Let me tell you a story about two firms I did business with last year. I’m not going to name any names; I’m not even going to identify which city either one was in; I’m not into getting sued and it doesn’t matter anyway. The point is that while these transactions may seem as different as chalk and cheese, they are actually about the same things: customer service and getting it right. It can happen in your current city as easily as either of the ones I lived in this year, in any kind of company that deals with the public, and there’s no reason every business can’t get things right just the way our positive example does – and every chance they will screw up the way our negative example did…
Let’s start with the company that did some framing for us. This is a service that is, to put it mildly, screamingly difficult. Everyone has their own ideas about art and aesthetics, and that includes what looks good with what and what should go in which frame. There is practically no upside to providing customer service in this business; if you attempt to offer guidance there’s a good chance the customer will blame you for things not turning out they way they envisioned, and if you don’t there’s an even better chance the customer will blame you for not telling them that their vision was idiotic…
Of course, in this particular case, the customers in question were my wife (who has an amazing eye for artwork) and my stepmother (who does this sort of thing for a living). Still, there are an amazing number of things the framers could have screwed up on, both in terms of the work we commissioned them to do and also in the administrative/billing details, and I am pleased to report that they avoided doing so in all cases. They took somewhat longer than they had estimated on the job, but let me repeat: it was a time estimate, not a fixed deadline. They also got things done exactly as promised, billed the right account for the work, packed everything up for transportation, even helped us load everything into the Torrent for the trip home…
Now let’s shift to consider a slightly less exacting service: breakfast. I know I’m on record calling food service the Hardest Business in the World, and I stand behind that, but that’s running such a company and making a living; the actual act of toasting a bagel and slapping cream cheese and lox on it isn’t actually that difficult. Except that the past seven months have taken us far from our beloved Manhattan Beach Bread and Bagel Company, and we’ve eaten bagels in several other cities. It was one such bagel joint that drew my attention because of their apparent inability to speak English – or, at least, hear it…
Each of the times we ate there, the folks behind the counter managed to get our order wrong, even though it was only for a bagel with cream cheese (and in one case, lox) smeared on it. We’d ask for food to eat in and get it packed to go (or visa-versa), order chips and have them left out of our order, get the wrong food items or the wrong drinks or whatever. If we were ordering complex, multi-course meals with dozens of menu changes I’d have a different opinion, but the fact is we were asking these people to sell us their primary product on days when their shop wasn’t even all that busy…
Okay, so it’s a simple story and you’ve heard it before. And I know it’s not fair to hold the minimum-wage bagel-smearers to the same standard highly-paid, highly-qualified framers. I’m just saying that in both cases, the company has selected the product or service they intend to sell, and set the price at the level they believe is acceptable to the customer. But one company is building goodwill, making strong relationships with their customers, and earning repeat business, while the other is annoying people with money to the point where at least some of us would rather get our breakfast at Burger King…
It’s worth thinking about…
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Washing the Car
Tonight before dinner I took the car over to the gas station around the corner and filled the gas tank, and then went through the automated car wash to get all of the salt, road dirt, and other crap that had accumulated on the outside of it over the past two weeks. Simplest, most natural thing in the world, right? Certainly nothing you’d weary your long-suffering blog readers with. But on the way home it struck me that there were at least three different business lessons to be had just in this ten-minute errand – which is at once why I love this discipline so much, and also why I keep saying I’ll never run out of things to write about in this blog…
First off, let’s consider the fact that it has been two weeks since I last put fuel in the car. For someone who grew up in Los Angeles, the concept is almost inconceivable. My daily commute before leaving L.A. to come here was 32 miles round trip, and in fact the shortest work commute I had the entire time I lived in Los Angeles was about twelve. In a car like our Pontiac Torrent, which gets about 16 miles per gallon in the city, the daily drive was taking up two gallons of gas per day, every day. With a 17-gallon tank, we could generally limit ourselves to one tank per week, but only if we limited our non-work driving rather sharply, and didn’t go anywhere on the weekends. Here in East Lansing, my daily commute is about six miles round trip, meaning that in an entire week I use roughly the same amount of gas that I would have used in a single day working at UCLA…
Actually, I could probably cut that down even more, considering that East Lansing has a quite good public transportation system, and there’s even a bus that goes from in front of my office to the supermarket up the street (half a mile or so). The point here is that because the University is located in East Lansing, it’s possible for students like me to get around for a fraction of what it would cost in L.A. or a dozen other cities. Of course, MSU has to be here – it’s been on this site for over 150 years now. But if you were going to select a new base for your company, choosing a city where even your lowest-paid employee can afford to get to work (and even senior management will spend a fraction of what they are used to on gasoline) might have a certain appeal…
The second point is the car wash itself. During the rainy season in Southern California you may want to wash the crap off your car from time to time, since all of that crud that you see overhead has to go SOMEWHERE when it rains, and it usually just falls on you. This pales in comparison to the salt, mud, dirt and dust involved in an urban/suburban setting in a cold-weather city in the winter. The salt used to keep the streets free of ice will also rust out every part of your car’s body if you don’t keep it clean. But the large, free-standing car wash operations common on the West Coast (and other warm-weather regions) are impractical on days when the ambient temperature is before freezing, so what you mostly see here in Lansing are small, completely-enclosed automated facilities like the one I drove through tonight. They’re not quite as effective at cleaning a car as their more labor-intensive cousins, but there’s something nice about being about to get your car cleaned whenever you want…
Which brings me to the very obvious third point: the gasoline was $1.49 a gallon. Lower than it was in the early 1990s when I was in graduate school the first time. Or, if you prefer, about a third of what it was in Los Angeles when I left, when everyone was talking about $9 per gallon and changes in our way of life. Will it go back to $4.50 by next summer? Will people go back to buying giant SUVs that get a quarter of the mileage my Torrent gets? Will the next year bring even more record profits for the oil companies, or will the car makers finally get back to good?
Darned if I know. I’m just pointing out that if you made plans based on $4.50 a gallon gasoline or the equivalent in diesel or heating oil you’re probably wishing you hadn’t; if you had all of your retirement funds based in some Wall Street investment scheme that seemed too good to be real you’re finding out it was; and if you bet the farm that a man of African ancestry would never be elected President of the United States, you’re probably out one farm. You’ve all heard me ranting on and on about the need for good business intelligence before making plans for the future. The past few months have demonstrated just how difficult that can be in exhaustive detail, but if you needed any further proof of it you only had to ride along with me tonight as I ran my errands…
First off, let’s consider the fact that it has been two weeks since I last put fuel in the car. For someone who grew up in Los Angeles, the concept is almost inconceivable. My daily commute before leaving L.A. to come here was 32 miles round trip, and in fact the shortest work commute I had the entire time I lived in Los Angeles was about twelve. In a car like our Pontiac Torrent, which gets about 16 miles per gallon in the city, the daily drive was taking up two gallons of gas per day, every day. With a 17-gallon tank, we could generally limit ourselves to one tank per week, but only if we limited our non-work driving rather sharply, and didn’t go anywhere on the weekends. Here in East Lansing, my daily commute is about six miles round trip, meaning that in an entire week I use roughly the same amount of gas that I would have used in a single day working at UCLA…
Actually, I could probably cut that down even more, considering that East Lansing has a quite good public transportation system, and there’s even a bus that goes from in front of my office to the supermarket up the street (half a mile or so). The point here is that because the University is located in East Lansing, it’s possible for students like me to get around for a fraction of what it would cost in L.A. or a dozen other cities. Of course, MSU has to be here – it’s been on this site for over 150 years now. But if you were going to select a new base for your company, choosing a city where even your lowest-paid employee can afford to get to work (and even senior management will spend a fraction of what they are used to on gasoline) might have a certain appeal…
The second point is the car wash itself. During the rainy season in Southern California you may want to wash the crap off your car from time to time, since all of that crud that you see overhead has to go SOMEWHERE when it rains, and it usually just falls on you. This pales in comparison to the salt, mud, dirt and dust involved in an urban/suburban setting in a cold-weather city in the winter. The salt used to keep the streets free of ice will also rust out every part of your car’s body if you don’t keep it clean. But the large, free-standing car wash operations common on the West Coast (and other warm-weather regions) are impractical on days when the ambient temperature is before freezing, so what you mostly see here in Lansing are small, completely-enclosed automated facilities like the one I drove through tonight. They’re not quite as effective at cleaning a car as their more labor-intensive cousins, but there’s something nice about being about to get your car cleaned whenever you want…
Which brings me to the very obvious third point: the gasoline was $1.49 a gallon. Lower than it was in the early 1990s when I was in graduate school the first time. Or, if you prefer, about a third of what it was in Los Angeles when I left, when everyone was talking about $9 per gallon and changes in our way of life. Will it go back to $4.50 by next summer? Will people go back to buying giant SUVs that get a quarter of the mileage my Torrent gets? Will the next year bring even more record profits for the oil companies, or will the car makers finally get back to good?
Darned if I know. I’m just pointing out that if you made plans based on $4.50 a gallon gasoline or the equivalent in diesel or heating oil you’re probably wishing you hadn’t; if you had all of your retirement funds based in some Wall Street investment scheme that seemed too good to be real you’re finding out it was; and if you bet the farm that a man of African ancestry would never be elected President of the United States, you’re probably out one farm. You’ve all heard me ranting on and on about the need for good business intelligence before making plans for the future. The past few months have demonstrated just how difficult that can be in exhaustive detail, but if you needed any further proof of it you only had to ride along with me tonight as I ran my errands…
Friday, December 26, 2008
Follow-up: Moving and Breaking
Back in August I told all of you about the fallout from our move to Michigan, which included a few smashed items (like our second TV set), a few broken but repairable items (like our piano), and at least one missing item (our vacuum cleaner). You can read the original post here if you want to. At the time of that post we had just filed our claim with the moving company and were awaiting their response. It took them several weeks to get around to responding, and a couple of months after that before they sent someone around to look at the damage, and a while after that before they could get someone around to look at the piano, but we waited. We didn’t even complain about the laughably long time it was taking these people to resolve the issue. Well, today we have their answer. And, to put it mildly, we’re underwhelmed…
It’s not like they refused to pay for the television set; for that I might just have taken them to court, considering that I would be able to produce the (smashed beyond repair) TV as well as the pictures and the statement that their people broke it. It’s not even the piano repair, really, although I’m less than thrilled with that: they are going to send us the money that their appraiser claimed it would cost to repair the instrument. Not an amount that we have a binding estimate on; not even an amount that we can be reasonably sure of getting someone to do the work for. Just the amount that the same company that broke the piano in the first place SAYS will suffice. Apparently, we’re supposed to trust them on that…
No, the part that really frosts my cookies is that they’re refusing to accept any responsibility for losing our vacuum cleaner, apparently because we failed to call them on it on the day of delivery. This is actually fairly standard procedure for movers, and normally I’d be inclined to just let it go, but in this case there are two reasons why I think this is outrageous: First, they failed to tell me that our choices were either check off each individual item at it came off the truck or else sign here to indicate that you aren’t going to do this until AFTER fifty or sixty items were already off the truck and inside the house, and Second, we were a bit distracted by the broken piano, smashed television set, broken and cracked furniture items, bald-faced hornets swooping down from the sky, and movers rushing all over the house at breakneck speed trying to finish early for the day…
Now, all of this would already be bad business practice, all else being equal. If you do this to people, there’s a non-zero chance that they will be annoyed enough to claim that this practice IS fraud, and complain to the authorities, who in this case would be Federal Interstate Commerce people (since this outrage took place over state lines). And if they decide it’s worth looking into, there will be Federal marshals (and possibly FBI agents; it depends) crawling all over your company, looking for evidence in this case and anything else you have ever done that violates Federal law. But as bad as that would be, there’s an even worse outcome that could befall a company that relies on having a good reputation to maintain its high rates and good sales figures, and these idiots have just fallen into it…
Put simply, we can tell our Realtors about this. Both of them; our California-based team and our Michigan-based team, both of whom are tapped into a nationwide network of real estate professionals (and one of whom is part of a national company with its own nationwide network). We can tell them about the outrageous, unprofessional, possibly fraudulent actions we’ve been subjected to, and the laughably incompetent, unethical, and stupid treatment we’ve received from the contractors our moving company assigned to deal with our damage claim. And we can recommend that they tell their clients about this episode and recommend that they NOT use this moving company. And we can ask them to share the story with their colleagues. All 56,000 of them…
We’re going to give them one more chance to make good on this situation. It seems only fair, given the relatively small amount at question and the potentially huge amount of damage this could cause the moving company. But if they insist on taking this position, I’ll be back in touch with the name of the company, both so I can mock them in public, and also so that all of you can avoid them, too…
It’s not like they refused to pay for the television set; for that I might just have taken them to court, considering that I would be able to produce the (smashed beyond repair) TV as well as the pictures and the statement that their people broke it. It’s not even the piano repair, really, although I’m less than thrilled with that: they are going to send us the money that their appraiser claimed it would cost to repair the instrument. Not an amount that we have a binding estimate on; not even an amount that we can be reasonably sure of getting someone to do the work for. Just the amount that the same company that broke the piano in the first place SAYS will suffice. Apparently, we’re supposed to trust them on that…
No, the part that really frosts my cookies is that they’re refusing to accept any responsibility for losing our vacuum cleaner, apparently because we failed to call them on it on the day of delivery. This is actually fairly standard procedure for movers, and normally I’d be inclined to just let it go, but in this case there are two reasons why I think this is outrageous: First, they failed to tell me that our choices were either check off each individual item at it came off the truck or else sign here to indicate that you aren’t going to do this until AFTER fifty or sixty items were already off the truck and inside the house, and Second, we were a bit distracted by the broken piano, smashed television set, broken and cracked furniture items, bald-faced hornets swooping down from the sky, and movers rushing all over the house at breakneck speed trying to finish early for the day…
Now, all of this would already be bad business practice, all else being equal. If you do this to people, there’s a non-zero chance that they will be annoyed enough to claim that this practice IS fraud, and complain to the authorities, who in this case would be Federal Interstate Commerce people (since this outrage took place over state lines). And if they decide it’s worth looking into, there will be Federal marshals (and possibly FBI agents; it depends) crawling all over your company, looking for evidence in this case and anything else you have ever done that violates Federal law. But as bad as that would be, there’s an even worse outcome that could befall a company that relies on having a good reputation to maintain its high rates and good sales figures, and these idiots have just fallen into it…
Put simply, we can tell our Realtors about this. Both of them; our California-based team and our Michigan-based team, both of whom are tapped into a nationwide network of real estate professionals (and one of whom is part of a national company with its own nationwide network). We can tell them about the outrageous, unprofessional, possibly fraudulent actions we’ve been subjected to, and the laughably incompetent, unethical, and stupid treatment we’ve received from the contractors our moving company assigned to deal with our damage claim. And we can recommend that they tell their clients about this episode and recommend that they NOT use this moving company. And we can ask them to share the story with their colleagues. All 56,000 of them…
We’re going to give them one more chance to make good on this situation. It seems only fair, given the relatively small amount at question and the potentially huge amount of damage this could cause the moving company. But if they insist on taking this position, I’ll be back in touch with the name of the company, both so I can mock them in public, and also so that all of you can avoid them, too…
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Mr. Happy Crack
I’ve done a lot of posts in this space on how different everything is in Michigan, and I expect we will have several more before I’m done at MSU. It’s not just the climate and the culture, although those are every bit as alien as everyone kept telling us they would be; even basic things like the selection of local companies in familiar fields (coffee, diner food, etc.) are different here. But of all of the strange things in this strange new world, I think we hit a new high (or low; it depends on your point of view) last week when we encountered Mr. Happy Crack…
For those who, like me and my wife, have never encountered him before, Mr. Happy Crack is the advertising mascot for a company that seals cracks and other structural issues with your basement where water can seep into your house, which is called The Crack Team. You can visit their website here if you’re interested in learning more about their services, pricing and so on. What makes this particular mascot so hilarious, in our opinion, is the company’s sales slogan, which says (I am not making this up) “Mr. Happy Crack says: ‘A dry crack is a happy crack!’” As you might imagine, when this offering first appeared on our television set, both of us just about lost it…
Now, there are two different reasons I’m wasting my time and yours writing about Mr. Happy Crack. One is the obvious business lesson: despite (or perhaps because of) its obvious absurdity, this ad actually served its intended purpose very well. My wife and I were completely unaware of the existence of this company before we saw the ad; we had not actually been aware of companies of this type at all until coming to Michigan. Now, having seen the television spot featuring Mr. Happy Crack and learning that “A dry crack is a happy crack!” the odds of our ever forgetting the company are effectively zero. We may or may not do business with The Crack Team (we actually have a company that we use for this type of home repair service already), but if for some reason we need a crack in our basement sealed and don’t have anyone else to call, we will definitely remember them…
The second reason I bring this up is a little more subtle. When I first saw the television spot I thought it was so funny that I snapped a picture of Mr. Happy Crack and his slogan with my cell phone camera and sent it to all of my friends, many of whom are also from California and (like me) had never heard of either the company or its mascot before. If school had been in session that week I would have undoubtedly shared this discovery with all of my fellow students, any faculty members in range, random visitors, and so on; we also considered sending the image (and possibly the link) to the Tonight Show so that Jay Leno could put it on the “Headlines” segment…
All of whom would have thought I was a total cretin, since this firm isn’t actually new to anyone from this part of the country. It turns out that the Crack Team has been doing business since 1985, and they’ve been cracking these same “crack” jokes the whole time. In fact, the founder refers to himself as “the Ray Croc of Crack” (in reference to the man who made McDonald’s famous). Mr. Happy Crack has already been featured on the Tonight Show, as well as the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, CNN, Fox News, and advertising industry journals like Brandweek, Advertising Age and CNBC…
Which only goes to show that what may seem new, unprecedented or just plain weird to you might be a regular part of the landscape in the strange new world where you have landed, and laughing and pointing may go farther towards making you look like a cretin than it does toward mocking what you’re pointing at. It’s worth keeping in mind, should you suddenly find yourself living Somewhere Else in early middle age...
