Which side are you on, boys?

Sunday Star Times Feb 12 2017

In 1982 I got an angry telephone call from a newspaper publisher. I was a young fool in a suit, working for an advertising agency, trying to help our client open a bottle store in Rotorua. Simpler happier times these were, when an advertising agency could fly a young fool to Rotorua just to make sure a double page advertisement appeared in the Daily Post.

Simpler happier times these were, when you couldn't just ask for a licence for a bottle store.  You had to prove the town needed one, and you had to do it in front of the Licensing Control Commission and you could be waiting months to get that licence and maybe years and maybe forever. 

The Liquorland executive in charge of getting the licence had promised us it was sorted, and it was coming. I flew to Rotorua with the double page advertisement ready to go: low low everyday prices on Gordons Gin and Smirnoff and Blenheimer wine casks and Double Brown cans and Coruba.

But the licence wasn’t sorted, and it wasn't coming. And each day for almost a week, we ended up putting a cryptic message in the two full empty pages of the Daily Post in the spot where our expensive ad was supposed to be.

Each morning you waited for word that the bottle store had its licence, each afternoon you rang the paper and said, please print in big letters the words ‘stand by for a big surprise’. Yes, the client is happy to pay, yes, we know it's a lot of money for two empty pages.

On day four, or maybe it was day seven, I got the irate call. He told me: I'm the publisher of this newspaper. You can’t be treating our readers like this.

What a happy world that was where a newspaper publisher could afford to make an angry phone call and refuse to take your money.

There's always someone trying to violate the established order of things, there's always someone getting angry and saying you can't do that, and they may just be cranky but they may also be right.

People use the word ‘disruption’ to describe the most excellent price you pay for your car ride with Uber and the mighty price you pay for your Airbnb apartment, but an equally valid word might be destruction.

I used Airbnb to stay in Sydney this week because someone had taken every last hotel room. What I booked was a nice apartment near Martin Place. What I got was a small debacle. Your apartment is not yet available, said the urgent text message, because the last occupant has caused a problem.

Oh really: what kind  of problem? Well, for reasons not at all clear to anyone, he had wrecked  the front door and then tried to hide the evidence by taking the bathroom door off its hinges and hanging it where the front door should go. The bathroom door was smaller, had no lock, and left a large gap in the place where your security and peace of mind is supposed to be.

Not to worry, the builder was coming, and in the meantime, the apartment owner had found a sort of a bed for me. But the first night came and went, and no builder, and next morning still no builder, and it wasn't until the end of the second day that I found myself sitting in the wreckage of a Martin Place apartment as the builders, new to the city and Australia, hauled a new door up to the twelfth floor, bored it out, fitted a a deadbolt and a handle and hinges and hung it and painted it and made all the neighbours irate.

The instructions you get when you book into an Airbnb often run along the lines of please don't tell the neighbours or the concierge that you are here here with Airbnb. Tell them you are visiting your friend Donny.  Neighbours don't like Airbnb because is disruptive and they can see that it may be driving prices up and out of reach and I can't blame them.

I’ve always thought when the revolution came I’d be on the side that wanted change. Right now I’m wondering which side I should be on, and feeling as lost as an Uber driver in Wellington.