One HoJo’s to Go

hijoI have a couple of lasting memories of Howard Johnson’s. One, because of the shape of the scooper they used, the ice cream looked like upside down dunce caps sitting atop a sugar cone. Each scoop not only had that distinct shape, they all also seemed to always be infused with chips of ice because, I guess, of some mandated freezer setting that was totally inappropriate. 

hojocone

My other lasting memory is service that varied from slow..to glacial. A stop at a HoJo on a road trip meant you were going to show up at your destination at least an hour late.  But you didn’t really care because that orange roof, the prospect of digging your teeth into a clam roll or hot dog on one of those oddball buns and licking one of those dunce cap ice cream cones represented everything good about America. The service may have been slow, but at least it was friendly. The prices weren’t bad and moms and dads could feel confident they were treating their families to a wholesome meal and clean bathrooms.

I’m thinking about Howard Johnson’s because with the recent closing of the Bangor, Maine restaurant, there’s only one left–in Lake George, New York. That one seems to be doing well but I expect that one day the last HoJo will be NoMo.

Only those of a certain age remember time when there wasn’t a fast food joint at every exit and places like Howard Johnson’s and Stuckeys and Horne’s horneswere the oases you hoped would appear around the next bend with their tall signs stuckeysbeckoning you from the road for food, rest and yes, their restrooms. I never fell victim to a Stuckeys pecan log roll but guess what, I still have a shot. According to their website  there’s a Stuckeys near Indianapolis…that’s within a day’s drive from my home.

Just as Howard Johnson’s hangs on with one last location, one Horne’s restaurant remains in Port Royal, Virginia.

I think the last time I went to a Howard Johnson’s was back where I went to college in Oswego, New York. My then-girlfriend, who’s now been my wife of 43 years, and I, would hop over to HoJo a few blocks from campus to take advantage of their “Double Bubble” drink special, which provided giant alcoholic beverages at college student prices. Even though the college was the town’s meal ticket the waitresses always scowled at us scruffy students and served us only begrudgingly knowing we were not only scruffy, but crappy tippers. Still, for my wife and I it brings back warm memories of our courtship and we still do “double bubble” several times a week at home. I can tell you this..the service is a lot friendlier!

Still, it’s sad to see some of our cultural touchstones fade with time but business is business I suppose. However, I’d give anything to lick one more ice chip -infused dunce cap cone. Fall in Lake George sounds nice.

The art of parting

It’s been a month since I left my laptop and iPhone on my desk, locked my office and walked out of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for the last time and into retirement. Since then, among other things, I’ve thought about my other workplace exits and how some were better than others.

This one was probably the best. I had it planned for several months so it came as no surprise to my boss, who had treated me royally. My wonderful team tossed me a great lunch, presented me with a basket of bourbon, signed each bottle, and produced several videos that absolutely blew me away ranging from heartfelt expressions of farewell, goodbye, thanks and hilarious wiseass comments–to a collection of outtakes from my standups that exposed me as more than fallible, and they even created a spoof of my infamous “April in the D” song with the words changed to “All Because of E.” It was very hard to keep it together viewing those videos knowing that short of an occasional lunch or drinks, after 11 years I wouldn’t be seeing my second family every day. 20160729_135507

By the time my last day, July 29th, rolled around, I was spent from all the “goodbyes” and actually slipped out of the office with barely a word, swiped my badge for the last time, got in my car and called my wife, telling her “retirement as begun!”

But not every one of my employment exits was quite as, let’s say, smooth. There was the disastrous merger between Time Warner and AOL when I worked at CNN. We knew there would be layoffs but while I was at the Detroit Auto Show my boss took the time to page me (this was 2001) to let me know our bureau in Detroit would “not be touched.” Big relief! For 72 hours. A few days later I had returned from a shoot when my boss called me to let me know he was paying our bureau a visit the next day and that I should arrive and 9am and the rest of my staff should come an hour later. I was pretty obvious I was getting the boot. So I asked him what happened. “Oh,” changed our mind,” was his lame answer. I was pretty stunned and upset, then got it together spending the next few hour giving my staff the news, exchanging a few hugs, a few tears and then started gathering my stuff and put the past 20 years behind me. When the loser came in the next day to give me the official word and have me sign papers re my severance I asked again why the change of heart. He actually said, “now’s not the time.” Huh? Time had run out, and so did I.

