Life Lessons: about Respect

“Put that cigarette out”, very directly and quite rudely. It’s 2013, I used to smoke then. I let it drop to the ground, saying “yes, sorry” while thinking “why am I sorry? why do I have to do that?” She goes “now you are littering”. This is gonna be contentious.

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Long Island is just to the east of New York City, jutting out onto the Atlantic almost perpendicularly to the continent’s coast. It is indeed a 118-mile long fish-shaped island, ~20 miles at its thickest, and at the east end splits into twin tails called ‘forks’, with the famed Hamptons region occupying the South Fork. I had a house in Southampton – five years as a weekend place and the following eight years as my permanent residence, and so I’m an expert on the access routes: I-495 is the main highway traversing the Island east-west, with the smaller Route 27 running alongside it to the south and then becoming Route 39 for a few miles and then reverts to be called 27 through the rest of the Hamptons all the way to Montauk Point. The traffic is proverbially bad: there’s always something on 495, accidents or roadwork or whatever, and 27>39>27 is an absolute nightmare. The eastward Friday afternoons and the westward Sunday nights are the worst of course, especially in the summer -- that’s when the weekenders travel in from Manhattan and then out back to it.

The last 500-yard stretch on 39 in Southampton at the mouth of 27, just when you’re basically getting out of the Hamptons, has two lanes each direction, highway-like but with a ridiculously low 35mph limit because there’s summer motels and local businesses, golf courses, residential all around it, and a couple of restaurants. Going eastward you sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and just about at the Atlantic Motel when 27 is coming up the traffic loosens up and picks up speed. And there, in the parking lot right past the motel, is where a police cruiser sits. I know the area, I know it’s a speed trap, I’m not the most law-abiding driver (hey, I’m from Rome, it’s in my blood) but I tend to behave, and Southampton Police is not the friendliest – maybe because they have to maintain the pristine & tony persona of the place. They never caught me there.

On this late August evening just about in front of the Atlantic I do accelerate and change lane to pass slower cars, nothing extraordinary. The sound of a siren materialized almost instantly. The cruiser follows me for a few hundred yards, I slow down and pull over. A lady cop appears next to me, my hand is at the edge of the window, a cigarette dangling from it. “Throw that cigarette out”, I do and say I’m sorry, “you sped by me at 53, the limit is 35, and you changed lane without signaling” she says. I plead -- I didn’t speed, I just accelerated as the traffic was loosening up, I have to go pick up my daughter, I’m a resident, I live a mile away, I’m on this road many times a day every day. She’s not listening, she’s exceedingly stern for some reason, maybe it’s the cigarette. I hand over my documents and she walks back to her cruiser, keeps me waiting for twenty minutes and then comes back with three summonses: one for speeding, one for changing lanes without signaling, and one for reckless driving related to the lane change – that’s six points on my license plus the fines (which later I found were going to be $520).

I leave, so angry, no way, I’ll plead not guilty. Pick up my daughter, I’m late, tell her what happened, she asks whether I was doing 53 and changed lane without signaling, I say Maybe and Yes – her take is very matter-of-fact: “then you’re guilty”. She’s almost nine years old, a future traffic cop no doubt. Back home I fill the Not Guilty Plea and send it in, and a couple of weeks later get the court appearance notice. I show up, huddle with the Assistant DA who’s making plea bargains, I explain, she listens, offers me two points and $300, I say no, not fair, too severe, I have a clean license; she’s in a good mood I guess because she lowers the offer to no points, a $125 parking ticket, and eight hours of community service – and she adds “you better take it”. I take it. She hands me a list of places where I can do my community service time - soup kitchens, adult care facilities, two schools - I’ve done some volunteering in those venues over the years and so I choose a different place in the list: the Southampton Historical Museum. Sounds interesting, and it’s a ten-minute drive from home. I call, a lady sets me up for the following Tuesday, 8:30am, “no cell phone please”, I ask what I will be doing and she says “not sure, but not work with the public”.

