Stationary Travelator Part 2

You'll recall that three weeks ago we brought you the tale of the Stationary Travelator at Garden City, Booragoon.  And sure, the moving tale of a non-moving incline is not everyone's idea of a story, but the actual importance of the items reported in this 'blog is more or less given away by the title Mr Trivia's Tract. No one is going to accuse us of false advertising.

I'm sure you can read the above sign, but for those of you who already have "tl:dr" flashed up in your cartoon eyeballs, here's the gist. It will take 26 weeks to manufacture a new travelator.  Half a year, people. You and your Significant Other can get to work on a conceiving a child this afternoon and be well into the second trimester before Garden City finishes its new people mover. You'll be deciding whether the names Jaydren, Baylinn and Robespierre are too posh or bogan for the new baby, before a single shopper in Melville district is moving up or down on those steely, glacial ramps again. (By the way all three of those names are now considered unisex, so go nuts).  

In fact if this project keeps not going the way it has, you and l'il Kadmium will be needing to walk around the long way to get her or his first pair of Converse All Star Toddlers from Foot Locker.

Bed Linen Faux Pas

I was talking with friends while purchasing bed linen. Inexpensive linen. Kmart’s Homebrand. My attention wasn’t fully on the task at hand. I thought I had bought a sober black and grey set. Many of you are shuddering now, but I have no problem with the idea of living in a house of black, white and stainless steel surfaces. Reflective, metallic surfaces, glass and recessed–lights – the future as seen from 1979 is what I'm shooting for. And as long as I had a chromed robot called Vacxy to clean those surfaces, I would be as happy as Larry. Larry Fortensky.

It wasn’t until I prewashed the linen that I realised the 30% drop off in my attention had led me to choose a rather more ‘shiny’ bed set than I had anticipated. Shiny metal and glass–good. Shiny quilt cover–bad.

As you can see in the photograph, there’s a circular “motif” on the pillow cover. The fake satin look of the quilt cover is unnecessarily garish. It might be okay for costuming an Earth, Wind and Fire tribute band, but restful, it is not.  I can’t recall what Homebrand calls this design triumph, but I’m dubbing it Spirograph at the Roller Disco. 

Brief Signage Rant

Thankfully they haven't offended me by suggesting that this checkout was somehow barred to me.  My purchase experience hasn't been negativized with the harsh and ugly "Checkout Closed" signs they used back in the dark ages. The Coles brand is a safe space where a sign informs me that should I allow for the possibility, there are others, somewhere, who are ready to take care of my shopping needs.

I like this about as much as a letter from my bank that tells me how much better off I will be when they change a system that was working fine for me, into something that will work better for them, usually at my expense. 

Doublespeak is Dooubleplusgood!

Generic Workplace Tips Article

Occasionally I read articles that are collections of workplace tips. Perhaps 5 percent of these articles offer useful material, the remainder are poorly researched, use questionable photgraphic material and are filled with bleedin’ obvious advice that can only be useful to those who have never set foot in a workplace. (A 2005 MIT study reveals that of this group 75% will become undergraduate filmmakers of whom 95% will go on to make a short film about the soul-destroying nature of the workplace.)

With this in mind, I determined it was time for me to write my own poorly researched, generic workplace tips. So here goes.

5 Generic Workplace Tips

1. Dress Four Success

A 2007 study commissioned by the Australasian Institute of Fashion Design reveals that four is the correct number of items of apparel one should wear in an office workplace. This quartet should include some form of upper body covering, lower body covering and one or two items of underwear. 

Obviously there is some give and take in this calculation. If you are adequately covered (ie no more than 10% total skin area visible) with just three items, then you may wish to make your fourth item a fascinator or some other form of natty chapeau. Gentlemen, please note that a trucker’s hat is not only unbearably passé but is unacceptable in any workplace that isn’t articulated and riding on 18 wheels.

2. Ill Communication

In his seminal 2005 work Incentovation: The Life and Death Of American Success, Peter F Mulroney recounts the tale of an CFO who insisted on addressing his colleagues with “What up, bitches?”  This upset many of his co-workers and there was talk of a class action until happily the CFO died in an ultralight aircraft accident in Maine.

The most appropriate form of address in the workplace is “Hello,” this may be followed by the line: “Is it me you're looking for?” if one is riffing on the classic 1984 Lionel Richie hit song. If one isn’t doing this, the name of your co-worker is the next best choice.

3. Gleaming the Cube

Personalising one’s space is important. Especially if your space is a cubicle. Even the best one of these is little more than a reminder that you are some kind of corporate battery hen laying the caged eggs of commerce for The Man (see Soul-Destroying Workplaces in Undergraduate Filmmaking, Polemic Press, 1999).

Many of us like to bring a photograph from home. A framed portrait of your Significant Other and your children is a great addition to your space. After all, you are, in part, working your arse off in this miserable dump, for them. A portrait of your extra-marital shag is most inappropriate. It’s fun to brag, but a purse or wallet sized photograph is the way to go here. If you’re a member of Generation Y you’ll keep this item on your smartphone.

4. Taking Credit

If you are one of those people who aren’t good at taking credit for your own efforts, now is the time to start. Think of yourself as a mini-brand, “Me Works”. You need to start to think like someone in marketing and get the word out. If you are already someone in marketing and have this problem, you need to start thinking like someone else. And look for a new job.

