Daily Nonsense

A New Day – Follows a New Dawn

Today I finished my last shift at Staples. A bitter sweet feeling to say the least. I’ve posted a little bit about Staples these last few days but I really haven’t said what’s important about my time there.

Staples taught me about customer service. Staples showed me how it’s the most important aspect of retail. But besides just at a service level, those lessons on how to treat customers transfer to everyday life. I’m trying to treat everyone with the same levels of courtesy and respect, and paying attention to them. It’s amazing what a difference it makes in how people treat ME!

Retail is not for everyone. Whether it’s the hours, the expectations, or the face-to-face interaction; not everyone is suited. But you can learn valuable lessons that can affect your life and how you live it and in it.

My Staples Era, Coming to a Close

It’s been almost 6 years now that I’ve been working at Staples. What a roller-coaster of a time.

I started as a full-time, hourly associate in the Business Machines (Electronics) department. After about 6 month there I moved into the Manager Trainee (MT) program. That was the most difficult time of my employment. The difficulty stemmed from the fact that you end up with too many bosses while enrolled in the Staples training system.

But I got thru it, and moved on upward into management. I was promoted to Operations Manager after about a year in the MT program. That was a stressful year! I was responsible for the 3 ‘Ps’, the Place, the Product, and the People.

So, the place, the building and it’s health. Are the doors working, is there a toilet clogged, stuff like that.

The product means the inventory in the store. The Ops Manager and the General Manager are responsible for all of the inventory, managing shortages, overages, and damages.

The people, hiring and retaining great employees. There are two ‘Ps’ associated with the people. Praise and Punishment. ‘Nuff said….

I then became a Sales Manager. That was the job I enjoyed the most. My job was to drive the sales of Business Machines along with the associated attachments. What many people do not realize is that the average profit margin on a computer or printer is less than 10%. That is not enough margin to keep a store in business so attachments are vital to the store.

A year ago last December I stepped down from management and took a part time technician job at the same store and went back to school. I’ve been studying to become an MCSE through an online course.

I’ve recently started working for Apian Software as their Technical Support Rep for SurveyPro 4.0, a software package that allows you to create meaningful surveys with a rather easy interface. It should prove to be an interesting job.

Starting over with customer service

As some of you know I’ve worked at Staples for about 6 years now and have a few stories to tell about customer service. I have enjoyed working at Staples for many reasons one of which is the level of customer service that the company DEMANDS we provide. I really want to help most customers (now let’s be real, there are always some that grate…) and Staples gave me the opportunity to do so. But…..

I’m a consumer too. There are some stores I won’t go to any more. Someone, a cashier, an associate, a manager, someone ticked me off. I’ve know for years that customer service outside of Staples, is hit or miss.

Seth Godin recently wrote about it on his blog and I was impressed by his insight:

Customer service is broken. Not just because of bad management, though we have plenty of that to go around. Customer service is broken for three reasons:

1. The internet has taught us to demand everything immediately (and perfect). As a result, we expect that every single time we pick up the phone or deal with someone in a retail setting, we’ll be dealing with the Senior Vice President of Customer Satisfaction, the head of accounting and the chief of quality control, all at the same time. We expect instant results and undivided attention.

2. The rapid proliferation of choice has taught us to demand that everything should be cheap. As a result, we won’t pay extra for superior service, which means companies need to hire cheap.

3. The availability of blogs and other public histories means that it is harder than ever to treat different customers differently. Word gets out.

As a result of these three inexorable trends, companies are on defense. They are forced to add a new layer to their pyramid, and yes, it’s on the bottom. This layer consists of lots and lots of people, the cheapest the company can find. These folks are ill-trained, poorly supported and under lots of pressure. There is a lot of turnover (what a surprise) and most are working with nothing more than a simple manual and a lot of metrics.

[Thanks, Seth]

Almost A Week

So, I’ve been employed (at the new, full time job) for almost a week now and I’m still a happy guy. I’m learning new stuff, helping out with other things besides just my ‘job’, and am just generally enjoying life!

Things are going well

All is great at the new job. I’m reading and studying the software package right now. There’s not much else for me to do until I can be familiar enough with the package to start taking tech calls.

