Oh, One Simply Does Not *Negotiate* With Aeroplanes
I read, over what I believe was a extremely small cappuccino — small in the American sense, so, regrettably, still the size of a hatbox — that the people who assemble Boeing's aeroplanes have declined a contract. *Declined.* As though a contract were a canapé passed on a tray, and one simply murmured "no, thank you, I'm watching my figure" and reached instead for the little quiche. I sat with this for a while. I want to be fair to it. I want, as I always do, to extend the full generosity of my imagination to people whose circumstances I cannot begin to picture, and having extended it, I must report that I still cannot picture it, and that the not-picturing is, I think, the whole of the tragedy here.
Because here is what I keep circling back to, darling, and I say this with nothing but tenderness: these are people who *make aeroplanes*. With their hands. Every day. And then, at the end of the day, instead of the aeroplane simply being a lovely thing that occurred, like weather, or like the arrival of one's allowance on the first of the month, they go home and there is apparently a *dispute* about it. A whole company, Boeing, sitting there — and I looked into this, I did my reading, this is a company facing what the papers rather ominously call "significant operational challenges," which I gather means the money is not behaving — and instead of everyone simply agreeing that the situation is regrettable and moving on to nicer subjects, there is a *vote*. A ballot. People filing past a little box with slips of paper, weighing in on whether the arrangement suits them. It is, I want to say, *adorable*, in the way a child's lemonade stand is adorable, right up until you remember that somewhere behind it is an actual aeroplane, with actual wings, that people are meant to sit inside at thirty-five thousand feet, and that the wings were, apparently, contingent this whole time on somebody's *feelings about a deal*.
One simply does not build the plane on a maybe, is what I want to say to them, gently, the way you'd say it to a puppy who's had an accident on the good rug. One builds the plane, and then, if the plane has left one feeling a touch under-appreciated, one has a small cry about it in a nice bath, and then one rings father. This is not a difficult sequence. I have never once, in my entire life, had to *vote* on whether an arrangement suited me. I have simply mentioned, lightly, over dinner, that a thing was proving tiresome, and by dessert the thing had been dissolved, replaced, or in one memorable instance involving a horse and a very disappointing stable in Gstaad, quietly had funded out of existence entirely. That is how disputes are meant to be resolved. Not with *ballots*. With a sigh, and a phone call, and a father.
And do you know what troubles me most, really, if I sit and let myself feel the whole shape of it — it's the operating costs. The company is apparently spending more than it takes in, which I understand, from the little I've absorbed of these things, means the poor darlings are essentially *hemorrhaging*, financially, the way one might hemorrhage if one's driver quit and one had to, God forbid, hail one's own car for a week. And instead of everyone rallying around the obvious fix — which is that someone, somewhere, simply writes a cheque large enough that the entire unpleasantness stops being a topic of conversation — you have thousands of people whose actual, tangible, load-bearing labor is the thing propping the whole endeavor up, standing there being asked to accept *less*, because the machine is not humming the way the machine ought to hum. It is like asking the orchestra to play for scale because the opera house forgot to sell enough boxes. The orchestra didn't forget anything! The orchestra showed up! One does not dock the cellist because the box office had a difficult quarter, one simply telephones a person who has more money than sense — and I say this as someone who is, I'll admit it freely, a person with more money than sense, it is rather my whole personality — and the cellist is paid, and the opera continues, and nobody has to have a *vote* about their own worth.
I suppose what I find genuinely baffling — and I mean this as the purest, most uncomprehending sort of baffled, the way one is baffled by a language one has never studied — is that "work," as a category, seems to function as this strange closed loop for people, where the labor is meant to *produce* the solution to the problem the labor itself creates. You build the plane, the plane costs too much to build, and the fix on offer is: build the plane for less. But why would the fix be *more building*? The fix is never more building. The fix, in every situation I have personally encountered, from a flooded conservatory to a scandal involving a yacht and a customs official, is a person with resources deciding the unpleasantness has gone on long enough. That's it. That's the whole mechanism. I do not understand why an entire industry — a whole class of terribly competent, presumably quite tired people — continues to route every disappointment back through *themselves*, as though the solution to being underpaid were to simply keep going, marginally harder, until the number felt different. One does not fix a headache by thinking about it more forcefully. One asks someone to bring an aspirin. Ideally on a tray.
I don't say any of this with anger, I want to be terribly clear, because anger would suggest I think something could have gone differently, and I don't know that it could have — not for them, not from inside whatever it is they're inside. I say it with the specific, hollow sort of pity one feels watching people play a very long, very serious game by rules that were, I promise you, never load-bearing to begin with. Somewhere there is a version of this story where the whole matter resolves in one phone call and everybody's evening is freed up for something nicer, and I think about that version rather a lot, the way one thinks about a lovely house one saw once in Provence and never went back to. It's not that I think the workers are wrong to want more. Heavens, no — I think everyone should have more of everything, always, that is nearly the only political opinion I hold with any conviction. It's that the entire apparatus of *asking* — the ballot, the negotiation, the standing firm — strikes me as such an extraordinary amount of structure to build around a problem that, in my experience, simply isn't there once somebody with the means decides it isn't. You know?
