In a city where everything feels a bit belated, where the clever ones agonize over looming hindsight, our advertising company accelerated toward modernity, at last, on February 13, There was no sudden decimation of outdated practices, no computer or Internet upgrades or a radical shift to sole reliance on cheap foreign suppliers. After all, I was busy wasting time making anagrams about things I soon forgot. What happened simply was this: in the afternoon, while I was writing when I should have been working, my father, who is our president and owner, approached my desk with a box marked with characters from an Asian script.
He said, "Ha, here's my martini glasses that I had overnighted from Xian, China. The glasses were for a vodka distributor based in Maine.
Someone passed by as he unwrapped layers of bubblewrap from around the glasses, and she said, "Wow, those Chinese sure bandage those glasses tighter than mummies. Shipping and Szechuan and math--what can't they do? The glasses were nice; rather typical martini glasses except for infusions of color running down through the stems: red, blue, and green. I liked them despite my unchanged opinion that work is a distraction and the things we sell are laughable.
When my grandfather bought this company in the 's, it was a small, local operation. He was not importing glasses from China to sell to a customer in Maine. Why does it always sound self-indulgent and preposterous to mention the changes that occur over time?
My father said, "You know, we're top-heavy with office space. We have too much unused space inside, and we're suffocating in the warehouse. Once these new programs take off, we'll have to get a larger warehouse. I've been looking at a space out in Springfield that would be perfect for us; I was surprised how much they've restored that area.
