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[Liz]

But I just wanna swoop down like a motherfuck*ng angel of light into this man's past and I wanna give him a suitcase and I want him to cover it with travel labels from Italy and Baghdad and Samarkand...

He's retired, he's not dead.

[JorgeFabregas]

I kinda have some sympathy for smets' position. There seem to be some assumptions going on both sides. I did a google search to see if there was an article with quotes from the guy so that we can get some insight. I don't think he's retired.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world/mcdonalds-employee-leonard-rhomberg-honored-for-50-years-of-service_100247918.html

http://www.fox2now.com/ktvi-mcdonalds-employee-50th-anniversary-090909,0,1198202.story

[Bobby Isosceles]

But I just wanna swoop down like a motherfuck*ng angel of light into this man's past and I wanna give him a suitcase and I want him to cover it with travel labels from Italy and Baghdad and Samarkand...

Samarkand is kind of "bleh." Chipped a tooth there. They've fallen on hard times, mostly selling imported chinese junk to tourists. Lots of gypsies burning wild rue to annoy passersby into paying them.

[littlefallsmets]

I dunno. I can see where some of you all might not appreciate my tendency to trail off into extreme positions when I'm writing in a message board box, hell I'm not always so fond of it myself, but I just don't get where reacting to the headline "man's entire life consisted of disrespected and soul-crushing job" with "holy crap, that's sad, I wish things had gone better for this dude"...

I don't get where that's such a way out reaction. I don't get how the assumed reaction of the vast majority of people has been "oh it's a needed job/oh someone's gotta do it/oh maybe he figured out a way to tolerate it/oh maybe that's all he knows". I guess that's where I'm at a loss here.

When something bad happens to someone, my first jump isn't to rationalize how how it isn't that bad or how it was unavoidable or necessary or how the person brought in on themselves or whatever. My first jump is to imagine myself in that person's shoes, going through that experience and recoil in horror.

Maybe this is one of those things (I forget the word) where you go around your whole life thinking a way and you just assume that it's a natural pattern because it has never been directly challenged (it is killing me that I forget this word) but I guess this is one of those things.

Anyway, it perked the board up a bit. That's gotta count for something.

[wombat]

Speaking as a liberal, this is the problem with liberal thinking: the assumption that everyone would want to be like you and live like you, and would feel like you, if they truly understood. For example, either on the surface or deep down we left wingers all believe that right wingers are either not smart, or else tragically misinformed. We can't help it, it's just the way we are. The logic of our positions is so clear to us that we have to assume that the only explanation is that you don't have the right facts to draw the conclusion, or are too dumb to see its logical obviousness.

Likewise there is the assumption that everyone would want to live like us if only they were fully informed about the wonderfulness of our way of life. For instance, that someone who lives in the same small town all his life is by definition someone who was too pathetic or too deprived to get out into the world. Because the rightness of wanting to experience strange things and do something that seems important is so obvious, we don't understand that maybe it involves a sacrifice of other values like being connected to a place and people for the long term. And that someone who makes a different choice between those values is not necessarily an idiot.

Some people are perfectly happy without ever seeing Samarkand, or even knowing where it is. They don't want you to buy them a ticket there. They are perfectly fine where they are. And that doesn't make you better than them.

Anyway, LFM, that is the flaw in your thinking. Really imagining yourself in someone else's shoes doesn't mean imagining what your thinking would do with the way those shoes feel. It's imagining what it would be like to be that person in those shoes. Not what would it be like to be YOU, miserable in that job. What would it be like to be the person who was authentically happy that way?

[dejavroom]

Samarkand is kind of "bleh." Chipped a tooth there. They've fallen on hard times, mostly selling imported chinese junk to tourists. Lots of gypsies burning wild rue to annoy passersby into paying them.

Hella depressing. Been thinking about treating myself (at some point in the unguessable future) to some pretty basic Grand Tour stuff, maybe Greece, fuck it, but of course I suppose disappointments like these are only to be expected when one visits a place from history... oh, well.

[Ben-San]

I guess I missed the extra bonus paragraphs of that article where it says "Mr. Rhomberg has never left Crestwood by more than ten miles, never took a few vacation weeks and went on a trip, never had a honeymoon on the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, never traveled at all, never learned more than was absolutely necessary to make burgers, and used his weekends to stare, unfulfilled, at travel advertisements in Reader's Digest and wonder if there could ever have been more to his life."