For those who, like me and my wife, have never encountered him before, Mr. Happy Crack is the advertising mascot for a company that seals cracks and other structural issues with your basement where water can seep into your house, which is called The Crack Team. You can visit their website here if you’re interested in learning more about their services, pricing and so on. What makes this particular mascot so hilarious, in our opinion, is the company’s sales slogan, which says (I am not making this up) “Mr. Happy Crack says: ‘A dry crack is a happy crack!’” As you might imagine, when this offering first appeared on our television set, both of us just about lost it…
Now, there are two different reasons I’m wasting my time and yours writing about Mr. Happy Crack. One is the obvious business lesson: despite (or perhaps because of) its obvious absurdity, this ad actually served its intended purpose very well. My wife and I were completely unaware of the existence of this company before we saw the ad; we had not actually been aware of companies of this type at all until coming to Michigan. Now, having seen the television spot featuring Mr. Happy Crack and learning that “A dry crack is a happy crack!” the odds of our ever forgetting the company are effectively zero. We may or may not do business with The Crack Team (we actually have a company that we use for this type of home repair service already), but if for some reason we need a crack in our basement sealed and don’t have anyone else to call, we will definitely remember them…
The second reason I bring this up is a little more subtle. When I first saw the television spot I thought it was so funny that I snapped a picture of Mr. Happy Crack and his slogan with my cell phone camera and sent it to all of my friends, many of whom are also from California and (like me) had never heard of either the company or its mascot before. If school had been in session that week I would have undoubtedly shared this discovery with all of my fellow students, any faculty members in range, random visitors, and so on; we also considered sending the image (and possibly the link) to the Tonight Show so that Jay Leno could put it on the “Headlines” segment…
All of whom would have thought I was a total cretin, since this firm isn’t actually new to anyone from this part of the country. It turns out that the Crack Team has been doing business since 1985, and they’ve been cracking these same “crack” jokes the whole time. In fact, the founder refers to himself as “the Ray Croc of Crack” (in reference to the man who made McDonald’s famous). Mr. Happy Crack has already been featured on the Tonight Show, as well as the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, CNN, Fox News, and advertising industry journals like Brandweek, Advertising Age and CNBC…
Which only goes to show that what may seem new, unprecedented or just plain weird to you might be a regular part of the landscape in the strange new world where you have landed, and laughing and pointing may go farther towards making you look like a cretin than it does toward mocking what you’re pointing at. It’s worth keeping in mind, should you suddenly find yourself living Somewhere Else in early middle age...
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
It Can’t Happen Here!
There’s an interesting story being reported today out of England, where a couple who have never missed a single mortgage payment are on the brink of having their loan called in and their house repossessed by their lender. You can read about the story here if you want to. The bank is refusing to discuss why they are taking this action, and is not responding to requests from the media (for interviews) or from the consumer advocate group in the UK that has taken up this cause and is clamoring for answers. They’re just saying they want their money back in a week or they take the house instead…
“But wait!” I hear some of you saying. “This story is taking place in a foreign country! Therefore, it must concern the business decisions of whacky foreign persons! Such a thing could never happen here in America, right? Right?” You wish…
What is happening in this case is that the couple whose house is in question took out a second mortgage on the property in an amount roughly equal to 40% of the purchase price. Then the property market began to decline (yes, the bubble has burst overseas, too) and the house was no longer worth what the original lender had loaned the purchasers, let alone the total debt they had loaded onto it (somewhere in the 145% to 165% of its current market value). This is making the original lender nervous, because if the borrowers do default on their loans, there is no way the original lender can recoup the money they would be out, especially if they have to fight with another institution over the scraps...
Fortunately for the original bank, they can invoke the “exceptional circumstances” clause in the mortgage contract and demand repayment of the loan immediately. A lot of loan agreements have such a clause; it’s used to protect the lender in a case where the borrower is doing something unusual (e.g. crazy, weird or stupid) that may result in the loan being unpaid and the loan amount lost. It isn’t usually invoked just because the borrow has loaded the property up with too much debt and the lender is worried about what will happen in the event of a default (that hasn’t happened yet!), but unless the contract is very specific about what constitutes an exceptional circumstance (and most of them aren’t; that’s kind of the point) there’s no reason such a clause can’t be invoked…
Now it’s true that the financial laws in the U.S. are different; it’s also true that you should not get your legal opinions from bloggers who never went to law school. I don’t actually know if the “exceptional circumstances” clauses work the same way in this country; I’m not sure if Federal banking laws would permit a property grab like this one to go ahead, or if you would be able to sue the lender for making such a grab and win. I don’t even know if your mortgage has an “exceptional circumstances” clause in the first place. I’m just suggesting that you read over your contract very carefully and if at all possible consult with someone who DID go to law school before you start taking on any significant debt loading using your house as collateral…
“But wait!” I hear some of you saying. “This story is taking place in a foreign country! Therefore, it must concern the business decisions of whacky foreign persons! Such a thing could never happen here in America, right? Right?” You wish…
What is happening in this case is that the couple whose house is in question took out a second mortgage on the property in an amount roughly equal to 40% of the purchase price. Then the property market began to decline (yes, the bubble has burst overseas, too) and the house was no longer worth what the original lender had loaned the purchasers, let alone the total debt they had loaded onto it (somewhere in the 145% to 165% of its current market value). This is making the original lender nervous, because if the borrowers do default on their loans, there is no way the original lender can recoup the money they would be out, especially if they have to fight with another institution over the scraps...
Fortunately for the original bank, they can invoke the “exceptional circumstances” clause in the mortgage contract and demand repayment of the loan immediately. A lot of loan agreements have such a clause; it’s used to protect the lender in a case where the borrower is doing something unusual (e.g. crazy, weird or stupid) that may result in the loan being unpaid and the loan amount lost. It isn’t usually invoked just because the borrow has loaded the property up with too much debt and the lender is worried about what will happen in the event of a default (that hasn’t happened yet!), but unless the contract is very specific about what constitutes an exceptional circumstance (and most of them aren’t; that’s kind of the point) there’s no reason such a clause can’t be invoked…
Now it’s true that the financial laws in the U.S. are different; it’s also true that you should not get your legal opinions from bloggers who never went to law school. I don’t actually know if the “exceptional circumstances” clauses work the same way in this country; I’m not sure if Federal banking laws would permit a property grab like this one to go ahead, or if you would be able to sue the lender for making such a grab and win. I don’t even know if your mortgage has an “exceptional circumstances” clause in the first place. I’m just suggesting that you read over your contract very carefully and if at all possible consult with someone who DID go to law school before you start taking on any significant debt loading using your house as collateral…
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
It’s Not The Kids…
I’ve commented before in this space about the way some people insist on taking small children to inappropriate venues for meals – a rant topic that actually takes in a lot of ground. In fairness, not many small children are going to be able to handle sitting quietly for the hours it will take for a fine dining restaurant to cycle their parents through a dinner seating; even for very well-behaved young people, two or three hours with absolutely nothing to do is a challenge, and by young people I include everyone under the age of forty. And, as previously noted, a restaurant doesn’t have to have white linen and $50-a-plate food to be inappropriate for kids – even our local bagel joint back in Redondo Beach offered very little for the under-twenty crowd to do. But what about the case of venues specifically intended for small children?
You might expect such a place – such as the familiar kid-oriented pizza chain called “Chuck E. Cheese” – to be completely bomb-proof, possibly literally. I mean, if you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of making a venue kid-proof, including furnishings that can’t easily be damaged by kicking, screaming, pulling, twisting, food fights, toilet-training accidents or random vomiting, there’s not much that can go wrong with the place, right? You can still have Health Code violations in the kitchen, breakdowns in the heating and cooling systems or random muggings in the parking lot, but the place itself should be free from behavior-related mishaps, right?
Unfortunately, this proves not to be the case. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal as reported on MSNBC there has been a definite increase in bad behavior occurring at the Chuck E. Cheese locations nationwide. Only, in all of the cases reported, the real problem seems to be the parents, not the kids…
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that there’s anything wrong with what this article refers to as the “mama bear” instinct. The sources quoted are quite correct in calling this an evolutionary development, and it’s probably true that none of us would be here if our parents didn’t have this instinct to one degree or another. I’m also not going to devote any space to wondering what all of this says about the decline of our society, or how much lower than this we can really get and still be called a civilization. I’m not sure what’s worse, an adult who would actually get physical with a six-year-old (however obnoxious) or a parent who would leave a six-year-old alone in a public place and allow the kid to be as obnoxious as they like in the first place. My interest is business, and my question is what you, as a business owner, are supposed to do about the situation…
Clearly, just letting it happen won’t do; you’ll be sued by all of the participants in the brawl, anyone else in the place who feels their kids were “traumatized” by seeing the brawl go down (or thinks they can get money for doing so, at least), and anyone who was inconvenienced by the police cars, ambulances, emergency rescue vehicles, or platoons of lawyers who will descend upon your establishment afterwards. Armed security, as attempted by one of the restaurant locations in the online story, doesn’t seem to be a good idea, either; you’ll end up with snide remarks about drawn pistols and bad movies…
By the same token, hiring unarmed security (or even a bouncer) for a kid’s pizza restaurant doesn’t seem like an appropriate response, and you could hardly expect your regular employees to intervene in the sort of altercation being reported in the news. You could require deposits, or raise prices enough to both cover the cost of extra personnel to maintain order and also compensate for refusing service to certain (troublemaking) customers, but you’d better include enough money to cover the lawsuits for discrimination against people on the basis of race, religion, or being the sort of idiot who starts fights over seating order in a kid’s pizza joint…
Why does he tell us about this, I hear some of you asking. Certainly, you’d never do anything as daft as opening a kid’s pizza place. The problem is, if the sense of entitlement (to do anything you please, whenever and wherever you want) and lack of regard for other people (including their property) that we’re seeing these days both continue to rise, sooner or later these same problems are going to affect your business, too…
You might expect such a place – such as the familiar kid-oriented pizza chain called “Chuck E. Cheese” – to be completely bomb-proof, possibly literally. I mean, if you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of making a venue kid-proof, including furnishings that can’t easily be damaged by kicking, screaming, pulling, twisting, food fights, toilet-training accidents or random vomiting, there’s not much that can go wrong with the place, right? You can still have Health Code violations in the kitchen, breakdowns in the heating and cooling systems or random muggings in the parking lot, but the place itself should be free from behavior-related mishaps, right?
Unfortunately, this proves not to be the case. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal as reported on MSNBC there has been a definite increase in bad behavior occurring at the Chuck E. Cheese locations nationwide. Only, in all of the cases reported, the real problem seems to be the parents, not the kids…
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that there’s anything wrong with what this article refers to as the “mama bear” instinct. The sources quoted are quite correct in calling this an evolutionary development, and it’s probably true that none of us would be here if our parents didn’t have this instinct to one degree or another. I’m also not going to devote any space to wondering what all of this says about the decline of our society, or how much lower than this we can really get and still be called a civilization. I’m not sure what’s worse, an adult who would actually get physical with a six-year-old (however obnoxious) or a parent who would leave a six-year-old alone in a public place and allow the kid to be as obnoxious as they like in the first place. My interest is business, and my question is what you, as a business owner, are supposed to do about the situation…
Clearly, just letting it happen won’t do; you’ll be sued by all of the participants in the brawl, anyone else in the place who feels their kids were “traumatized” by seeing the brawl go down (or thinks they can get money for doing so, at least), and anyone who was inconvenienced by the police cars, ambulances, emergency rescue vehicles, or platoons of lawyers who will descend upon your establishment afterwards. Armed security, as attempted by one of the restaurant locations in the online story, doesn’t seem to be a good idea, either; you’ll end up with snide remarks about drawn pistols and bad movies…
By the same token, hiring unarmed security (or even a bouncer) for a kid’s pizza restaurant doesn’t seem like an appropriate response, and you could hardly expect your regular employees to intervene in the sort of altercation being reported in the news. You could require deposits, or raise prices enough to both cover the cost of extra personnel to maintain order and also compensate for refusing service to certain (troublemaking) customers, but you’d better include enough money to cover the lawsuits for discrimination against people on the basis of race, religion, or being the sort of idiot who starts fights over seating order in a kid’s pizza joint…
Why does he tell us about this, I hear some of you asking. Certainly, you’d never do anything as daft as opening a kid’s pizza place. The problem is, if the sense of entitlement (to do anything you please, whenever and wherever you want) and lack of regard for other people (including their property) that we’re seeing these days both continue to rise, sooner or later these same problems are going to affect your business, too…
Monday, December 15, 2008
The Ethics of Satire
It has been a number of years since I last watched “Saturday Night Live” – all due respect to the current cast, but I still think of the program in terms of skits like “Samurai Night Fever” and “Weekend Update with Dan Akyroyd and Jane Curtain” with Gilda Radner doing Emily LaTella and Rosanne Rosanadana. Some of the various casts in the years since have included some excellent (and funny) actors, and they occasionally strike gold, but frankly, I’ve outgrown the show – and for the past decade I’ve usually had something better to do on Saturday nights…
This weekend, however, we were up late and decided to tune into the program because Hugh Laurie was guest hosting. In the U.S. he’s probably best known as a dramatic actor (from his work as the title character in the “House, M.D.” television series), but actually Mr. Laurie spent a lot of time in the UK doing skit comedy and variety work very much like the SNL standard programming (only generally a lot funnier). We figured it would be a good episode of the show, and in fact the old franchise proved it still has some life left. Little did we know we were going to be witnessing the birth of a new television controversy…
A story being reported this morning on MSNBC details the formal protests being registered by the office of New York Governor David Paterson and the National Federation of the Blind over the portrayal of the governor on the show’s “Weekend Update” segment. Paterson, who took over as governor of New York after his predecessor was implicated in a sex scandal earlier this year, has been responsible for a number of bizarre, unconventional and just plain dim-witted moves since assuming an office for which he was neither elected nor prepared, and is now in the situation of having to appoint a replacement for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. This situation is drawing even more attention following the train wreak created in Illinois by an apparently even more bumbling governor threatening to sell Senator Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder…
Mocking Paterson would be standard operating procedure for the SNL cast, which has cheerfully mocked practically every public figure to make headlines since the show’s inception; they had, in fact, mocked the Illinois situation and the conduct of Governor Blagojevich in the opening sequence of the same episode. But a storm of controversy has erupted because Governor Paterson is visually impaired – and the SNL skit took note of it, having the cast member impersonating the governor holding up a chart upside-down, wander in and our of camera shots, and so on. The governor’s office and any number of advocacy groups are lambasting the show for mocking the visually impaired, and claiming that the entire skit was an outrage…
What seems to be getting lost in all of the shouting is that the program was not mocking the governor for not being able to see, it was mocking him for being an idiot. There was no implication that blind people in general are bumbling or inept, or even that Paterson himself would somehow be less a buffoon if he were somehow given full vision. The skit did imply that the man himself is befuddled, dim-witted, and unfit for his office, but it is difficult to see how any of this is any worse than the series’ portrayals of the last seven Presidents, for example, or that of Governor Blagojevich just a few minutes earlier. The erupting firestorm appears to be happening entirely because the public figure being satirized in this case is visually impaired…
Which brings us to the obvious question of business ethics: Should a public figure who is handicapped be exempted from any of the satiric representations they would receive if they were completely normal? Specifically, if Governor Paterson were to sell Senator Clinton’s vacant seat at auction, the way Governor Blagojevich was recorded threatening to, or any other idiotic thing, should he be spared from any public ridicule simply because of his disability? Should the normal rules that govern treatment of public figures apply equally in this case? And if not, if a public figure gets a free pass because of his status as visually impaired, is that really the “equal treatment under the law” that all minorities are supposed to be accorded in this country?