Make sure your boss or team leader knows what Me Works has achieved. Send that person a weekly email bullet-pointing your successes.  Start by referring to the team’s overall success and then spend the rest of the time focusing on you. Note: never actually take credit for someone else’s work unless you know categorically you won’t get found out.

5. Moving On

How do you know when it’s time to leave your present employment? Discovering all your stuff in a cardboard box in a loading dock is a good sign. More than two people greeting you with, “Are you still here?” is another. But sometimes it becomes necessary to move on to greener pastures before one has burnt all one’s bridges.

A 2003 study from the MacDonald’s Brain and Cognitive Science Division, shows that leaving a job is the third most stressful thing one can do. (Shopping at IKEA in the week before Christmas and knowing one is targeted for death by a US military Predator drone were first and second.) But when you have to leave, the study shows the best way to achieve this is to tell no one. Come into work on your final Friday. Don’t return to your desk after lunch. Boom! Done…

So there you have it. I hope you…Boom! Done…

Phil Jeng Kane

The Wheels of Perth City

I am confident that the good folk over at The Worst of Perth will have looked into this, but I couldn't find a mention of this over there. Not that I searched for more than a couple of minutes; their site is dense with Perthcentric gold. Have a look some time.

Anyhow, when I was a kid, Transperth–then the Metropolitan Transport Trust–ran a campaign encouraging Perthites to take the bus. There was a jaunty tune which sadly I cannot reproduce here and a sprightly lyric which went something like this:

We are the wheels of Perth City
Leave the driving to us
We are the Wheels of Perth
(Take it easy)
Come on and take the bus!

There was even a mascot for all of this, an actual MTT bus driver nicknamed "Jimmy". This is something like thirty years ago, but my memory has him as John Denver looking fellow. And if you don't know who the late John Denver was - ask your grandfather.

I believe Jimmy's brief was to be friendly; being a child at this time, I found the notion of a friendly bus driver fairly unlikely, but the people of Perth took to the whole thing like high school kids to the back section of a bendy bus.

Jimmy was a Perthonality for a time. He wasn't Luigi Savadamoni big, but he had his fifteen minutes. And if you weren't around for that, then you've missed out. These days we have the The Lottery West "catching a falling star" kid, but he simply doesn't have the charisma of a middle-aged man in green shorts and walk socks giving the people of Perth a cheery thumbs up.

Phil Jeng Kane

Stationary Travelator Part 1

Garden City's travelator has been broken for weeks. They've even had a nice sign made. The Travelator is on an incline, so it's like a lazy escalator. And of course a stationary travelator is a shiny metallic grooved ramp.

Unsung Hughes

Recently, a Facebook friend described herself as an 80s kid. This made my brain blink for a moment because I have always thought of myself as such. However, in my case it means I was teenager during the 1980s, rather than being born during this turbulently day-glo era. So, I'm not going to get into an ownership tussle. If someone wants to claim a decade in which they were a embryo, so be it. Based on that reasoning, I claim Woodstock and the Moon Landing.

But back to the 1980s. No one better defined the decade for teenagers (the other 80s kids) than American filmmaker the late John Hughes. He of SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984), THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985) FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF (1986) and PRETTY IN PINK (1986). He also made more adult oriented fare such as TRAINS PLANES AND AUTOMOBILES (1987) however somewhere along the line he became the go-to guy for family films like HOME ALONE (1990) and DENNIS THE MENACE (1993). He stopped directing after CURLY SUE in 1991, but wrote numerous screenplays.

Why did we youngsters like Hughes? Well, let's face it, there was a certain amount of outrageous pandering to the audience. "All adults are work obsessed androids who only care about enforcing the rules and making you do what they tell you to do."  This was more or less the unsubtle picture of adult life that he drew. But compared to what had passed for teen rom-com previously, Hughes captured a certain truth and boy was he good at weaving in those pop songs into zany montages.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I just discovered the trailer to CAREER OPPORTUNITIES (1991). It was written and produced by Hughes and is presented in this promo as though he directed it, but like 16 CANDLES, which is also though of as a Hughes film, this was directed by another.

But could it be more Hughesian? A zany off-beat hero who has yet to find himself. A hot heiress who wakes up in a Target after hours. The very same Target where our hero is a trainee janitor! They get to play around with all the merch and confess their insecurities. Probably they discover their respective parents screwed them up and also get to utter memorable dialogue. Not "necessarily "Does Barry Manilow know you raid his wardrobe?" but along those lines.  And then BOOM! they get held up by comedy bandits.

I'm going to spend the next couple of days tracking down this quasi John Hughes movie and see why it rates a mere 5.8 stars on IMDB. I can't say why it didn't set the world on fire in 1991. Possibly because Hughes's time as Monarch of the Teens was up. Possibly because he didn't direct this. And let's face it, Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly are about as unconvincing a match up as Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby in HIGH SOCIETY (1956). Still I'm hoping to find plenty of signature Hughesian comedy, emotional revelation and carefully placed pop hits of the era.

I'll keep you posted.

PJK

P.S. I have since seen this and now fully understand the low rating. It is a terrible film. Frank Whalley is essentially miscast in a role that is part-Ducky, part-Ferris and wholly annoying. His shtick gets old very fast indeed. Jennifer Connelly was cast for her high level of  kevorka and yet is sufficient in her role. She at least seems like a character and not a yammering caricature like Whalley. Unfortunately, her role is undermined by some of the director's framing and composition choices which are frankly exploitative.  This flick is entirely missable unless you're some kind of film obsessive or Hughes completist. 

Check it! I'm losing at Settlers of Catan