Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________SPIES LIKE US DAVID HOROWITZ (10/20/97)

David Horowitz wonders why we have not heard from the "New Leftists" concerning their alleged contacts with Soviet spymasters, and purports to find something sinister in their silence. Perhaps they are silent because they were not the recipients of the largesse of KGB recruiters, Mr. Horowitz's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. Or perhaps, like Mr. Horowitz, they abandoned their earlier convictions and embraced a right-wing ideology in order to profit from the goodies of the Reagan-Bush era.
Mr. Horowitz asserts, "In fact, the number of New Leftists who actively worked with communist regimes and their intelligence agencies probably runs into the thousands." This, without offering a scintilla of hard evidence other than his own fanciful descriptions of being plied with expensive lunches and dinners in London -- how many New Leftists worked for Lord Russell and taught classes on U.S. bases, anyway? And, while we're on the subject of spies, would Mr. Horowitz be kind enough to supply us with the New Left affiliations of Aldrich Ames, who did more damage to this country than all the members of CISPES and the Venceremos Brigades could ever have dreamed of doing?
In offering up the names of several "Old Left" people who spied for the Soviet Union, Mr. Horowitz invites us to make the assumption that if some spied, all were spies. Do I really need to point out the logical flaws in this kind of thinking? He, of course, would prefer that we not think at all, and that we accept his broad-brushed allegations of traitorous conduct so that we will then obediently supply the answer he wants to his last, poisonous question, "Come to think of it, what was Bill Clinton doing in Russia during that winter of 1969 but doesn't want to talk about?" I am not surprised that accusing the president of the United States of treason is in fact the real agenda of Mr. Horowitz's column, nor that the conservative movement in this country is so devoid of real ideas that they must now dredge up tactics that were thoroughly discredited during the Eisenhower administration in order to try, yet again, to bring down a man they have relentlessly tried to destroy for the past six years. How predictable, and how pathetic.
-- Ann Davidson

_______________DO YOU WANT ATTITUDE WITH THAT LATTE? BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS (10/15/97)

I've had my share of bad service, but I don't understand how Mary Elizabeth Williams has become so obsessed with it -- unless, of course, she sees anyone who is not chained to their laptop with built-in modem, cell phone and voice-mail beeper at all times to be someone who is inferior and an "idiot."
I think that the amount of bad service she has received is in direct correspondence to her own lack of common courtesy.
I am not in a service industry-related job and have a successful career. However, I am not one of the laptop-cell-phone-beeper-toting career maniacs who are always in such a rush they are truly annoying to be around in a restaurant or coffee shop atmosphere. Or pretty much, just about anywhere.
While you are enjoying some quiet conversation and relaxation with your latte, the worst thing that can happen to you is not bad service, but having someone like Ms. Williams sit at the table next to you. She will already have, of course, verbally abused her server and caused a very uncomfortable atmosphere in the place. Oblivious to the people around her, angry and muttering that the server put lowfat instead of nonfat milk in her latte, her cell phone will inevitably ring loudly several times, she will have a loud conversation or argument on the cell phone that drowns out your own conversation. And she will inevitably be the rude driver who cuts me off later in the parking lot with her big silver car, her manicured hand holding on to the cell phone. She will be so wrapped up in herself and her own conversation that she doesn't notice that she has nearly taken out a pedestrian and a baby carriage and caused a five-car pile up.
-- Jennifer Kolcun

Mary Elizabeth Williams has some valid complaints about the service she received. But I disagree with her tactics. Why keep going back to a place that doesn't get your order right? As for her comments on the staff that serves her, lighten up! You seem like a chronic complainer. I doubt that anyone would please you. Believe me, I understand the aggravation of poor service from people who, for whatever reason, do not care, but I will not hold a grudge against them. If the service was extremely rude or poor, I would contact the manager of the place of business and let them know why I would no longer be seeking their service. I have had excellent service in the past too. I guess it's all in how you react to it.
-- Elaine Dudzinski

Regarding Mary Elizabeth Williams' hilarious rant about bad service: Bad service is a tradition in Vegas, where I served time in the early '60s as a roulette dealer at the Golden Nugget. Sometimes, out of boredom, I would be polite, and I had more than one customer say, "You're the first person who's been nice to us since we got here."
Many of us younger guys thought we were too good for our jobs (the older generation had learned their trade under racket bosses around the country, and knew better). Whether we fancied ourselves writers or just hip dudes, we suffered from chronic sleep deprivation and resented groveling for tips; we tended to be surly as a matter of course.
My own theory is the general rudeness that started in the '60s stemmed from the Students for a Democratic Society's concerted efforts to strip authority from the Establishment that was waging the Vietnam War. Hegel would appreciate this instance of a good thing turning into a bad thing.
A personal recent service anecdote: When I called FBI headquarters in Washington recently to inquire about accessing files through the Freedom of Information Act, I was transferred to the FOI department, where the woman who answered the phone had such a strong foreign accent that it was impossible to be sure what she was advising. Freedom of information indeed!
-- Bruce Bebb

