Nachos and circuses,
and not being a sport
You might say it’s Roch Carrier’s revenge. You know, for the
hockey sweater — the Toronto
Maple Leafs sweater “Mr.
Eaton” sent him when little
Roch was expecting a Cana-diens jersey, like the jerseys his
buddies wore.
In this case it was a tie, mind
you, on a grown man, in Chicago. In late January, the day
after the Green Bay Packers beat
the Chicago Bears out of a berth
in Super Bowl XLV, John Stone
showed up at Webb Chevrolet
wearing his Green Bay Packers
tie. Webb Chevrolet is in Oak
Lawn, Ill., a Chicago suburb.
The manager there claims he
told the 34-year-old salesman to
remove the tie. Five times. It
would hurt business, the manager insisted, not to mention
promotional relationships with
the Bears. Stone was resolute,
explaining he wore the tie in
memory of his grandmother, a
recently deceased cheesehead,
a.k.a. Packers supporter.
The manager fired him. But
international news coverage
immediately landed Stone a
sales job with one of Webb’s
competitors, and a full plate of
cheesehead offers to purchase
Chevrolets through him at his
new employer.
Viscerally, you sympathize
with Stone. Roch Carrier’s
revenge and all that. But the
lawyer in you reasons that
Stone’s boss had a point, and
that Stone’s knotty recalcitrance
amounted to insubordin-
ation meriting summary
dismissal. But that is to
OFF THE RECORD
JEFFREY
MILLER
“Now, amid endless
playoffs, in a perpetual
series of ‘sports and
entertainment
spectaculars,’ sense
of occasion is dead.
ignore the essential tribalism of
the piece, the tribalism that led
me to recall this somewhat stale
news item in the middle of the
Stanley Cup final.
Consider, for example, how
the final is at heart just another
excuse for an undeclared holi-
day, like the Olympics and the
World Cup during the last
couple of years. Which in
itself — yes, I get it — is fine. We
all need rest and recreation,
distraction from the daily grind.
But consider also how, accord-
ing to the Conference Board,
Canada ranks tenth among
developed countries in produc-
tivity—a plunge of four places
in one year. Sweden, hockey
loving as well as iconically
worker-friendly, is number one,
followed by Switzerland, beer-
loving Belgium, easy-going
Australia, Denmark, Germany,
the U.S., and Austria. Can the
daily grind really be all that
grinding in Canada?
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