Appearing good

Koreans are all about appearances. 

I definitely uttered this phrase a few times while living in Seoul.  I had good reason too.  They stay at the office late, appearing to work very hard.  They lavish food and gifts on guests when they can’t afford it, appearing to be very wealthy.  They hire blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigners to “teach” in their schools, appearing to have highly qualified educators on staff.

Now that I’ve been back in the homeland long enough to unravel a multitude of myths I’ve built up about the culture and character of the Korean people over the past two years, I’ve discovered yet another one that needs to be shattered: Americans are just as much about appearances, but in a worse, far more destructive way.  Let me explain.

I remember (when I was a kid) going into a movie rental place on a back street in Newark Valley, NY, a rural town upstate.  The entrance was a broken screen door and that was all, I think—no outside door, no sign, some caging on the lone streetside window.  Maybe that’s why one could only rent movies from there in the summer time. 

Inside there were 5 or 6 metal shelves—the wire kind, the kind one used to find holding magazines in grocery stores.  They lined the walls—one was even set in front of the window—and one lone shelf stood longways in the center of the store.  There wasn’t enough room to fit two shelves back to back, just the one facing the right wall, with its back to the left wall nearest the door.  If I had climbed the rusty fire escape to the roof to peer in through the hole in the ceiling, the formation of shelves would look like a big, square “0”.

While I’m sure Blockbuster was not around then, I knew of at least one other, bigger movie rental store in the town, because I had gone there to rent movies with Mom a few times.  The selection was much bigger and they sold bags of popcorn (popped fresh from a machine) and Nintendo games.  This smaller, back street store sold Big League Chew and Marvel comics.  The charge for rentals at both stores was the same, though.  I know this because at one point I asked my mother how the small, dirty store could possible have the same prices as the bigger, cleaner store—the one with popcorn.  The selection was not as good and we could only rent the movie for two days instead of five, like the bigger store.  She said the small store ran a scam in that regard.  It was not reputable, not as fancy or friendly as the bigger store

They weren’t trying to scam us.  In fact, the exact opposite was true.  Despite the popcorn, the huge movie selection, and the vast array of video games, that big store had a strict return policy.  You were fined for every extra day you kept the movie, even if you had a good excuse.  For example, I tried explaining to clerk one day that my friend took my movie rental without my knowing and didn’t give it back to me until, like, three days after it was due.  It totally wasn’t my fault and could he please drop the extra charges.  Dude behind the counter told me I’d better pay up then get the friend to pay me back.  My whole story was, of course, a complete fabrication to begin with.  I, myself, had just forgotten to return it, but I thought in a small town businesses could allow for such slip ups to occur as an act of good faith.  Not so.

There were other intolerable aspects to the atmosphere in that big store.  The guy behind the cash register was always way more interested in the movie he had playing on the shelf below the counter than in finding one’s movie selection, which was most often misplaced in the stacks of neglected returns in a shopping cart in the back, a place I could see only through the crack in the door with the “Employees Only” sign.  

The floors in the place were uneven too.  The interior decorator must have thought covering the place in thin grey carpet would disguise that fact, but, to me, the extra layer only called the rough terrain to my attention with more clarity.  And the silk flowers that hung from wicker baskets on the walls, though keeping with the accepted decorum of place and time, did little to persuade me of the place’s genuineness.

What I liked about the small store was its easy come, easy go feel.  On a hot summer day the owners (grandparents by my estimation) didn’t gripe when my brothers wanderedin with noe shirts on and on many occasions I didn’t wear shoes.  This would have been in direct violation of the abrasive sign fastened to the front door of the upscale competitor. 

The grandparents at the small rental place kept records of movies rented on index cards.  And they didn’t seem to mind if you were a few days late on returning the movie.  They never said a word.

Today, though I have not been to the town in many years, I can say with complete certainty that neither stores exist.  They were but small fishes in an infinite sea of corporate greed and the appearance of customer service.

Americans are ALL about appearances.  This restaurant has a nice interior and the food is expensive: It must be good (but it’s not).  The company donates 1% of its annual profits to feed the poor (in the very country from which its stealing vital resources and sifening them away to throw billion dollar birthday bashes for their spoiled offspring).  While waiting to speak to the next service representative, a voice recording assures Bank of America customers they’ve chosen the right money lending institute: Bank of America has supplied loans to more people with bad credit than any other bank in America (Unfortunately, those customers, less inclined to take their lives in a fatal bridge jump, will be paying back that loan for the next 30 years at 27.99% interest).

Give me the no thrills, no frills, no shoes, no shirt, local rental shop over the robotic, pay-on-time-or-else, fake, fancy flowers shop with fickle floor boards.  At least SoKo still has some of those places kicking around.