The Price of Kindness

"Stores are never nice to people. They're nice to credit cards." -- Edward Lewis

I'm cautious by nature and I have New York sensibilities, so I'm instantly suspicious when strangers are kind to me for no apparent reason. What? I was raised to believe that a random person -- the type I meet once and will likely never meet again -- will never go out of his way to endear himself to me unless he can get something out of it, and with few exceptions, that has held true throughout my life. This intrinsic distrust of human intentions especially extends to two groups of people: gorgeous men and salespeople, and since the former can easily spawn half a dozen blog entries on its own, I'll only be discussing the latter today.

I've done a lot of shopping and worked a little retail in my time, and I've developed a few prejudices from my experiences:

• In an H&M or Old Navy, I don't expect the sales help to ever acknowledge my presence.
• In an Ann Taylor or Express, I expect one greeting and maybe one check-in if I'm not well-dressed. If I am well-dressed, I expect a couple of check-ins, a little help finding sizes, and minimal fitting room support.
• In a J. Crew or Banana Republic, I expect to be ignored if I'm not well-dressed. If I am well-dressed and I show genuine interest in full-price items, I expect a warm greeting, lots of check-ins, and lots of schlepping of items to and from the fitting room. If I am well-dressed and I show more interest in the clearance rack than the full-price items, I expect to be ignored after this becomes apparent.
• In an Abercrombie, Hollister, or Pac Sun, I expect to be treated as if I am not cool, trendy, and/or hip enough to set foot in the place. I do not shop in these stores by my own choice. If someone drags me to one and I am treated nicely by the sales help, there is no doubt in my mind that they're making fun of me while I'm not looking.

My expectations also vary based on location -- I generally expect non-Manhattan salespeople to be nicer to me than Manhattan salespeople. (Perpetually nasty Roosevelt Field Mall employees are the exception.)

Anyway, I've enjoyed two surprisingly pleasant shopping experiences lately and the events left me feeling so happy about life that I have to share them here. The weekend before last, I wandered around a J. Crew aimlessly for a while, collecting various items off the sale racks, when a very perky blonde lady approached me and asked if I needed any help. Before I knew it, the items in my hands were placed in a fitting room reserved for my use, she was suggesting jeans for my body shape and helping me choose sizes and colors, and she continued to help me and give me clothing advice and bring me new pieces despite the fact that a line of people now waited for fitting rooms. The lady working the cash register didn't ask me for the name of my attendant, but I gave it to her anyway along with a few words of praise.

I went shopping and was shocked by good service once again today -- only this time, I was in SoHo and decided to browse around Uniqlo after remembering that my cousin once got an enviable pair of jeans there. I found a style of dark denim I liked, pulled a 2, 4, 6, and 8 off the shelf (which I always do, and which usually pisses off salespeople immensely), and entered the fitting room. The attendant smiled, encouraged me to take as long as I needed, and told me to come out and let her examine the fit of the jeans once I determined my size. The second I pulled open the curtain, the attendant swooped over, checked that the waistband didn't gap, and dropped to one knee to pin my hems to the correct length. She then informed me that, should I choose to purchase the jeans, the store would alter them to fit my body... free of charge. "So bring these up front to the register, go get yourself some lunch, come back here with your receipt in about two hours, and they'll be ready for you."

I was stunned; this was a relatively inexpensive store and these were forty-dollar jeans, for heaven's sake! I asked more questions in search of a loophole or a catch -- and I found none. Turns out that the company believes that every single one of their customers should walk out of the store with clothing that fits their body as perfectly as possible. Thus, they offer free fitting and same-day tailoring on every pair of pants they sell.

Not only is it amazing customer service -- my jeans fit perfectly right out of the shopping bag, which NEVER happens to me -- but it's a fantastic business model. I'm sharing the news with anyone who will listen, and I'm planning on going back tomorrow morning for some colored denim that I can pass off as work pants!

You Bet

"I thought I knew, but now I know that rose trees never grow in New York City." --Elton John

Costco sells Fox's U-Bet in gallon jugs. I nearly bought one last week and thought better of it, but I've been craving a chocolate egg cream ever since.

I don't know if it's a result of my Queens upbringing, my family's bakery roots, or my "world revolves around New York City" outlook on life, but it flat-out never occurred to me that anyone could ever find those two sentences incomprehensible. My universe tilted on its edge when I uttered them at work yesterday and, instead of the sympathy I craved, they garnered these two responses:

1. Egg cream? Easter is coming up...
2. What about foxes?

It took me a few minutes of stilted explanations to realize that my colleagues didn't know what an egg cream was and didn't recognize the brand name of the key ingredient. "Maybe it's a local thing?" suggested one of my compatriots, so I did a little research, learned that both originated in Brooklyn, and was satisfied with that explanation.