It’s worth thinking about…
This weekend, however, we were up late and decided to tune into the program because Hugh Laurie was guest hosting. In the U.S. he’s probably best known as a dramatic actor (from his work as the title character in the “House, M.D.” television series), but actually Mr. Laurie spent a lot of time in the UK doing skit comedy and variety work very much like the SNL standard programming (only generally a lot funnier). We figured it would be a good episode of the show, and in fact the old franchise proved it still has some life left. Little did we know we were going to be witnessing the birth of a new television controversy…
A story being reported this morning on MSNBC details the formal protests being registered by the office of New York Governor David Paterson and the National Federation of the Blind over the portrayal of the governor on the show’s “Weekend Update” segment. Paterson, who took over as governor of New York after his predecessor was implicated in a sex scandal earlier this year, has been responsible for a number of bizarre, unconventional and just plain dim-witted moves since assuming an office for which he was neither elected nor prepared, and is now in the situation of having to appoint a replacement for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. This situation is drawing even more attention following the train wreak created in Illinois by an apparently even more bumbling governor threatening to sell Senator Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder…
Mocking Paterson would be standard operating procedure for the SNL cast, which has cheerfully mocked practically every public figure to make headlines since the show’s inception; they had, in fact, mocked the Illinois situation and the conduct of Governor Blagojevich in the opening sequence of the same episode. But a storm of controversy has erupted because Governor Paterson is visually impaired – and the SNL skit took note of it, having the cast member impersonating the governor holding up a chart upside-down, wander in and our of camera shots, and so on. The governor’s office and any number of advocacy groups are lambasting the show for mocking the visually impaired, and claiming that the entire skit was an outrage…
What seems to be getting lost in all of the shouting is that the program was not mocking the governor for not being able to see, it was mocking him for being an idiot. There was no implication that blind people in general are bumbling or inept, or even that Paterson himself would somehow be less a buffoon if he were somehow given full vision. The skit did imply that the man himself is befuddled, dim-witted, and unfit for his office, but it is difficult to see how any of this is any worse than the series’ portrayals of the last seven Presidents, for example, or that of Governor Blagojevich just a few minutes earlier. The erupting firestorm appears to be happening entirely because the public figure being satirized in this case is visually impaired…
Which brings us to the obvious question of business ethics: Should a public figure who is handicapped be exempted from any of the satiric representations they would receive if they were completely normal? Specifically, if Governor Paterson were to sell Senator Clinton’s vacant seat at auction, the way Governor Blagojevich was recorded threatening to, or any other idiotic thing, should he be spared from any public ridicule simply because of his disability? Should the normal rules that govern treatment of public figures apply equally in this case? And if not, if a public figure gets a free pass because of his status as visually impaired, is that really the “equal treatment under the law” that all minorities are supposed to be accorded in this country?
It’s worth thinking about…
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Ethics of Leaving
A few posts ago I made reference to a former U.S. President who had the good sense to leave before he could be put on trial in the Senate (and most likely convicted and sentenced to prison). Regardless of how you feel about this individual, or for that matter, how you feel about the Congress of his time or ours, it's still hard to argue with his timing. That his Vice-President issued him a complete pardon shortly after he left office, and that he has subsequently been completely rehabilitated in a disturbingly revisionist history of that time are both irrelevant to the fact that unlike some other public figures one could mention, his timing was excellent...
Now, unless the readership of this blog is a lot larger (and much stranger) than I had imagined, it's unlikely that any of you reading it will ever run for President, much less be elected President and then impeached for high crimes, misdemeanors, or just being an arrogant prick who thinks the Constitution should not apply to you. Unless you are unusually blessed in your choice of profession and specific career arc, however, you will eventually experience a situation where you, too, have remained in your job for too long, and it would be better for everyone if you just leave...
This happens to different people for different reasons; quite often through no fault of their own. Perhaps your tolerance for idiotic management practices has been exceeded; perhaps you have grown too experienced, to wise or too jaded for your current role, and your employers will not promote you; perhaps you have just reached a point in your life's journey where your job no longer fulfills your needs, whatever those might be. Regardless of the cause, you have arrived at the point when it is time for you to move on, and your performance will almost always begin to decline at this point...
I realize that some people can remain in a single job all of their lives and never reach this point; they are the individuals I referred to above as being "unusually blessed." And I know there are some people who will always be promoted into a new position at just the right moment to avoid burning out or losing their love for the company; these individuals are either insanely lucky or else offspring of whoever owns the company. Some people will change jobs to accompany their spouse to a new location or challenge, and some people will seek out a new position that offers greater opportunity for advancement, earning potential, or life in a new place they've always wanted to live. But most of us will, at least once, be faced with a situation where the company would actually be better off without us...
The question is, if your company would be better off without you, do you have an ethical responsibility to quit and let them replace you with a better candidate? What if you know that they won't make the transition well, and the short-run result will be a significant loss? How about a case where your departure will result in someone completely unqualified being promoted into your position; does the fact that your departure will serve the long-term needs of the company outweigh the fact that the short-term results will be disastrous?
A more frequent issue is what happens when your needs would be better served by remaining in the job, even though you are completely burned out and would like to leave. Suppose you have a family to support and need the salary, or that members of your family are dependent on your job for their medical insurance. At what point do your personal responsibilities outweigh your duty to the company?
In the long run, of course, it is unlikely that your remaining with the company will actually destroy it, while quitting your job and walking away might well destroy you and/or the people who are counting on you; this is why most people are so reluctant to just walk away from a job that they can still stand. But once you've burned out to the point where you are no longer making (or saving) the company as much as they are paying you, do you have a responsibility to them to take your final curtain call and leave?
It's worth thinking about
Now, unless the readership of this blog is a lot larger (and much stranger) than I had imagined, it's unlikely that any of you reading it will ever run for President, much less be elected President and then impeached for high crimes, misdemeanors, or just being an arrogant prick who thinks the Constitution should not apply to you. Unless you are unusually blessed in your choice of profession and specific career arc, however, you will eventually experience a situation where you, too, have remained in your job for too long, and it would be better for everyone if you just leave...
This happens to different people for different reasons; quite often through no fault of their own. Perhaps your tolerance for idiotic management practices has been exceeded; perhaps you have grown too experienced, to wise or too jaded for your current role, and your employers will not promote you; perhaps you have just reached a point in your life's journey where your job no longer fulfills your needs, whatever those might be. Regardless of the cause, you have arrived at the point when it is time for you to move on, and your performance will almost always begin to decline at this point...
I realize that some people can remain in a single job all of their lives and never reach this point; they are the individuals I referred to above as being "unusually blessed." And I know there are some people who will always be promoted into a new position at just the right moment to avoid burning out or losing their love for the company; these individuals are either insanely lucky or else offspring of whoever owns the company. Some people will change jobs to accompany their spouse to a new location or challenge, and some people will seek out a new position that offers greater opportunity for advancement, earning potential, or life in a new place they've always wanted to live. But most of us will, at least once, be faced with a situation where the company would actually be better off without us...
The question is, if your company would be better off without you, do you have an ethical responsibility to quit and let them replace you with a better candidate? What if you know that they won't make the transition well, and the short-run result will be a significant loss? How about a case where your departure will result in someone completely unqualified being promoted into your position; does the fact that your departure will serve the long-term needs of the company outweigh the fact that the short-term results will be disastrous?
A more frequent issue is what happens when your needs would be better served by remaining in the job, even though you are completely burned out and would like to leave. Suppose you have a family to support and need the salary, or that members of your family are dependent on your job for their medical insurance. At what point do your personal responsibilities outweigh your duty to the company?
In the long run, of course, it is unlikely that your remaining with the company will actually destroy it, while quitting your job and walking away might well destroy you and/or the people who are counting on you; this is why most people are so reluctant to just walk away from a job that they can still stand. But once you've burned out to the point where you are no longer making (or saving) the company as much as they are paying you, do you have a responsibility to them to take your final curtain call and leave?
It's worth thinking about
Friday, December 5, 2008
Hotel Security
Suppose for a moment that you owned and operated a hotel in a costal city, possibly even somewhere near a harbor or a marina. Suppose a boatload of heavily-armed idiots washes up on your beachfront and attacks your hotel, apparently just because some rather more charismatic idiot has told them that Americans are bad, killing innocent people without warning is good, and God wants them to do this. What, exactly, are you going to do about it?
That seems to be the question on a lot of people’s minds following the attacks in Mumbai, at least according to articles being reported on USA Today Online. Police in New York City are running training exercises based on a similar scenario, while people in Miami are worried because not only is the entire city accessible by water, they already have dozens (scores? Hundreds? Thousands? No on really knows) of unauthorized boats coming ashore every week. If you can smuggle a large bale of South American agricultural products into this country whenever you want to, then getting a few people and a few hundred pounds of weapons and explosives ashore doesn’t sound all that difficult. Nor can you expect the Coast Guard to completely seal off a coast as large as ours, even with help from the Navy…
Taken at face value, of course, it’s a silly question: there is no way you can equip your hotel with bomb-proof walls, bullet-resistant windows, bunkers for your guests to sleep in, or platoons of armed guard roaming the grounds looking for invading terrorists, nor should you try to do so. Matters of national security are best left to the government agencies charged with those matters, and no private citizen or business owner is going to be able to take those matters into their own hands. The degree to which this remains a serious question is, to what extent will your customers EXPECT you to protect them from armed threats? And if you don’t, how will this affect your business?
Banks have employed armed security guards for decades, not because these worthies (often retired police officers) are expected to engage and defeat groups of armed bank robbers, but rather because they provide a reassuring presence for the law-abiding customers – and because there is always a chance that a lone bank robber will fail to notice the bank guard in time, of course. If people become concerned enough about violent crime it may become financially prudent for hotels to re-introduce the position of Hotel Detective onto their staff, as well as beefing up security measures like locked doors and closed-circuit cameras…
None of which will do the bottom line any good, of course – especially during a time of economic downturn, when most people are already curtailing all non-essential travel. But if the choice is implementing such security measures or losing business (potentially all of your business) to competitors that have, we might very well start seeing increased security as a standard feature in high-class hotels. One could easily imagine these security measures becoming a selling point (featured in the advertising, perhaps?) as hotels compete to become your safest holiday option.
Which brings me back to my original point: you might regard the attacks on Mumbai to be unfathomable goings-on from the other side of the world. You might believe that just because you don’t live in India (or Miami) your business will never have to deal with boatloads of sea-borne murderous idiots. You might even be completely correct in these beliefs. But if your customers do not share in your optimism, then these attacks may impact your business, too, even if you run a Holiday Inn somewhere in the middle of Kansas…
That seems to be the question on a lot of people’s minds following the attacks in Mumbai, at least according to articles being reported on USA Today Online. Police in New York City are running training exercises based on a similar scenario, while people in Miami are worried because not only is the entire city accessible by water, they already have dozens (scores? Hundreds? Thousands? No on really knows) of unauthorized boats coming ashore every week. If you can smuggle a large bale of South American agricultural products into this country whenever you want to, then getting a few people and a few hundred pounds of weapons and explosives ashore doesn’t sound all that difficult. Nor can you expect the Coast Guard to completely seal off a coast as large as ours, even with help from the Navy…
Taken at face value, of course, it’s a silly question: there is no way you can equip your hotel with bomb-proof walls, bullet-resistant windows, bunkers for your guests to sleep in, or platoons of armed guard roaming the grounds looking for invading terrorists, nor should you try to do so. Matters of national security are best left to the government agencies charged with those matters, and no private citizen or business owner is going to be able to take those matters into their own hands. The degree to which this remains a serious question is, to what extent will your customers EXPECT you to protect them from armed threats? And if you don’t, how will this affect your business?
Banks have employed armed security guards for decades, not because these worthies (often retired police officers) are expected to engage and defeat groups of armed bank robbers, but rather because they provide a reassuring presence for the law-abiding customers – and because there is always a chance that a lone bank robber will fail to notice the bank guard in time, of course. If people become concerned enough about violent crime it may become financially prudent for hotels to re-introduce the position of Hotel Detective onto their staff, as well as beefing up security measures like locked doors and closed-circuit cameras…
None of which will do the bottom line any good, of course – especially during a time of economic downturn, when most people are already curtailing all non-essential travel. But if the choice is implementing such security measures or losing business (potentially all of your business) to competitors that have, we might very well start seeing increased security as a standard feature in high-class hotels. One could easily imagine these security measures becoming a selling point (featured in the advertising, perhaps?) as hotels compete to become your safest holiday option.
Which brings me back to my original point: you might regard the attacks on Mumbai to be unfathomable goings-on from the other side of the world. You might believe that just because you don’t live in India (or Miami) your business will never have to deal with boatloads of sea-borne murderous idiots. You might even be completely correct in these beliefs. But if your customers do not share in your optimism, then these attacks may impact your business, too, even if you run a Holiday Inn somewhere in the middle of Kansas…
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Black Friday
Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere you've probably heard the story about the Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death last Friday when a mob of crazed consumers stormed his store in a rush to purchase assorted crap at special early-bird prices. It's getting a lot of ink about how our society is degenerating, about how evil Wal-Mart is, about how evil big-box retailers are in general, and about how They (the ubiquitous "they" who are always responsible for everything) should do something about situations like these. As usual, the actual issues are being ignored in favor of shouting, hand-wringing, and passing of the buck...
First, let's consider Black Friday. It's called that because conventional wisdom claims that this is the day when retail businesses break even (or "go into the black") for the year. In some cases this is literally true, as retail companies will generally make somewhere between 15% and 40% of their annual revenue in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's not just Christmas shopping, either; a lot of people will make major purchases at this time of year in order to get the tax deductions for the current year's return. Cars, computers, office equipment, and anything else you can write off will see a major upswing this time of year. But it's still going to be the big-ticket gifts that draw most of the attention...
So if there are both cultural and financial reasons why this buying frenzy is going to happen each year, why aren't retailers ready for it? Well, actually, most of them are. Any company that experiences increased sales in the last seven weeks of the year will have been sending extra merchandise to its stores for the last three to six months, as well as laying out aisle set-ups and product displays. Some chains will actually have reduced hours on the Wednesday and Thursday before just to get ready for Black Friday, and will engage extra personnel for the holidays starting that morning. Unfortunately, they will probably also have been advertising special sale items and prices for that day only...
