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Odd Angles
Public relations: Every now and then, life presents situations that guide our career path: We overhear a conversation about a job opening, take an elective that turns out to be a passion, or are told to "Get a job!" two months after graduation.
The Career Counselor of Life is apparently well aware of my colossal impatience with thoughtlessness, because periodically I will get a reminder telling me to stay away from jobs requiring contact with the public. The first notice came when I was a teenager.
It was the summer of 1979, and I was a fitting room attendant at a large department store called TSS. I'm not certain what those initials stood for, but there's a good chance it was "Totally Stinky Stuff," or something to that effect.
One night I was approached by an elderly female customer. In retrospect, she was probably as old as I am now, which is not old by any means. My younger self had a lot of nerve.
The woman was holding a pair of underwear best classified as drawers: a pale pink cotton blend with an incongruously narrow elastic band, roomy leg openings, and a waistline aimed at the breast bone.
Customer: "One."
Me: "You can't try that on -- it's against store policy."
Customer: "I need to make sure they fit."
Me: "Sorry."
Customer: "*%#@! I'm not buying these if I can't try them on!"
Me, reminding myself that I was saving for Sasson jeans: "Sorry."
Customer: "Listen, girlie, you just lost a sale!"
Me: "Listen, lady, I don't care!"
I finished my shift and, it turned out, my TSS career that night. But not before noticing that the elderly, I mean middle-aged, customer had returned to the vast display of drawers and tossed them like a Caesar salad. My painstaking evening of folding them was destroyed along with any inclination that I'd work with the public again.
Since then, life has given me many such career reminders. None, however, were more drastic than the most recent event.
We were visiting the National Gallery of Art, where I learned that traditional souvenirs have gone the way of photos to be e-mailed, videos to be posted and, the more immediate, on-the-spot cell calls that begin with, "Guess where I am?!" I can only assume this is done because friends wouldn't believe it otherwise. "You? At an art museum? Prove it!"
The guards did their best to keep an eye on everyone, but one room in particular was very crowded. A family that I had spotted earlier was taking turns posing next to a famous self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh. The rest of us patrons stood in a semicircle around the painting, trying our best to focus on Vincent's face and not the mugs of the Clod family.
The distraction this group created paled in comparison to what happened next: the father BUMPED INTO THE PAINTING! Imagine: a rare 19th-century masterpiece, worth an estimated $70 million, swaying to and fro. Around the world other masterpieces reacted: "The Scream" stopped screaming, Mona Lisa grimaced, and Venus de Milo swooned.
A female guard rushed over and said gently yet firmly, "Please, sir, you must maintain a 12-inch distance." Neither he nor his family had the decency to run from the room, building or city, as I would have. Instead, the guy smiled stupidly while waiting for Vincent to settle down so that his wife could snap another photo. Coincidentally, I, too, wanted to shoot him.
On our way out, I complimented that guard and several others, telling them how impressed I was by their patience and calm.
The way the NGA security guards deal with the public is, to me, a true work of art.
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