Using Mom’s Hairdresser as Your Focus Group

To write about my husband’s clients would be indiscreet and highly inappropriate and we certainly wouldn’t want that. So let’s just say that I know this certain guy (let’s call him “Bob”) who has a number of small business clients (let’s just call them “clients” because calling them Dumbo, although tempting, would be inappropriate).

In earlier times, “Bob” worked at a fairly major Chicago ad agency and so he understands the etiquette of how a marketing plan and its accompanying creative product are handled. He knows that there is a creative director through whom all creative product passes before going to the client. He knows that marketing is not the same as advertising, not all cost savings are a good thing, and you don’t “rebrand” your business by changing the logo.

But small business clients don’t always know this stuff and trying to get them to understand it is like trying to teach a pig to sing – it’s not only futile but it annoys the pig.

“Hey Bob, I know that you told me not to be passing your confidential marketing notes around the office because it’s just a rough draft and all, but I was so excited about the concept and so thrilled about the work I thought I should share it with just a couple of key people. Twelve people within the company (including an intern and the third-floor janitor) loved it but the lady who does my mother’s hair doesn’t like it and now I’ve decided that maybe we should rethink this whole thing.”

And:

“You know that new logo that the professional graphic designer who specializes in creating logos designed for us? The one we spent two months, seven meetings, 56 phone calls and 1,146 emails about? Well, after I dropped it off at Bubba’s Auto Emporium on Monday to have it painted on the company vans, Bubba Jr. decided to take it to his high school art class and these kids have come up with something entirely different that is kind of cute.”

And:

“Bob, you can take that professional film production money out of the budget because I met this retired welder at my cousin Blanche’s wedding last weekend. He just started a wedding video business and he’s going to shoot the whole package – the commercials and the training film – on his iPhone for a fraction of the cost. Can you have the script ready by Friday? We’re going to save even more money with the on-camera talent because Blanche offered to do it for free and she looks so nice now that she’s got most of the weight off.”

I’ll bet you think that I’m kidding. I’ll bet you think that I’m exaggerating. I will admit that these examples are a compilation of the kinds of things that several different clients have come up with over the past year. Nonetheless, this weekend “Bob” has to try to break the latest news to the art director. I’d tell you more, but that would be inappropriate.

Are we having fun yet?

Dreading the Mailbox

The mailbox is a foreboding place these days. Like a 4:00 a.m. phone call, you know it’s not going to be good news. There was a time when I might look forward to a letter from a distant friend. Now friends just email me the latest YouTube link. Is it just me, or are you beginning to wonder if Susan Boyle knows a song other than “I Dream a Dream?”

Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes could be informing me that “I may already be a winner!” But I doubt it. Ed McMahon died and my hopes of an oversized check with my name on it died with him.

Nonetheless, I reluctantly trudged out to the mailbox this morning and here’s what I found:
3 magazines (I actually subscribe to one of them)
3 catalogs
2 ads
1 Christmas Card (from my insurance agent)
15 pleas for donations from nonprofits

‘Tis the season.

So I go through the stack. I pull out the “mailing labels enclosed” because I can always use more return address labels. OK, actually I can’t use more. I already have so many that I don’t know what to do with them. But I feel guilty throwing them out. Of course, that’s exactly what the nonprofit is hoping. That I’ll feel guilty about their having made up these lovely personalized labels.

The thing is: Lots of times they don’t get the name correct. Kay Lorraine. Sometimes they decide that my name must really be Lorraine Kay. Like I wouldn’t know my own name just because I’m blonde. And how do they know that I’m blonde? Worrisome.

Furthermore, my husband’s name is Brad Bate. Mostly, I don’t use his name. I use my husband a lot but his name, not so much. So I get Lorraine Bate, Kay Bate, Mrs. Kay Bate, Mr. Kay Bate, and – my own personal favorite – Mr. Brad Lorraine.

Anyway, I have too many labels. But my packrat mind keeps them all – just in case! Even the Christmas labels which, as a practicing Jew, are probably inappropriate for me, but the gas company doesn’t know that I’m Jewish so I use them to pay bills. I think of it as “Festive.” The Christmas Cards with the snow scenes are another story. As a Jew in Hawai‘i, they just don’t say “Happy Holidays” for me. But I keep the envelopes to pay bills with.

