Two Birds in a Bakery By Mat Weir

For the past hour I've been sitting inside Gigi's bakery/cafe, a small shop by the freeway off Water street in Santa Cruz. A steady drizzle streams from the silver clouds above as I gaze out the large crystal windows to my left. "It's not a hard rain" as an elderly customer says with a grizzled laugh; just enough to clean the world. I fumble through a blueberry muffin and gulp down my first of at least four cups of coffee, all black. My morning ritual. But this morning, two middle aged birds are squawking about. Not quite desperate enough to be cougars, not young enough to be lusty, they are busily filling up the bakery with their upper class ideas on corporate business, the marketplace and all of their neo-new age corporate guru ideas on the finer things in life.

"Well, if I was to see an employee with his desk disorganized I would immediately assume that he wasn't ready to be given any more responsibility and I would continually pass him up for a raise. I guess some people need to have a lot around them, but it just looks so unprofessional and whether you like it or not, this world is based on appearances."

"Oh yes Mary, I agree. People like that are always breaking promises to themselves. They haven't realized their full potential. I saw this seminar the other night all about that. The speaker was saying that broken promises to yourself are the best way to destroy your self-esteem. He told us that if you were to do five push-ups a night for ten nights, and made yourself do them, after the tenth night you'd have done fifty push-ups. Not only could you pride yourself in a job well done, but it would be better than telling yourself to do fifty push-ups in one night and not being able to complete them."

As I'm trying not to spit my coffee all over my laptop with a sarcastic laugh, I notice that while this asinine squawking is going on, one of the many homeless faces from downtown has been tap dancing away inside the cafe. I have seen him around many times before, but still don't know his story; if he's one toke over the line or just quiet. But there he is, tap dancing away in the same old hand knit baby blue beanie and dark striped jacket. Clicking his rubber souled boots against the shiny, wood floor with a thud and a squeak, the whole time a smile of simple enjoyment on his face.

Now, what pisses me off about these high society women suckling way at the corporate tit is not necessarily their way of life (though they sold their souls a long time ago for comfort) or the fact that what they were saying was not only painfully obvious but complete bullshit (yes, five times ten equals fifty but then you're only doing five push-ups a night which isn't really exercise so you're pride in accomplishing fifty is false and undeserving not to mention if you're already making yourself do five you might as well do all fifty at once). What really made me loathe them was that they were talking about things they knew nothing about.

These were women who had lived their whole lives in and orderly fashion. They had taken the steps to rise up the corporate ladder, accumulating spouses and children along the way basing their lives and merit on the appearance of success. The idea that if you succeed in having and doing what everyone else is, you too will be envied and loved just how you envy those perfect people around you. They go to self help programs, the corporate version of the self-esteem movement which was just another version of the earlier "love ins," in order to feel good about themselves during the times that the power, consumption and glossy ad lives just don't have the same sweetness they used to. Their world view and lives are so layed out and categorized anyone who doesn't fit into place is unprofessional, messy, and not worthy to rise up in the world. They don't base this persons' worth on the actual work he does, on how he handles tasks or if his deadlines are on, but if he does it in an orderly manner. The squeaky cog gets the grease, or in this case, greased over.

My annoyance grew steadily until it became a great sadness for them, these two parrots squawking from behind their croissants and jewelry. In all of their talk about corporate mannerism, they never once discussed what it was they actually did, just how they looked when they did it. It seemed to me that their lives were just as empty and nutritionally starved as the conversation they were having. And all the while the man in the blue knit cap tap-tapped away, a satisfied grin spread across his unprofessional face.