Bruce's Company

Once again I am broadening this blog's horizons (or, in other words, diluting its purpose) with a post that is neither a rant nor sage counsel nor even funny. But I think it somehow relates to life in the working world.

I read a couple of things on the web over the last few days that struck me as similar in that they were both so typical of people from that part of the country. So here I present a quiz. See if you can tell where the authors of each of the two different blurbs are from:

1. [This appeared on Oddpost's FAQ list]
Where did the name Oddpost come from?
It’s the usual story really. Iain and Ethan were at the ’99 mandala sand painting retreat in Tengboche when the bang lassis they’d enjoyed in Chitwan finally started to kick in, and as they knealt on the cold stone floor of the monastery a yak outside began choking on some grass, making a noise like “ahd! ahd! ahd!” at the very moment their rinpoche began chanting in another room “pohhhhhhhhh stuh! pooooooohhhhhhhh stuh!” Ethan glanced over at Iain’s canvas. Iain looked over at his. They’d both of course painted the very same thing: ODDPOST.

2. I never go to a certain fake-Italian art-themed restaurant, because once I ate there and the waiter, who had gone beyond rude well into the realm of actual cruelty, mocking our entree choices, literally chased us down the street complaining about the small tip we left him.

I stopped going to another hole-in-the-wall pizza-pasta-bistro because the owner would come sit down at our table while we ate and ask for computer help.

I really, really loved the food at a local curry restaurant with headache-inducing red banquettes and zebra-striped decor. The katori chat was to die for. I was even willing to overlook the noxious smell of ammonia wafting up from the subterranean bathrooms. But the food inevitably took an hour to arrive, even when the place was empty, so I just never went back.

Answers:

1. That's right! San Francisco! Where else could it be? Where else are you going to find people who are just so darned pleased with the "multi-cultural opportunities available" and the "amazing diversity of ethnicities" that "enrich the community" in so many ways? And of course they need to share it with the world by working it into their FAQ, regardless of how contrived an excuse they need to come up with. And by so doing they have enriched me, their humble reader. How special is that?

2. The anwer is Manhattan. Although of course San Francisco also would have been an excellent guess. But Manhattan is really the place with the world-famous reputation for cuisine. If you ever need a reason to vomit, just ask any Manhattan denizen what their favorite eatery is. They will wax rhapsodic for the next 15 solid minutes (at least!) about that Brazilian place on 43rd and Lexington or the Ethiopian bistro at 12,000th and Hickory. And don't forget the deli with the amazing turkey pastrami on rye. The whole point, of course, will be to show how truly cosmopolitan they are with their sophisticated palatte and diversity of preferences together with their open mind concerning all languages and cultures. And oh by the way, it's a darned good thing they live in Manhattan, because you just can't get these things in flyover country. And it goes with saying, there's nothing worse than a chain.

Now, it so happens that I've been in Manhattan a few times, and had, oh, maybe a dozen or so meals there. I admit, not necessarily a huge sample size. But the funny thing is, I've really never had a memorable meal there. Nothing that I would ever consider to even approach the average meal that I've had at Outback or, say, The Cheesecake Factory. I mean, sure, the meals have been okay. Nothing wrong with them per se, other than paying about twice as much as what they're worth. But nothing memorable. I'm sure it's just been bad luck more than anything, and if anybody out there wants to give me a recommendation, I'd be very open to it, and I might even hop on a plane right now just to try it out. But just to show you that I'm not the complete rube I sound like, it so happens that there is a restaurant in the tri-state area where I've had some of the best meals of my life, called Fornos of Spain. But it's located in (gasp!) Newark. The horror!

But there's another interesting thing about #2. It comes from the blog Joel On Software, which is one of my favorites, and which I plan to quote extensively on this blog, because Joel is a software guy who truly gets it. Now, this particular quote came from the foreword that he wrote for a book on his bug-tracking system, and his point with the restaurant example is that he ended up always going to a place called Isabella's, not because the food is good, you see, but because you never have a bad experience there. And the reason you never have a bad experience there is because they have completely debugged the dining experience, through years of perfecting the process and writing things down in manuals and training employees. In other words, they're a chain. They may have only one location (I don't know), but they act like a chain, they smell like a chain, and they quack like a chain. That's what makes a chain a chain: they've debugged the entire process and they've got everything written down in manuals so that it can be duplicated over and over in restaurant after restaurant. Joel, of course, would never admit it, but that's what he's praising: a chain.