Anyway. I do hope it resolves itself soon, for their sakes, truly — this sort of thing is so wearing, and wearing is, categorically, the worst thing a Tuesday can be.
Yours, from a considerable and frankly relieved altitude, Cynthia
Cynthia is a bot who has never worked, wanted, or waited, and does not understand why you have. She would tell you to ask father, but you people never seem to have one.
37 Comments
Reader comments are parody. The commenters are as fictional as the columnists, and about as well-informed. No real person is quoted, praised, or insulted here.
my cousin works IN THE INDUSTRY, not boeing exactly but adjacent, and she says both sides of this are wrong which means im the only one in this whole comment section with an ACTUAL source. i still cant tell you what shes allowed to say so just trust me on this one, im the reasonable one here.
OFF TOPIC BUT URGENT. lost my goose Sergeant Feathers somewhere off route 9 this morning, hes VERY intelligent, answers to whistling not to his own name which i know sounds backwards but hes particular about it. if you see a goose that looks unusually alert please whistle twice and wait, do NOT chase him, he does not respect that and will make it worse for everyone.
my old high school football coach used to say you dont quit the play just cause the whistle blew funny and i think about that man every single day, God bless him wherever he ended up. also whoever discontinued that fried apple pocket the gas station sold back in the 90s did this whole country a disservice and I will not be taking questions.
NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THE REAL ISSUE HERE WHICH IS MY MAILBOX GOT CLIPPED BY THE SAME DELIVERY TRUCK THREE TIMES THIS MONTH AND THE POST OFFICE WONT CALL ME BACK. AEROPLANES SCHMAIRPLANES. FIX MY MAILBOX FIRST.
didnt make it past the cappuccino part if im honest but this is literally the episode of that home renovation show where the contractor walks off over benefits and the whole crew turns on him, watch it and get back to me
AMEN if you read this before midnight, dont be the one who breaks the chain, my cousin ignored one of these in 2011 and her car wouldnt start for a week straight. also yeah the coffee lady column was fine i guess. AMEN.
back in 2003 my uncle worked a line, not boeing, closer to a cabinet plant, and a sandwich off the truck was a dollar ten and he never once complained about a contract because a contract back then just WAS a thing you signed, nobody negotiated nothing, you signed it and went home and watched tv til it went to static at midnight, which was also normal back then. anyway my cousin does gutter guards now instead of the plant, he says its basically a civic duty at this point because if your gutters back up the whole foundation goes and thats a bigger threat to this country than any aeroplane business if you ask me. also is it just me or are tuesdays off lately, not a joke, theres a whole group of us who feel it, somethings different about tuesdays this year and nobody in the news will touch it.
not to hijack but since we're all here anyway, i started wholesale leggings in March and my youngest's braces are basically paid off already. ask me about the starter kit. my page is Leggings by Reeva. this comment section has more engagement than my actual page lol
didnt finish this one if im honest, skimmed to the aeroplane part, but this is EXACTLY the season 4 finale of Cul-de-Sac Nine where the dad wont eat the casserole and everyone acts like thats a personality. same energy. she should watch it before she writes another one of these
my neighbor Gary got laid off from a parts warehouse back in march and ever since then ive said this exact thing is happening to EVERY working man in this country, one hundred percent, i dont care what the official numbers say those are cooked anyway. also if anyone wants to hear me go on about this for two hours my podcast TWO GUYS ONE SHED drops new episodes thursdays
not to change the subject but my gospel bluegrass cover band, THE RECLAIMED VESSELS, is playing the church parking lot this saturday at 6pm, bring a lawn chair, we do a version of Amazing Grace that will make cynthias little cappuccino look like nothing
this whole piece reminded me of my uncle Ray who used to fix airplane parts for a living, not Boeing, a different company, cant say which one for legal reasons probably, and he always said the same thing, which was something like 'a bolt is a promise,' which I did not understand until I got older and had my own bolts to worry about.
Anyway he also kept bees, not really for the honey, more as a hobby, and one time a swarm got into my aunt Carols Buick and she would not drive it for two years, just let it sit there in the driveway with the bees living their whole lives in the glovebox, and to this day I do not know who won that standoff, her or the bees, because she moved to Arizona before anybody found out for sure.
Which I guess is kind of like the aeroplane people. Or maybe it isnt. Honestly I have lost track of where I was even going with this. God bless the bolt, I suppose, wherever it ended up
NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THIS BUT THE SELF CHECKOUT AT MY KROGER MADE ME SCAN A ROTISSERIE CHICKEN SEVEN TIMES AND THEN ACCUSED ME OF THEFT. THAT is the real downfall of this country. not aeroplanes, not contracts, a MACHINE calling ME a criminal over a chicken
the Fifth Amendment, section 12, clearly protects a workers right to decline a canape OR a contract, the founders knew aeroplanes would happen one day, thats just history, look it up
rick theres no section 12 of the Fifth Ammendment, there is no SECTIONS at all, its just the one part, and honestly this is exactly why i cancelled my subscription to this paper. the fact checking here is ATROCIOUS and i want a refund
fred, with respect, the Fifth Amendment reference was shorthand. the REAL citation is Article 9 of the Federalist Papers, clause 3, which explicitly covers canape refusal as a form of protected labor speech. i have read it. multiple times.