And therein lies the problem. Since every retailer is having a sale, and since they know that people will probably blow their entire budget within minutes of entering the first retail store they go to, every retailer is also trying to get you to go to THEIR sale first. This is how the Black Friday phenomenon began in the first place. Years ago, there were week-long specials offered in the week after Thanksgiving; then these were shortened to three-day sales (covering the rest of the holiday weekend) to try to get people to come and drop all of their money in those places first. This led to one-day sales, which led to part-of-one-day sales, which led to stores opening earlier and earlier that day. This year it seems like every major chain was opening early, some as early as 4 AM local time, and offering specials that are only good for 6 to 8 hours, just to try to get your money before someone else does...
Which leads to crowds of people going into a feeding frenzy trying to get those elusive deals before the stores sell out of everything good ("Remember, no rainchecks on these deals!"). Which leads to some poor fellow getting trampled to death. Which leads to much wailing and gnashing, and cries for regulation to prevent this from happening again - as long as it doesn't interfere with people's ability to obtain various comsumer crap at special low prices...
In the long run, there's no point in expecting people to stop going to these sales in protest; people for the most part want everyone ELSE to stay home in protest - so they can get all of the really good deals for themselves. It's no use expecting the government to step in, either; retailers (especially big, powerful retailers like Wal-Mart) have good lobbyists and lots of spokespeople who will cry piously about the need for retail sales to support a strong economy and provide jobs. The best we're likely to see is that if enough people sue Wal-Mart (and other retailers) over the injuries (and, in at least one case, wrongful death) caused by these situations, the retailers will have no choice but to change the way they allow people to enter the store on Black Friday and hire more security people, simply because it will be cheaper to do so than to keep paying off the huge injury and wrongful death settlements...
Unless, of course, online retail companies finally succeed in killing off the real-world retailers. But that's a post for another day...
First, let's consider Black Friday. It's called that because conventional wisdom claims that this is the day when retail businesses break even (or "go into the black") for the year. In some cases this is literally true, as retail companies will generally make somewhere between 15% and 40% of their annual revenue in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's not just Christmas shopping, either; a lot of people will make major purchases at this time of year in order to get the tax deductions for the current year's return. Cars, computers, office equipment, and anything else you can write off will see a major upswing this time of year. But it's still going to be the big-ticket gifts that draw most of the attention...
So if there are both cultural and financial reasons why this buying frenzy is going to happen each year, why aren't retailers ready for it? Well, actually, most of them are. Any company that experiences increased sales in the last seven weeks of the year will have been sending extra merchandise to its stores for the last three to six months, as well as laying out aisle set-ups and product displays. Some chains will actually have reduced hours on the Wednesday and Thursday before just to get ready for Black Friday, and will engage extra personnel for the holidays starting that morning. Unfortunately, they will probably also have been advertising special sale items and prices for that day only...
And therein lies the problem. Since every retailer is having a sale, and since they know that people will probably blow their entire budget within minutes of entering the first retail store they go to, every retailer is also trying to get you to go to THEIR sale first. This is how the Black Friday phenomenon began in the first place. Years ago, there were week-long specials offered in the week after Thanksgiving; then these were shortened to three-day sales (covering the rest of the holiday weekend) to try to get people to come and drop all of their money in those places first. This led to one-day sales, which led to part-of-one-day sales, which led to stores opening earlier and earlier that day. This year it seems like every major chain was opening early, some as early as 4 AM local time, and offering specials that are only good for 6 to 8 hours, just to try to get your money before someone else does...
Which leads to crowds of people going into a feeding frenzy trying to get those elusive deals before the stores sell out of everything good ("Remember, no rainchecks on these deals!"). Which leads to some poor fellow getting trampled to death. Which leads to much wailing and gnashing, and cries for regulation to prevent this from happening again - as long as it doesn't interfere with people's ability to obtain various comsumer crap at special low prices...
In the long run, there's no point in expecting people to stop going to these sales in protest; people for the most part want everyone ELSE to stay home in protest - so they can get all of the really good deals for themselves. It's no use expecting the government to step in, either; retailers (especially big, powerful retailers like Wal-Mart) have good lobbyists and lots of spokespeople who will cry piously about the need for retail sales to support a strong economy and provide jobs. The best we're likely to see is that if enough people sue Wal-Mart (and other retailers) over the injuries (and, in at least one case, wrongful death) caused by these situations, the retailers will have no choice but to change the way they allow people to enter the store on Black Friday and hire more security people, simply because it will be cheaper to do so than to keep paying off the huge injury and wrongful death settlements...
Unless, of course, online retail companies finally succeed in killing off the real-world retailers. But that's a post for another day...
Monday, December 1, 2008
Throwing Snow
Today I got to operate my snow thrower for the first time. If you read yesterday's post (and goodness knows I'm not suggesting that anyone should have) you already know that one of our purchases this fall was a snow thrower (called a snow blower by people who live in warm-weather cities and have never used one). Specifically, it's a Craftsman 24-inch 2-stage snow-thrower from Sears, with six forward gears, two reverse gears, an electric starter (for those times when the pull-start just won't cut it), and an overhead-cam gasoline engine that sounds a lot like a chainsaw. Unless the port where the snow come out of gets clogged (which happens every few minutes with snow this wet), in which case it sounds like a chainsaw being strangled by a quilt...
No, I don't have any idea how that would happen, either. But if it ever did, it would sound exactly like the snow thrower getting clogged with snow and ice...
I'm not sure how to explain the sensation of guiding a self-propelled gas-powered machine through the snow and watching as snow cascades merrily out one side and a completely clean path appears underneath it, but I will try: It is cool. And it's only going to get cooler as I get used to adjusting the choke so that the engine doesn't stall out when you hit a really heavy patch of snow...
The only major downside of the morning, in fact, was trying to put fuel in the snow thrower. This is because our recently-acquired gas can is equipped with safety devices to prevent spillage and keep small children from pouring gasoline on themselves. Like most "child-proof" devices, this one works so well that it's extremely difficult even for a grown man (currently in grad school) to get any gas out of it, although I imagine a small child would have have no problems with it. But eventually, I got the idea of pushing the "spout" in as you try to pour, and the rest was easy...
Okay, so far this sounds like the story of a 44-year-old "noob" experiencing his first attempt to clear a driveway since roughly 1971, and his first attempt (ever!) to run a snow thrower. But imagine if I was working a job where I have to be at my desk by a specific hour, but I had to take 40 minutes to fuel the snow thrower, fire up the engine, clear my driveway and sidewalk, dry everything off and put it away before going to work. Imagine if everyone in the office had to do these things, too. Imagine if we also had to get a truck with a snowplow blade on the front to clear the parking lot before we could park in it, or the approach to the loading dock before we could get the trucks in...
Now, I realize that none of these things are novel, let alone surprising, to anyone who lives in a cold climate. I know that anyone who has ever lived in East Lansing longer than I have would have allocated the necessary time to get ready in the morning. My point here is that I DID allow for extra time to clear the driveway, extra time to drive to work very slowly and carefully, even extra time to get from the parking lot to my desk. But I hadn't counted on not being able to figure out how to operate a newfangled gas can...
No, I don't have any idea how that would happen, either. But if it ever did, it would sound exactly like the snow thrower getting clogged with snow and ice...
I'm not sure how to explain the sensation of guiding a self-propelled gas-powered machine through the snow and watching as snow cascades merrily out one side and a completely clean path appears underneath it, but I will try: It is cool. And it's only going to get cooler as I get used to adjusting the choke so that the engine doesn't stall out when you hit a really heavy patch of snow...
The only major downside of the morning, in fact, was trying to put fuel in the snow thrower. This is because our recently-acquired gas can is equipped with safety devices to prevent spillage and keep small children from pouring gasoline on themselves. Like most "child-proof" devices, this one works so well that it's extremely difficult even for a grown man (currently in grad school) to get any gas out of it, although I imagine a small child would have have no problems with it. But eventually, I got the idea of pushing the "spout" in as you try to pour, and the rest was easy...
Okay, so far this sounds like the story of a 44-year-old "noob" experiencing his first attempt to clear a driveway since roughly 1971, and his first attempt (ever!) to run a snow thrower. But imagine if I was working a job where I have to be at my desk by a specific hour, but I had to take 40 minutes to fuel the snow thrower, fire up the engine, clear my driveway and sidewalk, dry everything off and put it away before going to work. Imagine if everyone in the office had to do these things, too. Imagine if we also had to get a truck with a snowplow blade on the front to clear the parking lot before we could park in it, or the approach to the loading dock before we could get the trucks in...
Now, I realize that none of these things are novel, let alone surprising, to anyone who lives in a cold climate. I know that anyone who has ever lived in East Lansing longer than I have would have allocated the necessary time to get ready in the morning. My point here is that I DID allow for extra time to clear the driveway, extra time to drive to work very slowly and carefully, even extra time to get from the parking lot to my desk. But I hadn't counted on not being able to figure out how to operate a newfangled gas can...
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Snow Day
It's snowing today in Central Michigan, and if the weather idiots are correct, it should continue to snow until dinnertime tomorrow, with up to 8 inches accumulating on the ground. On the television news they're calling it our first "big" storm of the season, and I suppose they're right. We've only had about 4 inches in the past three weeks -- we could get double that in the next 24 hours. It's a good thing we put out the ice and snow melter crystals this morning before the snow started...
If you're not familiar with this product (and up until now I'd only lived in warm-weather cities; I wasn't myself), the ice and snow melter we're using is a granular agent that keeps the ice and/or snow from sticking to sidewalks, driveways, and other concrete surfaces. It's touted as being more environmentally friendly than the rock salt traditionally used for this purpose, and a small bag of it is enough to cover our sidewalk and front walkway, usually with enough left over to touch up any spots we missed on the first pass. It's easy to use and not too expensive (about $4 a bag, which lasts for about a week so far) -- which is important, since keeping your sidewalk clear is required by a city ordinance...
Clearing the snow is one thing; keeping it clear is quite another. The traditional snow removal tools is a shovel, but shovelling snow is a bad idea if you're a middle-aged man with hypertension; a lot of heart attacks happen each year because men my age and general condition decide that they can still clear the driveway the way they did when they were teenagers. When we decided we were going to move to East Lansing the first thing I put on my shopping list was a snow blower. Little did I know that I'd have to wait almost three months before anyone here started selling them, and another two months before I'd get to use mine...
Assuming that I do, of course. This storm is still just warming up, and there's never any way to tell how much of it will stick and how much will just melt on contact. But the reason I'm blathering on about all of this is simple: snow melter, snow shovels and a snow blower are all things I went 44 years without ever having to purchase, and now I've bought all of them in just a few weeks. Moving to a cold-weather city, most people consider higher heating costs and more warm clothing, but fail to take into account costs like snow melter and gasoline for the snow blower. And I'm not even sure what other costs may present themselves before spring...
Now multiply that by every one of your employees and throw in the costs of winterizing your place of business, whatever it is, and you're starting to get an idea of what it might take to move your business into such a climate. Forget all of the wailing and gnashing you see about "hidden costs" in television commercials and business journals; in business their are ALWAYS going to be hidden costs. Sometimes you find them on your heating bill or the budget for an indoor break area, and sometimes they hit on your liability insurance bill (increased slip-and-fall premium), but they're always going to be there, swirling around outside your window like a fall of snow...
If you're not familiar with this product (and up until now I'd only lived in warm-weather cities; I wasn't myself), the ice and snow melter we're using is a granular agent that keeps the ice and/or snow from sticking to sidewalks, driveways, and other concrete surfaces. It's touted as being more environmentally friendly than the rock salt traditionally used for this purpose, and a small bag of it is enough to cover our sidewalk and front walkway, usually with enough left over to touch up any spots we missed on the first pass. It's easy to use and not too expensive (about $4 a bag, which lasts for about a week so far) -- which is important, since keeping your sidewalk clear is required by a city ordinance...
Clearing the snow is one thing; keeping it clear is quite another. The traditional snow removal tools is a shovel, but shovelling snow is a bad idea if you're a middle-aged man with hypertension; a lot of heart attacks happen each year because men my age and general condition decide that they can still clear the driveway the way they did when they were teenagers. When we decided we were going to move to East Lansing the first thing I put on my shopping list was a snow blower. Little did I know that I'd have to wait almost three months before anyone here started selling them, and another two months before I'd get to use mine...
Assuming that I do, of course. This storm is still just warming up, and there's never any way to tell how much of it will stick and how much will just melt on contact. But the reason I'm blathering on about all of this is simple: snow melter, snow shovels and a snow blower are all things I went 44 years without ever having to purchase, and now I've bought all of them in just a few weeks. Moving to a cold-weather city, most people consider higher heating costs and more warm clothing, but fail to take into account costs like snow melter and gasoline for the snow blower. And I'm not even sure what other costs may present themselves before spring...
Now multiply that by every one of your employees and throw in the costs of winterizing your place of business, whatever it is, and you're starting to get an idea of what it might take to move your business into such a climate. Forget all of the wailing and gnashing you see about "hidden costs" in television commercials and business journals; in business their are ALWAYS going to be hidden costs. Sometimes you find them on your heating bill or the budget for an indoor break area, and sometimes they hit on your liability insurance bill (increased slip-and-fall premium), but they're always going to be there, swirling around outside your window like a fall of snow...
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
AIG Update
I suppose I should stop picking on AIG; it's starting to get old. You know, like making "Ike" jokes in a time when no one really remembers anything about the Eisenhower Administration except the Korean War ended and the Vietnam War began, and the Cold War really started to hit the big time. Or making "Tricky Dick" jokes in a time when Nixon has been fully rehabilitated and is being fondly remembered for going to China, putting the Watergate complex on the map, and leaving BEFORE Congress could drag him through the mud. Still, there is something inherently offensive about a company whose primary function is managing other people's money screwing up so badly that they have to request that the government give them $150 billion of OUR money -- and then blowing large chunks of it on resort hotels and spa treatments for their idiot management team. Or, for that matter, hiring more PR people so that they can appeal to humor websites for better spin...
The political satire/comedy site known as Wonkette is reporting that they've been getting emails from AIG's Public Relations department, reacting to the site's mocking AIG for the aforementioned squandering of public bailout money for the enrichment of their (already obscenely well compensated) senior management with requests for reporting that casts the company in a better light...
Now, it must be admitted that Wonkette is not exactly a top-tier news organization; it's a popular website that spends most of its bandwidth mocking the more absurd figures and actions of the day. But that's precisely the point: if AIG is suddenly employing enough PR personnel to scan for ANY negative mention of themselves and then write personalized messages begging for better treatment (in a vaguely threatening manner and tone) then clearly AIG is spending too much of its new-found government loot on spin, and not enough of it actually fixing the things they are supposed to be fixing...
Of course, I could also spend this post railing against banks who are hoarding all of their Federal TARP money so they can collect and retain the interest, legislators who will gleefully fling bales of cash at failed banks and insurance companies without a thought of oversight -- and then tell the American automobile industry that they "don't feel right about" giving money to companies with "failed management practices," or even about automakers who show up before Congress to plead for billions in bailout funds (each bigshot arriving on a separate corporate jet costing $12 million a year, naturally) without being able to produce a single page of written plan for how those funds would be used...
But I think I will save all of these topics for another day. For the moment, let's just say that all of those people who were saying last summer that they should have gone out and bought themselves an oil company were wrong. What you should have gone out and purchased was an insurance company -- or a bank...
The political satire/comedy site known as Wonkette is reporting that they've been getting emails from AIG's Public Relations department, reacting to the site's mocking AIG for the aforementioned squandering of public bailout money for the enrichment of their (already obscenely well compensated) senior management with requests for reporting that casts the company in a better light...