The only labels I don’t feel bad about tossing are the Jerry Lewis MD labels. Not because of Jerry or his kids. I give money every year to Jerry. But those are hands-down the most ugly labels known to man. Year after year, they never get any better. Horsy bold typeface set too close together. Yuk! Doesn’t the MD marketing department have an art director? Or someone with some esthetic sensitivity that can look at those suckers and say, “Guys, this is just crap.” It costs the same amount of money to print a nice serif typeface with decent kerning and leading as it does to print crap. Hello! So I throw those directly into the trash with no remorse.

But then there are the groups who send you a nickel. Do you peel off the nickels? Me, too. I just do it so that the metal doesn’t screw up the shreader at the city dump. That’s the only reason – I’m not really greedy; It’s an ecology thing. Sure.

At least it’s not as bad as the Indian Reservation that sends me blankets made from toilet paper byproducts.

Who knows better than I do how desperate nonprofits are these days? Each time I pass the empty building where the Hawai‘i Women’s Business Center stood, a pain shoots through my heart. They closed the doors over a year ago. I was the Executive Director. My husband says, “You have to move on.” Of course, he’s right.

In this economy, nobody has any money. So the nonprofits are glutting the mail. Can this possibly be profitable? I now own eleven free calendars for next year, filled with lovely pictures of polar bears and homeless children and whales-worth-saving. If those nonprofits took all of the money they spend on mailing labels, calendars, Christmas cards, Tibetan peace flags, and Indian blankets and did good instead, wouldn’t we all be better off? Or does no one give money to any charity anymore unless they get something or are guilted into it? Maybe that’s what we did wrong at the Business Center. Too much free counseling – not enough mailing labels. Sure.

Everyone is scrambling for every nickel these days. Not me, of course. I’m just trying to do my part to save the shreader.

Social Networking – Sometimes You CAN Pick Your Family

I have a dirty little secret. I have a second family stashed away in cyberspace. I didn’t choose them on purpose – at least not at first. But when I became unemployed, my friend Kathy Kamauu pushed me to use LinkedIn for business networking. So I joined a couple of professional Groups. This is as close to a sorority as I’ll ever get. I had to “apply” and I got positively giddy when I was accepted. Let’s face it, I’m not getting that much positive reinforcement these days.

In one of the groups, I was seduced by a subgroup – Professions and Industries. Now this is hard-core – sort of like joining a gang except you’re not required to wear your pants below your underwear which, I think you’ll agree, is a blessing for all of us.

There are lots of things that you can do in a LinkedIn group. You can go to the Job Board to see what’s available; you can check out the Promotions for free webinars and upcoming events; you can search other members’ blogs; or you can join a discussion group on a specific topic. I gleefully started discussions of my own and participated in others. I made some interesting on-line acquaintances. And then one day I stumbled into the greatest LinkedIn Group of all time: The CAREER INSIDER NETWORK.

And I was home.

There’s no explaining it. This is a group unlike any other. Some discussion “threads” have strict rules. This one has no rules at all. We give each other advice (some of it actually worthwhile). We uncover recruiting scams and gleefully name names to warn others. We cheer each other’s victories – be it a full job offer or merely a 2nd interview. We dispense sympathy when an offer falls through. We are a support group! We welcome newcomers with open arms, but woe to the newbie who wanders into “The Thread” and attacks someone personally, because we are fiercely protective of our family unit.

Serious friendships have developed. People have met face-to-face as a direct result of this group. Members pass along confidential information privately when they hear of an opening that might be right for someone. We bitch. We cheer each other up. We occasionally tell “Knock Knock” jokes. OK, that’s not totally true. Sharn in Thailand occasionally tells KK jokes. The rest of us groan. Professional recruiters and employment consultants such as Rick in Los Angeles and Kim in North Carolina regularly dispense advice both publicly and privately to members, generously giving away what others pay good money to get.

Swifty in the UK tells us that outsourcing is such a problem over there, he fully expects the government to outsource the Queen to China. Mark Dennis in the Philippines is our resident wisecracker and pun enthusiast. Marissa in San Antonio shares great Tex-Mex recipies and George “Stud Muffin” Gurney tells terrible jokes but since he owns the discussion, there’s not really much that we can do to stop him.

This, folks, is social networking at its finest. It is different from “social media” where people use blogs and discussion groups to try to sell their products or drive traffic to their websites. And it certainly isn’t FaceBook, which I have always considered to be a strictly “social” kind of networking between friends.

This is one of those rare instances when lightning strikes; when all of the windows turn and line up perfectly. An unusual occurrence when a business group turns into a family while remaining within the context of conducting business. We in this dysfunctional little family are virtually all in the same boat. We are all formerly middle or upper-middle management types who have, as a direct result of the economic collapse, inexplicably found themselves unemployed, often for the first time in our lives. From that misery has arisen a support group unlike any other. With people from at least 20 different countries, we have forged a bond and discovered that frustration and disillusionment is the same the world over.

