Weekend Reads
“It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street. I thought, ‘I can’t sit by any longer.” In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi on why JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep this woman from talking. The $9 billion witness.
+ “Hour after hour, this terrible fever. What the hell am I doing? I kept asking myself. Why am I forcing a fine new machine to pretend it is a half-dozen old, useless machines? Eventually I realized: This might be about my friend Tom dying.” Paul Ford: The Sixth Stage of Grief Is Retro-computing.
+ “Blood rushes to my cheeks. I desperately want my next sentence to calm her down, to sound confident, sympathetic. I want this customer — my customer — to feel assuaged.” It takes a unique person to calm us down when we’re calling customer service. Gabriel Bristol discovered he had a special talent for appeasing angry customers. That skill helped him go from being homeless to being a CEO.
+ “If someone had told that man he’d have eight more years with that boy, eight happy, normal years, he would have kissed them and wept for joy. But this man, in 2014, is pissed. He wants to punch that person in the fucking face.” Ken Norton remembers his son Riley: Alone Time. Read it. Then go hug your kids. (And if you know Ken, hug him too.)