You Must Be From Away

>Saw today that my mate and ex-boss, Gunter, has a flash new Mercedes as his company car.

And good on him, too.
If you’re one of the head honchos of a big company, you certainly deserve it.

I’ve never really placed much value on vehicles as a status symbol.
I ran around in a variety of Fiat Unos and Hondas for a long time and when someone once said “I’m surprised that someone in your position would drive a car like that”, I thought “You prick”

But I accept that – in certain circumstances – it’s important.

After I started a fairly senior sales job a few years back, we were planning the logistics around a presentation for an overseas customer (fairly biggish airline) and I was picking up their VP Cargo from his hotel. and someone else was picking up their local manager from his office and so on.

And then my boss asked “What sort of cars are we driving tomorrow?”

Audi, Mercedes, my Saab 9.3. All meet approval.

Then he told the story.

Another presentation a while back and one of the techies had offered to pick up the customer from the airport.

Turned up safe and sound and we’re doing the usual “How’s the hotel, how was the flight, was the pick-up OK?” sort of bullshit conversation, when the customer – an American, built like an NFL line backer. 6’5″, 130kg – says

“That was an interesting car that Hans picked me up in. I think it used to be a refrigerator”

Quite ironic for an American, which impressed me no end, but it turned out that Hans had a white and rust Fiat Panda, tinny little engine that sounds like a motor mower and a back seat full of kids toys and safety seats, no boot (sorry…trunk) to speak of and reeking of dead nappies and stale kiddy chunder.

Took about 10 minutes to fold this giant into the front seat and stow his luggage and about the same time to extract him at the end of the journey. (Which must have seemed like an eternity

I think he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the Mercedes at the end of the day….

>

This a good one.

Stephen Dubner, one of the authors of “Freakonomics” (great book, although I prefer Tim Harford’s “The Underground Economist“) was on a domestic Northwest flight in Business. .

Didn’t want the meal for a variety of reasons that sound very familiar – had to keep working, just had something to eat (because you know that the food’s going to be crap), food’ crap – but asked the flight attendant if he could instead have a snack that they were selling for $2 in Economy.

He could – for $2.

There’s been quite a verbal stoush about this, both at Freakonomics and at Consumerist, and it brings to the surface the lunatic fringe with all their envy and class hatred that you’re not supposed to acknowledge exists.

And a lack of common sense.

But it does remind me of flying Air India from Delhi to Mumbai a while back.

Flight came from Katmandu in Nepal, so we were a mixture of domestic and international passengers.

On Air India, there are rules.

The rules are that international passengers don’t get a meal on the domestic leg, because they’ve already been fed on the first leg, but they get alcoholic beverages (because it’s an international flight.)

Domestic passengers get a meal, because it’s that time of day. But no drinks, (because it’s a domestic flight)

So I get a meal, but what I’d really like is a beer.

The guy next to me is glancing covetously at my veg curry and he’s just ordered a beer.

Time for a secondary market to go into action. He orders another beer, we do a quick swap and everyone’s very happy.

Not the flight attendant.

Confiscates my beer, puts the (untouched) meal back in front of me with instructions to EAT IT and gives us both a ticking-off and a lecture about rules and what-have-you.

We look suitably chastened and wait for her to disappear. Meal tray gets shoved surreptitiously over to my new mate, who digs in and shoves it back in front of me when she reappears, while we sit there with butter-wouldn’t melt-in-our-mouths smiles on our faces.

Until she’s gone and we’re off again.

And in the meantime, my mate’s mate has ordered another beer for himself. Or for me….

A pub with no beer.mp3 has rarely been more appropriate