I wanted to walk today but it looks like I’ll need to schlep my laptop one last time. And It’s a heavy sucker.

Quickly!

I’m at the new job and it’s cool so far.  So low key! Updates as they occur.

Polish poets threaten Google’s supremacy

You really have to wonder about these people who think that throwing money and lawyers at a mistake or oversight will make it all better.

AFP has a funny story. It seems a group of Polish poets, Grupa Mlodych Artstow I Literatow (Group of Young Artists and Writers) owns http://www.gmail.pl/ and Google wants it. So it’s using its lawyers to try to get it, rather than admit its own incompetence and just offer to buy it.

Izabela Krawczyk of GMAiL told AFP: “We bought the name legally, with our own money. Nobody gave it to us for free. We refuse to be deprived of what we consider is our property.”

Krawczyk, a poet and IT fan based in the central Polish city of Lodz, said that at the end of last year her group was surprised to discover that www.gmail.pl was available.

They decided to buy the rights to the domain name in order to raise the profile of GMAiL, which publicises the works of young unknowns who have not yet found a conventional editor.

“Our site has a use. There’s no financial gain involved. And we’re not competing with the US company,” she said.

So is the message that after three years of beta testing Gmail, and stashing many billions in the bank, the droids at the Googleplex either have not yet heard of Poland or still can’t figure out how to buy a Polish domain name? No problem! They may not be able to figure out how to spend $10 on a domain name, but they can easily afford $100,000 worth of lawyers.

What was that bullshit about “Don’t be evil” again?

Hat tip to Profy.

[Thanks, Guardian Unlimited]

New Things Going On!

Tomorrow I start a new job!

I’ve accepted a position with Apian Software, right here in the Greenwood district of Seattle. Last week I found an ad on Craigslist for a Technical Support Rep that intrigued me. The title was something like “Not Your Typical Support Position”. The text described a position where I would be encouraged to work with the customers and find the right solution to their problems.

I applied immediately and soon received a reply from the sales manager of the company. We set up an appointment for last Thursday. I interviewed with her, a techie type and the president of the company. (It’s only a 7 person organization at this point). They called me later that day(!) and asked me to come back by and pick up an offer letter. After careful discussion with Brooke, I accepted the next morning.

So, starting tomorrow morning at 8am PST I’m going back to work full time.

Goodbye Sonics

The Seattle Supersonics have finally come up with a plan to get the quality arena they think they deserve. And all they expect is for everyone OTHER then themselves to pay for it.

I think it’s time for us in Seattle to STOP getting screwed by this kind of corporate welfare. It’s time to START saying NO! No to adding tax burden to an already weary public. No to allowing this kind of ‘good ol’ boy’, back room decision making without a public vote. JUST Say No!

Read the text of the Seattle PI story and start contacting your elected officials and SAY NO!

Sonics: Renton, here we come
But first, team wants $400 million from taxpayers

By CHRIS McGANN AND CRAIG HARRIS
P-I REPORTERS

OLYMPIA — The Seattle Sonics want the public to pay for most of a new $500 million multipurpose arena in Renton, they want most of the proceeds from that facility and they want the money without a public vote, owner Clay Bennett told lawmakers Tuesday.

The NBA team will face a fight on every front.

Aside from support from Renton and King County, Bennett is dealing with taxpayers who still are paying for four major stadiums and who have grown weary of subsidies for millionaires and sports teams.

And there are many other formidable obstacles:

 

It would be nearly impossible to pass the tax package without support from Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, who has said his caucus isn’t interested and that the money should go to education and health care.

If the Legislature authorizes a tax package that does not include a public vote, opponents say they’ll file an initiative to block the deal and King County Council Chairman Larry Phillips has told state leaders he’ll block the necessary county tax increases.

The land Bennett said he wants to build is apparently not for sale.The Boeing Co. owns the roughly 22 acres that the Sonics want, but a Dallas-based developer, Harvest Partners, has the first right of refusal to buy the property.And Harvest Partners on Tuesday gave no indication it was willing to sell.

“We are moving forward to build a shopping center on that land. That is our intent and that is the direction we will pursue,” said Natalie Quick, a Harvest Partners spokeswoman. “We have no formal agreement nor have we had discussions with anyone. Our plan remains the same.”

