Nicole be Thinking...

Those of you who know me know that I have had a million jobs and I can do a million things. Before last December, I had never worked in a restaurant. I figured being a hostess couldn't be that hard. The majority of my positions have been in customer service, so I'm very comfortable dealing directly with the public. How hard can it be to take people to tables? Not hard at all. However… Some patrons are determined to make my time at work pure hell… Sometimes people do things without realizing it. I am a firm believer that I can't necessarily expect someone to perform the way I want them to if I haven't shown them how. SO… As a courtesy, a fair warning before I go the hell off… Here are five little things to plant into your brain for the next time you dine out: If a hostess seats you at a specific table, it is for a reason; stay there. Part of a hostess's job is spreading out the crowd evenly over the sections of the servers. When s/he chooses a ta...

As a hostess at a restaurant, I see lots of men going to ridiculous lengths to please women… I ask [what I think are] simple questions and dudes go crazy: "Would you mind sitting on the patio?" "Oh, uh, um… Well… I don't know. It might be too cold for her…" "Do you want to sit at the bar?" "Wow… The bar? It's up to you, honey." "The wait is 20 minutes." "Whooooa! 20 minutes?? I need to ask her first." The looks of panic I have seen in response to my [basic] questions would have you thinking I made an indecent proposal… Seriously dude? Is it REALLY that serious? Just make a decision! This awkwardness alarmed me, so I consulted my favorite expert on masculinity, my biological dad. He blamed the weirdness on "crazy feminists" who demanded to be allowed to make their own decisions. He says women want to have it both ways: they want to be in charge, but they don't want to be held accountable. He claims a...

I was looking through my Strunk and White (because… yeah… sometimes The Elements of Style is Sunday reading…) and I started think about how awesome we'd all be if we followed all those rules. Then my brain went on this tangent about how I don't follow all those rules and how the book is called "Elements of Style" not " Rules of Writing" and how a lot of people can't keep that stuff straight anyway and specifically how most people use commas completely wrong and how that screws up most essays and papers… ( whew… ) People hate commas. Why is that? I love English (but I am by no means a grammarian.) I don't use commas correctly 100% of the time, but I like them. They're not as difficult to use as we make it, and I think simply correcting one's comma usage can vastly improve one's writing. So… Periods tell your brain when to stop. (Or, as my over use of the ellipsis shows, when to trail off in thought…) Commas, on the other hand, tell you...

...how to write and format works cited page? Granted… MLA was revised in 2009 and different disciplines use different style guides, but how do you make it without it looking at least familiar to you? …how to write [or even recognize] a thesis statement? We learned about topic sentences and thesis statements early on. Topic sentences guide paragraphs and thesis statements guide entire papers. I mean… That's the basis of every paper I write. The three-part thesis statement is the essay formula I was given. How can it be that you were ever asked to write an essay without being taught how? …anything about ANY black writers? I'm not talking about knowing full bios. I'm not saying you have to have even read anything by one. But what's your excuse for not recognizing Maya Angelou? I mean… She was in Poetic Justice ! …how to use the index of a book? The professor gave a list of terms and said they're all in the textbook, though not all of them are highl...

Alright… I don’t [think] I have daddy issues. I knew my daddy and even though he had shitty moments, I knew him. He was "there." I have a stepfather who has been around since I was 4. He married my mom when I was 9. He's good and supportive and all that. I've never been "fatherless." My daddy wasn't absent. Life probably would have been a little different if I didn't have a father. All this comes to mind because a lesbian couple at my job have a daughter: one of them was pregnant and gave birth 2 months ago. I have yet to ask about the baby's father so I don't know if he was a donor or if she was with him and left him for her girlfriend. That part is irrelevant, though. Fodder for gossip mills… Mostly, I wonder if there will be a father figure for their daughter, and if it was a consideration. Everyone says a woman can't teach a boy how to be a man. But a woman - by herself - can't teach a girl how to be a woman, either. I...

I've written about Margaret Sanger and reproductive rights in the black community before , but I think I may need to revisit some things since the issue has resurfaced… Recently, about 80 billboards that feature a beautiful black baby with the worlds "ENDANGERED SPECIES" printed on him have gone up in Atlanta. Stories from ABC and Essence.com say these billboards were sponsored by The Radiance Foundation (who set up a website called toomanyaborted.com) and Georgia Right to Life. According to these groups, of the 36,094 abortions performed in Georgia, 21,000 were obtained black women. The people behind the billboards admit that the message is shocking and the billboards are intended to incite outrage at the fact that black women are "killing" black babies. According to the Essence article, some believe that the government should cut funding to Planned Parenthood because abortion clinics are disproportionately placed in low income areas and they "prey on ...

My dictionary.com app (#teamiphone #folife) defines "gentrification" as "the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses." I mostly see this when white folks want to "improve" something. Like the situation with Belmont and Rose Park. OH! And when white people want to be edgy and/or gritty and move to East Nashville… I don't really see it happening in other ghettos, though… Nolensville Rd. is still very Mexican... Architecture and civil engineering are interests of mine (In 3rd grade I drafted an entire city without direction or adult input…) so while I was in line waiting for my Mocha JavaKula at Borders The Plan of Nashville caught my eye. It's a great book and an awesome plan. However… does such a plan cross that line into gentrification? One of the 10 principles tha...

… if you're looking for my great insight into some social issue/current event. Got plenty of others for that. Try here , here , and here . Just need to vent and I enjoy the noise my nails make on the keyboard. It's… therapeutic. Anyway. Fifth Third Bank, the bastards. Three years ago I had an account with them into which I deposited my weekly pay checks. Somehow the account was overdrawn by some small amount… Like a dollar and some change… I saw it but I didn't trip because it was just a dollar and I deposited my check every Thursday. So… I looked at my account one day and it was overdrawn by that dollar. The next day I looked it was -$300. WTF? I called and a representative told me that ten transactions were responsible for the overdraft and a fee of $33 was assessed on each one. I tried to reason with her. How could ten transactions add up to a dollar? I had my statements and everything. She wasn’t budging, so I said whatever and kept it moving. I looked at my account...

So… My dad has a problem with me not supporting "black" movies. More specifically… He wants me to support Tyler Perry movies. I can't get with Tyler because I'm tired of seeing black men in drag. He's promoting this image of a black woman devoid of any femininity. We're just the same as a man except we wear dresses? Get out of here. Also… His favorite storyline is problematic. All of his movies include a woman who needs to be saved. Usually she's saved by a man from chaos of her own creation. That's hella wack. Daddy claims the "black" movies I won't go see, I'd go see if they were made by white people. About that… A lot of these "black" movies I'm supposed to support WERE made by white people. Your favorite black movie probably wasn't directed by black people. Or… If it was, it wasn't funded by black people. Tyler Perry does that well. I can't knock his hustle. Aside from that… He's wrong. I don’t like...