Be grateful for the little things

One of the things that I find the most interesting about working at a hotel is that I get to… One of the things that I find the most interesting about working at a hotel is that I get to meet people from all around the world. We get guests from many different countries staying with us while they visit Pitt or Carnegie Mellon University, or one of the many hospitals in the area. But sometimes it’s also an experience in how American culture differs from the rest of the world.

For instance, recently we had a couple come in with a young child from India to stay with us for a few days. They’d never been to the United States before, so everything was pretty new to them. When they asked me to show them their suite, the wife was positively amazed when we told her that there was a kitchen with service for four that she could use however she wanted to.

I’ll be honest: I felt like some sort of royalty, showing off all the stuff that we had to offer. But what was really weird about the experience was how clearly it showed me what Americans just take for granted that maybe we should be more thankful for.

For instance, take clean water. When I was showing this couple the kitchen, they deliberately asked me several times whether the tap water was drinkable. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I would find it difficult to imagine a situation where I would be OK with the water coming out of my faucet not being OK to drink.

Imagine having to boil your water every time you needed to drink or cook with it, or having to buy bottled water in order to ensure that it was potable. But we simply expect that it would be that way.

This is true to the point that we get pissed off when our expectations aren’t met. For example, when the great and wonderful city of Pittsburgh decides to tear up water mains and shut off service or force brown water into the system for days at a time, people get pissed off.

Never mind the fact that a huge percentage of the world’s population can’t drink or cook their food in the water they have; I have to wait 20 seconds before my tap water turns clear! What a horrible and completely unreasonable inconvenience!

And it’s not just that. We think of electricity, water, Internet, cable, cell phones and so on not just as privileges, but as rights that can’t be taken away. People get mad when they’re told they won’t be able to use their cell phones when they’re driving, or call the power company and complain if the electricity goes out for more than a minute. I hate to break it to everyone, but unless there’s some sort of life-threatening condition that necessitates your ability to watch “America’s Next Top Model,” you’ll probably live.

I was looking up information for this column and I found an interesting definition of “infrastructure:” the things that you notice more by their absence than by their presence. Think of all the conveniences and comforts that we go through every day, and then just try to take one of them out and imagine your reaction. For example, imagine life without University computer labs or survival minus toilet paper.

And yet, there are millions of people who do without these conveniences every day, and more. There are millions of people who go without food a large part of the time. It kind of puts our whining about the water being brown for a few seconds in perspective, doesn’t it?

Every time I showed this couple at the hotel something else about the suite, I felt both proud and a bit guilty about it. I told them how to use the gas stove, how to work the television with 200-plus channels, how to turn on the radiators. These are things that pretty much everyone has and thinks nothing of – things that we basically never notice until someone or something points them out to us.

So, since Thanksgiving is this Thursday, I think we should be thankful for everything that we never think about. I’m glad that I have heat in my house, or an elevator to take me up the Cathedral so I don’t have to take the stairs. I’m glad that I can type this column on my own personal computer, then send it anywhere in the world with just a few clicks, and then have anyone else in the world respond to me with just a couple more. And I’m glad that I live somewhere that the majority of these services and commodities work almost constantly and without our ever noticing. Aren’t you?

Tell Richard your sappy list of things you’re happy about with an e-mail to rab53@pitt.edu.