Well, hello out there. I've been working a lot of hours at my retail job (oh, the joys of being an underemployed artist in America). This week, it inspired my play.
Some of you may remember an incident back in 2010, when Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater, after dealing with an excessively nasty passenger (she reportedly hit him with her bag, then screamed an obscenity at him, although some reports indicate that wasn't the case) announced over the plane's PA system that he was quitting, and then slid down the evacuation slide and took off. The incident caused Washington Post writer Peggy Noonan to comment that "Once we were a great industrial nation. Now we are a service economy. Which means we are forced to interact with each other, every day, in person and by phone and email. And it's making us all a little mad." I think every person who has worked in a service industry has had that moment when they wished they had Mr. Slater's cojones and applauded him for having the last word with a difficult customer, in an industry where you are just supposed to smile and take it.
My new play is titled American Spring. Customers at an upscale store find themselves at the forefront of a revolution, where the weapons are pointed at them.
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