorry I didn't see your text--these phones are so complicated!"

No, Thank You (Notes)

Christmas is the season of shopping, gift-wrapping, mailing, and spending, not to mention traditional activities like church-going, caroling, tree-trimming, and card-writing. The "chore" that is among the last on the list is composing thank-you notes, which are going "the way of the horse and buggy":

Writing a thank-you note requires keeping track of who needs thanking, crafting a message that strikes the right tone, thoughtful but succinct, neither florid nor terse. To say nothing of hunting down a mailing address, buying the cards and getting the stamps.

The obligations stack up particularly high at certain life stages: 20 notes to all the kiddies who attended Ethan’s fourth birthday, holiday gifts, newborn presents.

Even Lizzie Post, etiquette maven and great-great-granddaughter of manners arbiter Emily Post, thinks that while a handwritten note can convey special effort, a texted thank you is OK in most situations. Especially within groups of friends or peers, the thank-you text has become standard and accepted, she says.

A texted thank-you? Say it ain't so, Lizzie Post. What would your great-great-grandmother say?

To be perfectly honest, there are members of our extended family that don't bother with any kind of acknowledgment--text message, phone call, voicemail, email, or otherwise.

After a couple of years of no response, we have stopped sending gifts to them. It may be a win-win: less holiday shopping for us and not receiving a present that is desired by them.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to write thank-you notes for people that send me stuff because I wouldn't feel right if I didn't do it. Yes, I'm a prisoner of my upbringing.

Persuasion by Netflix

Not your grandmother's Jane Austen: Dakota Johnson's
Anne Elliot breaks the fourth wall and holds a rabbit
throughout the film.

Still a Jane Austen neophyte, I watched Netflix' Persuasion this month. Like the screen versions of Pride and Prejudice, the movie necessarily dispenses with the nuances of the novel in order to tell the story in under two hours. If inspired to move on to the book, the viewer can then savor the subtleties of the characters as they navigate the rules of Regency society.

To get right to the point, I liked the film. It had outrageously self-absorbed characters that provided the grist for protagonist Anne Elliot's ironic observations, and the requisite Austen plot twists that provided a happy ending for most of the players.

But it's a good thing that I didn't read the reviews first. They slammed the movie because of the modern dialogue ("He's a 10" "Now we're strangers, worse than strangers, we're exes") and the 21st-century sensibility of Anne Elliot.

Here's an example of movie dialogue that would never come from the pen of Jane Austen.

[Male character]: He [Wentworth] could be an admiral some day, great service to the Crown and all that it holds dear, but instead he'd rather fart around inland for the rest of his life.

[Woman character] Oh, let the man fart where he likes.

It's obvious why diehard Austen fans ("Janeites") are outraged, but I'm not so wedded to historical authenticity. It's fiction.

A Small Gesture

(WSJ illustration)

Determined to follow the rules of business etiquette, I responded to every telephone message and letter request at the beginning of my working career.

But the 1970's were a lifetime ago, before email and telemarketing, before real and electronic in-boxes overflowed with messages from people and bots who don't know me personally. So now I don't answer every communication, but I do always call back people I know--even if the conversation may be unpleasant.

That's why it's disappointing that businesses--who supposedly adhere to higher standards than individuals--now "ghost" job applicants:

Sounds like you’ve been ghosted. Most people have heard this term in connection with social situations and online dating. Unfortunately, it is an ever-growing trend in the business world as well.

According to research, 73% of employers admit to having willfully ignored job candidates. This behavior has negative consequences not only for candidates but also for employers: A job seeker suffering from feelings of social rejection—and who likely missed opportunities to interview for other positions while waiting to hear back from a particularly desired employer—may turn to social media to complain publicly. The result is reputational damage to the company that can have a real negative impact on its ability to recruit down the line.

Ghosting is hurtful and unprofessional, but you may be able to put your negative experience to use. What if this is one way for the company to show you its real face? The company may have done you a favor, as you likely won’t be happy in a place that signals arrogance and little desire for long-term affiliation.

To the people in charge of hiring decisions: please treat job applicants the way you wish to be treated yourselves. If you're not going to hire them, let them know so they won't waste time waiting by the phone or mailbox. They did go through the trouble of filling out your job application, which in many cases is time-consuming.

And don't decry the meanness and cruelty in the world if you're not going to make this small gesture yourself.

E-Mails: a Curse and a Blessing

(Universal scribbler)

I entered the work force in an era when it was considered mandatory to respond to every phone call and letter request. The reasons were intuitively obvious: a response could lead to a sale, you're representing your company which has the highest standard of etiquette, treat others how you wish to be treated, etc.

Then telemarketing and email happened.

Re phone calls, I initially spent too much time on the phone listening to sales pitches. Worse, I fell for a few of them and was usually disappointed by paying too much for products that fell shy of promises. Now every call from a number that I don't recognize goes to voicemail, and even within that group I ignore nine out of ten messages, which are, no surprise, from telemarketers.

