As I’ve mentioned before, I write these things early Friday mornings, five days before their print dates. Since I need sleep before writing, I try to get to bed early. Meaning, usually 8 in the evening Thursday.
So it was with consternation, some horror and anguish that I found myself talked into attending the opening of the exhibit “Stories From The Streets: Up Close With Real Change.” It’s an update of the portrait project matching local artists to Real Change vendors that began in 2014. The new exhibit will be showing at the Downtown Central Library on level 8 until June 16.
It’s a great exhibit everyone should see. You should go to find out if your favorite vendors are represented among the paintings and photographs. Needless to say, they’re all favorites of mine because I see them all in the office. So I won’t name names. All I’ll say is that I like Sabina Lopez’s portrait the best. It has Scrabble tiles on it. You have to see it.
Anyway, Anitra made me be there, with wanton disregard of my need for a timely precolumn nap, which is why I’m now writing at 2 a.m. Friday morning, because the nap wasn’t working for me. Having gone to the exhibit, my brain is stuffed with all those portraits, and they won’t get out of my head.
The point of a precolumn nap is to unload brain stuff by sleeping it out. It doesn’t work if the sleeping doesn’t happen.
Speaking of openings, by the time you read this, the Bellevue-Redmond leg of the light rail #2 line will have opened, without the originally planned connection to the Seattle light rail system. That will have to wait at least until next year — maybe the year after, crossing fingers, may the stars be in our favor.
It’s been, what? Two years, three, since the disembodied voice of the Seattle light rail started telling us we are on board the #1 line, when there is no #2 line in Seattle.
It reminds me how anxious I was to live to be 52, so I could see the year 2001 and experience living in Stanley Kubrick’s future. OK, 2001 turned out to be mostly a bust, but I didn’t know that going into it. I had high hopes in January 2001.
Well now I want to live to be 76 or 77 — whatever it takes for me to take a #2 line light rail train starting from Seattle and getting me over the lake to Bellevue and then on to Redmond. I don’t want to have to connect by a shuttle bus. I want the future I was promised.
Usually I don’t talk about news I can’t personally relate to, but here’s an item that resonates even in the abstract: The FTC has voted to end most non-compete agreements. I know about these but have never had experience with them. Usually an employee signs a non-compete agreement as a condition to work at some company. The non-compete agreement says they can’t leave and go to work for a competing company in the same business.
I think I first heard about these deals about 15 years ago and thought the practice was unfair. I thought, this is why we need labor unions. Not only is it unfair for the employee, but the agreements undermine the very competition we’re always told is what makes capitalism great. Why shouldn’t businesses have to compete for labor? Unless they’re yellow. Right?
The only time I tried changing companies between competitors was in the 1980s, when I was driving cabs. I started driving for Farwest and, after a few little problems I had, its insurance company said I crashed one too many cabs, so I was forced to switch to a rival cab company. Nobody said I couldn’t switch. There was no non-compete agreement.
It didn’t matter because I, of my own free choice, came to the conclusion that the competitor company was not to my liking. I preferred the way Farwest was set up, so as soon as I could, I returned to that company.
That’s how it should be. Let the companies compete with the best deals. Not with coerced legal agreements.
Well, hey look, I managed to personalize the issue after all! And it’s not even 3 in the morning yet!
Dr. Wes is the Real Change Circulation Specialist, but, in addition to his skills with a spreadsheet, he writes this weekly column about whatever recent going-ons caught his attention. Dr. Wes has contributed to the paper since 1994. Curious about his process or have a response to one of his columns? Connect with him at [email protected].
Read more of the May 1–7, 2024 issue.