Now, it must be admitted that Wonkette is not exactly a top-tier news organization; it's a popular website that spends most of its bandwidth mocking the more absurd figures and actions of the day. But that's precisely the point: if AIG is suddenly employing enough PR personnel to scan for ANY negative mention of themselves and then write personalized messages begging for better treatment (in a vaguely threatening manner and tone) then clearly AIG is spending too much of its new-found government loot on spin, and not enough of it actually fixing the things they are supposed to be fixing...
Of course, I could also spend this post railing against banks who are hoarding all of their Federal TARP money so they can collect and retain the interest, legislators who will gleefully fling bales of cash at failed banks and insurance companies without a thought of oversight -- and then tell the American automobile industry that they "don't feel right about" giving money to companies with "failed management practices," or even about automakers who show up before Congress to plead for billions in bailout funds (each bigshot arriving on a separate corporate jet costing $12 million a year, naturally) without being able to produce a single page of written plan for how those funds would be used...
But I think I will save all of these topics for another day. For the moment, let's just say that all of those people who were saying last summer that they should have gone out and bought themselves an oil company were wrong. What you should have gone out and purchased was an insurance company -- or a bank...
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Ethics of Litigation
Last week I ran across one of those news stories that makes you wonder if somebody out there is just making this stuff up: a guy left his cell phone in a McDonalds, and is now suing the employees of the restaurant, the franchise owner, and the parent corporation because the naked pictures of his wife that were stored on the phone’s internal memory have been stolen and posted on the Internet. You can read the story here on MSNBC if you want to verify that I am not, in fact, making any of this up…
The lawsuit alleges that the reason the guy should be able to recover damages from McDonalds is that the employees at the restaurant promised they would secure the phone until he could return and collect it, and therefore one of them must have stolen the files and posted them online. The company won’t comment on pending litigation (and the employees would be insane to open their mouths about this), so there is no confirmation of that; we’re not clear on how long the phone was sitting around the dining area before anyone found it, how many other people might have had access to it, or even if any employee ever made any such promise. For all we know, the owner uploaded those pictures himself as a prelude to a lucrative lawsuit against a huge deep-pockets corporation…
But let’s leave the legal insanity of the case out of it for a moment; let’s not even comment on the mind-numbing stupidity of not only carrying around picture files of your spouse naked but then also leaving the device containing those files unattended in a public place. The business-related question here is, if you were the franchise owner (or senior management for McDonalds) what would you do about this issue, and how would you try to keep it from happening again? Because if this case recovers even the price of a Big Mac, you can better your last dime that dozens (or thousands) of other scam artists will try the same trick…
Of course, this is why so many businesses have signs posted that say “We are not responsible for any articles lost, stolen, sold on eBay or posted onto the Internet because you’re too stupid to know better,” and we can safely assume that if those actually help, every McDonalds that doesn’t already have one will be sporting one very soon now. In theory, you could also use closed-circuit TV cameras to record what goes on in the store, and in fact a lot of retail and food service companies do, but this won’t tell you if somebody left their phone behind as a scam or just forgot about it. It won’t even tell you whether one of your employees copied, saved or emailed the pictures unless you monitor the cameras every moment of the day – which we’ve established you can’t if you want to also run a business…
From an ethics standpoint, the question is really this: Do you, as the owner of a business (franchise) have any responsibility to prevent your customers from being damaged, humiliated or otherwise injured as the result of their own carelessness and lack of common sense? And if you do, how much responsibility for your customers’ welfare can you reasonably be expected to take on when all you did for those customers was sell them a cheap food item? Are you also responsible for ill-advised business decisions, stupid career choices, disastrous marriage proposals, or other lapses in judgment (or sanity) made while on your premises? And by the same token, should every customer in every public place have to live as if everyone else in the room was waiting for the chance to do them harm the moment their back is turned? What expectation of safety in the event of unwise behavior does the public have, and who has to take that responsibility?
It’s worth thinking about…
The lawsuit alleges that the reason the guy should be able to recover damages from McDonalds is that the employees at the restaurant promised they would secure the phone until he could return and collect it, and therefore one of them must have stolen the files and posted them online. The company won’t comment on pending litigation (and the employees would be insane to open their mouths about this), so there is no confirmation of that; we’re not clear on how long the phone was sitting around the dining area before anyone found it, how many other people might have had access to it, or even if any employee ever made any such promise. For all we know, the owner uploaded those pictures himself as a prelude to a lucrative lawsuit against a huge deep-pockets corporation…
But let’s leave the legal insanity of the case out of it for a moment; let’s not even comment on the mind-numbing stupidity of not only carrying around picture files of your spouse naked but then also leaving the device containing those files unattended in a public place. The business-related question here is, if you were the franchise owner (or senior management for McDonalds) what would you do about this issue, and how would you try to keep it from happening again? Because if this case recovers even the price of a Big Mac, you can better your last dime that dozens (or thousands) of other scam artists will try the same trick…
Of course, this is why so many businesses have signs posted that say “We are not responsible for any articles lost, stolen, sold on eBay or posted onto the Internet because you’re too stupid to know better,” and we can safely assume that if those actually help, every McDonalds that doesn’t already have one will be sporting one very soon now. In theory, you could also use closed-circuit TV cameras to record what goes on in the store, and in fact a lot of retail and food service companies do, but this won’t tell you if somebody left their phone behind as a scam or just forgot about it. It won’t even tell you whether one of your employees copied, saved or emailed the pictures unless you monitor the cameras every moment of the day – which we’ve established you can’t if you want to also run a business…
From an ethics standpoint, the question is really this: Do you, as the owner of a business (franchise) have any responsibility to prevent your customers from being damaged, humiliated or otherwise injured as the result of their own carelessness and lack of common sense? And if you do, how much responsibility for your customers’ welfare can you reasonably be expected to take on when all you did for those customers was sell them a cheap food item? Are you also responsible for ill-advised business decisions, stupid career choices, disastrous marriage proposals, or other lapses in judgment (or sanity) made while on your premises? And by the same token, should every customer in every public place have to live as if everyone else in the room was waiting for the chance to do them harm the moment their back is turned? What expectation of safety in the event of unwise behavior does the public have, and who has to take that responsibility?
It’s worth thinking about…
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
It’s That Time Again…
Every year around this time somebody posts a blog or set of message board discussions about “What was the worst present you ever received?” Most of the time it’s a mixture of the crass, the tacky, the tightwads and a handful of trolls who are either attacking the rest of the posters for being too material or spouting a bunch of religious rubbish about how because they don’t personally agree with giving gifts on a holy day, everyone should spend the day in church, or eating cold gravel, or whatever trolls pretending to be holy rollers believe we should all be doing. Some of the posts are sad, some are touching, and some are either the most materialistic people on the planet or more trolls trying to get a rise out of people by pretending to be wretches who would actually complain because the new sports car their parents gave them was the wrong color…
Although, in fairness, it’s sometimes hard to tell who’s a troll and who’s just an appalling human being these days. In any case, you can catch this year’s version on MSN Money if you want to. Personally, I think the people who make the “groaning moose clock” referenced in the comments to this article are about to get a surprise at how much traffic on their website has picked up, but then I’d imagine it would take a lot to surprise people who manufacture and sell clocks that make a 60-second “moose mating call” ever hour…
I thought it might be worthwhile to review some of the comments made earlier about the rules for buying presents. If you’re not the type who thinks moose (or strange noises that sound like a moose made them) are funny enough to make the ideal gift, some of these might come in handy:
1. Never purchase anything that is actually for you. It’s rude. Especially if it’s something you know the recipient does not want, and will just give back to you.
2. Don’t assume that just because you want something, your significant other does too. This goes double for home entertainment equipment that you will also get to use.
3. Never purchase exercise equipment for any female recipient. Not even if she specifically asks for it. It sends the wrong message (e.g. “you need to work out more”).
4. When purchasing gifts for a female significant other, never purchase anything because your mother, your sister, your ex-girlfriend or some hot saleswoman at the store where you were shopping liked it. And if you’re dumb enough to violate this rule, for heaven’s sake don’t ADMIT that you did so!
5. When purchasing gifts for a male significant other, never purchase lifestyle or wardrobe accessories that conform to your ideal of him. For example, if he doesn’t already carry a “man-purse” you probably shouldn’t get him his first one. If he already does, there’s nothing wrong with getting him a new one, but otherwise…
6. Regardless of the recipient’s gender or your relationship with him or her, do not purchase things he or she doesn’t use but you think he/she ought to. This applies to styles he or she doesn’t wear, grooming items he or she doesn’t use, religious or self-help texts that will help to short up something YOU believe is a shortcoming, and so on.
7. Avoid gift cards. It’s not just that they’re impersonal, although they are, but in the current economic climate there’s a nonzero chance that the company will go under before the recipient can cash them in – and if that happens, the card won’t be worth the price of the plastic it’s made out of. Also, keep in mind that just because the store you’re buying the card from is convenient for you, that doesn’t mean there’s one in the recipient’s neighborhood. If someone gave me a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf gift card this year, for example, I’d be roughly 2300 miles from the nearest place I could use it…
8. Avoid novelty items that make loud, rude noises every hour on the hour. Unless, of course, you KNOW that the recipient really likes the sound of moose mating calls…
Although, in fairness, it’s sometimes hard to tell who’s a troll and who’s just an appalling human being these days. In any case, you can catch this year’s version on MSN Money if you want to. Personally, I think the people who make the “groaning moose clock” referenced in the comments to this article are about to get a surprise at how much traffic on their website has picked up, but then I’d imagine it would take a lot to surprise people who manufacture and sell clocks that make a 60-second “moose mating call” ever hour…
I thought it might be worthwhile to review some of the comments made earlier about the rules for buying presents. If you’re not the type who thinks moose (or strange noises that sound like a moose made them) are funny enough to make the ideal gift, some of these might come in handy:
1. Never purchase anything that is actually for you. It’s rude. Especially if it’s something you know the recipient does not want, and will just give back to you.
2. Don’t assume that just because you want something, your significant other does too. This goes double for home entertainment equipment that you will also get to use.
3. Never purchase exercise equipment for any female recipient. Not even if she specifically asks for it. It sends the wrong message (e.g. “you need to work out more”).
4. When purchasing gifts for a female significant other, never purchase anything because your mother, your sister, your ex-girlfriend or some hot saleswoman at the store where you were shopping liked it. And if you’re dumb enough to violate this rule, for heaven’s sake don’t ADMIT that you did so!
5. When purchasing gifts for a male significant other, never purchase lifestyle or wardrobe accessories that conform to your ideal of him. For example, if he doesn’t already carry a “man-purse” you probably shouldn’t get him his first one. If he already does, there’s nothing wrong with getting him a new one, but otherwise…
6. Regardless of the recipient’s gender or your relationship with him or her, do not purchase things he or she doesn’t use but you think he/she ought to. This applies to styles he or she doesn’t wear, grooming items he or she doesn’t use, religious or self-help texts that will help to short up something YOU believe is a shortcoming, and so on.
7. Avoid gift cards. It’s not just that they’re impersonal, although they are, but in the current economic climate there’s a nonzero chance that the company will go under before the recipient can cash them in – and if that happens, the card won’t be worth the price of the plastic it’s made out of. Also, keep in mind that just because the store you’re buying the card from is convenient for you, that doesn’t mean there’s one in the recipient’s neighborhood. If someone gave me a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf gift card this year, for example, I’d be roughly 2300 miles from the nearest place I could use it…
8. Avoid novelty items that make loud, rude noises every hour on the hour. Unless, of course, you KNOW that the recipient really likes the sound of moose mating calls…
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Kids, Stay in School!