I receive over a hundred emails a day. The majority go to the aol account that was originated in the days of floppy disks and dial-up modems. The yahoo and google mailboxes were created for specific purposes and capture the remaining traffic. The only vestige of traditional etiquette is that I always open and answer emails from individuals whom I know and apologize to if their message goes unanswered because it got buried or was sent to the junk folder.

The sea of communications from people trying to reach others to serve their own purposes has become a modern burden:

So many of us spend our days ruled by email: constantly refreshing, wading through detritus, paralyzed by the pressure of crafting a reply to the one note that actually matters. The moment we reach inbox zero, and few of us ever do, the ding sounds again.

Consultant Greg McKeown's suggestion:

Start your day by writing a list of priorities on a piece of paper. Block two half-hour slots on your calendar to really deal with your email—rather than scrolling through constantly—and ignore it the rest of the time, he says.

Regardless of the tech tools at one's disposal, one must spend 30-60 minutes a day on email in order not to lose control of the inboxes. E-mail supposedly has improved our lives immensely, but it sure has us stressing while sucking up our time.

Business Etiquette: Some of it Sounds Familiar

(Image from franchetti)

The job market has been heating up for new graduates, which means that there's a new generation that needs to learn the norms of workplace behavior.

These norms, or rules, are a bit different--and some subjects didn't even exist--when your humble blogger entered the work force back in the (cough) '70's. For example:

Note preferred modes of communication. On the first day, ask: What’s the best way to get in touch? Email? Call? Slack? (Don’t text your bosses unless they text you first.) “Every manager is going to have a different preference, and simply asking signals that you are eager to contribute,” [Harvard career adviser Gorick] Ng said.

There does seem to be one common predilection among managers, which Mr. Ng calls “bundle and escalate.” Don’t ask 10 questions in 10 separate communiqués—batch them together before approaching your manager...

Virtual-Meeting Virtuoso
Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex and Bluejeans are some of the more widely used videoconferencing platforms. Find out which is deployed by your company and download the apps for your desktop and mobile device in advance, then try a test meeting, before you have to join a real one...

You’ll want to make sure you look and sound great. A little height for your webcam and light on your face goes a long way. Logitech’s $60 Litra Glow clip-on light produces soft, flattering illumination, but any lamp or nearby window helps...

Email Like a Pro
Overly long emails are a common new-grad pitfall, according to Renate Norman, general manager of global university recruiting at Microsoft. “Get to the point quickly,” she said. She recommends starting with a summary and your main point or request up top. You can add more detail later, but if it’s getting too messy, pick up the phone.

Many of these recommendations are simply updates to old standards. For example, managers have always preferred that subordinates "get to the point quickly" in meetings or memos; now we're applying that rule to other modes of communications, i.e. e-mails and videos. Another: personal phone calls were frowned upon during working hours; now we're expanding that rule to include text messages and e-mails.

In my humble opinion the new rules can be figured out from general principles: keep your personal and business lives separate; respect the privacy of others; look presentable; waste as little of other's time as possible; be prepared on the topic and technology before the meeting; and be polite even if you have negative emotions toward another person.

Emily and Amy Didn't Write About This

As a follow-on to yesterday's post about punctuation in the modern age, the WSJ publishes a guide to digital etiquette.  (Your humble blogger's comments are in green.)

Faux pas: pasting URL link

Don’t: Paste a long URL link into an email
Do: Hyperlink the text instead
Nothing uglies up an email exchange or reveals that you’re behind the times quite like a 10-line URL link with more symbols than letters (See our poor dinosaur’s faux pas). In most email servers, however, you can hide a hideous URL by hyperlinking it to related text in the body of your note. I prefer pasting "hideous" URL's, then converting the link to text; some servers consider links to be spam.

Not appetizing to me

Don’t: Ask for a menu
Do: Learn to scan QR Codes
People’s unwillingness to touch potentially germy surfaces and devices during the pandemic has greatly accelerated the adoption of unique QR codes. At most restaurants, only the out-of-it still ask for the opportunity to squint at a sticky menu; instead use your smartphone’s camera to scan the QR code (typically found on a placard at your table) to easily access the eatery’s offerings online. I like looking at printed menus; some restaurants spend a lot of time designing them. As for online menus, seen one, seen 'em all.

Don’t: Squirrel away your microwave manual
Do: Watch how-to videos on YouTube
You can finally clear out that drawer of old appliance manuals you keep “just in case.” The tech-savvy know that, should they need to troubleshoot a device, jump-start a car, learn how to hyperlink a URL (see above), or even change a setting on a Gmail inbox, they can simply type a query into YouTube’s search bar and watch the video with the most views. When I can't find the manual, I do watch YouTube videos, which have too many ads before, during, and inside the videos. Yes, I'm too cheap to pay Google for an ad-free subscription.