I mean apparently LFM read those paragraphs, where do I have to click for them?

Edit: So I decided to instead of just fantasizing about what he must or mustn't be like, go look for other information. Rhomberg is unmarried, and says that the only downside he feels to working at McDonald's so long is that his clothes smell like McDonald's, "especially with a dog around". He reminisces that when he started, a burger was 15 cents and "got more and more"; when the PR flack (or possibly a Fox reporter which is about the same thing) said "and better and better, right?" he became extremely noncommittal and said "Well, some people." He cleaned up after his own retirement party, although it is unclear whether this was an irony of duty required by contract or something he chose to do as a farewell. The franchise has been owned by the same family since he started working there, and it is this family that threw the retirement party rather than the McDonald's Corporation.

So there you go. All the information that a few minutes on Google turns up about Leonard Rhomberg of Crestwood, Missouri.

[JorgeFabregas]

I guess I missed the extra bonus paragraphs of that article where it says "Mr. Rhomberg has never left Crestwood by more than ten miles, never took a few vacation weeks and went on a trip, never had a honeymoon on the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, never traveled at all, never learned more than was absolutely necessary to make burgers, and used his weekends to stare, unfulfilled, at travel advertisements in Reader's Digest and wonder if there could ever have been more to his life."

I mean apparently LFM read those paragraphs, where do I have to click for them?

Edit: So I decided to instead of just fantasizing about what he must or mustn't be like, go look for other information. Rhomberg is unmarried, and says that the only downside he feels to working at McDonald's so long is that his clothes smell like McDonald's, "especially with a dog around". He reminisces that when he started, a burger was 15 cents and "got more and more"; when the PR flack (or possibly a Fox reporter which is about the same thing) said "and better and better, right?" he became extremely noncommittal and said "Well, some people." He cleaned up after his own retirement party, although it is unclear whether this was an irony of duty required by contract or something he chose to do as a farewell. The franchise has been owned by the same family since he started working there, and it is this family that threw the retirement party rather than the McDonald's Corporation.

So there you go. All the information that a few minutes on Google turns up about Leonard Rhomberg of Crestwood, Missouri.

I linked the video of that above. I thought it was sad and a little bit interesting that all he does at McDonald's is clean up and bus tables. I would wager that most McDonald's don't have anyone who does that full time and that he's somewhat of a throwback.

His bright, white, Wainwright jersey got stained with ketchup. Cleans up after his own party and his gift gets stained at work? Yeah, I do think that's at least a little sad.

[pmcd9]

I'm gonna throw in with Mike.  Goddamn, why doesn't this pathetic fuck just throw himself in front of a bus already?

[Bobby Isosceles]

Hella depressing. Been thinking about treating myself (at some point in the unguessable future) to some pretty basic Grand Tour stuff, maybe Greece, fuck it, but of course I suppose disappointments like these are only to be expected when one visits a place from history... oh, well.

Bukhara is still pretty rad. Samarkand is ... eh, kind of big and desolate.

the registan (that might be the Shir Dor or Ulug Beg mosque)

the red circle is around me. that is a BIG facade

[AugustWest]

I have eaten at the Crestwood, MO, McDonalds an non-zero number of times.

[JorgeFabregas]

I bet it was really clean. Am I right?

[theinevitable]

Some people are perfectly happy without ever seeing Samarkand, or even knowing where it is. They don't want you to buy them a ticket there. They are perfectly fine where they are. And that doesn't make you better than them.

Yeah, the part that makes us better than them is the part where they call you a fag and then broomhandle you in the locker room.

[AugustWest]

I bet it was really clean. Am I right?

Nope.  There were puddles of poorly aimed spittle everywhere, left by the crowds of snide customers who pointed and laughed at this poor older fellow struggling to clean up.  He was hindered by his pre-pubescent supervisor, who slapped him on his bald head like Benny Hill did Jackie Todd.  He seemed to be on the verge of tears, and as I walked out the door he caught my eye.  He gave me a look of such desperation as I shall never forget.

I told him McDonald's wasn't paying him 75 cents an hour to stand around gawking, spit my gum on the floor and left.

[pmcd9]

Oh Frank, that was the post of the year.