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...
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