When I left The Detroit News, it was to take the job that morphed into the one I held at FCA. The automaker was starting its first blog (2005) and the head of PR wanted an autowriter to manage and ghost write it for him. Cool job. I had been looking for work for a bit and six months prior had accepted a job at the rival Detroit Free Press but the News hated having their autowriters poached by the competition and gave me a huge raise to stay. So I did, but I still hated it there and kept looking. when the FCA job came through I jumped at it but never got a chance to give notice quite the way you should. While covering the annual auto industry conference in Traverse City, Mich., I called in a story we would be breaking, but I was flummoxed to find it wasn’t in the next day’s paper. That was the last straw for me after putting up with three years of what I thought was questionable and unethical editing decisions. What no one knew was that I had already sealed the deal on my new job so I had nothing to lose when I exploded in the media room at the conference, slamming down the phone and declaring, loud enough for all to hear, “screw it! I quit!” Of course it took only two breath’s time for that revelation to reach my boss back in Detroit who was not pleased to hear of my impending departure from a reporter at the Free Press. Oooops. They tossed me a goodbye thing anyway..maybe to make sure I was really leaving!

My favorite exit was from my part-time job as a stockboy/cashier at a department store on Long Island when I was in high school. Part of my duties was as the “bargain broadcaster,” announcing in-store sales from time-to-time as well as letting the shoppers know when the store was about to close. I shared the announcing duties with a friend who had a big, big voice. It was our last night on the job, and then we were headed Jones Beach to celebrate. But my friend and I were not what you would call “model employees.” He had been fired, twice, and I was laid off once. It was his turn in the booth to announce the impending closing of the store. He had to say, “Attention S. Klein shoppers. When you hear the bell, it means the store will close in 10 minutes. Please bring your purchases to the nearest cashier and check out.” Then the security guy named Bill would ring the bell. However, since it was our last night, my friend, whose name I am protecting, decided the announcement should be a little more, um, emphatic so he changed it. “Attention S. Klein shopper. When you hear the bell, it means the store will close in 10 minutes. Please bring your purchases to the nearest cashier and check out. SO BILL, RING THE EFFIN’ (he said the real word) BELL SO WE CAN ALL GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!” We hit the exit before security could propel us by our belt loops out onto the hot, asphalt parking lot.

What I learned over the years is no matter what the circumstances of your departure from a job, always leave on the best terms possible. In all cases, except for the department store thing, I made sure I shook the boss’s hand, left a nice, positive goodbye note to my co-workers and removed any rotting deli from my desk drawers.

DTW to JFK to BOS to CDG to LHR to STFU

airportcodesYou’ve seen those people. You may be one of them. You know. Inveterate airport code posters on Facebook or Twitter. “Hey! I’m LGA to HNL for a fabulous 2-week vacation.” I always thought that a person willing to reveal their absence should add the helpful information, “so go ahead and rob my house. Just got a new 75-inch TV. Best to take it out through the garage. Don’t worry. No one will be home for the next two weeks.”

But it’s not only vacationers. It’s business travelers. I suppose it’s a way of broadcasting you’re traveling the world on the boss’s dime and that makes you one cool ass guy or girl. It really doesn’t. It broadcasts the fact that you’re deluded into believing people will be jealous of you because you spend much of your life on an airborne tube stuffed with people who smell bad and try to pound a steamer trunk into the overhead bins.

I don’t think I’m being paranoid by never posting on social media that I’m away from home. Believe me. My “adoring” public can wait for the photos until I return and my home and family aren’t sitting ducks for whatever mayhem this crazy world has in mind.

