John Mashek, a retired political journalist and part time teacher has a Blog over at U.S. News and World Report where he is busy commenting on politics. He posted some thoughts yesterday that struck a chord in my battle weary heart. He was referring to the Mukasey confirmation votes by Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and […]

Ben Popken over at The Consumerist just posted about a new service called Catalog Choice, an Opt-Out service for those nasty and unwanted catalogs you get in the mail all the time. Catalog Choice is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center whose mission is is to reduce the number unsolicited catalog mailings. Sounds good […]

My favorite marketer, Seth Godin, re-posted a very interesting article to his blog the other day. I’ve gone back a couple of times since to review it and finally decided that it bears repeating.
Seth maintains that since things are becoming less scarce, things are becoming less valuable. Well, we all agree with that […]

My brother-in-law Will (lovely man, great father, green to the gills), has documented a recent Verizon customer service issue that caused is mother Grace (lovely woman, cool mother, lives in Jersey) to cancel her newly installed Verizon DSL account due to speeds LOWER than 56kps. I didn’t make a typo there, modem-like speeds at DLS-like […]

We’re heading out to spend the weekend in Portland but I thought I just had to post quickly about this news story from Australia. You really need to read the whole article. The additional commentary is priceless for those of us who are not in the publishing business. Here’s a link to […]

A couple of months ago I stumbled across a site that made me say, ’Huh?’. Scott Ginsberg, that guy with the nametag, was recently featured on 20/20. In the interview Scott maintains that he is the luckiest guy he knows and it’s all due to the nametag. The nametag opens doors for […]

 This is an old article I found in my drafts section when I imported all of my posts from my old BlogSpot blog.

I’ve recently been lax posting to this and my other blogs. I got a new job and just don’t have as much time as I used to. But there is one […]

Seth’s Blog:
Rochambeau the front line
(via
Seth’s Blog)

“May I help you?”
Some of you may know that I once lived in retail-land, far above the Caramel Mountains and beyond the Sodie-Pop Sea. As a Staples employee I was taught to ask the question “What Can I Help You Find Today?” This is an open ended question and pretty much demands anything […]

Starbucks Redux…
On the 3rd of March I posted an article about Starbucks and the loss of corporate vision which has reduced the Starbucks experience to something akin of getting a cup of bean at a fast food restaurant. Time Magazine on-line put their own spin on the story with a couple of eye-opening thoughts:
You […]

Starbucks Smells the Death of Its Brand ExperienceCEO Confronts Missing Aroma of Fresh-Roasted Coffee
Wow, this is a great article. It really brings home that there is more than just one thing, a sign for instance, that are involved in branding. Starbucks had branded itself with a smell as well as a little green […]

Monster.Com E-mail Virus
This morning I received a horrible email purporting to be from Monster.com. You know them, the resume site that helps join up jobs with workers. The start of it is posted here:
So, running my cursor across the links I found three links to monster.com and one to http://khbdqnnkrgrl.com/ (Which is actually […]

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 […]