Later that night, I marveled to a few fellow native New Yorkers that my coworkers had never heard of egg creams or Fox's U-Bet. I was met with total confusion once again, and this time, the universe imploded outright. What did these people drink after school as kids? Did no one else's father scour every kitchen supply store in the tri-state area looking for pressurized seltzer bottles? Was I the only person not allowed to consume Hershey's syrup during my formative years? How can you go through two-odd decades of life without having the "milk first or syrup first" argument?

Thus, I'm writing this as a public service. Read, my poor deprived friends, and learn. [Clears throat so Brooklyn accent becomes more pronounced.]


An egg cream does not contain eggs, nor does it contain cream. It is a delicious frothy drink that originated a century and change ago in the fountain soda shops of Brooklyn, New York. You can make your own in five easy steps:

1. Find a tall glass and stick it in the fridge for a few minutes to chill it.
2. Pour an inch of chocolate syrup into the bottom of the glass.
3. Pour an inch of cold milk into the glass.
4. Fill the rest of the glass with cold, fresh seltzer water, preferably from a pressurized bottle.
5. Stir it up and enjoy.

You can use any old chocolate syrup in a pinch, but a real, authentic, honest-to-God egg cream must use Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup. U-Bet, like the egg cream itself, was born in Brooklyn and its parent company still operates out of Brownsville. I grew up on this stuff, and we always made sure that at least one yellow-labeled jar -- it was only available in jars back then -- was stashed in the back of the fridge. Hershey's, Nestle, and even Bosco syrups were (and are) never purchased as long as U-Bet was (and is) available, since, owing to its inclusion of real cocoa, cane sugar, and powdered milk, the flavor is distinct from anything else on the market. I can taste the difference between U-Bet and any other syrup brand with little effort.

If you have the ingredients on hand, make an egg cream for yourself and see what I'm talking about. If you don't, let me know and I'll treat you to one, preferably in an outer borough dive diner where the seltzer man still delivers pressurized glass bottles every morning. You'll never feel more in touch with traditional New York City, I promise.

Seeing and Knowing

"I have a friend who's an artist... he'll say, 'I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.' There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." -- Richard Feynman

Everyone has a completely different perspective on life, but just how different does the world look to someone with a strong educational background in physical and biological sciences? I pondered this question a great deal during the nine months between my acceptance to engineering school and my first day there. I thought about how an in-depth scientific education would change the way I look at the world and what the ramifications of such an understanding would be. To work through my conflicting emotions, I started writing a short story about a high school senior lured into a scientific education by extraordinary promises:

"“But when all of this is said and done, you’ll know exactly who you are and what you’re doing on this planet.”
“I won’t have time to think, let alone find myself.”
“It’s intrinsic to science, don’t you see?!” Tommy slid onto the desk and leaned close to me. His eyes, bright as hummingbirds and just as jittery, flitted across my face. “And you're going to learn more about your own life than anyone! You’ll get some paint on your shirt and visualize the chemical structure of the pigments. You’ll blink and calculate how air resistance curls your eyelashes. You’ll laugh and recognize what muscles relax to form the dimple in your left cheek." His gaze softened. "You’ll understand the reflex pathway causing you to blush whenever I look at you too closely.”
I lglanced at my hands, then remembered my molecular biology. “Beta-adrenergic stimulation activates adenylyl cyclase, which raises cyclic AMP levels, which dilates facial capillaries.”

The perspective of the story flits between the curious student and the jaded doctor she becomes, between a girl searching for some beauty in life and a woman who can't find beauty in anything. It took me four years to finish writing because it took four years for me to understand what I was trying to write.

120 credits of technical courses happened during those four years, and every circuit and every metabolic pathway and every differential equation made my world look a little bit different. So much science happened so gradually that I internalized an entire new world outlook without even realizing it.

Today, I took the elevator with a woman who tried -- and failed -- to make a phone call as we traveled between floors. She frowned at her BlackBerry, I muttered the words "Faraday cage," and she had no idea what I was talking about. For the first time in a long time, it dawned on me that people actually exist who can stand in an elevator without thinking of electrical fields rearranging charges.

As I rode the subway home today, shifting my weight from one leg to the other to balance against the inertia of the moving train, I tried to remember a life before scientific enlightenment and realized that I couldn't. But why would I want to? Honestly, how can someone book a stateroom on a cruise without first calculating the center of mass of the ship? How can someone examine a windshield crack without knowing how the defect will propagate? How can someone make cream of tomato soup without understanding why a spoonful of baking soda needs to go into the pot?

I agree with Richard Feynman; I adore knowing and find that life is incredibly beautiful when you understand the science behind it. But honestly, on some level, is not knowing just as fulfilling? Does my lack of ignorance mean that I'm missing out on the simple pleasures?