As for the ego trip of letting the world know that I’m traveling the world? Please. Given the conditions of air travel today I would think it much more prestigious to boast about traveling in complete comfort in a shipping container in the depths of the cargo hold of a Great Lakes coal hauler.

So if I see a post from you that’s nothing more than a string of airport codes I’ll just figure it’s a cry for help. Perhaps the code you need to post is SOS.

 

Justifiable Shopper-cide

ddsAlmost two weeks into my voluntary unemployment, called, “retirement,” I’ve become all too familiar with a life form I’ll call DDS, “death deserving shoppers.” These are shoppers whose eyes are fixed-focused on their phones, whether plying the aisles of a store or navigating their way around a parking lot. Their eyes never leave their phones, even as they walk, blissfully blind about the possibility that oncoming vehicles will turn their smartphones, and bodies, into instant speed bumps. Where we once had the expectation that pedestrians would look both ways before crossing a roadway, and give way to cars and trucks that could impair their ability to reach their destination alive, now the DDS simply dive in, figuring the squeal of brakes, a flipping finger, maybe a horn honk would validate their selfish supposition motorists will do anything to work around them without causing fatalities. Actually, if you are, or know a DDS, you should know we motorists don’t care about avoiding your fatality. We are simply averse to all the paperwork.

There’s no crying in retirement

arod

Why do people cry when they announced their retirement? I suppose I can understand overpaid athletes who will miss playing “the game,” their teammates and exorbitant paychecks. For the rest of us, it’s not gonna happen. Didn’t happen for me last week. Oh, I’ll miss my wonderful teammates, but honestly, would I cry about not having just a couple of more hours behind my desk, pine about not being lobotomized at still another meeting, receiving an email from someone asking me to do something they are more than capable of doing? I can see it now. A tearful retirement announcement going something like this: “(sniff, sniff) I announce my retirement today from Blodgett Bullshit Ltd. and it’s still hitting me that within a couple of days I will have filed my last BBSLTD BS Report, completed my last expense report, attended my last stiff, er, staff meeting and eaten my last portion of greasy chicken tenders from the company cafeteria. It’s a hole that I can’t imagine could be filled anytime soon with free time allowing me to pursue my personal interests since I long gave those up in order to work overtime. I suppose my family will be happy to see more of me, but honestly, when I’m home they generally decide it’s time for ‘individual pursuits’ leaving me to read the ingredients on boxes of colonoscopy prep substances. Aw…hell, I’m happy as hell to logout, punch out, run outta here as fast as I can and find out what this thing they call fresh air and exercise is all about!”

Retirement Diaries: What I learned…after a single week

It’s been a week since I swiped my badge for the last time and walked out of Corporate America into the nebulous world called “retirement.” One savvy co-worker with a “no shit” attitude called it straight. “You’re not really ‘retiring,’ you’re just walking out the door and quitting!” Technically that’s true. Philosophically it isn’t since I’m not seeking full-time work but would be open to a thing now and again just to keep my brain sharp and my annoying self out of my wife’s hair in between bike rides, kayak paddles, bourbons on the patio and pushing the shopping cart at Kroger.

What have I learned after one week of intentional unemployment? I learned I missed the convenient ATM at work but not the over-cologned colleagues who always seemed to be standing just ahead of me on the escalator in an effort to cause “death by olfactory overload.” I learned that telling people you’ve retired causes immediate glances at your legs to see if they’re being held up by either a tripod, long loaf of French bread or cane signed by your erstwhile co-workers.  Just because you retire does not mean you’ve given up your ambulatory rights.

It took only 17 minutes to tire of people cracking that I would now be eating dinner at 4 p.m., placing my teeth in a glass each night or would become a shuffleboard savant. I’ll have you know my late father was captain of the 3-time champion Buttonwood shuffleboard team in Greenacres, Fla. and taught me the intricacies of the game which includes blasting the other team’s discs into what’s known as “the kitchen”–the dreaded 10-off trapezoid.