Mary Elizabeth Williams replies:
The fact is, I do not own a laptop, a cell phone, a beeper or a big silver car (or any car at all for that matter), and the last time I got a manicure was on my wedding day.
Very few people in this world have the luxury of never having had to trudge to the $5-an-hour, on your feet all day, dead boring and dead-end job, myself included. My friends and I put ourselves through college and supported ourselves early in our careers by being receptionists, waiting tables and working in retail. Do I know how obnoxious and demanding customers can be? I could write a book. That's why I'm a polite customer, and when the service merits, a generous tipper. And having walked many blistered miles in those shoes, that's also why I expect reasonable service. Far as I know, going about the business of day-to-day commerce without being treated contemptuously isn't some middle-aged, middle-class conceit. You don't have to drive a Saab to know that having a low-paying job isn't an excuse for being a jerk.

_______________THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG BY TRICIA ROMANO (10/15/97)

First, bravo to Ms. Romano for telling it like it is about the "service" industry. Secondly, bravo to Salon for running it and the previous week's article about what working for Bill Gates is really like. Ten years ago, you'd only see such well-composed frankness about the world of work in "radical" publications like Processed World.
There's a rule of thumb that the further down the occupational ladder your job is, the worse you will be treated. At my last retail job, in the camera department of a major chain store, I had a customer barge into my cash register booth, where he clearly wasn't supposed to be. At the time I was in the middle of helping another customer. I politely informed the intruder that I'd be with him in a minute. He stormed over to a neighboring department and harassed the salespeople who worked over there. Next thing I knew, I was getting written up by the department manager for abusing that customer!
Furthermore, the company not only paid me minimum wage but got some of my co-workers to quit by only giving them four hours of work per week; this was to keep them from getting unemployment benefits.
If people want better service, then retailers will have to treat and compensate their sales workers better than they now do. But that will never happen.
-- Paul Goldschmidt