Bennett told the Senate Ways and Means Committee that he expects the public to provide most of the financing — $300 million from the state, about $100 million from the city of Renton — and that most of the money from the facility should go to the team.

Bennett said his time and the $350 million the Oklahoma City ownership group spent buying the Sonics last year is a substantial part of the team’s investment. He also said he expects to take responsibility for about $100 million in private investments.

Ways and Means Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, said the public would benefit from new jobs and tax revenue generated by sales at and around the arena.

“With each transaction, you get a new tax,” she said.

But Chris Van Dyk, founder of Citizens for More Important Things, blasted the proposal.

“For them to say they are doing a big community service by buying the team is preposterous,” he said. “The former Sonics owners bought the team, held it for five years and made $80 million profit.”

Van Dyk said the Sonics should pay for their own arena.

“This is a private enterprise, we are not a socialist state, let the private market take care of those problems.”

Bennett said the hostility in some quarters to public sports stadium funding surprised him.

“I underestimated that part of the deal,” he said, adding he hopes the region will rally to keep professional basketball. Bennett has said he may move the team if the Sonics don’t get a new arena.

Asked why he didn’t try to build the stadium with private money, Bennett said the “model has changed” because the facility will be much more than a venue for sports. “This will be the most expensive building ever built (for an NBA team),” he said.

King County Executive Ron Sims testified in support of Senate Bill 5986, which would allow the county to extend taxes on things such as restaurants, rental cars and hotels worth $423 million. He said the plan would provide sustained money for the arts and ball fields that is not available today.

Renton Mayor Kathy Keolker said the facility would help create a vibrant community.

“We see the potential of this arena as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said.

But one of Renton’s biggest investors said the area’s economy could bloom without a new multipurpose stadium and pro basketball.

Harvest Partners is now building on 46 acres of the first phase of the Landing, a proposed 68-acre urban village just off Interstate 405 near the south end of Lake Washington. The land the Sonics want is directly south of phase one, which Quick said is 70 percent leased.

“People continue to see the value of doing business in Renton and we don’t see that changing,” Quick said. “When we think of that second 22 acres, we are looking at it as viable property for retail.”

Peter Conte, a Boeing spokesman, said the company was very excited about possibly having an arena in Renton, but “significant issues” such as security and traffic flow must be worked out because the nearby Boeing plant is the final assembly site for Boeing 737s.

“Boeing needs to make sure its manufacturing operations are not impacted and we continue to meet our obligations to our customers,” Conte said.

Larry Warren, Renton’s attorney, said the city has not made any financial promises to the Sonics regarding infrastructure or parking amenities.

“There is no deal,” Warren said. “We have a pretty strong message we try to follow and that is the revenues brought in by any new endeavor have to cover what we will invest. We would have to do an economic analysis.”

Meanwhile, Renton’s gain is a loss for Bellevue, which also had been in discussions with the Sonics about having an arena.

“I wish them well,” Bellevue Mayor Grant Degginger said. “If they continue to look, I’m sure we will talk to them again.”

Back in Renton, Jay Fisher, who owns the Dog and Pony Ale House and Grill, is optimistic about the proposed move.

“This is going to impact us, and it can only be positive. … Sonics fans are not just in Seattle; they’re from all over Washington. I think for many Sonics fans it wouldn’t be much harder to make the drive here.”

AT A GLANCE: SONICS’ PLAN FOR NEW ARENA

What the Sonics want:

 

A new $500 million multipurpose arena in Renton, with $400 million coming from public funds.Obstacles they face:

Angry taxpayers weary of subsidizing sports teams.

Strong opposition from leading state lawmakers.

Calls for a public vote on the plan.

The land in Renton they want may not be for sale.What could happen next:

Team owners have said they may move the team out of state if they don’t get what they want.

P-I reporter Casey McNerthney contributed to this report.

[Thanks, Seattle PI]

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades – Joel Johnson

Joel Johnson over at Gizmodo writes an article that explains why all consumer electronics are crap and why that is your fault. I’ll chime in and say that Joel has hit this one in the bulls-eye.

Consumer electronics are a joke. It’s everyone’s fault but mine. You assholes.