Seriously, I mean it: stay in school! What kind of school isn’t really important; if you like plumbing or drywall better than math and liberal arts, then by all means, find a good trade school and stay in that. Given the crumbling infrastructure in this country, having more people around who actually know how to build things, fix things, and keep things running smoothly would be wonderful, and it’s much easier to get the really good jobs in any field if you know what you’re doing. On the other hand, if you don’t, you might be faced with having to dress up as a Smurf and travel around the world advertising costume sales…
A story being reported this week on the Daily Telegraph website tells the strange but true story of Ian Tomkins, an employee at a costume shop in Newbury (England) whose employer decided to buy a huge lot of Smurf costumes from a manufacturer in China. Unfortunately, while there as a market for a few dozen Smurf costumes in Newbury, 500 of them was a bit much for this small business to move. So the owner decided to have Mr. Tomkins travel around the world in a Smurf costume and have his picture taken in front of various international landmarks. Which he then did…
Now, I’m not saying that getting paid to travel around the world on business with no duties or responsibilities beyond having your picture taken isn’t a good gig, all things considered. Nor am I criticizing the business itself (or the owner) for attempting such a stunt. It turns out that there are apparently thousands of people in Europe who like dressing up as Smurfs, and apparently all of them are now buying their costumes from the shop in Newbury, which has placed several repeat orders for bulk Smurf costumes, selling them by the thousands. I’m just saying that, all things considered, when the time comes to determine whether you have the job of wearing the Smurf costume around the world or the job being the guy who orders someone ELSE to wear a Smurf costume around the world, I know which job I’d going to pick…
Probably the ultimate case of this syndrome appeared before me a few years ago, when I was working in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. I was driving between survey assignments (long story) when I noticed a guy dressed up as a submarine sandwich standing on a street corner handing out flyers for a nearby Subway shop. At the time, my job included scaling the outside of apartment buildings without a safety line in order to check their line-of-site for microwave signal repeaters, but there were still three reasons I preferred my job to the sandwich guy’s job: 1. I got paid about 6 times what he did; 2. It was 106 degrees, and he was wearing about 45 pounds of heavy, shaggy costume, and 3. two small kids kept trying to kick him in the backside…
I’m not saying that he’d have been better off staying in school; a lot of people with college degrees can’t find work at all, and I’ve actually had jobs that were worse than that even since I’ve had a Master’s Degree. But you’ve got to admit that if you want to avoid wearing a stupid-looking costume in public and actually get paid a living wage, dropping out of school probably will not help…
A story being reported this week on the Daily Telegraph website tells the strange but true story of Ian Tomkins, an employee at a costume shop in Newbury (England) whose employer decided to buy a huge lot of Smurf costumes from a manufacturer in China. Unfortunately, while there as a market for a few dozen Smurf costumes in Newbury, 500 of them was a bit much for this small business to move. So the owner decided to have Mr. Tomkins travel around the world in a Smurf costume and have his picture taken in front of various international landmarks. Which he then did…
Now, I’m not saying that getting paid to travel around the world on business with no duties or responsibilities beyond having your picture taken isn’t a good gig, all things considered. Nor am I criticizing the business itself (or the owner) for attempting such a stunt. It turns out that there are apparently thousands of people in Europe who like dressing up as Smurfs, and apparently all of them are now buying their costumes from the shop in Newbury, which has placed several repeat orders for bulk Smurf costumes, selling them by the thousands. I’m just saying that, all things considered, when the time comes to determine whether you have the job of wearing the Smurf costume around the world or the job being the guy who orders someone ELSE to wear a Smurf costume around the world, I know which job I’d going to pick…
Probably the ultimate case of this syndrome appeared before me a few years ago, when I was working in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. I was driving between survey assignments (long story) when I noticed a guy dressed up as a submarine sandwich standing on a street corner handing out flyers for a nearby Subway shop. At the time, my job included scaling the outside of apartment buildings without a safety line in order to check their line-of-site for microwave signal repeaters, but there were still three reasons I preferred my job to the sandwich guy’s job: 1. I got paid about 6 times what he did; 2. It was 106 degrees, and he was wearing about 45 pounds of heavy, shaggy costume, and 3. two small kids kept trying to kick him in the backside…
I’m not saying that he’d have been better off staying in school; a lot of people with college degrees can’t find work at all, and I’ve actually had jobs that were worse than that even since I’ve had a Master’s Degree. But you’ve got to admit that if you want to avoid wearing a stupid-looking costume in public and actually get paid a living wage, dropping out of school probably will not help…
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Suspension of Disbelief
Regular readers of this space will recall that once upon a time I was going to be a literary scholar and probably write lots of books about English lit that no one was ever going to read (except for other literary scholars), in sharp contrast to my current career arc in which I’m going to write lots of books and journal articles about Strategic Management that no one is going to read (except for other Management scholars). It’s progress, believe me, at least for a certain definition of “progress.” In any case, there’s a news story this week that makes me wish I was still deconstructing fiction, because then I could claim to be a legitimate expert on suspension of disbelief – that convention where you, as the audience, KNOW that the story you’re reading isn’t/can’t be true, but you suspend your disbelief for long enough to enjoy it…
Unfortunately, this story appears to be true. A report appearing in the Daily Kos website indicates that while the Republicans were spending the summer beating the drum for new and better drilling rights in environmentally sensitive parts of the U.S. so that the big energy companies could lower the price of oil and gas, the Department of Energy was contracting to sell off enough natural gas to run 1.4 million households annually to the Japanese (and other Pacific Rim nations) from the Alaskan reserves we already have. That’s right, folks; at a time when prices here were crippling the economy and leading to what is being called the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, your government and Big Oil (it was ConocoPhillips and Marathon, if anyone’s counting) were working together to export energy reserves and maintain artificially high prices…
Now, this blog is about business, not politics, and I’m not going to start writing about the excesses of the current regime (I’m a doctoral student; I don’t have time for that). And in fairness, we should probably all remember that the Daily Kos isn’t exactly the most moderate and well-balanced news organ around. I’m just going to note that if this story is correct (and it checks out so far; I’ll keep you posted) then what we have here is some of the most unethical business practice I’ve seen in at least two or three hours, and false advertising into the bargain…
You know all of those petroleum industry television commercials, where they talk about how much oil and gas we have right here in America? It sounds great, doesn’t it? We could totally drill out all of our own oil and gas, tell the OPEC nations to take a flying leap, and have total freedom from little issues like international finance or economics. Or reality, apparently. What these ads seem to be ignoring is that energy is an internationally-traded commodity, and the oil companies are going to sell their product to whoever will give them the best price for it, just like anyone else. Which probably seems unpatriotic, or at least heartless, in the current climate, but as I’ve noted before in this space, the alternatives are worse. It’s just that the natural gas move detailed above is, well, stupid, for a number of reasons…
First, it’s a colossally bad public relations gesture for an industry that is already having severe image problems. People didn’t need more reasons to hate ConocoPhillips and Marathon, especially with winter coming, but this will be a good one. Second, there’s the potential for political fallout. If enough of the voters decide that this is yet another case of the Bush Administration putting their friends in the oil business ahead of the American people it could easily contribute to a Democratic majority in Congress as well as a Democratic President being elected, which will probably not be a good thing for the petroleum industry and its plans to acquire new cheap drilling rights. And third, if the high price of energy contributes to the current economic crisis, then people will have less money to spend on things like gasoline and huge wasteful vehicles that squander it…
It’s said that a rising tide lifts all boats. If that’s true, then the converse must also be correct: pulling the tide out from under the consumer will come back to bite the people doing it in the long run. The fact is, even if you ARE a stockholder in one or both of these oil companies, this is still not serving your interests. And if you’re a Republican of any kind, particularly a political hopeful, you’ve got to be sitting there shaking your head in disbelief…
Unfortunately, this story appears to be true. A report appearing in the Daily Kos website indicates that while the Republicans were spending the summer beating the drum for new and better drilling rights in environmentally sensitive parts of the U.S. so that the big energy companies could lower the price of oil and gas, the Department of Energy was contracting to sell off enough natural gas to run 1.4 million households annually to the Japanese (and other Pacific Rim nations) from the Alaskan reserves we already have. That’s right, folks; at a time when prices here were crippling the economy and leading to what is being called the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, your government and Big Oil (it was ConocoPhillips and Marathon, if anyone’s counting) were working together to export energy reserves and maintain artificially high prices…
Now, this blog is about business, not politics, and I’m not going to start writing about the excesses of the current regime (I’m a doctoral student; I don’t have time for that). And in fairness, we should probably all remember that the Daily Kos isn’t exactly the most moderate and well-balanced news organ around. I’m just going to note that if this story is correct (and it checks out so far; I’ll keep you posted) then what we have here is some of the most unethical business practice I’ve seen in at least two or three hours, and false advertising into the bargain…
You know all of those petroleum industry television commercials, where they talk about how much oil and gas we have right here in America? It sounds great, doesn’t it? We could totally drill out all of our own oil and gas, tell the OPEC nations to take a flying leap, and have total freedom from little issues like international finance or economics. Or reality, apparently. What these ads seem to be ignoring is that energy is an internationally-traded commodity, and the oil companies are going to sell their product to whoever will give them the best price for it, just like anyone else. Which probably seems unpatriotic, or at least heartless, in the current climate, but as I’ve noted before in this space, the alternatives are worse. It’s just that the natural gas move detailed above is, well, stupid, for a number of reasons…
First, it’s a colossally bad public relations gesture for an industry that is already having severe image problems. People didn’t need more reasons to hate ConocoPhillips and Marathon, especially with winter coming, but this will be a good one. Second, there’s the potential for political fallout. If enough of the voters decide that this is yet another case of the Bush Administration putting their friends in the oil business ahead of the American people it could easily contribute to a Democratic majority in Congress as well as a Democratic President being elected, which will probably not be a good thing for the petroleum industry and its plans to acquire new cheap drilling rights. And third, if the high price of energy contributes to the current economic crisis, then people will have less money to spend on things like gasoline and huge wasteful vehicles that squander it…
It’s said that a rising tide lifts all boats. If that’s true, then the converse must also be correct: pulling the tide out from under the consumer will come back to bite the people doing it in the long run. The fact is, even if you ARE a stockholder in one or both of these oil companies, this is still not serving your interests. And if you’re a Republican of any kind, particularly a political hopeful, you’ve got to be sitting there shaking your head in disbelief…
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Shorter Commercials? For Real?
It sounds obvious, I know. But a report this week on the Washington Post Online states that when a television network puts fewer – and shorter – commercial breaks into a show, the viewers like it more, and better still, are less likely to surf away from the channel. This cuts way back on the chances of those viewers finding something more interesting on the other channel and not coming back after the commercial break (all 3 minutes 16 seconds of it) is over. Apparently, telling them how long the commercial break will be (e.g. “Bob’s House of Spackle will return in 73 seconds”) works even better on both dimensions – the viewers are pleased to hear it, and less likely to surf away. Particularly if the announced break is really short…
Why this isn’t actually obvious has to do with the primary misconception that television viewers have about their programs – and the commercials, for that matter. You see, however much the viewing public may think (or hope) otherwise, television exists mainly for the purpose of selling advertising time. It’s sort of an unwritten, unspoken contract between broadcasters and the viewing public: you watch our 14 minutes of advertising and we’ll show you 46 minutes of entertainment, free of charge. This is why old-time cable channels charged money for their content: because they weren’t showing you ads, they had to make money some other way. Or, to look at it another way, instead of you watching the ads, you were just giving them money for the content directly…
Unfortunately, as the years passed people started messing with the contract. Television stations and producers started following the example of Hollywood movies and putting ads for products (called product placements) directly into the programs, and cable channels started to realize that people would still pay extra for their exclusive content if there were ads, and started selling ad space just like the broadcast stations. Worst of all was the “program crawl” concept – little animated ads or previews running along the bottom of the screen while the program was in progress, distracting the viewer and sometimes even blocking out critical parts of the picture. Viewers fought back with VCRs, editing out or fast-forwarding through commercials, and spending more time on DVD movies and the Internet. The introduction of digital video recorders like TiVo and television downloads for you iPod completely upset the balance, and today the broadcast networks are growing desperate to bring back their lost viewers…
Which brings us back to the concept of shorter, less invasive advertising. If the networks can demonstrate that shorter and less annoying commercial breaks result in more people watching their ads, they should be able to justify charging more for those ads and retaining the same revenue while improving their relationship with the viewers. It’s a better answer than those “sponsored by XYZ Corporation, with no commercial interruptions” concepts, because those shows usually open and close with hordes of XYZ Corp. commercials that no one watches, because the viewers know they’re coming. If the broadcast networks can back it up with some quality programming, they might even be able to turn the tide and restore their traditional contract with the viewers...
Therein lies the problem, of course. The viewing public has gotten a taste of programming on their schedule, of what they actually want to see, and without having to bother about advertising interruptions at all. It’s possible to regain their attention, if you have something new, unique, or at least interesting (I note here things like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, which are neither new nor unique, but seem to interest a lot of people), but it’s going to be hard going to attract an audience without at least one of these elements. Regardless of how short your commercial breaks happen to be…
Why this isn’t actually obvious has to do with the primary misconception that television viewers have about their programs – and the commercials, for that matter. You see, however much the viewing public may think (or hope) otherwise, television exists mainly for the purpose of selling advertising time. It’s sort of an unwritten, unspoken contract between broadcasters and the viewing public: you watch our 14 minutes of advertising and we’ll show you 46 minutes of entertainment, free of charge. This is why old-time cable channels charged money for their content: because they weren’t showing you ads, they had to make money some other way. Or, to look at it another way, instead of you watching the ads, you were just giving them money for the content directly…
Unfortunately, as the years passed people started messing with the contract. Television stations and producers started following the example of Hollywood movies and putting ads for products (called product placements) directly into the programs, and cable channels started to realize that people would still pay extra for their exclusive content if there were ads, and started selling ad space just like the broadcast stations. Worst of all was the “program crawl” concept – little animated ads or previews running along the bottom of the screen while the program was in progress, distracting the viewer and sometimes even blocking out critical parts of the picture. Viewers fought back with VCRs, editing out or fast-forwarding through commercials, and spending more time on DVD movies and the Internet. The introduction of digital video recorders like TiVo and television downloads for you iPod completely upset the balance, and today the broadcast networks are growing desperate to bring back their lost viewers…
Which brings us back to the concept of shorter, less invasive advertising. If the networks can demonstrate that shorter and less annoying commercial breaks result in more people watching their ads, they should be able to justify charging more for those ads and retaining the same revenue while improving their relationship with the viewers. It’s a better answer than those “sponsored by XYZ Corporation, with no commercial interruptions” concepts, because those shows usually open and close with hordes of XYZ Corp. commercials that no one watches, because the viewers know they’re coming. If the broadcast networks can back it up with some quality programming, they might even be able to turn the tide and restore their traditional contract with the viewers...
Therein lies the problem, of course. The viewing public has gotten a taste of programming on their schedule, of what they actually want to see, and without having to bother about advertising interruptions at all. It’s possible to regain their attention, if you have something new, unique, or at least interesting (I note here things like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, which are neither new nor unique, but seem to interest a lot of people), but it’s going to be hard going to attract an audience without at least one of these elements. Regardless of how short your commercial breaks happen to be…
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Get a Rope
We’ve been hearing so much about bailouts lately that one could easily get the impression that our entire government was spending most of its time down in the (metaphorical) bilges with a (metaphorical) bucket. Or, for that matter, that the Great Depression Part II was premiering, and our government was stepping in to prevent runs on banks and similar financial disasters that might end up with a third of the country out of work from now until the next major war. What’s actually happening is that the Federal government is taking a trillion or so of your dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000.00 if you’re keeping track at home) and giving it to the same people who created the current financial crisis, on the principle that not doing so would be even worse…
All right, I know it’s not actually the gift to the extremely wealthy that the far left would have you believe, but neither is it the populist measure for the greater public good that the far right is trying to describe. The situation does have at least some similarity to the financial crisis that President Hoover inherited in January of 1929, and it’s probably just as well that our current government is trying to come up with a better answer than the one the Hoover administration used (running around the Oval Office in circles making little shrieking noises and then pretending that nothing was wrong until the current term was up), since that didn’t work all that well last time. But the fact that none of those involved are going to be charged with criminal wrongdoing, none of those responsible are going to pay for their incompetence, no new legislation that could prevent future disasters like this one will be passed, and the people who made huge fortunes on predatory lending will now make even more money being bailed out from the resulting crisis is enough to make any thinking person want to get out the torches and pitchforks and storm the castle…
Then there’s the recent shenanigans from AIG, which may just make you want to get a rope. According to a story being reported today by ABC News Online, “Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California.” The company spent more than $440,000 on the retreat, including over $200,000 for the rooms alone, with another $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for spa treatments. Now, in fairness, I imagine that screwing things up badly to require an $85 billion government bailout must be very stressful, and a nice week at the spa probably made these corporate criminals feel a lot better. But I resent them being permitted to do this on MY dime, and I hope you do, too...
Meanwhile, the article goes on to note, the corporate executives responsible for this outrage have all be given millions in termination benefits ($15 million for the ex-CEO alone). This would be disgusting in any time, frankly; it’s a complete violation of the trust placed in these swine by the stockholders, and they should all be tried for various criminal offenses. But coming as it does during a time of financial crisis, when many Americans are losing their homes and their fortunes, it’s completely infuriating. In the long run, this will probably get lost in the $700 billion we’re going to spent to make sure that the rest of the financial industry doesn’t implode and take our economy down with it, and in a few years probably nobody will even remember these corporate a-holes getting manicures on the public’s expense…
But somehow, I just can’t help but wish that they run across some of the people they’ve ruined in a dark alley somewhere – and that those aggravated Americans have a nice length of rope with them…
All right, I know it’s not actually the gift to the extremely wealthy that the far left would have you believe, but neither is it the populist measure for the greater public good that the far right is trying to describe. The situation does have at least some similarity to the financial crisis that President Hoover inherited in January of 1929, and it’s probably just as well that our current government is trying to come up with a better answer than the one the Hoover administration used (running around the Oval Office in circles making little shrieking noises and then pretending that nothing was wrong until the current term was up), since that didn’t work all that well last time. But the fact that none of those involved are going to be charged with criminal wrongdoing, none of those responsible are going to pay for their incompetence, no new legislation that could prevent future disasters like this one will be passed, and the people who made huge fortunes on predatory lending will now make even more money being bailed out from the resulting crisis is enough to make any thinking person want to get out the torches and pitchforks and storm the castle…
Then there’s the recent shenanigans from AIG, which may just make you want to get a rope. According to a story being reported today by ABC News Online, “Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California.” The company spent more than $440,000 on the retreat, including over $200,000 for the rooms alone, with another $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for spa treatments. Now, in fairness, I imagine that screwing things up badly to require an $85 billion government bailout must be very stressful, and a nice week at the spa probably made these corporate criminals feel a lot better. But I resent them being permitted to do this on MY dime, and I hope you do, too...