SALON | Oct. 23, 1997

R E C E N T L Y+| FOR GIRLS ONLY By Laura Green

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_______________SPIES LIKE US DAVID HOROWITZ (10/20/97)
	David Horowitz wonders why we have not heard from the "New Leftists" concerning their alleged contacts with Soviet spymasters, and purports to find something sinister in their silence. Perhaps they are silent because they were not the recipients of the largesse of KGB recruiters, Mr. Horowitz's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. Or perhaps, like Mr. Horowitz, they abandoned their earlier convictions and embraced a right-wing ideology in order to profit from the goodies of the Reagan-Bush era. Mr. Horowitz asserts, "In fact, the number of New Leftists who actively worked with communist regimes and their intelligence agencies probably runs into the thousands." This, without offering a scintilla of hard evidence other than his own fanciful descriptions of being plied with expensive lunches and dinners in London -- how many New Leftists worked for Lord Russell and taught classes on U.S. bases, anyway? And, while we're on the subject of spies, would Mr. Horowitz be kind enough to supply us with the New Left affiliations of Aldrich Ames, who did more damage to this country than all the members of CISPES and the Venceremos Brigades could ever have dreamed of doing? In offering up the names of several "Old Left" people who spied for the Soviet Union, Mr. Horowitz invites us to make the assumption that if some spied, all were spies. Do I really need to point out the logical flaws in this kind of thinking? He, of course, would prefer that we not think at all, and that we accept his broad-brushed allegations of traitorous conduct so that we will then obediently supply the answer he wants to his last, poisonous question, "Come to think of it, what was Bill Clinton doing in Russia during that winter of 1969 but doesn't want to talk about?" I am not surprised that accusing the president of the United States of treason is in fact the real agenda of Mr. Horowitz's column, nor that the conservative movement in this country is so devoid of real ideas that they must now dredge up tactics that were thoroughly discredited during the Eisenhower administration in order to try, yet again, to bring down a man they have relentlessly tried to destroy for the past six years. How predictable, and how pathetic. -- Ann Davidson
_______________DO YOU WANT ATTITUDE WITH THAT LATTE? BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS (10/15/97)
	I've had my share of bad service, but I don't understand how Mary Elizabeth Williams has become so obsessed with it -- unless, of course, she sees anyone who is not chained to their laptop with built-in modem, cell phone and voice-mail beeper at all times to be someone who is inferior and an "idiot." I think that the amount of bad service she has received is in direct correspondence to her own lack of common courtesy. I am not in a service industry-related job and have a successful career. However, I am not one of the laptop-cell-phone-beeper-toting career maniacs who are always in such a rush they are truly annoying to be around in a restaurant or coffee shop atmosphere. Or pretty much, just about anywhere. While you are enjoying some quiet conversation and relaxation with your latte, the worst thing that can happen to you is not bad service, but having someone like Ms. Williams sit at the table next to you. She will already have, of course, verbally abused her server and caused a very uncomfortable atmosphere in the place. Oblivious to the people around her, angry and muttering that the server put lowfat instead of nonfat milk in her latte, her cell phone will inevitably ring loudly several times, she will have a loud conversation or argument on the cell phone that drowns out your own conversation. And she will inevitably be the rude driver who cuts me off later in the parking lot with her big silver car, her manicured hand holding on to the cell phone. She will be so wrapped up in herself and her own conversation that she doesn't notice that she has nearly taken out a pedestrian and a baby carriage and caused a five-car pile up. -- Jennifer Kolcun Mary Elizabeth Williams has some valid complaints about the service she received. But I disagree with her tactics. Why keep going back to a place that doesn't get your order right? As for her comments on the staff that serves her, lighten up! You seem like a chronic complainer. I doubt that anyone would please you. Believe me, I understand the aggravation of poor service from people who, for whatever reason, do not care, but I will not hold a grudge against them. If the service was extremely rude or poor, I would contact the manager of the place of business and let them know why I would no longer be seeking their service. I have had excellent service in the past too. I guess it's all in how you react to it. -- Elaine Dudzinski Regarding Mary Elizabeth Williams' hilarious rant about bad service: Bad service is a tradition in Vegas, where I served time in the early '60s as a roulette dealer at the Golden Nugget. Sometimes, out of boredom, I would be polite, and I had more than one customer say, "You're the first person who's been nice to us since we got here." Many of us younger guys thought we were too good for our jobs (the older generation had learned their trade under racket bosses around the country, and knew better). Whether we fancied ourselves writers or just hip dudes, we suffered from chronic sleep deprivation and resented groveling for tips; we tended to be surly as a matter of course. My own theory is the general rudeness that started in the '60s stemmed from the Students for a Democratic Society's concerted efforts to strip authority from the Establishment that was waging the Vietnam War. Hegel would appreciate this instance of a good thing turning into a bad thing. A personal recent service anecdote: When I called FBI headquarters in Washington recently to inquire about accessing files through the Freedom of Information Act, I was transferred to the FOI department, where the woman who answered the phone had such a strong foreign accent that it was impossible to be sure what she was advising. Freedom of information indeed! -- Bruce Bebb Mary Elizabeth Williams replies: The fact is, I do not own a laptop, a cell phone, a beeper or a big silver car (or any car at all for that matter), and the last time I got a manicure was on my wedding day. Very few people in this world have the luxury of never having had to trudge to the $5-an-hour, on your feet all day, dead boring and dead-end job, myself included. My friends and I put ourselves through college and supported ourselves early in our careers by being receptionists, waiting tables and working in retail. Do I know how obnoxious and demanding customers can be? I could write a book. That's why I'm a polite customer, and when the service merits, a generous tipper. And having walked many blistered miles in those shoes, that's also why I expect reasonable service. Far as I know, going about the business of day-to-day commerce without being treated contemptuously isn't some middle-aged, middle-class conceit. You don't have to drive a Saab to know that having a low-paying job isn't an excuse for being a jerk.
_______________THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG BY TRICIA ROMANO (10/15/97)
	First, bravo to Ms. Romano for telling it like it is about the "service" industry. Secondly, bravo to Salon for running it and the previous week's article about what working for Bill Gates is really like. Ten years ago, you'd only see such well-composed frankness about the world of work in "radical" publications like Processed World. There's a rule of thumb that the further down the occupational ladder your job is, the worse you will be treated. At my last retail job, in the camera department of a major chain store, I had a customer barge into my cash register booth, where he clearly wasn't supposed to be. At the time I was in the middle of helping another customer. I politely informed the intruder that I'd be with him in a minute. He stormed over to a neighboring department and harassed the salespeople who worked over there. Next thing I knew, I was getting written up by the department manager for abusing that customer! Furthermore, the company not only paid me minimum wage but got some of my co-workers to quit by only giving them four hours of work per week; this was to keep them from getting unemployment benefits. If people want better service, then retailers will have to treat and compensate their sales workers better than they now do. But that will never happen. -- Paul Goldschmidt SALON \| Oct. 23, 1997