These guys want me to write a weekly column, but I hate consumer electronics, I hate marketing, and I hate you people, because you’re all so dumb. If you’re lucky and I need the money, I will.

I gave up two years of my life writing about gadgets for this site. Waking up every morning at 5 AM, chewing up press releases to find the rare morsel of legitimate information, chasing down “hot tips” that ended up being photochops of iPods with reflections of genitals in the touchscreens. Oh, and the worst: fielding emails from PR parasites eager to suck away precious time in a half-hour phone meeting while the Senior Vice-President of Smoke Blowing tells me about how his company’s software—based on an idea cribbed from Google—is going to change the way I look at something I didn’t care about in the first place. (Inevitably, “forever.”)

And you guys just ate it up. Kept buying shitty phones and broken media devices green and dripping with DRM. You broke the site, clogging up the pipe like retarded salmon, to read the latest announcements of the most trivial jerk-off products, completely ignoring the stories about technology actually making a difference to real human beings, because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket to impress your friends and make you forget for just a few minutes, blood coursing as you tremblingly cut through the blister pack, that your life is utterly void of any lasting purpose.

Then you had the audacity to complain about broken phones, half-assed firmware that bricked your gear, and winner-takes-nothing arms races between the companies whose gear your bought and the hackers who had nothing better to do than try to fix it. Do you realize how ridiculous that is? Programmers with free time did more to help you get quality products than you ever did by buying the broken gear in the first place.

Stop buying this crap. Just stop it. You don’t need it. Wait a year until the reviews come out and the other suckers too addicted to having the very latest and greatest buy it, put up a review, and have moved on to something else. Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn’t do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.

You want to know the punchline? The average Joe that makes up the market is smarter than you saps. The market-at-large waits until a clear leader emerges, then takes a modest plunge. You may think you’re making up the “bleeding edge” of “gadget pimpatude” but you’re really just a loose confederation of marks the consumer electronics industry uses as free market research and easy money. “Give me the latest version,” you coo, hiking up your skirt another inch over your exposed wallet. “Point Oh One upgrades make me so hot.”

And for god’s sake, Gizmodo, stop giving this stuff such a free pass. Stop using terminology that they’ve programmed into you by puking it into your eyeballs via press release after press release. What is this “unleashes” horseshit, Deleon? You’re not in marketing. Don’t write like you are. This is obviously a not a real product, Frucci. Did you even read the site you linked? Are you actually writing boosterism-filled copy about products that don’t actually exist? Oh my god, Wilson, you’re writing about that house-printing machine? I wrote about that almost three years ago. (You get a slight pass because I couldn’t find my old link in Google because of Gawker’s inexplicable “Wheel O’ Permalink Syntax,” but still, you guys are supposed to be well-versed experts about technology. You should know about this stuff. The C in “Gizmodo” is for “some fucking context,” which you should provide, even if you only get paid per cock joke.)

While we’re on the subject of your torpid, irresponsible copy, stop calling stuff “*tastic.” Especially “geektastic,” your slackest-jawed portmanteau. Would you drop that bon mot to a woman you were trying to hit on in real life? Of course you would, because I know you guys, and you’re dorks.

Get it together: every single one of these consumer electronics companies should be approached as the enemy. They work for us. Hold their feet to the fire when they say their product is going to change even a small part of our lives. Circle back again in six months when they’re shilling the incremental upgrade and ask them why the last version didn’t cut the mustard. Step out of your blogging trench and ask yourself what your responsibility is to the tens of thousands of idiots who are reading this site right now to determine what they should spend their next paycheck on. They’ve already proven they’re too imbicilic to make any smart purchases on their own. (Remember, Gizmodo was a nexus of debate over which MP3 player was going to “kill” the iPod two years after Apple won.) If you write like another stupid fanboy who ricochets a pillar of spunk off the roof of his gaping mouth just because something is glossy and uses electricity, you’re just doing the work of the companies trying to get rich selling us broken promises.

Ah. I feel better. Didn’t help a thing, but I feel better, and I’m what’s important here.
–Joel Johnson

[Thanks, Gizmodo]

Web 2.0 takes a new turn – down a pipe!

This week Yahoo released one of the most exciting Web 2.0 applications I’ve seen in a long while. It’s called pipes, and it’s cool! What is Pipes you may ask? Well the blurb from the homepage says:

Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line.