Meanwhile, the article goes on to note, the corporate executives responsible for this outrage have all be given millions in termination benefits ($15 million for the ex-CEO alone). This would be disgusting in any time, frankly; it’s a complete violation of the trust placed in these swine by the stockholders, and they should all be tried for various criminal offenses. But coming as it does during a time of financial crisis, when many Americans are losing their homes and their fortunes, it’s completely infuriating. In the long run, this will probably get lost in the $700 billion we’re going to spent to make sure that the rest of the financial industry doesn’t implode and take our economy down with it, and in a few years probably nobody will even remember these corporate a-holes getting manicures on the public’s expense…
But somehow, I just can’t help but wish that they run across some of the people they’ve ruined in a dark alley somewhere – and that those aggravated Americans have a nice length of rope with them…
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Go With the Cat
I’m not sure how many of you follow this sort of feel-good news on the Internet, but the story of the stationmaster in Japan who is actually a cat hit about a year ago. It seems there was a station on a Japanese light rail system that decided to adopt a cat as a mascot to improve customer relations. So they chose a tortoiseshell cat that had been born next door and lived around the station, made her an honorary stationmaster, and produced a cat-sized version of a stationmaster’s cap for the cat to wear. It was cute, and it did in fact both improve customer relations and bring some much-needed favorable publicity to the failing rail line…
A few years later, the cat’s station was converted over to an automated facility because the line was losing money, and all of the human personnel were transferred to other locations, but the cat stayed on (as cats are wont to do) – still wearing her cap (as cats are somewhat less wont to do). The rail company apparently figured that people in the area would go right on feeding the cat, and people who rode the line would go right on enjoying having the cat there, so why mess with a good thing? The cat became the only remaining employee of the station, and no one thought anymore about it. That is, until the traffic on that rail line started to pick up…
According to the story being reported on ABC News Online, approximately 55,000 additional passengers used the light rail line in 2007 alone – specifically to travel to the automated station and have their picture taken with Tama the tortoiseshell. This has resulted in an estimated $10.44 million US (about 1.1 billion yen) flowing into the local economy, just for fiscal 2007, with an even bigger impact expected this year. Of course, part of the effect is being attributed to the children’s books and other tie-in merchandising about the cat, but it’s still rather a large impact for an animal mascot to have on a local economy. Apparently the Japanese like cats a lot more than anyone realized…
Now, I’m not suggesting that your business could duplicate these effects just by “hiring” a cute animal and dressing it up like one of your employees. People in the US don’t have quite the same attachment to anthropomorphic animals that the folks in Japan have, and are unlikely to travel out of their way for a photo opportunity with one, let alone an actual animal dressed up in human costume. Animals of various types have been used as business mascots for decades in North America, and no one is likely to think there is anything particularly amazing about a bookstore cat or a library cat, to take the obvious examples. Even more to the point, most businesses in this country will have health code issues if they keep a live animal on the premises. It’s the principle that we should be looking at in this story…
Adopting a cat and equipping it as a stationmaster didn’t require a lot of money or time, and yet this change in the routine was enough to catch the imagination of the rail line’s customers and bring them flocking to see her. Eventually, it was enough to catch the imagination of the general public and bring people from all over the country to see her. So I have to ask you: is there something that YOUR business could do to cut through the clutter, attract attention, and maybe even improve your relations with your customers? Something that might put a friendly face on your operations (even if it’s a cat’s face) and make people want to come and see you? You might want to look into the idea…
A few years later, the cat’s station was converted over to an automated facility because the line was losing money, and all of the human personnel were transferred to other locations, but the cat stayed on (as cats are wont to do) – still wearing her cap (as cats are somewhat less wont to do). The rail company apparently figured that people in the area would go right on feeding the cat, and people who rode the line would go right on enjoying having the cat there, so why mess with a good thing? The cat became the only remaining employee of the station, and no one thought anymore about it. That is, until the traffic on that rail line started to pick up…
According to the story being reported on ABC News Online, approximately 55,000 additional passengers used the light rail line in 2007 alone – specifically to travel to the automated station and have their picture taken with Tama the tortoiseshell. This has resulted in an estimated $10.44 million US (about 1.1 billion yen) flowing into the local economy, just for fiscal 2007, with an even bigger impact expected this year. Of course, part of the effect is being attributed to the children’s books and other tie-in merchandising about the cat, but it’s still rather a large impact for an animal mascot to have on a local economy. Apparently the Japanese like cats a lot more than anyone realized…
Now, I’m not suggesting that your business could duplicate these effects just by “hiring” a cute animal and dressing it up like one of your employees. People in the US don’t have quite the same attachment to anthropomorphic animals that the folks in Japan have, and are unlikely to travel out of their way for a photo opportunity with one, let alone an actual animal dressed up in human costume. Animals of various types have been used as business mascots for decades in North America, and no one is likely to think there is anything particularly amazing about a bookstore cat or a library cat, to take the obvious examples. Even more to the point, most businesses in this country will have health code issues if they keep a live animal on the premises. It’s the principle that we should be looking at in this story…
Adopting a cat and equipping it as a stationmaster didn’t require a lot of money or time, and yet this change in the routine was enough to catch the imagination of the rail line’s customers and bring them flocking to see her. Eventually, it was enough to catch the imagination of the general public and bring people from all over the country to see her. So I have to ask you: is there something that YOUR business could do to cut through the clutter, attract attention, and maybe even improve your relations with your customers? Something that might put a friendly face on your operations (even if it’s a cat’s face) and make people want to come and see you? You might want to look into the idea…
Friday, September 12, 2008
Was That A Goat?
What do brush clearance in Southern California and electrical energy generation in Coastal New Jersey have in common? Well, other than appearing in this blog post together, they're also examples of controversial attempts by local government to "go green" -- that is, to promote ecologically responsible operating strategies. The amazing part, at least from where I'm sitting, is that either of these things is actually controversial. I suppose we should keep in mind that nothing is simple when it really is happening in your metaphorical back yard...
First, let's consider the New Jersey wind farm proposal. We've been hearing a lot about wind farms, or large wind-turbine arrays, since the T. Boone Pickens ads started running earlier this year. It's an appealing idea; harnessing the power of the wind to generate absolutely clean energy in a completely renewable manner. As wind turbines become more common the price for building one (and for the equipment that makes it work) is coming down, and the break even point is getting closer and closer. With the relatively high cost of fossil fuels, the idea of a power plant that you don't have to buy fuel for -- ever! -- is only going to become more and more popular as we go on. In fact, the same market forces will probably bring solar power plants online before much longer, as well...
So why is this controversial? In a word, NIMBY. Alright; technically that's an acronym that stands for Not In My Back Yard, and not really a word. But it's an accurate description of the reaction from the resort communities along the New Jersey coastline, all of which are convinced that they will lose tens of millions of dollars each year if there are a bunch of giant windmills anchored into the sea bed three miles offshore. The commercial fishing industry isn't happy about it, either, but it's mainly the resort operators who think the windmills will be an eyesore who are screaming...
I'm not sure that a bunch of tall, white wind turbine towers three miles away constitutes an eyesore, but then I rather enjoy watching windmills spin. In any case, there are conflicting reports of how much actual business would be lost because of the windmills, but most of the experts agree that it would be in the tens or hundreds of thousands, not the tens or hundreds of millions, and only for a few years until everybody concerned calmed down and forget that those white things on the horizon are windmills. The experts also agree that this would remove over 400,000 TONS of particulate from the air over New Jersey each year...
I know that Los Angeles would give it's (metaphorical) eye teeth for that kind of per capital smog reduction, so let's shift over to our other story of the week: the City of Los Angeles is employing a flock of about 100 goats to clear the brush off of Angel's Knob, a hill adjacent to the famous "Angel's Flight" tramway. This is saving the city about $4,000 over employing human workers with gasoline-powered weed whackers and chainsaws and such. It's also saving gasoline, noise, and air pollution, all of which my birth city already has quite enough of. So why is it controversial? Well, apparently the goats smell bad -- and this project is only creating work for a single goatherd for a few weeks, not for a dozen or so laborers for the rest of the year...
Some days, you just can't win, can you?
First, let's consider the New Jersey wind farm proposal. We've been hearing a lot about wind farms, or large wind-turbine arrays, since the T. Boone Pickens ads started running earlier this year. It's an appealing idea; harnessing the power of the wind to generate absolutely clean energy in a completely renewable manner. As wind turbines become more common the price for building one (and for the equipment that makes it work) is coming down, and the break even point is getting closer and closer. With the relatively high cost of fossil fuels, the idea of a power plant that you don't have to buy fuel for -- ever! -- is only going to become more and more popular as we go on. In fact, the same market forces will probably bring solar power plants online before much longer, as well...
So why is this controversial? In a word, NIMBY. Alright; technically that's an acronym that stands for Not In My Back Yard, and not really a word. But it's an accurate description of the reaction from the resort communities along the New Jersey coastline, all of which are convinced that they will lose tens of millions of dollars each year if there are a bunch of giant windmills anchored into the sea bed three miles offshore. The commercial fishing industry isn't happy about it, either, but it's mainly the resort operators who think the windmills will be an eyesore who are screaming...
I'm not sure that a bunch of tall, white wind turbine towers three miles away constitutes an eyesore, but then I rather enjoy watching windmills spin. In any case, there are conflicting reports of how much actual business would be lost because of the windmills, but most of the experts agree that it would be in the tens or hundreds of thousands, not the tens or hundreds of millions, and only for a few years until everybody concerned calmed down and forget that those white things on the horizon are windmills. The experts also agree that this would remove over 400,000 TONS of particulate from the air over New Jersey each year...
I know that Los Angeles would give it's (metaphorical) eye teeth for that kind of per capital smog reduction, so let's shift over to our other story of the week: the City of Los Angeles is employing a flock of about 100 goats to clear the brush off of Angel's Knob, a hill adjacent to the famous "Angel's Flight" tramway. This is saving the city about $4,000 over employing human workers with gasoline-powered weed whackers and chainsaws and such. It's also saving gasoline, noise, and air pollution, all of which my birth city already has quite enough of. So why is it controversial? Well, apparently the goats smell bad -- and this project is only creating work for a single goatherd for a few weeks, not for a dozen or so laborers for the rest of the year...
Some days, you just can't win, can you?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Buy and Bail?
I suppose we could call this an update on the mortgage crisis stories I've been profiling, but in fact I think this one is more of a spin-off (a new story line derived from older episodes). Which is not to say that it isn't the result of a financial services industry apparently run by people who should never be trusted with any business unit more complicated than a lemonade stand, but the outrage here is coming from the general public, or at least that part of it that are so crooked they have to screw on their hat. The amazing part is that no one saw this one coming...
A story being reported this week on the ABC News Online site introduces the concept of "Buy and Bail" -- people who are escaping from their absurd housing market boom mortgages (both ARMs and also sky-high payments from fixed-rate loans they should never have taken out) by purchasing a second house at rock-bottom prices, and then simply defaulting on their original home loan. Their first bank can foreclose on the loan and seize their first house (and a lot of them do), but not the second one, since it's part of a different loan transaction, often with a different lender. Of course, the foreclosure won't do the first bank much good unless they can sell the property to someone else, and even then it won't repay the defaulted loan if the house is currently worth less than the mortgage taken out on it a few years ago...
Of course, the first bank can sue the absconding homeowner, claiming the original mortgage was taken in bad faith, but that can take years, will frequently cost them more than the amount they are trying to recover on the defaulted loan, and may not be successful. It's hard to prove intent in these cases, and if your contractual agreement was "pay this amount or we take away your house" it's difficult to get the court to change it to "pay this amount or we take away your house, and you also have to give us the difference between what we can get for it and the original loan amount." Most people will just figure that if that was the contract you wanted, you should have asked for it in the first place...
Of course, that's what's starting to happen. One of the consequences of the mortgage crisis is that home loans are no longer as easy to get as they used to be, and one of the reasons why not is that lenders are trying to block the "Buy and Bail" tactic. Another is that they're trying to screen out anybody who they think might try such a thing in the first place. And still another is that they're trying to screen out anybody who they think IS trying to do such a thing right now (e.g. if they think you're trying to make THEM the second bank in a "Buy and Bail" scheme)! Which may be a little like closing the barn door after the horses escape, but is still better than nothing...
Now I know some of you are thinking, "these greedy bastards brought the whole mortgage crisis down on themselves in the first place; it's great that someone is finally using their own greed to pay them back!" And in some ways that might be true, but don't forget who is paying the money to bail out all of these stricken mortgage lenders. That's right: you are. Your tax dollars will be used to keep billion-dollar companies from suffering the consequences of being too stupid, greedy and incompetent to avoid losing all of their money in the first place, and protect all of their investors from suffering the consequences of being too heavily invested in an industry with questionable business ethics. None of which is going to be any less expensive just because a few people managed to work themselves out of trouble by screwing the bank back in return...
A story being reported this week on the ABC News Online site introduces the concept of "Buy and Bail" -- people who are escaping from their absurd housing market boom mortgages (both ARMs and also sky-high payments from fixed-rate loans they should never have taken out) by purchasing a second house at rock-bottom prices, and then simply defaulting on their original home loan. Their first bank can foreclose on the loan and seize their first house (and a lot of them do), but not the second one, since it's part of a different loan transaction, often with a different lender. Of course, the foreclosure won't do the first bank much good unless they can sell the property to someone else, and even then it won't repay the defaulted loan if the house is currently worth less than the mortgage taken out on it a few years ago...
Of course, the first bank can sue the absconding homeowner, claiming the original mortgage was taken in bad faith, but that can take years, will frequently cost them more than the amount they are trying to recover on the defaulted loan, and may not be successful. It's hard to prove intent in these cases, and if your contractual agreement was "pay this amount or we take away your house" it's difficult to get the court to change it to "pay this amount or we take away your house, and you also have to give us the difference between what we can get for it and the original loan amount." Most people will just figure that if that was the contract you wanted, you should have asked for it in the first place...
Of course, that's what's starting to happen. One of the consequences of the mortgage crisis is that home loans are no longer as easy to get as they used to be, and one of the reasons why not is that lenders are trying to block the "Buy and Bail" tactic. Another is that they're trying to screen out anybody who they think might try such a thing in the first place. And still another is that they're trying to screen out anybody who they think IS trying to do such a thing right now (e.g. if they think you're trying to make THEM the second bank in a "Buy and Bail" scheme)! Which may be a little like closing the barn door after the horses escape, but is still better than nothing...
Now I know some of you are thinking, "these greedy bastards brought the whole mortgage crisis down on themselves in the first place; it's great that someone is finally using their own greed to pay them back!" And in some ways that might be true, but don't forget who is paying the money to bail out all of these stricken mortgage lenders. That's right: you are. Your tax dollars will be used to keep billion-dollar companies from suffering the consequences of being too stupid, greedy and incompetent to avoid losing all of their money in the first place, and protect all of their investors from suffering the consequences of being too heavily invested in an industry with questionable business ethics. None of which is going to be any less expensive just because a few people managed to work themselves out of trouble by screwing the bank back in return...
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
The Ethics of Pole Dancing
For those who have never encountered the term, Pole Dancing has nothing to do with folk dances of Polish origin, Maypoles, or drunks who believe that the telephone poles are following them as they drive home -- although alcohol is sometimes involved. Pole Dancing is the performance style common to "exotic" dances in strip clubs, and involves a series of gymnastic or even acrobatic maneuvers executed while clinging to and spinning around a pole extending from the floor of the stage to the ceiling. Clearly, this is not something you'd want located in (or moving into) a retail space in the center of town, or anywhere families with small children are likely to encounter it, unless you take an unusually tolerant view of sex education. But the case that came up a week or so ago demonstrates once again that things are never that simple, especially where First Amendment Rights are involved...
As reported in the York PA Daily Record, a woman named Stephanie Babines is attempting to open a dance studio in rural Adams Township, where she will teach (among other things) pole dancing to local women who want to learn how to do it. Note that this is not a strip club or a "gentleman's club;" there will be no men allowed in these classes, and spectators will not be permitted either. In fact, there will be no nudity involved, and nothing will go on in any of the studio's classes that could not be shown on network television in prime time. But this hasn't stopped the local authorities from going berserk over the studio's business permit application...
The township government seems to be taking the position that anything that might be remotely defined as a sex-based business, or even anything that might be remotely defined as promoting a sex-based business (or even anything implying that there are such things as sex-based businesses, one supposes) are in violation of a town ordinance that governs business permits. This is often considered a slippery-slope situation, in the sense that once a given municipality has one sex-based business, it is no longer possible to prevent other such businesses from opening. And we all know how dangerous THAT could be!
In fairness, there are cetain public safety risks associated with bars of any kind, and strip clubs in particular. But this situation isn't about increased rates of public intoxication (the dance studio doesn't serve alcohol), noise polution (the studio will be sound-proofed and will not operate at night), drunken driving (no alcohol, no drunk driving), or associated crime (no drunks with cash to rob, no cash register full of cash to rob, no dancers with handfulls of dollar bills to rob, no scantily-clad women to assault, no crowds of drunks to get into brawls, and so on); it's only about whether this type of business is going to be difficult for families with small children to deal with. Which is hard to imagine in this case...
The bottom line in this case seems to be at what point does the township's collective right to live in peace (without troublesome reminders that people do, on occasion, behave in risque fashions) outweigh the rights of a law-abiding citizen to operate a business that teaches people how to dance in a risque fashion? If the good people of Adams Township don't want a studio like this one, can't they just not do business there? Or does the Township government have a responsibility to protect their citizens from the (possible) effects of such an operation?
