Dear Unions, Your Strikes Are Terrible.
There are several great things about my tiny walking commute in downtown Dallas. First of all, I love the fact that I am able to actually walk to work, it makes me feel all urban and sophisticated (ignoring the fact that I usually am wearing some sort of combination of skirt and tennis shoes which immediately deducts all my sophisticated points and places me squarely in the lame and decidedly unsophisticated middle aged woman camp.) There are all sorts of tiny flowers popping up all over the place, and when it’s not too hot, the walk is pretty much the best part of my day.
However, there are also several terrible things about the walk to work. The weather rarely cooperates, and I find myself often arriving at work in some sort of disarray resulting from hurricane-ish winds or sweating massively from a Texas sun induced heat stroke. The path I take to work also leads me past several secret homeless sleeping spots, hidden carefully under various bushes, and impossible to see from a car (but not impossible to see as you search the area from the source of the strong smell emanating from the area.) There are also a number of strikers and picketers peppered in front of various buildings.
These strikers seem to all originate from the same group, but you know, bad marketing on their part – I have no idea exactly which union the represent. They usually present themselves in one of two manners: either standing in a giant circle around the building, or chanting some unintelligible chant as they march around in a small circle. Despite seeing both types of strikers numerous times, I could not even begin to tell you who they represent, why they are unhappy, or who they are unhappy with. Usually, their sole purpose seems to be handing you wrinkled version of the same flyer with a cartoon picture of a giant rat on the top, the words RAT written in bold letters below it, and some contact information for the union (but not the name of the union, of course). I mean really, a rat? Are we actually in the 1920′s? Do people get all offended when they are called a rat? Does the union think that something is being accomplished by having all their members (or paying the homeless, as the rumor goes) to stand around in a silent circle around a building, handing the same oblivious office workers the same pointless flyer over and over again? And honestly, the chanters are worse. After passing the same chanting group in front of a nearby building for a month or so, I finally was able to make out one of the chants. And it is stupid. It goes:
Where are they?
INSIDE!
Where do we want them?
OUTSIDE!
Where do we need them?
OUTSIDE!
And so on and so on for a while. Another time they spelled out RAT slowly. Again – I have no idea what exactly they are striking about, just that they want someone to come from inside to outside, and also….rat. There is usually one head chanter, who varies his chanting style so that the people marching around in a circle are unable to follow it, breaking out into a R&B-esque, scale-jumping, singing exercise every now and then, leaving the rest of the strikers to simply march around in a circle until it becomes clear that they are supposed to yell out “OUTSIDE!’ There is also the same lady with a tripod set-up, monitoring the strikers and compiling hours upon hours of footage of a small group of people walking around in a circle. The whole thing is insane!
After watching this unfold many, many times, I have discovered a new business opportunity for anyone interested. I think there could be a lucrative future for any marketing minds out there for “Strike Coordinator,” responsible for organizing the union, printing flyers that mean something for the average office worker and not just evoking history lessons from the 1920′s (“rat” is out, “idiot” is in!), and coming up with some intelligible chants and head chanters who don’t feel the need to break out into song. Oh yeah, and compiling all those hours of footage into some great art project.
I think I’m on to something.