I learned that utilizing senior discounts is not a stigma, but rather an excuse to say “nyah, nyah” to young punks stuck paying full price.

I learned Millennials is just another name for “Generation C”–C standing for “Ciphers.” Indeed, one former co-worker of that ilk said he could accomplish more but just “didn’t have the bandwidth” at this time. Or any discernable skills. In my brief retirement I let that sink in before pouring another bourbon to help me forget it.

I suppose I’ll learn a lot more as time passes and my full-time working life fades into distant memory. Of course there are people I will miss and those I regret missing–with every round. But the bottom line is so far I’m enjoying the time with my family even if every time I appear unexpectedly I hear one of them whisper, “he’s still here!”

 

House of Electronic Worship-Retirement Series Part 1

microcenter1On this, my second “work” day of retirement I made a discovery. A high number of men did not show up for work today in the metro Detroit area because they were all, with me, at the House of Electronic Worship known as Micro Center. There was not one woman there. I’ll bet they don’t even have a Women’s Rest Room. Every aisle was jammed with walking testosterone depositories, some who may have needed suppositories because their cheeks were so tightened with arousal over the deals on hard drives, HDMI cables, giant screen TVs and assorted parts, blank media and mini LED flashlights. microcenter2The check out line snaked for 50 feet looking like LA’s 405 in rush hour–shopping carts filled with electronic things, things you plug in, turn on, set, reset, recharge. In this holy of holies of electromagnet forces size matters. microcenter3The size of the screen in your cart, size of your RAM, size of your lens, length of your data contract. I left completely spent even though I spent a measly 30 bucks on a cable and a keyboard…the keyboard this post is being written on. Do you feel its power? It’s USB power? It’s OK..it’ll wear off…as soon as I power down.

Retirement Reflection: 8 Workplace Lessons

20160705_071325On the occasion of my retirement this week, I thought I’d relate my long work history and the 8 very important workplace lessons I learned along the way.

My first paying job was at Mel’s Laundromat on Union Turnpike and 248th Street in Queens.  Might have been around 1962. Now, everyone knows the “mat” part of “laundramat” means you do it yourself, but I got paid 25 cents a day to do it for busy or working moms who didn’t have the time or desire to hang around a hot, steamy, dumpy store while their family’s dirty clothes went round and round in the washer and dryer for more than an hour. That first work experience taught me workplace lesson number 1 –don’t ask for a raise after blowing a bubble all over your face. The boss will never take you seriously.

I quickly moved on to a much more high paying job, scoring a summer job as an assistant counselor at Great Neck Country Day Camp in tony Great Neck Long Island. At a sweet salary of $25 plus tips for the summer, that represented a big raise and I immediately began investing heavily…in Clearasil. I did so well, they hired me back at twice the money the following year and at that income level I had an endless supply of egg creams and Clark Bars. Yes. I was living the high life. That’s when I learned workplace lesson number 2–using your hard earned money to buy sugary treats makes you fat and pimply and offensive to any and all females.

By high school I gave up my starting position on the Martin Van Buren varsity soccer team to work in the linens and domestics department of the S. Klein department store in Lake Success, Long Island. It was a clear case of irony, since despite its lofty sounding location, the S. Klein chain went bankrupt, which, unknown to me then, led to workplace lesson number 3–you are now prepared to work in the auto industry.

During my college days I scored a political patronage job with the NYC Comptroller’s officer courtesy of my mother’s connections through the Eastern Queen Democratic Club. My job was to type out the checks to people who successfully sued the City of New York for car damage from potholes. The city was not a fast payer. In 1971 I wrote a check to someone who sued the city in 1957. Maybe the city believed if they waited for the payee to croak, the check would never be cashed.  Hence, workplace lesson number 4–if you drag your heels long enough you might escape doing anything that requires actually working.

