Category: Issues

We customers get no respect

Jae-Ha Kim

Just when did the shift take place from the customer always being right to just being a plain pain in the butt? In recent months, I have been cut by a manicurist, pierced by a tack while trying on clothes at a department store, handed mixed-up food orders and messed-up film negatives and subjected to cab trips in which the drivers’ seats were so far back that I had to kiss my knees. Fact is, I can deal with inconveniences. But they’d be a lot easier to stomach if people would just show some common courtesy.

State of being single not a sickness

Jae-Ha Kim

I realize that no one’s going to mistake me for Tyra Banks and that Keanu Reeves probably won’t be knocking on my door any time soon with an engagement ring (although a girl can always dream). But I’ve got a good career going, my mental health is stable and I’m debt-free. In some countries, I would be considered a good catch.

Spinster…Really?!

Jae-Ha Kim

I never knew I was a spinster until my bank told me so. It’s true I am an unmarried woman. I like to think of myself as an independent, financially secure woman who is capable of buying a home by myself. But I suppose that takes up too much space on the line next to my name. My married friends didn’t have to deal with this humiliation when they signed up for their mortgages. And my single guy friends were described as “bachelor.”

Have no date? Take heart

Jae-Ha Kim

For those of you lucky enough to have loving, significant others, Valentine’s Day is a dream come true. But for the rest of us, it’s a dreaded night second only to New Year’s Eve. The expectations are so high that disappointment is as likely as anything else. Not only are we supposed to have a date, but it’s supposed to be with the perfect guy. And we can’t just go out for a nice meal. It has to be a special meal.

Please, all Johns keep out: Besides the privacy issue, there are some sights best left unseen.

Jae-Ha Kim

There’s one thing I don’t ever want to see in a women’s room — a man. Ever since “Ally McBeal” hit it big on Fox, talk around the water cooler has centered on two things: the brevity of our heroine’s hemline and the uncomfortable concept of the coed bathrooms that the attorneys share on the show.

Spring cleaning for the soul

Jae-Ha Kim

Dumping your friends is different from losing touch. The latter is passive action that happens because one of you moves away, or he gets married, or she has a baby and is too busy to listen to you harp about a Kate Spade handbag that you absolutely have to have. Eventually, you run into each other again, exchange new numbers and addresses and make an effort to renew your friendship.

Beyond Asian stereotypes

Jae-Ha Kim

“Chink-a-Chink-a Chinaman sitting on a fence; Trying to make a dollar out of 59 cents.” My parents were mortified when their 5-year-old daughter came home from school singing this chant. My friends and I had learned to jump rope to this song from older kids who thought it would be fun to teach a bunch of kindergartners a thing or two. At the time, I had about as much concept of what a “Chink” was as I did the actual value of 59 cents. But I was too young to see past my parents’ forced smiles.