The Southampton Historical Museum sits at the very center of town at the intersection of Jobs Lane, Main Street, and Meeting House Lane. It’s made of a total of eleven small dwellings – among which a paint store, a blacksmith’s shop, a carpentry shop, an 1830 one-room schoolhouse and the Sayre Barn -- and a large house, the Rogers Mansion, which houses the Museum itself and is in the National Register of Historic Places. The history of Southampton is all in there, starting with a map that shows the forty original long and narrow three-acre lots that were given to the early settlers from Massachusetts who almost 375 years prior docked nearby at Conscience Point; they were welcomed by the Shinnecock tribe who – bless their hearts - helped them build their first homes and plant crops. One of the forty lots was given to a William Rogers. They built their house at the corner of their lot, and occupied it for the next eight generations. The final owner, Jetur Rogers, a whaling captain who inherited the house in 1854, sold it in 1889 to John Nugent, a physician who ten years later sold it to Samuel L. Parrish, a Manhattan lawyer (he later founded an art museum in town, which is still today the Hampton’s premier art venue – and became both a branding client a year from now together with a social hangout venue – amazing what some donated money can do to get invited to the Hamptons’ best parties). He died thirty-three years later, in 1932, and eight years later his widow sold the house to Southampton Village who used it as a community center, as the local Red Cross headquarters, and as a YMCA. Finally, in 1952 the Southampton History Museum leased the property and moved in with their eclectic collection made of pieces from the early settlers’ times to the Victorian and Edwardian eras: furniture, paintings, exhibits, displays, photos, Native American pieces, silverware, books, maps, and much more small and large memorabilia. And Mr Parrish’s walnut piano is still there.

Monday comes, I’m there at 8:15am. It’s late August, warm day, I’m wearing a black T-shirt, tan slacks, and dark sneakers. Casually professional, I think. An older lady with a beautiful pearl strand sends me upstairs to speak with the Executive Director. I find him in the office at the top of the stairs, Tom Edmonds is his name. A bit younger than me I think, bespectacled, distinguished-looking, jacket & tie. He shakes my hand, says that he does get his share of my kind of volunteers, then says Welcome, and I reply “pleasure to be here, what would you like me to do”? He goes “they didn’t tell you?” No, I say. “We’re closed today, Monday is cleaning day, that’s your job. The lady downstairs will set you up.” I’m taken aback a little – I just didn’t expect that. Click my heels and walk downstairs, where the pearled lady shows me the cleaning closet and tells me with a warm smile that “two weeks ago we had a community service person as well, and he did a great job, the place sparkled”.

The cleaning closet is just like the cleaning closet at home, only with ten times more items and in greater quantities; it also has few aprons – I’ll put one on, seems like the right thing to do. Off I go, pushing the cleaning cart out of the closet – just like a hundred cleaning people I’ve seen a hundred times in a hundred of different hotels or office buildings.

Allright, so I have to clean the place. What does that mean exactly, I’m thinking. I look around, park the cart, and take a walk around the floor. Where do I start and where do I end? I’ve got eight hours, about 5,000 square feet of space, and countless artifacts; it’s a busy place item-wise, not like a regular museum where things are hanging on walls and there’s nothing else – this is a house, and looks and feels like it, and a large one. But yes, there is a smallish newer area where things hang on walls, indeed. Do I clean each room from top to bottom? Or do I do floor-wide activities one after another--- that is, dust first, vacuum second, etc.? I chose the latter – yes, ops strategy. It’s close to 9am.

For the next four hours I roam the entire place with a clear intent and concerted precision. Starting at the mounted deer head in the entry corridor, I go room after room; some are open or connected spaces really, plus the large main opening has about fifty folding chairs still set up from a prior event. A careful all-around dusting first, lots of surfaces, the dreaded top-of-the-picture-frames, lots of picking up / clean / replace – there’s dust. Fold all the chairs away and vacuum and then roll up all the rugs. Then back to the deer head and back all around as there’s some wet-rag scrubbing to do here and there (I guess the person “from two weeks ago” wasn’t that great after all). Back to the deer head again and run the vacuum cleaner, a turbocharged one it seems, works like a charm. And finally a good wet mopping throughout. And then the bathrooms and the coat room. And oh yes, I gave the piano a good shine too. Put the carpets back down, unfold and place the chairs (now they are straight, before they were straight-ish). And since I’m there I hit pretty hard the welcome mats outside the main entrance, and sweep that walkway too. Then I take a survey walkaround – all looks good. At the cost of sounding immodest, you can eat off any surface.