Once I entered the full time working world after graduating college I worked at a series crappy radio stations in Central New York and Tucson, Arizona. At the station in Tucson the general manager’s head popped through the roof right over the microphone while I was reading a newscast. “Dang!” he said in his big Texan drawl. “That ain’t right.” Yup. Workplace lesson number 5: Bosses will stick their heads where they don’t belong.

From there it was television station KGUN in Tucson where I was both the weekend weather caster and midweek nightside general assignment reporter. It could be confusing. One time when I covered a murder, as they brought the body out of the house a Tucson cop cracked, “why’s the weather guy here? Is it gonna rain on the stiff?”

Somehow that job led to being hired by CNN as one of the original producers of CNN2, which morphed into CNN Headline News, which much later, morphed in an unrecognizable channel I never watch. Over the next 20 years I would move from producer to correspondent, spot anchor and finally, Detroit Bureau Chief and correspondent until I was laid off in 2001 as part of that awesome merger between Time Warner and AOL. I was actually laid off one day after interviewing the authors of a book on why employee evaluations are a total waste. When I asked why I was chosen to be laid off, the boss said, “now’s not the time.” Oh. Guess what? The boss ended up getting canned too. That led to workplace lesson number 6: Karma always wins.

A stint as national auto writer at the Associated Press and General Motors beat writer at The Detroit News followed. Two great jobs that taught me workplace lesson number 7: going to work is more fun when you don’t have to wear makeup.

And now..the end of the road. After 43 years in the workforce I’m hanging it up. I’ve spent the past 11 years at DaimlerChryslerChryslerFiatChryslerAutomobiles as the head of its digital communications team, which is a really wonderful, groundbreaking combination of broadcast, social media and video production. The job was created just for me. How lucky is that?  It’s been a crazy ride through three owners, one bankruptcy and one gentle idiot who asked if we could post an item on both the “national and international Internet.” We assured him that since he asked nicely, we would accommodate that lofty request. I’ve been blessed with a wonderful team who will give most any of my nutty ideas a try and actually make them work. I will miss them terribly, but now it’s time to focus on my family, which has had to put up with my crazy hours and travel for many years, and to tackle some personal projects such as playing my drums for hours on end in order to smoke out those neighbors I haven’t yet met.

That leads to my 8th and final workplace lesson: When you’ve worked more years than most of your employee’s parents have been alive, it’s time to pack your paper clips and post it notes and, stop, smell the roses, and enjoy going to Kroger on a Tuesday, push the cart for your wife and carry home those heavy jugs of milk and orange juice. She’ll appreciate that.

 

 

Conventional Wist-dom

cowpalace

The first political convention I can remember watching was the 1964 Republican at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. As a 12-year old my first thought was, “are you kidding me? They’re gonna nominate a candidate for President in a place called the Cow Palace?” It seemed more appropriate as a venue for judging heifers and goats at a state fair. After two days of viewing on our 19-inch black and white Zenith TV, it became apparent it was exactly the right place since the delegates were packed together as tightly as canned hams and the nominee, Barry Goldwater, was throwing out conservative red meat to the crowd poised to gobble up every morsel of anti-Communist paranoia. Sidenote: many years later when I was a weatherman at KGUN, Tucson, Arizona, Goldwater came walking thr0ugh the studio as I was preparing my map. He stopped and joked, “you’re not gonna make it rain this weekend, are you?” “Oh no, Senator. This is Arizona. We don’t do rain,” was my lame reply. He kept walking.

I don’t remember much about the Democratic convention that year. It was held in Atlantic City where we vacationed each spring break with another family long before the casino/parasites sucked the once quaint beach resort dry. LBJ was the Dem’s nominee having benefitted from taking office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I do, vaguely remember Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s running mate, being pushed to the sidelines and made to appear as the strong-willed Johnson’s man servant.

1968 didn’t happen for me. Of all years. I was 16 and working for a camp that took disadvantaged inner city kids from New York City, camping and canoeing and hiking in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. White Mountains of New Hampshire and Baxter State Park in Maine. While the upheaval and violence was going on at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, I was fending off a 10-year thug at a campsite in New Hampshire who pulled my own jackknife on me. He wasn’t hard to disarm but I had to escort him on a Trailways bus back to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan and deposit him with his parents who just couldn’t believe their darling Julio could do such a thing.

