97B Yonge

I would often miss the last subway home and end up waiting for the bus they run until dawn, up and down Yonge Street, to gather the shift workers, the cleaning ladies, and the under-aged drinkers.

It was a lonely stop on a fifteen-minute schedule, one long block south of the main intersection at Eglinton, where at long last I could see the bus—my bus—pull up to the curb, empty itself of passengers, and drive away to the yards . . . another long wait, for the bus they call the Vomit Comet had once again lived up to its name.

Photo by Eyeline-Imagery.

Level Five

Waiting for the Lansdowne South bus is one of the most soul sucking experiences available to Parkdale residents. There is no queue to speak of, just a mass of the damned riding its eternal ride to Queen Street. Schedules are mythical and when the bus does appear, the tiny shelter vomits out dozens of the unwashed and unloved like some sort of ringwraithe clown car. I picture mornings in TTC hell where some senior demon, probably Scottish, metes out the day’s punishments, “Okay you bastard”, he’d say fixing a sadistic eye on a newly-condemned driver, “have fun with the 47 south.”

The Ugly American

We were in the gift shop after touring the Globe Theatre. Next on the agenda was lunch. The salesclerk was ringing my purchase through when an obviously American woman came rushing up and asked her for advice on the best place to eat in the area. The salesclerk shrugged coldly, almost rudely, answering that all the restaurants were good. Since I, too, was interested in lunch I perked up, saying, “So any place around here is fine?” To me, she smiled and recommended a specific eatery, saying, “I hate the way they always jump queue.” I knew she meant Americans.

Dining with Americans

The Canadians had been sent down to Texas to work with their American counterparts. We wrote the manuals, but they had to train people how to use the equipment, so there was lots to talk about . . . and lots to learn about dining out in that part of the States. Whenever something wasn’t quite right, we’d happily ignore the problem, while they’d see it as a challenge to the free-market system and try to score a free meal. The Texans were particularly good at this game, until something in the prime rib took them out for the remainder of the season.

Strange Animal

Like the guy who whistled for Mabel to get him “another Black Label,” the idiot next to us at the sushi restaurant was a finger snapper. He was abrupt with the server and just spoke louder when she faltered with English. He had a familiar Gowan, circa 1982 vibe. I could be wrong but I think he was the host of a local teen show called Ghost Trackers, where ’tweens roam the city’s historic houses afterhours in search of hauntings. If only he’d used his parabolic microphone last night he could have heard the other diners calling him a douchebag.

Reversing the Trend

I feel sorry for the makers of Black Label beer, who were no doubt mystified why their previously low profile beer had a surge in popularity in certain fringe culture bars in Toronto. I met the guy they hired to capitalize on the profits. He developed an edgy ad campaign meant to appeal to the ‘type’ of people who patronized those bars. For awhile the beer’s popularity shot up more, but then it fizzled out. He did not realize those ‘type’ of people ordered Black Label because it was not widely advertized, striving to resist being influenced by marketing.

Disabelled

When I was still in high school, there ran an ad campaign to convince potential employers in Ontario that the handicapped were quite capable of performing most jobs.
     Their slogan was: “Label us able!”
     Now, I have always been a pretty good speller, but there are a number of outlying words that still give me trouble, and so I latched onto this as a useful mnemonic for sorting out which of those words should end in “–le” and which in “–el.”
     The problem is that I got it all wrong and became convinced that “lable” was the way to go.

Fashion Bitch

I could never be a label whore because those tiny demons are like little ribbons of torture, itchy little hair shirts. I can feel them regardless of the material they are made from or their location on the garment and immediately have to cut them out. In fact, if I’ve forgotten to remove a label prior to wearing the item I’ll try to tear it out or bite it off. I’ve ruined many outfits this way. I’m like a dog with a piece of tape stuck to its rear, turning in circles to get that damn thing off my back.

Guerilla Costumer

As a costume designer, my eye that would zero in from the back row on the tiniest thread hanging from a hem. Nothing escaped my attention and I am sure the costume shop staff often rolled their eyes, but it was my name that was going on the programme. So you can imagine how hard it is for me to walk down the street seeing people with various garment flaws. I can imagine myself in my dotage creeping up behind people on streetcars and turning in all the labels I see sticking out of the backs of t-shirts and sweaters.

Perfect, Just Perfect!

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’ve always been quite the perfectionist, particularly with anything I buy. When I had enough money to start buying fancy electronics, one particular purchase went back twice to the store for the tiniest imperfection. And every record was listened through first for the inevitable scratch. So, thank goodness for CDs and failing eyesight. And thank goodness for Apple for doing everything imaginable to guarantee its products emerge from the box still perfect and shiny. But after that, watch out, says the man who managed to scratch his iMac with his iSight.