It's worth thinking about...
As reported in the York PA Daily Record, a woman named Stephanie Babines is attempting to open a dance studio in rural Adams Township, where she will teach (among other things) pole dancing to local women who want to learn how to do it. Note that this is not a strip club or a "gentleman's club;" there will be no men allowed in these classes, and spectators will not be permitted either. In fact, there will be no nudity involved, and nothing will go on in any of the studio's classes that could not be shown on network television in prime time. But this hasn't stopped the local authorities from going berserk over the studio's business permit application...
The township government seems to be taking the position that anything that might be remotely defined as a sex-based business, or even anything that might be remotely defined as promoting a sex-based business (or even anything implying that there are such things as sex-based businesses, one supposes) are in violation of a town ordinance that governs business permits. This is often considered a slippery-slope situation, in the sense that once a given municipality has one sex-based business, it is no longer possible to prevent other such businesses from opening. And we all know how dangerous THAT could be!
In fairness, there are cetain public safety risks associated with bars of any kind, and strip clubs in particular. But this situation isn't about increased rates of public intoxication (the dance studio doesn't serve alcohol), noise polution (the studio will be sound-proofed and will not operate at night), drunken driving (no alcohol, no drunk driving), or associated crime (no drunks with cash to rob, no cash register full of cash to rob, no dancers with handfulls of dollar bills to rob, no scantily-clad women to assault, no crowds of drunks to get into brawls, and so on); it's only about whether this type of business is going to be difficult for families with small children to deal with. Which is hard to imagine in this case...
The bottom line in this case seems to be at what point does the township's collective right to live in peace (without troublesome reminders that people do, on occasion, behave in risque fashions) outweigh the rights of a law-abiding citizen to operate a business that teaches people how to dance in a risque fashion? If the good people of Adams Township don't want a studio like this one, can't they just not do business there? Or does the Township government have a responsibility to protect their citizens from the (possible) effects of such an operation?
It's worth thinking about...
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Legal Weed
Here's another one of those cases of something that sounds like a good idea (or at least an innocuous one) at first glance, but very rapidly turns out to be more complicated than you'd expect. It happens that Federal law (which governs most aspects of the brewing and distilling industries) prohibits drug references on the packaging of alcoholic beverages. You might think this would be a good idea, in that it would prevent the liquor industry from trying to use the appeal of various controlled substances to sell a product that would almost certainly end up being abused in its own right. Unfortunately, once you allow any regulation to restrict free speech, the matter will almost always become more complicated than you wanted it to be...
Take the case of Legal Weed beer, made by the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company in Weed, California. The town of Weed has been enjoying the double entendre of its name for over a century now, with everything from T-shirts that play on the name to a sign at the city limits that reads "Temporarily Out of Weed." A famous tourist spot is the road sign that has "Weed" with an arrow pointing left, and "College" with an arrow pointing right (people like to get their picture taken in front of the sign). It's all made even funnier by the fact that the town is actually named for its founder, Abner Weed, a local lumber baron and state senator. No one is actually advocating the sale, possession or use of marijuana (often known by the slang term of "weed"), and everyone knows it...
Everyone, that is, except for the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which earlier this year ordered the brewery to stop marketing the "Legal Weed" beer that they had begun selling. Apparently unable to see the humor in the situation, the Feds threatened all sorts of civil and criminal sanctions, and only backed down when the huge storm of negative public opinion reached a crescendo. Video segments about this David-and-Goliath fight appeared on the news across the U.S. and as far away as Saudi Arabia, and over 1,400 supporters sent letters or emails to the brewery owner, urging him to stay in the fight. Eventually the Bureau, sensing the enormous potential for bad publicity and a lengthy trial reversed its position...
But not before sales of all of the brewing company's products (not just the "Legal Weed") had more than doubled. We've often been told that there is no such thing as "bad" publicity; anything that puts your company into the public eye is automatically a good thing, no matter how negative the circumstances behind it might be. Based on the events in this story, it might be true. But a much more immediate question is whether anyone else out there is considering launching an alcoholic beverage product with a drug reference in the name, and whether this story will convince them to go ahead and take the same risks, or rename the product "White Rabbit Lager" or something equally inoffensive...
And whether letting Federal agencies suspend a constitutional right just because they think it MIGHT help to suppress crime and/or drug abuse is a good idea in the first place...
Take the case of Legal Weed beer, made by the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company in Weed, California. The town of Weed has been enjoying the double entendre of its name for over a century now, with everything from T-shirts that play on the name to a sign at the city limits that reads "Temporarily Out of Weed." A famous tourist spot is the road sign that has "Weed" with an arrow pointing left, and "College" with an arrow pointing right (people like to get their picture taken in front of the sign). It's all made even funnier by the fact that the town is actually named for its founder, Abner Weed, a local lumber baron and state senator. No one is actually advocating the sale, possession or use of marijuana (often known by the slang term of "weed"), and everyone knows it...
Everyone, that is, except for the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which earlier this year ordered the brewery to stop marketing the "Legal Weed" beer that they had begun selling. Apparently unable to see the humor in the situation, the Feds threatened all sorts of civil and criminal sanctions, and only backed down when the huge storm of negative public opinion reached a crescendo. Video segments about this David-and-Goliath fight appeared on the news across the U.S. and as far away as Saudi Arabia, and over 1,400 supporters sent letters or emails to the brewery owner, urging him to stay in the fight. Eventually the Bureau, sensing the enormous potential for bad publicity and a lengthy trial reversed its position...
But not before sales of all of the brewing company's products (not just the "Legal Weed") had more than doubled. We've often been told that there is no such thing as "bad" publicity; anything that puts your company into the public eye is automatically a good thing, no matter how negative the circumstances behind it might be. Based on the events in this story, it might be true. But a much more immediate question is whether anyone else out there is considering launching an alcoholic beverage product with a drug reference in the name, and whether this story will convince them to go ahead and take the same risks, or rename the product "White Rabbit Lager" or something equally inoffensive...
And whether letting Federal agencies suspend a constitutional right just because they think it MIGHT help to suppress crime and/or drug abuse is a good idea in the first place...
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Starbucks Update
It’s funny how often we’re seeing additional information about the current events I wrote about four or five months ago, especially when you consider that these stories really have nothing in common except for the oddball writing about them. In today’s example, I will ask all of you who still can to remember a post I wrote back in California about Starbucks attempting to expand their business through the introduction of new product lines, new promotional angles, and even new business partners. I was dubious about how well any of it was going to work, and apparently I had good reason to be…
A story being reported on The “Cluster Stock” website last week indicates that the Starbucks empire is indeed coming into difficult times, with 600 locations closing in the U.S. alone, and a 60% drop in its stock price from the peak a few years ago. One would expect the company to do something about the weaknesses in its business model, the primary one being the relatively high cost. In a worsening economy, it’s getting harder and harder to persuade your customers that it’s actually worth paying $3 for a cup of coffee (or $4.50 for a specialty coffee drink), and new competitors (like the Biggby Coffee chain profiled in this space a few weeks back) are taking full advantage of that weakness. Starbucks might also be able to do something about their food options or convenience issues, but they’re already faster than most of the companies in the industry, and food isn’t really their core competency. But apparently the company is balking at the idea of lowering prices…
According to the story (originally carried by Reuters), the CEO of Starbucks is maintaining that the firm will not lower prices, but will instead “look for fun ways to offer value.” One wonders what, exactly, this will entail. Their new “everyday blend” of coffee (profiled in my last post about them) does not seem to have been the sales booster the company was hoping for, and their special $2 iced coffee deal (if you’d already bought a regular coffee at Starbucks that day and still had the receipt to prove it and came in during the specified hours the special was valid) was so confusing that most customers didn’t bother to try figuring it out, and so precious that most people wouldn’t have bothered with it even if they did understand it. Similar offers, as well as short-term sales on seasonal products, new products or discontinued merchandise are unlikely to do any better, either…
The curious part, at least from my perspective, is that the margin on a cup of coffee is already the best aspect of running a coffee house. As I noted last fall, in my post about starting such an operation, most of the food choices sold by businesses of this type are break-even propositions at best, with only a handful of companies (generally ones that bake their own food products for sale) actually turning a profit on anything other than coffee. Of all of the things they could possibly do to add value to the consumer, the one that is least likely to impact the bottom line in a Starbucks operation is a price reduction. So why aren’t they even considering it?
It’s possible that the company is adhering to an old salesman’s adage: never lower your asking price for something; it makes it look as if the thing was never worth what you were asking in the first place. You have to wonder if Starbucks is trying to avoid letting their customers find out that they’ve been paying $3 for a beverage product that actually costs between 40 and 60 cents (depending on the formula you use), or if they’re just worried that if they lower the price to $2.70 the public will expect them to keep it that way. But in either case, the company needs to stop fooling around with “fun ways to offer value” and come up with something that their customers will actually be willing to pay for…
A story being reported on The “Cluster Stock” website last week indicates that the Starbucks empire is indeed coming into difficult times, with 600 locations closing in the U.S. alone, and a 60% drop in its stock price from the peak a few years ago. One would expect the company to do something about the weaknesses in its business model, the primary one being the relatively high cost. In a worsening economy, it’s getting harder and harder to persuade your customers that it’s actually worth paying $3 for a cup of coffee (or $4.50 for a specialty coffee drink), and new competitors (like the Biggby Coffee chain profiled in this space a few weeks back) are taking full advantage of that weakness. Starbucks might also be able to do something about their food options or convenience issues, but they’re already faster than most of the companies in the industry, and food isn’t really their core competency. But apparently the company is balking at the idea of lowering prices…
According to the story (originally carried by Reuters), the CEO of Starbucks is maintaining that the firm will not lower prices, but will instead “look for fun ways to offer value.” One wonders what, exactly, this will entail. Their new “everyday blend” of coffee (profiled in my last post about them) does not seem to have been the sales booster the company was hoping for, and their special $2 iced coffee deal (if you’d already bought a regular coffee at Starbucks that day and still had the receipt to prove it and came in during the specified hours the special was valid) was so confusing that most customers didn’t bother to try figuring it out, and so precious that most people wouldn’t have bothered with it even if they did understand it. Similar offers, as well as short-term sales on seasonal products, new products or discontinued merchandise are unlikely to do any better, either…
The curious part, at least from my perspective, is that the margin on a cup of coffee is already the best aspect of running a coffee house. As I noted last fall, in my post about starting such an operation, most of the food choices sold by businesses of this type are break-even propositions at best, with only a handful of companies (generally ones that bake their own food products for sale) actually turning a profit on anything other than coffee. Of all of the things they could possibly do to add value to the consumer, the one that is least likely to impact the bottom line in a Starbucks operation is a price reduction. So why aren’t they even considering it?
It’s possible that the company is adhering to an old salesman’s adage: never lower your asking price for something; it makes it look as if the thing was never worth what you were asking in the first place. You have to wonder if Starbucks is trying to avoid letting their customers find out that they’ve been paying $3 for a beverage product that actually costs between 40 and 60 cents (depending on the formula you use), or if they’re just worried that if they lower the price to $2.70 the public will expect them to keep it that way. But in either case, the company needs to stop fooling around with “fun ways to offer value” and come up with something that their customers will actually be willing to pay for…
Monday, September 1, 2008
The Ethics of Bandwidth
Here’s an interesting question that came up last week about cable modems and Internet access – and exactly what each customer is entitled to under a supposedly “unlimited” service agreement. According to the news reports, Comcast Cable has decided to cap their customers’ Internet downloads at 250 gigabytes per residential account per month, calling this amount excessive for a residential customer. A quick check will tell you that this will come out to over 50 million average emails, or 124 full-length movies downloaded at standard resolution, which does seem a bit excessive for only 30 days, but the real issue here is what “unlimited” actually means in practice – and if the company has an ethical responsibility to the rest of its customers to protect them from having their cable modems jammed by a single user who is downloading 4 or five movies a day (or the equivalent). It seemed like it might be worth a closer look…
The first question that comes to mind is what a customer can reasonably expect from a service that is described (and sold) as being effectively infinite. In practice, most “unlimited” service contracts for whatever form of media delivery (cell phone, text message, Internet, etc.) have only meant that the customer does not pay any additional fees for service, regardless of the actual volume of data they use. These service plans would more correctly be called “flat rate” services, and in fact are usually called just that in the contracts, along with a deeply-buried clause about cancellation for excessive use. Thus, the debate on deceptive marketing and misleading advertising goes back to before the customer ever signs up. It is quite possible that some of the people who saw the term “unlimited” in print ads or on television actually had an expectation of unlimited usage, and failed to read the fine print that said otherwise…
In most states, however, not reading (or claiming that you didn’t read) a contract will not protect you from the consequences of signing it. California, in particular, is sometimes called the “Anybody can contract to do anything” State, because you are assumed to have read, understood and agreed to anything you actually sign. If you signed a contract that specified that you could be billed extra (or disconnected) for “excessive use” you can go to court and argue whether 250 gigabytes is actually excessive, but you can’t expect to get an infinite amount of downloads just because you thought you could. And as long as Comcast isn’t actually charging you more for your monthly service than their usual flat rate, you can’t contend that they are in violation of your contract…
A much more interesting point is how the “rights” of these extreme high-end users impact the rest of the customers on the system. Modern fiber-optic systems can carry a lot of data in a relatively small physical space, but there are still hard limits to how much volume can be transmitted over a specific cable line – and cable modems are already infamous for slowing down if a lot of people are attempting to use the same line. So if there’s a power user on your block, downloading over 250 gigabytes each month, and this usage is making your Internet service run slower, does the company have a responsibility to restrict the power user and free up bandwidth for you? Or should the company just let the download speeds fall where they may? Should Comcast be legally required to expand its capacity to give everyone all of the downloads they want? What if the cost of expanding their capacity bankrupts the company, putting thousands of people out of work and destroying the fortunes of their shareholders?
It’s worth thinking about…
The first question that comes to mind is what a customer can reasonably expect from a service that is described (and sold) as being effectively infinite. In practice, most “unlimited” service contracts for whatever form of media delivery (cell phone, text message, Internet, etc.) have only meant that the customer does not pay any additional fees for service, regardless of the actual volume of data they use. These service plans would more correctly be called “flat rate” services, and in fact are usually called just that in the contracts, along with a deeply-buried clause about cancellation for excessive use. Thus, the debate on deceptive marketing and misleading advertising goes back to before the customer ever signs up. It is quite possible that some of the people who saw the term “unlimited” in print ads or on television actually had an expectation of unlimited usage, and failed to read the fine print that said otherwise…
In most states, however, not reading (or claiming that you didn’t read) a contract will not protect you from the consequences of signing it. California, in particular, is sometimes called the “Anybody can contract to do anything” State, because you are assumed to have read, understood and agreed to anything you actually sign. If you signed a contract that specified that you could be billed extra (or disconnected) for “excessive use” you can go to court and argue whether 250 gigabytes is actually excessive, but you can’t expect to get an infinite amount of downloads just because you thought you could. And as long as Comcast isn’t actually charging you more for your monthly service than their usual flat rate, you can’t contend that they are in violation of your contract…
A much more interesting point is how the “rights” of these extreme high-end users impact the rest of the customers on the system. Modern fiber-optic systems can carry a lot of data in a relatively small physical space, but there are still hard limits to how much volume can be transmitted over a specific cable line – and cable modems are already infamous for slowing down if a lot of people are attempting to use the same line. So if there’s a power user on your block, downloading over 250 gigabytes each month, and this usage is making your Internet service run slower, does the company have a responsibility to restrict the power user and free up bandwidth for you? Or should the company just let the download speeds fall where they may? Should Comcast be legally required to expand its capacity to give everyone all of the downloads they want? What if the cost of expanding their capacity bankrupts the company, putting thousands of people out of work and destroying the fortunes of their shareholders?
It’s worth thinking about…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