IMG_0395The closest I ever got to actually covering a convention was in 1988 when I worked for CNN. The Democrats did their thing at the old Omni Arena in Atlanta, which was about 10 steps from CNN Center. That made things very convenient. I was assigned to work, most of the week, in one of our trailers below a viaduct between the Omni and CNN Center. I honestly don’t remember exactly what I did but I do remember two things: Al Franken walking glumly through the trailer after being fired when his “humorous” commentaries fell flat, and the unbelievable large quantity of pigeon droppings that adorned our little metal workplace. When I wasn’t working in the trailer I was the Supervising Producer in the actual newsroom in CNN Center. It was a cool time. All sorts of celebrities toured our complex. The one I remember clearly was CNN’s own Larry King. I’d never seen him in person before but if “The Walking Dead” had been a thing in ’88, he’d have been either the star, or the inspiration for the series.

Over time, of course, the long death march primary system has replaced the conventions as the method whereby candidates actually win the nomination, but I still enjoy watching them. For one, I get the greatest amount of joy seeing some low-level official attempting to capture the delegates’ attention while giving a speech at 4 p.m. I confess, desperation has its allure, when it’s not mine.

So I look forward to the unusual arrangement of both conventions running back-to-back this time around. Someone is bound to do something foolish or personally destructive, but on the other hand a new political star may be born. Just ask Hillary Clinton about one such star who wowed the crowd at the 2004 convention in Boston, then outshined her own candidacy in 2008 and is completing his second term. Is it her turn, finally? Will Donald Trump rock Cleveland…or turn it into a casino/condo development? Don’t know but I have a better TV now and I can’t wait to watch…in color.

An Unfriend-ly Warning

Unfriend In this past, horrible week when, it seems, we should be focusing our anger on innocent people being killed by cops and innocent cops being killed by criminals, I’ve seen a disproportionate amount of invective aimed at…Facebook friends.

Oh, it’s been building up to this idiocy. All political season anyone who expresses an opinion from the left, right or sideways is obnoxiously shouted down as being either a moron, cretin, or, worst of all, an acolyte of Taylor Swift.  But during this past tense week I have seen this philosophical intolerance escalate to the point where Facebook posters are making what they honestly believe is the strongest threat of all against those with whom they disagree…unfriending! Oh yes! Express an opinion at odds with a certain cranky individual with whom you’ve spent years sharing photos of your dog, anecdotes about your ineffective dermatologist and recipes for breakfast cereals made from Elmer’s Glue and bam! Relationship over. You’re crossed off his/her virtual list of friends you’ve never actually met and who would never show up for your funeral or kid’s Bar Mitzvah.  The upside is, who the hell cares? Honestly, I never, ever look at the number of Facebook friends I have and if you dump me I’d never know, or care.

I can see it now…

Guy 1: “There’s too much violence. We must have gun control!

Guy 2: “Piss off. I belong to the NRA. Guns are good. I’m unfriending you!

Guy 1: “Oh no!  I recant everything I ever said about gun control. Can we still be friends?

Guy 3: I’m unfriending both of you morons.

You like what I write? Read on. Don’t? Move along. I don’t care. My page is my page and yours is yours. But don’t whine like a spoiled, simpering snot who holds your breath if you don’t get the biggest slice of birthday cake or shows up at the Apple store just as the last, latest iPhone is sold. If you honestly can’t stand to read an opinion that doesn’t match yours then go to your room, close your eyes and imagine a world that revolves around you. Believe me, Copernicus could use the laugh.

So here’s my new policy. I catch you whining on my feed about how tired and exhausted and pissed off you are about certain people’s opinions and then level the “unfriend” threat, boom, there you go. Maybe you care about being unfriended. I’ll never know you were gone.