I walk up the stairs to Mr Edmonds, he goes “time for lunch?”, I say “no, I’m done”, he goes “you’re done?” Yes, I say. He gets up, walks downstairs, I follow; he walks the whole floor, looks in corners, over exhibits, under desks, behind curtains, marvels at the chair alignment. He smiles at me, “amazing, this place is spotless”. I smile back, ask him what else I should do. He replies “I’ll sign up that you did eight hours, don’t worry.” I thank him, go downstairs and straighten out the cleaning closet, take off my apron and hang it, all nice and neat. I leave.

Now – did you think that I wrote all this just to tell you about me getting out of a traffic ticket and to celebrate my museum-cleaning prowess? Right, I didn’t think so.

The museum was closed that day as every Monday, but pretty busy nevertheless: staff scurrying around, tradespeople, five small gatherings in meetings, scholarly-looking people walking round with notebooks, a photographer taking pictures, an elementary-grade classroom on a tour with a teacher. In my few hours there I saw at least fifty people.

And I’m sure they saw me.

But not one person acknowledged my presence. Not a nod, not a second look, certainly not a hello.

For those hours I was invisible. Worse than invisible: I was transparent – people would look my way but looked through me. A weird feeling, not being seen. Never experienced that in my entire life. ‘The cleaning guy’, that what I guess I was, existed but ... didn’t exist really. But they are walking the floor that I cleaned, sitting on the chairs I placed, looking around a place that I made pleasant, there’s value in it, all those people will have permanent memories of their morning here, and I had a small but important part in making them good. But that’s normalcy for them, you’d noticed only the opposite: floors dirty, chairs misplaced, dust. Unrecognized hard and valuable work. I’m thinking of all the people who every day spend the day the way I did today: what they feel while they work their long hours, and when they go home are they proud of what they did and how they did it. They should, I know I did. But there’s no recognition, that’s for sure. We people take that for granted, in our jobs we usually get that positive feedback, makes us feel that we are worth something. How many hardworking people don’t have that? They feed their families with that work, send their kids to school.

From that day on, no matter where I am, be it in a store or an office building or the airport or the subway or a bank, I notice the invisibles, I make a point of looking for them -- from security guards to cleaning crews. I taught my kids to do the same, make eye contact, nod or say hello, give them a smile, acknowledge their existence – very often slip them a tip. I feel good about it, every time. And I’m sure they feel good about it too, every time.

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EPILOGUE about Respect

Fast forward a year, and I’m sitting in a meeting at City Hall with the Mayor of Southampton, his deputy, the heads of the Chamber of Commerce and the Visitors’ Bureau, and the Executive Director of the Historical Museum – Tom Edmonds. The subject matter is the upcoming 375^th anniversary of the founding of Southampton, and I’m there because I prepared on a pro-bono basis a Brand, Identity, and Marketing plan for the year-long set of events. I shake hands with everyone at the outset, and notice Mr Edmonds’ lack of any sign of familiarity – he doesn’t remember me, that’s clear. The meeting ends, every participant is invited to say a few closing words; I say that “I look forward to helping the town in the celebrations, as long as I’m not asked to clean up the Rogers Mansion after the opening gala that’s been suggested as the main fundraiser.” Everyone looks at me, puzzled, and Tom bursts out “I remember you now!” He explains our previous encounter to the group, we all had a good laugh about it.

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EPILOGUE, about 375

I worked my butt off in creating a comprehensive brand and marketing plan for the yearlong 375^th Anniversary, and all for free -- one that included as partners the Chamber of Commerce, the Visitor’s Bureau, learning and historical institution, plus local and non-local businesses as sponsors which would have brought in significant revenues. If I can say so myself, it was very smart and highly beneficial all-around -- from a community, business, history, and economic standpoint.

Unfortunately, they used none of it. For all of 2015 the 375^th anniversary was barely whispered in the region, just a few banners around town (with, honestly, an ugly logo) and only the area’s cognoscenti were really aware of it and participated in the for-the-rich-Hamptons-insiders-only events. Such a huge missed opportunity. But that logo is proudly in my portfolio.

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