This is pure social networking on a business level. It’s not for everyone. But to quote Lynn, one of our newest members, as she said this morning, “I don't know what I would do without you all. I love this board :)”

The Land Beyond O’Hare

Before I moved to Paradise (i.e. high cost of living, lousy wages, no jobs, but absolutely fantastic weather), I used to live in Chicago. Not the “greater Chicago tri-state area,” but CHICAGO. Right downtown. Across the street from Water Tower Place.

I make this distinction because in Chicago, as in many places, people get very defensive about their territory. In truth, it’s not really about geography but about the mindset that accompanies the geography. Rather like the famous 1976 New Yorker magazine cover that depicts a typical New Yorker’s point of view of the U.S., with everything west of the Hudson River lumped into one small barren blob.

In Kansas City it’s important to know if you are from the Kansas-side or the Missouri-side of town, because the Missouri side is chic but the Kansas side is not. Although my cousin Courtney claims to live in Cincinnati, she really lives across the river in Covington, Kentucky; but she would be as horrified if you referred to her as a Kentuckian as she would be if you had suggested that she marry her brother.

In Chicago, there are the city-folk, i.e. Chicagoans, and the suburbanites, whose suburb-names are not even differentiated in the city as anything other than “The Land Beyond O’Hare.” (O’Hare Airport sits just inside the city limits.) Chicagoans don’t like to go to the suburbs. They get lost. There are these vast expanses of nothingness, called “fields.” Very disconcerting. Then there is Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, whose 278 sq. mile parking lot has it’s own “Woodfield Mall Parking Lot, I Hate You” Facebook page with 3,887 members. Really.

In return, my Uncle Donn and Aunt Char lived in The Land Beyond O’Hare (OK, technically it was the suburb of Northbrook). They avoided the city like the plague. When Uncle Donn was forced to attend a dental convention at the Palmer House in Chicago, he hated every minute of it. Driving in the city made him nervous. Parking was always a problem. The prices drove him crazy. When they spoke of going to the “theater” they meant Drury Lane Dinner Theater in Evergreen Park to see the 156th revival of “Guys and Dolls.”

See, it’s a mindset. In business and in life, we don’t like that with which we are unfamiliar. We tend to do business with folks we know, which is why networking is so important these days. We want to see multiple references on your job application, hopeful that we will recognize one of them because we don’t like to deal with strangers. I am currently job-hunting and I keep avoiding “straight” for-profit postings, even though I was once President and CEO of a large Midwestern corporation with offices on both coasts. But that was years ago and now I feel more comfortable in the nonprofit world where I know where all the bodies are buried (one of them may be mine).

I don’t eat food that Norman Rockwell didn’t paint. My mother always read Roger Ebert’s review before deciding whether to join us at the movie (that way she would guarantee avoiding something that wasn’t upbeat). My son no longer dates, because he knows that eventually whomever-she-is will dump him. My husband has projects in the house that he has promised to fix for three years but has never even attempted, because he is worried that he won’t know how and he would rather be seen as a lazy bum than a failure.

Think of all of the things that we are depriving ourselves of because they are unfamiliar or uncomfortable or might make us appear to be less than competent or question our preconceived values. In defense, we mock the unknown as beneath us, uninteresting or tasteless. (My West End Avenue Manhattan friends, upon hearing that I had a ticket to see “The Addams Family” could not have been more appalled or horrified if I had intentionally smeared excrement across their white designer sofa.)

No matter the cost, we stay in our little boxes where it might be damn uncomfortable but at least it’s familiar. It defines us; who we are and what we do. It is our neighborhood, even if the geography is actually located squarely between our ears. Because, let’s face it, it’s pretty scary in our own neighborhood but it’s really scary out there in The Land Beyond O’Hare.

You Heard Me Say WHAT??

“That’s not what you said.”

This person is intelligent, articulate, and a friend. How could he possibly not understand what I said? I was very clear. Wasn’t I? Well, wasn’t I?

English is my mother-tongue. I have spoken it all my life. So I am always surprised when I say something very clearly and the other person hears something entirely different. Maybe it’s a simple language barrier: We both speak English but his is Mars-dialect and mine has a very distinct Venus-accent. Bad translation, perhaps.