Don’t: Listen to music on Pandora
Do: Download Spotify
Beyond unearthing new artists, the best reason to download a music app is to share your taste with friends (and romantic partners). While more than 10 million people have hopped off Pandora since it was bought two years ago, according to Music Business Worldwide, dropping its active user base to around 55 million, Spotify—with its impressive algorithm for discovering new music—now boasts more than 165 million users.  Apple Music, which is part of an Apple One subscription, is good enough for me.

Don’t: Get cash from an ATM to reimburse a friend
Do: Use Venmo
Dragging a cohort along to an ATM so you can hand her a bundle of sticky bills is like insisting on communicating with her by snail mail. Venmo and CashApp help you automatically find friends in your contacts list or, if you’re sitting together, you can scan each other’s unique QR codes. Plus: No line ups.   I'll put up with mild convenience so as not to let another company into my financial affairs.

Don’t: Write down all your passwords
Do: Utilize a password manager
If you still keep passwords stored in an email draft in hopes of eluding hackers, assume your passwords have already been compromised and come up with new ones. Better yet, download a password manager like LastPass, Keeper or Dashlane. Each can securely create and store unique codes for every platform you visit, allowing you to keep dodgy types from accessing all your personal emails and information. I've got an admittedly inefficient paper system that is, as far as I know, unhackable and won't be until mind-reading devices come along, and even then, why would they bother with me?

Don’t: Store files on a thumb drive
Do: Use the Cloud or Dropbox
New computer models are quickly phasing out USB ports, so if you have all your most secret and important files stashed on a USB thumb drive, you are a bit of a dinosaur and you need to move fast. Your best option is to use a secure cloud server like Apple iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive, which provides anyone with a gmail account 15 gigabytes of free and safe storage. "Secure cloud servers"?  If they can hack Microsoft cloud, I'm gonna keep my thumb drives for sensitive files that I can't afford to lose.

Four Magic Words

How to get through a conversational lull with a stranger: [bold added]

Paul Ford: self-described "rumpled
giant in an off-brand shirt"

Here’s a polite person’s trick, one that has never failed me. I will share it with you because I like and respect you, and it is clear to me that you’ll know how to apply it wisely: When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives, be the master of it.

I have come to revel in that agonizing first pause, because I know that I can push a conversation through. Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.”

The author, "writer, product strategist, educator, programmer, and software consultant" Paul Ford, wrote this somewhat tongue-in-cheek article in 2014. It's become unexpectedly relevant because of its section on Hair Touching:

WaPo: no-no to hair touching.

One way to be polite is by not touching people unless they specifically invite it. You’d be amazed at how often people screw this up; just search the Internet for “touch black woman hair” and marvel at the number of articles, posts, and guides...I’ve read many narratives about white people just touching black hair and I read them with my mouth open. Not because of the racism, even. Just because as a polite person the idea of just reaching out and touching anyone’s hair makes my eye twitch. When would it be appropriate? If there was a very large poisonous spider in their hair. If I was doing a magic trick. Or after six or more years of marriage.

Come to think of it, I can see why people prefer to stay home and chat with others remotely.

Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post are Long Gone

"PokeStop nearby" does not refer to the restaurant in Waipahu.

I love poke, the seasoned raw fish dish beloved by Islanders and increasing numbers of Mainlanders. There are now restaurants that specialize in poke, for example Pokeatery, Poki Bowl, and PokeStop.

However, be careful when typing the name of the latter on Yelp, the popular restaurant and services rating site. What pops up may not be just fish.

Yelp now has a filter that shows whether a PokéStop (a place where Pokémon Go players can get rewards) is near a business.

Gone are the days when eating establishments frowned on telephones, paper and pen, or even talking business at the tables. Today restaurants are actively courting patrons who furiously flick their thumbs across tiny screens, trying to snare imaginary monsters.

Yelp is just responding to market demand. As for the patrons, they are far, far away from their frowning grandmothers, so what's the problem?

Tech Etiquette

(Image from grooverpr.wordpress.com)

This article is about rules of etiquette in the brave new technological world. Examples:

You can’t quit a social network just because your mom joins.

Early Apple Watch owners.....don’t act like you’re better than the rest of us because you can order pizza by talking into your wrist.

All smartwatch owners: No messaging during dinner and pretending you’re just scratching your wrist. Wrists aren’t that itchy.

An insightful quote at the end, IMHO, takes the prize:

When my friends and I go out to dinner, we’ll sometimes go ‘phones down’ as soon as we’re seated. Whoever accidentally picks up the phone first has to pay the tab for everyone. It is really effective at getting people off their phones. — Andy Dunn, CEO of the online men’s fashion retailer Bonobos