A Breakdown in Southern Hospitality

So getting out of my neighborhood gets harder and harder, for two clearly identifiable reasons--one, traffic, which has increased exponentially since I moved to Atlanta from New York 18 years ago (has it been that long already? Where am I from anymore?), and two, what I'm guessing we can call a bit of a breakdown in the infamous Southern hospitality that so blew me away years ago when drivers would actually back up to let folks in.

And after countless mornings of close-call moments where I felt like my life was hanging in the balance trying to make a left onto the main road, I threw up my hands and exclaimed, "That's it. In 2008, I make only right hand turns. I'm done with lefts." And every day in December I thought about this. Could I do it? Could I only make rights? Of course I would need to write about it, so my mind got filled with thoughts of that, of how making only right hand turns could lead to trying to make only right decisions. And what, exactly, is right? And what would I call this exciting, sure-to-fly-off-the-shelves memoir? No Left Turns? Right Turns Only? You can see the abyss to which I descended rapidly on this fruitless journey.

My family hated the idea. My friends scoffed. I then shared this with a client of mine, whose office, thankfully, is to the right, and he said, "Pattie, get a pencil and paper. Now try to get to your child's school. You're going in a circle, Pattie, don't you see? You're not going to get anywhere! You're going to waste time--and gas. It doesn't work."

Okay, he had a point. But if I started riding my bike to the supermarket . . . And taking the bus to karate . . . And doing all business meetings by phone . . . And never leaving my house . . .

And it was about then when I heard about someone else who had this idea. Someone big.

I represent just one vehicle. But what if I were a global corporation with 88,000 vehicles and 15 million daily deliveries and I decided not to make left hand turns? What if I used package flow technologies that include preloading vehicles in the morning, routing drivers according to volume and favoring right-hand turns? Well, if I were UPS, the worldwide package delivery company (at whose headquarters here in Atlanta I worked, by the way, as a marketing communications project manager specializing in national sales), and I decided to do this, I would save time (rights are faster), I would save fuel (54 million gallons a year for a cost savings of something like 150 million dollars), and yes, by making this one little change, I would help save the planet. Not to mention my sanity.

Bravo to UPS for recognizing that little things matter. Now, if a UPS driver would just let me out of my neighborhood this morning, I'd appreciate it!

A Breakdown in Southern Hospitality