And we weren’t even in conflict. Conflict communication can get really tricky. My thoughts go back to the office not so long ago when what I really wanted to say is, “Hey lard-ass, the presentation is tomorrow and Michelle suspects that you haven’t even started to write it, which means that she will be stuck here at midnight putting together the PowerPoint; so why are you busy posting a funny picture on FaceBook?” But I didn’t say that, because I am a caring boss who wants to empower my employees and constantly reinforce their self-worth to inspire a more team-driven end-product. Instead I said, “How’s the presentation coming?”

Polite. Inquisitive but not prying. Said in a friendly supportive tone of voice. But what he heard was, “Hey lard-ass, the presentation is tomorrow and Michelle suspects that you haven’t even started to write it, which means that she will be here at midnight putting together the PowerPoint; so why are you busy posting a funny picture on FaceBook?”

Strange. I didn’t say that. So he countered with, “Listen Bitch, stop riding me so hard. I could write this in my sleep and, besides, I’m taking a personal break here so why don’t you back off before I go postal.” No, actually what he said was, “Almost finished,” which meant that Michelle is probably right, and it’s not even started.

So in my best upbeat voice, while turning away, I said, “Great! Let me know if you could use a hand.” Which, in Kay-speak means, “Why do I even try to give these people more responsibility? I could have written this in my sleep.” And I go back to my office.

Given our tendency to hear what we expect to hear, miscommunication can happen easily. In addition, body language and tone of voice add heavily to the message being conveyed. I often tell my husband, “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.” He takes great exception to this, by the way, and always feigns complete innocence. Sure.

Most of us in the business world have taken some kind of seminar on communication where they teach you active listening, and positive spin, and putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. We learn to respect the other person’s belief, eliminate ambiguity, and most importantly keep our communications non-confrontational.

“Constant kindness can accomplish much.” said Albert Schweitzer, “As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” Albert clearly never visited my office.

By the way, Michelle refuses to think of this as an opportunity for growth; she wants overtime for having had to stay after midnight.

Twitter “Croaks.” Gone Phishing!

Last week, I had to apologize to Miss Universe. Twice. I hate it when that happens.

You see, she had taken exception to a couple of DM tweets that I had sent her, inviting her to check out an LOL video that “made my day,” and daring her to beat my IQ score. Frankly, I feel pretty confident that I could have held my own on the IQ score. The trouble was, I didn’t send either tweet. Nor did I taunt her with, “Did you know you were in this video?” Or offer to hook her up with Viagra at dirt cheap prices. At least, not on purpose.

Somebody hacked my Twitter account. What a mess! Multiple DMs (Direct Messages) had been sent to virtually every one of the hundreds of people who are “following” me. Bummer. Actually, Miss Universe was pretty nice about it. Others, not so much. I got some fairly nasty “croaks” from people I’d never even heard of. I just this minute invented the term “croak” because the whole word “tweet” has a kind of a nice, fun, upbeat sound to it. And there was nothing nice about some people’s reactions.

I felt real bad about it. At first I was just plain confused; then it became clear what had happened. I was the victim of phishing and I felt violated. Using my account, some hacker dropped a virus in my cookies (goodness, that sounds downright unsanitary) and sent out messages to everyone in my database.

Here’s the deal: social networking sites are tripping all over themselves to embed powerful features that most subscribers will never use, such as digital image or media files with the ability to download content from third-party Web sites. These features are not the kind of worms or viruses that shut your computer down. They just send out messages using your own friend list, or something similar. 99% of them are harmless advertising spam that result from wandering around in YoVille on your Facebook. (Hey, you gave them permission when you adopted your first cow.) But a moderately-proficient hacker can use the features to phish your network with files that, when opened, transfer the virus through that person’s network, and so on, and so on…

Mostly, the public doesn’t hear about nobodies, like me, who get phished. We just change our password, run a virus protection scan, clean out cookies in the browser, and a write a lot of apologies to people like Miss Universe. But I did some research and discovered that having your Twitter account hacked is not nearly as rare as you might have hoped. (Actually, Twitter tries never to use the word “hacked,” preferring instead to speak of having your account “compromised.” Sounds nicer, I guess.)

My research turned up 10 large-scale “compromisings” so far in 2009, covering thousands of accounts. Some of these include high-profile folks such as President-Elect Barack Obama (in January, before the swearing-in), Britney Spears (3 times in 2009), and the official feed for Fox News. Yikes. My personal favorite took place in mid-July, when a hacker broke into the online accounts of various Twitter staffers, including Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ email account. How embarrassing! The attack exposed all sorts of internal documents which were distributed widely and gleefully reprinted by the French website Korben.

