Letters from South Florida Part II
1st official day on the new job!
Walking down memory lane in Jimmy Choos
Airports are always good people-watching, especially in South Florida! Seriously…it’s a totally different vibe. Every person you see looks like they have a story to tell, and they probably do! Case in point….
As I stood in the line outside FLL for the remote baggage check-in, I noticed a middle-aged couple a few feet away looking rather anxious. The line was moving slowly (another cultural difference from the fast-paced “north” from which I hail). I didn’t notice much about the man…he wore a light-weight button up shirt and khaki (no, not cargo) shorts…his hair was thinning and silver, he was maybe a bit on the bulky side…. but it was the woman who caught my attention. She was very slender and wore a slim-fitting bodycon type dress made of ribbed jersey material – not unlike the Michael Kors one that I was wearing – and a pair of white sandals with a chunky heel and a metal buckle. Overall, she gave the impression of being fairly stylish, but I’d wager that no part of her outfit was designer brand (I’ve become such a snob!). Her hair was beautiful, long, blond, and apparently had been straightened (a tremendous feat in the South Florida humidity – if you thought we had it bad in DC….). Her face was the only marker of her age; typical of South Floridians, she was extremely tan but also very wrinkled, both the result of a lot of time spent in the sun. This is a “type” of which I saw a lot when I lived in South Florida, specifically Fort Lauderdale (in Miami the ladies tend to be trendier, younger, with fuller figures…the men also tend to be more physically fit).
At the airport I also observed a young Latina lady, obviously an employee based on her uniform of blue button-up top and darker blue trousers, which obscured her shoes to give the effect that she was skimming the ground. She accidentally dropped something, which she bent to pick up causing her hair to fall out of place. She brushed her long, dark brown silky hair while at the same time glancing back at her colleague with a little laugh, indicating that they knew each other fairly well.
The coworker herself was another “type” I’ve observed in South Florida. She was slightly older, slightly heavier, with darker skin and tight curly rings framing her face. She spoke over the loudspeaker (actually, she did not even bother to use one – she simply shouted across the gate’s seating area!) with great authority, only a slight accent that spoke to a heritage that was either islander or Latina – or both. I was slightly intimidated, like…”this is not someone I would want to mess with”…but her jocular interaction with her coworkers led me to believe that in a better mood she was actually quite friendly.
Obviously, both Fort Lauderdale and Miami have a large Latinx population. I am clearly not qualified to generalize about an entire culture, but it is my opinion that the influence of Latin culture is why the area moves at a more relaxed pace, why personal relationships still matter in business (for better or for worse), why rules are casually ignored, and why there still exists a spirit of entrepreneurship (as
opposed to those of us in the north who are resigned to working for larger corporations). I did have the opportunity, when I was younger, to travel to a select few South and Central American countries – Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Cuba – but again, this hardly makes me the expert. I am simply sharing my own impressions.
If anything, I hope your key takeaway is how varied the culture is in Florida as well as across the United States. I hope we someday learn to cherish each other’s differences. Whether you travel to Dallas, San Francisco, DC, NYC, Denver…every part of this country has new experiences and cultures in store. I’m far from a patriot in a certain “red state,” political sense….but I do embrace the diversity that exists within our country and wish that more people did the same.
