Remember when the Jeffersons left Queens to “move on up” to the luxury of the Eastside? Well, luxury comes with a price. This week New Yorkers are holding our collective breath about an impending strike of the city’s 30,000 doormen and porters who are negotiating their new union contract. If an agreement can’t be reached, 3,200 of New York’s apartment buildings’ residents will find we have to pick up our own dry cleaning, take out our own trash, and meet “Fresh Direct” at the curb. A few week’s back a substitute yoga teacher realized her presence had created a disappointed energy in the room and she announced that sometimes life throws us problems like our a/c goes out, the heel on our expensive shoe scuffs, our dinner is taking to long, or…our favorite yoga teacher calls out sick! These, she said, are “bourgeois problems”- a momentary glitch in our otherwise well-appointed lives. I don’t want our doormen to go on strike (they don’t get paid while they are striking!) but perhaps these kind of lessons make us realize, having someone accept our packages, take out our trash, open the door, is a luxury we should be grateful for. Life, after all, could be harder. Enjoy your dinner, even if it takes longer than you’d like.