Big Mac

On Roy’s advice I switched my office over from PC to Mac and instantly felt cooler. The space was transformed from a pile of maps and banker’s boxes in the middle of Parkdale to an urban working oasis, humming with creative people dressed in black. The new sleek monitors and shiny surfaces made me feel ten pounds thinner. I’m still using Word, but now I feel like a creative genius. Even Colin, my beloved luddite colleague figured out how to use it. Now we just need a coffee bar and someone to bring us lunch in those little steel containers.

Fighting for Formatting

What I hate most about Microsoft products is that the tacky formatting they force on you. I am horrified by the combination of colours and fonts that Microsoft calls ‘styles,’ I can imagine nothing less stylish. I have always prided myself for formatting a document to support the material, making it both attractive and easier to understand. I have to fight Microsoft word every step of the way to embed my own formatting. Seems like most people have given up, however, because as far as I can see just about every corporate document is starting to look the same nowadays.

The Picture of William H. Gates

The power of Bill Gates, I’m convinced, comes not from the vast sums of money we spend every year on Microsoft products but from the great oceans of time those products suck from our lives. Whenever a Word document gets corrupted or an Excel spreadsheet loses its external links, we lose the time fixing the problem to Bill, and drop by drop he gains his strength from our puny losses. Even waiting for Windows XP to start up, I get a good sense of how the picture of Dorian Gray must have felt at the start of each new day.

Here’s Shampoo in Your Eye

My dear friend Jim insists his office run on Word Perfect. He does this because he prefers that program to Microsoft Word. He also refuses to give Bill Gates any money. He’s on to something. Better than signing petitions or carrying placards, the best thing we can do is vote with our wallets. There are a lot of people who won’t get a penny of my dough. Topping my list are Wal-Mart succubus Rosalind G. Brewer, Proctor and Gamble’s Robert McDonald and Louise my former travel agent who stiffed me $300 for a mistake she made on tickets to England.

flummoxed

Thrown into a temp position where computer skills were required, back when PCs were just being introduced into offices, I was flummoxed by the use of Word Perfect. “The manual is in the desk,” snapped the supervisor, impatient with my slowness. Trying to make out the convoluted instructions, written in technolese, I felt I must be the stupidest person in the world. Later, once I got to know all the ins and outs of Word Perfect, I checked out the manual again. I still could not understand a thing – even for operations I now performed on a daily basis.

Hows’ (sic) it going?

I once had a manager who’d come by my cubicle every few days and literally ask me how things were going, just like that. I would say “fine” and off he would go. Honestly, it was some time before I even realized this was actually his way of asking me for a full status report on my projects and not just a social call. And so, yes, I was dumb, but surely he was dumber, and dumber still the people who had hired a manager of technical documentation who couldn’t spell let alone explain to anyone else how things worked.

Annabelle From Hell

By the time she’s thirty every woman should have experienced one idiot boss. I worked for one when I was twenty-nine. She was a senior council at the Department of Justice and having experienced a hot flash during a screening of Dances with Wolves decided she would like to practice native law. War room discussions were like reasoning with a chimp, and court days were like taking a chimp to a tea party. But I have my own company now and in retrospect she was the most important person of my early working life. God knows she would hate that.

Scary Position

It was fitting that I started that job on Hallowe’en. My new boss was so insane that Steve found it hard to believe the daily stories I brought home of his behavior. Looking back to the interview I realized that he must have been fighting to maintain a façade of reasonable humanity for the entire time. He was probably more nervous that I would detect that he was utterly psychotic than I was in trying to impress him that I was right for the position. I loved my work but dealing with him finally drove me away three years later.

October 25th

They fired him on October 25th, but they botched the job . . . leaving him to wander the halls for a full week afterwards, like a spectre contemplating his future with a company that had taken away the department he had built from scratch and offered him shit. Even for Hallowe’en he made a point of dressing as he always had, professional to the end, until you discovered that someone had apparently plunged a large butcher knife into his back, complete with a sickeningly realistic wound that oozed blood for the rest of the day and ended up ruining a $700 suit.

Pumpkin Head

At first he was a zebra,
Then a Paddington Bear
And then a little wee skunk
with faux fur hair
Once Captain Star
got a bit too grubby
When first mistaken
for a Teletubby.
Junior Kindergarten spider
Then a little red Fox
Pointy-eared Legolas
Slick Neo redux
King Arthur, a fighter pilot,
And a blue-faced Celt
Followed by a Courier de Bois
Complete with pelt
Then came the last
to be stored in our attic
A lowly Crusader
The religious fanatic
And now we are left
Just my husband and me
Missing the masquerade zebra
Our Dan used to be.