FAST
A few months ago I was playing backgammon with Stephen Dubner when we saw something that was fairly repulsive. Here’s the thing about Dubner. He wrote Freakonomics and that catapulted him to success. And I think it’s a great book. But here’s the thing: I think he’s a world-class writer with his other books. “Confessions of a Hero Worshipper” is one of my all-time favorites but I don’t think it sold well.
Stephen writes in his first book, “Turbulent Souls” that his dad died when he was young. In “Confessions” he admits to worshipping the football player Franco Harris from the Pittsburgh Steelers. Stephen and I are near the same age and I liked football as a kid so I remember who Harris was. He was a machine for the Steelers. Anyway, Stephen wants to write about the concept of hero worship. He has
various philosophical ideas about what hero worship means in our society. How it could be a replacement for fatherhood. It could even be a replacement for God (he notes that the authors of almost every major superhero (Superman, etc., were Jewish) and even Superman’s real name “Kal-El” is derived from the Hebrew word for “God” - “El”.
But he doesn’t just write about these things. He goes ahead and does them. He went to Pittsburgh, called Franco Harris, and waited for Franco Harris to basically call him back. Harris did! And for the next few months Dubner went back and forth between hanging out with Harris or waiting for Harris to call him back. Harris was a childhood hero come to life. Maybe they could be friends? Stephen gave it his all. And the book morphs from this philosophical tome about heroes and fathers and gods to Stephen’s unrequited friendship with Franco Harris, the 70s Pittsburgh Steelers all-pro football player. I hope Stephen eventually writes more books like that. I might’ve even been telling him this while we were eating at Le Pain Quotidien on the upper west side and playing backgammon. He might have even been beating me in that particular moment so the interruption was welcome. The woman at the table next to us started in with a combination of screaming and crying. It’s one of those animal sounds when all the animals around sense something is very wrong and look over. Here’s what was wrong:
James Altucher
There was a dead mouse in her salad. She moved it from the salad to a bowl. I walked over there and asked her if I could take a picture so she could have it in case she needed it for anything. I was being nice and she thanked me profusely but my real motive is exactly what you are seeing here: I wanted to write about it.
Le Pain Quotidien is a great chain of healthy restaurants. But it’s growing fast. When a company grows fast things (mice) literally slip through the cracks. Stephen did a radio show about the situation a few weeks ago. I said on the show, a lot of things have to go wrong in order for that mouse to get there. It’s not a simple mistake. A bag of salad had to be left open in a kitchen, unobserved. A mouse had to crawl into it. The salad bag had to be then shut. The mouse then died. At some point in the future the salad was removed from storage and opened. A hand reached into the bag and didn’t watch what it was doing. It pulled out a bunch of lettuce, and one dead mouse, and put it on a woman’s plate. All unnoticed.
Things happen from the top down. It’s not the waiter’s fault. Or the guy in the kitchen’s fault. Or the manager’s. Somewhere near the top of a fast growing company, an executive can’t handle the growth, and doesn’t put the structure in place for a mouse to sneak into the salad bag. This happens with every company on the planet. A mouse in the salad means congrats, you are growing. But it also means if you can’t handle the growth, you’re about to die a horrible death. Trapped without oxygen in a salad bag.
A waiter had to then take the plate, and still not notice the dead mouse that was on it. It was delivered to the woman. The woman began eating the salad. Until she ate enough lettuce to uncover the mouse, or until she stuck her fork in it and picked it up.
Stephen put on his Freakonomics hat. We didn’t pay our bill and we packed up our backgammon set and began walking out. “Let’s let the manager set the price of the bill for us.” At the door, the manager came up to us. Stephen said: “look, we mostly finished our meal but now we don’t feel so well, given the mouse thing. What do you suggest we pay for this meal?”
Stephen’s theory was that if the manager was good, he would have us pay nothing, even offer us incentives to come back. Fortunately it turns out the manager was good.
As we were leaving, the woman who found the mouse in her salad came up to me and said, “thank you so much. You are very kind to help me out here.” No problem, I said, I wanted to help. I would hate to find a mouse in my food. I was actually feeling a gag reflex as I was thinking about it. I think I’m feeling that even right now as I write this.
She was still thanking me. “It’s very sweet that you would help us. My friend and I eat here regularly. Maybe we will see you when we eat here next week.”