Tipping Point

The metaphor, The Tipping Point, was first coined in 1957 by sociologist Martin Grodzins from the University of Chicago in an article about social housing in the Scientific American. [Thanks to www.tippingprojects.org for that little nugget.]

There wasn’t one real tipping point which projected me out of the Retail Cathedral and into bed with Job2.2 - just a pile of stuff to try the patience of saints and sinners alike.  With a few days to myself this week, I’ve been thinking through the many tipping points that have happened in real life and if you’ve been casting a beady eye over Raven these last few months, you’ll have realised by now there’s loads of the wretched things.

My life-long favourite TP occurred in Tenerife in my trolley-dolly days …on a night-stop, where else.  I wore brown feathers in those days and looked like a chocolate button.  We were out to dinner on a balmy winter’s evening consuming vast amounts of alcohol as per the requirements of the ‘Cabin Crew Mandate’.  Our crew included a cavalier First Officer from New South Wales called Robin and, for him, the extra beers he’d had at dinner tipped him from airline pilot to idiot.  He could barely walk but the sight of a swimming pool obviously reminded him of The Great Barrier Reef back home and without disrobing he dived in, swimming straight to the bottom.  Luckily there were three of us around to watch in horror - me, Annie Firth and an elderly, Spanish pool attendant who was berating us in several languages.  Yes, we got him out and he went on to fly jumbos for Cathay Pacific but I’ll never forget the screams of the cleaner who found him next day.  Face down on the bed where we’d left him, butt naked.

Water’s been playing a large part in my life these recent, damp weeks.  It’s only a small tipping point but I’d refrain from putting your new handbag near one of those auto-wash sink contraptions in a Retail Cathedral.  I turned round to fix my lippy and hadn’t noticed my lovely bag had slipped into the sink and activated the taps … slowly filling with water and drowning the demonic Samsung Ace2.  It dried unlike my favourite slippers which would never recover from one night last week.

In Germany, apparently, it’s bad manners to flush a loo between the hours of 11.00 pm and daybreak.  No, no idea? But I’d got no such scruples about keeping the noise down when I wandered in from a bit of a party.  I completed my ablutions in the dark and accidentally tipped a loo roll into the pan thus blocking the torrent of flushing water, which resulted in wet fluffy-duck slippers and a trip to M&S.  Lucky me, I had a gift card handy and in my haste, bought a pair of sparkly boots which were too small so had to be returned to an out-of-town branch.  Don’t you love their Customer Service Representatives who move with the speed of a tectonic plate?  During my stint there in the 1990’s I got told off for being too efficient.

I was owed £4-50 and when the young woman handed me my refund, it came as a credit note attached to a grimace.

“Hang on.” I chirped. “I paid part card, part cash; so what’s with the voucher?”

“You can’t have cash.  You paid with a gift card.”  She barked, hands on hips.  “And you have to have a credit note or nothing.”  Actually, I had four beagle burgers and a bottle of water, and left with a sense of real disappointment.

I’d also returned a dress which was to wear for Job2.2, and as I don’t have that contract now, it had to be disposed of.  Besides, Alphonse looked at its leopard print fabric and obvious lack of style with complete distain and remarked “that’s vile!”  Coming from a man who can’t find the chino rack without a map, I knew it to be true and skulked off. I do have my eye on a gorgeous fake-fur coat in TKMaxx though but it might just be the tipping point that finally bursts my wardrobe.

Tip of the Blog:  What with Disney’s announcement that they’ve bought Lucasfilm and are planning three more Star Wars movies, can I send them a plea from the heart.  Get a better scriptwriter and ditch the Ewoks, please!  I’ve watched SWIII at least four times now and, politics and The Emperor aside, I still don’t know what tipped Anakin Skywalker over to the dark side of the force.  Three weeks as a medical secretary did it for me … if only light sabres were real weapons.

Raven