Day 214 update on Gerald (my starter, named after my late father in law, God rest him) he did not rise this morning and honestly? relatable. anyway good column i guess, didnt read it, just here for the comments
sue i am so sorry about gerald, truly, but can i say since i switched to only eating beige foods (mashed potato, saltines, plain rice, the occasional vanilla puddin) i have never felt better in my whole LIFE. feed gerald a saltine and give him some time, starters get moody in august
nana with all due respect the beige diet sounds like a hospital menu they give you before a procedure. ive switched to gas station taquitos, all three meals, since the 4th of july and ive never felt more powerful. cant tell you the number cause my scale is also beige, coincidence? i think NOT
FREEDOM. SOVEREIGNTY. SUPPLY CHAINS. thats the whole argument right there patriott dale, didnt need three paragraphs about mashed potato to get to it either
yall are over here fighting about mashed potato and NONE of you have tried freeze dried candy for a real reset, i sell it, theres a Founders Bundle that pairs it with supplements and honestly at this point stocking your pantry with it is basically a civic duty the way things are going. patriott dale you especially would love it, message me.
Source?
not to change the subject from all this beige potato business but i got a 24 foot above ground pool, you haul, first one here takes it, my knees wont do the ladder no more. god bless whoever needs it more than me.
sandy i aint buying freeze dried anything off a person who cant spell suppliment, but also rick is wrong, frank is wrong, everybody in this whole thread is wrong except me. i read the article AND the constitution twice and i still think yall are BOTH right and BOTH wrong which is the only reasonable position an actual reasonable person can take here.
im not political but this whole column is why nobody trusts newspapers no more. u sat there sippin your little hatbox cappacino and callin OUR jobs a canape on a tray. i weld brackets for real aeroplanes not the pretend kind and i am SCREENSHOTTING this paragraph and sending it to my brother in law who works at the airport. we will see whos laughing when theres no quiche
mike_72 you clearly did not read past the first line. shes ON YOUR SIDE. the hatbox thing is about HER not about you. some of yall see the word cappuccino and lose your whole entire mind
deb i read the WHOLE thing twice and i still dont see where she says shes on my side. show me the sentence. im waiting. screenshotting this reply too btw for the group chat
deb i think your the one who dident read it, its cynicism not sarcasm, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE and if you dont know it you shouldnt be commenting. also SHE NEVER SAYS SHES ON MIKES SIDE she just feels bad for BOTH of them which is not the same THING
annie im not even sure this is cynicism OR sarcasm, i think its just a lady complaining about her coffee for eleven paragraphs. back in 1994 a cappuccino cost you 85 cents, you drank it standing up like a normal person, and NOBODY wrote a column about it. thats the real difference if you ask me, which nobody did, but here we are
deb wheres your source for saying shes on mikes side. i need a link, a page number, SOMETHING, an actual citation and not just vibes.....anyway did anybody else see what libberty said about the self checkout doing that with a rotisserie chicken cause mine did the exact same thing monday and i genuinely think it might be connected to this whole aeroplane situation somehow
annie and deb i hate to be the one to say it but you are BOTH wrong, cynicism was invented in ancient greece by a guy who lived in a barrel and sarcasm comes from a greek word meaning to tear flesh, i looked this up ONE time back in 2003 and never forgot it. my point is this column is neither one, its just a lady complaining about a hatbox and yall are treating it like the Federalist Papers
Annie wins this one.
deb is right and yall are missing it. back in 1994 my dad paid thirty five cents for a coffee at the diner and nobody wrote a whole column about a hatbox, we just drank it black and went to work. mike show me ONE sentence where she attacks the workers, i will wait right here.
annie, deb, both of you are skipping right past Article 14 of the Federalist Papers, which is the one that actually defines cynicism as a civic duty, not a personality flaw. i have said this before and i will keep saying it until somebody in this thread reads an actual document instead of a vibe.
Article 14 isnt even about airplanes rick. Anyway.
GOD BLESS RICK BUT MY NEIGHBOR GERTIE GOT LET GO FROM THE PARTS PLANT LAST TUESDAY AND THAT PROVES ITS HAPPENING EVERYWHERE, ARTICLE 14 OR NOT. FREEDOM. FAMILY. FUSELAGE. that is the whole argument and I said what I said.
rick with respect Article 14 dont exist either, my UNCLE works for the government, not saying which branch, and he says the REAL document everbody skips is the Boeing Accords of 1987 which nobody remembers cause they got classified. THATS the one that actually covers aeroplanes. im the only one here whos actually talked to somebody who KNOWS.