What it does is to take the info you want, from where you want it and display links on it’s output page. I’ve only futzed with it a little bit and to tell you the truth, it’s HARD to make a valid, working pipe, but if you look at the work others have done you can see the potential.

NY law would ban iPod listening when crossing street

Sen. Carl Kruger would like to ban the use of iPods and cell phones in crosswalks throughout New York City. As the following article notes, it’s better than getting flattened by a city bus. The question this brings up is simple. If YOU could ban any technology, what would it be? Leave comments….

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN
Associated Press Writer

February 7, 2007, 4:12 PM EST

ALBANY, N.Y. — You could get clipped $100 for walking, jogging or cycling across a New York street with an iPod plugged into your ears under a new law proposed by a state senator from Brooklyn.

That’s better than getting clipped by a city bus, like a 21-year-old man who was listening to music when he stepped off the curb at the busy intersection of Avenue U and Flatbush Avenue and was killed Sept. 1, says Sen. Carl Kruger. The Democrat points to another incident in his district: A 23-year-old iPod listener killed in Bergen Beach Jan. 11.

“If you’re so involved in your electronic device that you can’t see or hear a car coming, this is indicative of a larger problem that requires some sort of enforcement beyond the applicaton of common sense,” Kruger said. His bill would also outlaw using cell phones, Blackberries, video games or other electronic devices when crossing the street.

“You should pull it out of your ear for the three seconds or four seconds that it takes you to cross,” said Jason Koppel, Kruger’s chief of staff. “Even if you have a light … you could have a fire engine coming and you wouldn’t hear it.”

The legislation will be introduced this week, Koppel said Wednesday. He wasn’t aware of any other state or city that has adopted a similar ban, but he said it’s a growing issue.

Violators in New York would get a court summons with a penalty of $100.

Charlotte Troisgros, 16, a Manhattan student talking on her cell phone in a crosswalk near City Hallon Wednesday, laughed and said the law may not be such a bad idea. “You really don’t pay attention. You might get hit by a car,” she said.

Restaurateur Cordell Lochin was talking on his cell phone as he crossed a city street. He said any law should be backed by research and not just enacted to raise revenue from tickets. “Laws are made to protect people. If they are going to protect people, it makes sense,” he said.

So-called “iPod oblivion” is on the radar in San Diego, where people have been warned it makes them easier prey for muggers, according to Kruger.

In November, New York City officials unveiled new automatic timers at five intersections _ one in each of the five boroughs _ to see if they boost safety and should be extended to the more than 100,000 city traffic signals. They count down the seconds before the light changes. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there were 156 pedestrian deaths in each of the last two years _ the lowest number since 1910.

Under current state traffic law, both motorists and pedestrians are required to obey traffic signals. Cars have to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks with no signal. Pedestrians have to yield to cars on roadways outside of marked crosswalks.

There are some fine points about turning.

At traffic lights, motorists have to yield to crosswalk pedestrians even when drivers have a green right-turn arrow. It’s the same when a driver stops at a red light and turns right.

However, the law requires pedestrians to obey signals and to avoid stepping suddenly into crosswalks right in front of turning cars. ___

Associated Press writer Adam Goldman in New York City contributed to this report.

[Thanks, Newsday.com]

Home Again

We’ve been gone for a week. I don’t suppose that anyone noticed……

It was a great week spent in Myrtle Beach. Brooke and I went to visit and babysit her nephew Gavin for the week. The weather was Seattle-like, cold and rainy, so we spent most of our time indoors. A real high point of the week was when we went to Ripley’s Aquarium there in Myrtle Beach.

It’s a real nice aquarium where you actually walk through the largest of the tanks in a serpentine acrylic tunnel. Really cool effect when you walk under a cruisin’ shark or saw fish. I’ll post some pictures later on.

Other highlights included Sunday breakfast at Akel’s House of Pancakes (2005 winner of Best Breakfast of the Year). The food was both good and plentiful. We also ate at Greg Norman’s Australian Grille. This is the only restaurant to bear the name Greg Norman and boy was it good! Tasty meals and the full selection of Greg Norman wines.

Anyway, I’m back now and will start posting regularly again.