Lara Zielin

The other day, I offered my help to someone. The interaction occurred at the front of my office, near the main desk and elevators. I think because of my proximity to where our receptionist normally sits, the person assumed I was the receptionist. That’s fine by me, except that their attitude was condescending and rude. However, the moment I clarified that I was a magazine editor and was just trying to direct them to the right resource (and, hello, be nice), the person’s demeanor changed. Suddenly, they were sweet as pie.

Ick, right?

But the thing is, it happened to me again not long thereafter. I was at a local drycleaner picking up my wares when the drycleaning lady working behind the counter asked if I was familiar with Ann Arbor. I said I was, and she held out the phone to me. A customer was on the other end, asking for directions to the joint and would I please assist. Simple, right?

Wrong. This person was so rude. I won’t even go into the myriad problems that were suddenly my fault (everything from prices to turnaround to the type of transportation they were going to have to take to get to the drycleaner). But when I explained that, actually, I was just a customer trying to help out because the drycleaning lady behind the counter wasn’t from around here, the customer gave a surprised little “Oh!” and, bam, they were suddenly respectful as could be.

I have to say, that’s the biggest form of lame ever.

Being nice to the CEO but mean to the janitor still makes you mean.
Being sweet to your aunt but pissy to your waitress still makes you pissy.

Here are three people we should be nice to all the time.

• Customer service reps (anyone on the other end of the phone helping you — no matter if they’re in Dubai or Iowa)
• Food service peeps (anyone and everyone from the lowly busboy to the manager)
• Airline flight attendants (do what they say, smile, and be cool)

Yes, there is a time and place for good customer service and if something is wrong, you’re right to want it fixed. But you can also tell a lot about a person by how they treat the lowliest among them. Just saying.

Welcome to another exciting installment of Friday Flashbacks!

Today, I ask you: who would win in a bar fight, unicorn or Pegasus? Unicorn has … well, a horn. Impalement, anyone? But Pegasus — dude, his dad was Poseidon and his mom was Medusa. Hello, kickbutt pedigree!

Fortunately, I answered this question a long time ago in a drawing.

Behold, I present to you … Unisus!

It’s a unicorn … that flies! Its the perfect conflusion (totally just made up that word) of Pegasus and unicorn.

And its majesty is hardly dwarfed by the outline of pencil marks that I erased but you can still kinda see.

Fly free and win all bar fights everywhere, Unisus! I believe in you!

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: This Improv Everywhere skit from Grand Central Station. Think New Yorkers are unflappable? Maybe not, according to this vid. Thanks, Lauren, for sending it my way!

Last weekend, I competed in a duathlon. It’s like a triathlon, but for people like me who hate swimming competitively, there’s no getting wet. In this particular race, I ran a mile, biked 11 miles, and then ran 3 miles.

One of  the best parts about the race was that I had friends there from my awesome gym, Ypsi Studio, and we were able to support and encourage each other the whole time. How cute (and tough! grrr!) are we?

Here we are, at the beginning of the one-mile. I’m fresh and dewy, ready to run. (Fresh and dewy = sweaty already. And it only gets worse.)

Here I am biking. It’s blurry — because I’m going SO! FAST! (Actually, I think it’s a technique from Rob’s fancy-schmancy camera, but I’m going to pretend it’s because I’m so speedy.)

And here I am booking it to the finish line! And I eventually made it! My time was one hour, 24 minutes, which exceeded my wildest expectations for the race.

Here I am, immediately after finishing.

I’m happy! And will I be doing this again next year? You bet. This race was awesome.