Survival of the Fittest

It is cold in Chicago. Absurdly cold. Cold enough to make your eyeballs hurt. Cold enough to make your nose hairs freeze over. This last is particularly annoying anytime you walk outside, because as your nose hairs start to freeze, they also start pulling away from your nose lining, which is excruciatingly painful. Cold like this makes you feel alive … and stupid for continuing to live in this city.

Currently adding to all this discomfort is the change in Abbott shuttle management. There are dozens of employees who take the train every day to work (myself included). Abbott very graciously provides for shuttles that pick us up once we arrive, and which drive us to the office campus. However, due to a transition with the contractor who manages these shuttles, life for the Abbott commuter has become a mess.

At a basic level, the number of seats available on these shuttles has declined because of both fewer and smaller shuttles. Which means that inevitably some people have been getting left behind at the train station in the morning. In the cold. The absurd Chicago cold. To be fair, a backup shuttle is dispatched and picks up the remaining passengers within 20 minutes, but that is still an eternity in this weather.

The change that this has affected in human behavior is classic survival of the fittest. It started out slowly at first – people would walk briskly after getting off the train so that they would be first in line at the shuttles, therefore ensuring themselves a spot. That brisk walk became a healthy jog, and last week I saw a lady break out into an all out sprint (and subsequently slip and fall on the ice).

When people realized that they were not Olympic decathletes and would be unable to win a footrace as they tried to hurdle over parked cars to get to the shuttles, they adapted again. They started sitting in train cabs that stopped at just the right spot, thereby providing them a straight line to the waiting shuttle in the parking lot. They no longer had to pretend to be Usain Bolt and break any world records – by starting at a more optimal point, they would still beat out the sprinters. But eventually all the seats on the ideal train cab started filling up early in the journey, therefore reducing the effectiveness of this strategy – no one wanted to stand for an hour. So there was more adaptation.

Passengers began to sit wherever they wanted to on the train, but started leaving their seats before the Abbott stop to queue up in front of the train doors. At first this meant leaving your seat a few minutes before the stop, but as more people caught on, people began to leave their seats earlier and earlier – from five minutes, to ten minutes, to several stops before our destination. The result? Passengers that had nothing to do with our shuttle issues, and who needed to get off earlier actually started missing their stops - our crowding at the train doors had become so bad that other passengers were unable to fight their way to the doors to leave.

I still find this fascinating – a seemingly insignificant transition in shuttle management at a specific company is having ripple effects that are making life miserable for the entire ridership of our train line. Whatever, if things continue to get worse I know I'll be ok. I have a black belt in karate and know how to incapacitate an opponent, even if that opponent is a benign market research analyst.

Only in LA

Saeeda, Nuha and I were in LA for the holidays – even though I have no affinity for Hollywood-land, I’d trade Chicago’s arctic chill for LA’s more moderate climate any day. Saeeda’s family lives here, which always gives us a place to escape to when Chicago weather makes you question your sanity in choosing that city as a home. Every time in LA however, I am confronted with something that is unique to this area, and which strengthens my desire to continue living in Chicago (Saeeda will eventually make me move to LA – I just know it).

This time around, the unique experience came during a post-Christmas trip to one of the swankiest malls in the area – the Costa Mesa mall in Orange County (“the OC” of television fame). I’d visited this mall with Saeeda before, but the current state of the economy had me curious. Would we continue to see hustle and bustle at a mall that boasted high-end designer stores for all ages? Would stores and food courts still be crowded? The answer, as it became abundantly clear while spending 30 minutes looking for a parking spot, was yes – there were crowds galore, seemingly thumbing their noses at the idea of a recession.

[As an aside, trying to find a parking spot in an LA mall is a little like going on safari in the South African savannah. The person riding shotgun acts as a tracker, sniffing out signs of people leaving the mall, then making sure that the driver stays locked on this prey as it tries to locate its own vehicle. The driver must prowl slowly, making sure not to spook the prey by revving the engine too much, but always matching the prey’s speed. It is also the driver’s responsibility to conduct outflanking maneuvers to effectively block other circling predators from staking a claim on the hunted. The thrill of finally pulling into a spot cannot be much different than sinking one’s fangs into fresh kill]

As Saeeda and I finally walked towards the mall entrance, I was struck by a beautiful site. In front of us was a serene waterfall in a large plaza flanked by dark walls of granite. The cascading water collected gently into an infinity pool that lay bounded by simple benches shaded by planted trees. The collecting water then made its journey to a single water channel that dipped and turned its way out of sight, leaving only its gentle murmuring behind. The sense of peace was palpable, as was made obvious by the number of people sitting around the reflecting pool, silently contemplating life’s meaning.

“What’s this memorial for Saeeda?” I asked. Such a monument made perfect sense for a community poignantly trying to remember fallen heroes. I could not however, think of the sad tragedy that had to have occurred in Costa Mesa that would require such a monument.

“It’s not a memorial,” replied Saeeda as we walked into the mall. “It’s for shoppers when they get tired.”

Only in LA.