Dance of the Green/Orange Ladies
Another story idea from taking the bus. This is one that first came to me more than a year ago when I started blogging and that I had forgotten until this month, my first month back on the daily commute.
About three-quarters of the way through my commute the bus I ride stops at a Skytrain station (Vancouver's subway/metro equivalent). In the mornings this is a pretty busy place as people rush from a bus to a train or vice versa - coffee mug, phone, mp3, backpack, umbrella in hand.
This week I saw a forgotten spectacle and it raised the same ideas and emotions in me as it had a year prior. Standing at the front of the Skytrain entrance are two women - the same two as last year by the way. One is dressed in an orange apron. The other wears a green one. They are competitors looking for customers. Looking to give a freebie to the passing and rushing commuters. Looking to give them something else to carry.
If you take public transit in Vancouver you will have noticed that there are a lot of newspapers left lying around. They are kindly left behind by previous readers - squeezed into the cracks between the light blue plastic cushions (what lives in those crevasses?). They lie on the floor, trampled into a grey papier mache - a touch of orange and green still showing through. They fill garbage cans at bus shelters.
The women in front of the Skytrain station are handing out free newspapers. 24 Hours in orange and Metro in green. They stand one or two metres apart and are continuously trying to shove these rags into hands. As a new bus arrives at the station they quickly position themselves, hopefully orange in front of green or vice versa, to win the race of getting rid of their newspapers as fast as possible.
They have been working this turf, in competition with each other for at least the last eighteen months or so. Being so close to one another for such a period of time you would think some sort of relationship would have sprung up. It does not appear so. They don't speak to each other. They don't smile at each other. They don't even seem to look into each others eyes. They do look in each others general direction to gauge the next move of their nemesis.
Lots of thoughts pop up when I look at the scene. These women, still strangers after eighteen years, must expend some effort to continue ignoring one another after so long. I also think of the garbage creating, energy consuming mess of a business model spreading a product that should be eliminated. If one wants news one can either buy a newspaper, surf the net or watch television. Rather than employing people to print, deliver, handout, pickup, throw out and recycle why not spend the money on more intelligent services?
My thoughts go back to these two women, hands blackened. How much are they earning and can they even read the words written on the free rags they are handing out. Do they look at this model and think back to their childhood and their home country. Do they wonder how a "rich" society evolves to this state. Do they wonder "How much longer?"
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