Welcome to New York. Now Please Shut Up!

Dear Visitor to My Fair City,

Despite the presence of millions of people, thousands of tall buildings, and hundreds of establishments offering $5 ice cream cones, New York really is, in some respects, just a like a small town. You tend to see the same people over and over again. You meet people with whom you have co-workers, friends, or acquaintances in common. You cross paths with the ghosts of your personal and professional pasts.

So let me ask you something. Would you sit around in public in a small town trashing your co-workers? If you did, would use your co-workers first and last names? Would you say the name of the borg for which you work? Would you do it all at top volume so that an entire subway car could hear every word you were saying?

Note to the dimwit here on a business trip who just sat next to me on the subway shrieking about her co-workers in her borg's New York office, one of whom happens to be an acquaintance of mine: I am going to spare that acquaintance's feelings by not recounting to her your very well-formed opinions on her body, her clothes, or her hair. What I am going to suggest is that you take a good look in the mirror when you get back to North Carolina or Georgia or wherever-the-fuck-you-are-from (you had a southern accent, but I'm not able to discern which southern accent) and think carefully before you criticize anyone else's appearance or taste.

xxx...res

P.S. The news about the relationship between tanning and skin cancer appears not to have reached your particular corner of Dumbfuckistan, but I assure you, it's out there. You could look it up if you managed to stop yapping for a few minutes.