As unique as I like to think of myself, my own experience targeted about 750 people, including New York Jets Wide Receiver David Clowney. I only hope that I’m not going to have to apologize to him as well.

Did I bring this upon myself? Well, maybe partly. It turns out that I’m not the only one who can’t retain anything but water these days. The systems are designed as they are because huge numbers of us with college degrees and reasonable IQs are unable to remember a single four-digit PIN number without “hints,” let alone a unique password for every application for which we ever sign up. The result is that 41% of internet users unwisely use the same username and password for numerous internet services, including online banking accounts. Couple this with apps like Ping.fm, which automatically triggers your message to your profile on FaceBook, hiF, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter and Xanga simultaneously, hooking them together like an ecosystem – when one account is “compromised,” the others are likely to tumble like dominoes.

Would I do something as stupid as this? Well…. not any more. Additionally, giving the user an option to guess the name of a pet in lieu of actually knowing a password has just dramatically shortened the odds for an attacker. Does the fact that I had three dogs as a kid, each one named Skippy, show continuing sentimentality on my part or an incredible lack of childhood imagination? You choose. Would I actually stoop to using “Skippy” as my password, let alone my “hint?” Well…..not any more.

There are some things that we simply can’t control. The kinds of DDoS attacks that occurred on August 6th managed to slow both Twitter and Facebook to a standstill by using a network of computers (dubbed zombies) to flood the server with requests for data until the server overloads and comes crashing down. No amount of firewalls on our end can protect us from this, but I so loved the security experts’ analogy of likening a DDoS attack to 15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time, that I just couldn’t resist working it into this post. Sorry.

I discovered two other interesting miscellaneous pieces of information in my research: The first is that there are Hacker Conventions. Lots of them. All over the globe. The world’s largest annual hacker convention is called DEF CON and it’s held in Las Vegas. Of course it is!! Federal law enforcement agents from the FBI, DoD and other agencies regularly infiltrate DEF CON but they just can’t keep pace with a couple of 18-year-olds with too much time on their hands.

The final remarkable thing is that this past April, University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson, by wearing a cap outfitted with electrodes that monitored changes in his brain activity, managed to tweet 23 characters just by thinking. Yup, by focusing on the letters, he spelled out “USING EEG TO SEND TWEET,” among other messages.

You know what this means, don’t you? It will only be a matter of time before some dweeb in a party hat will be able to stand across the room from me at a cocktail party and tweet spam into my head; words that will, no doubt, come rolling uncontrollably out my mouth like a gumball dispenser.

With my luck, I’ll be chatting with Miss Universe at the time. I could just croak!

Try Not to be so…..You.

I was headed to a job interview for a position that I was excited about. My friend, Professor Robert Littman, was giving me advice. “Try Not to be so....You.” I knew what he meant. I am unique/effective/charming/nuts/in-your-face/funny/weird (you choose – they all apply). I like to think of myself as just having too much personality for one body. But in a job interview, I should temper my sense of humor. I need to talk more slowly. I need to wear subtle colors and be careful not to overshare.

In the end I, of course, ignored his advice. Because if they had hired this serious, subtle, unassuming, low-key persona, in a few weeks the real me would have slipped out. I like to think that it would have been a lovely surprise for them but maybe not everyone would agree.

Do you know that if you Google “How to behave on a job interview,” you get 222,000 results? Really! There are whole articles written about how to dress, controlling your body language, never using slang, employing the proper handshake, the use of eye makeup, and correct nail polish colors.

You can hire a consultant to use for practice sessions. You can take multi-level courses on interview techniques, learning inside hints such as the initial interview is probably with a low-level HR person designed to weed out unqualified candidates so gaining “rapport” is a waste of your time. You learn how to cock your head ever-so-slightly and arch your eyebrows so as to appear "interested" in what the interviewer is saying. One special tip is to carry a thick portfolio with the client’s name on it, inferring that you have done a lot of research on their company. (It can be filled with blank pages – it’s the impression that counts.)

Sometimes the advice is contradictory. “Never cross your legs or your arms. Sit straight and at attention.” “Be careful not to look too stiff or uncomfortable. Crossing your arms just at the wrist conveys a comfortable but businesslike composure.” “ Smile; it’s a fact that smiling makes other people happy and comfortable around you.” “Don’t smile too much. It may look like you are not taking the interview seriously” Whew!

There are a lot of rules about your attire, too. Dress slightly better than the interviewer. Men should always be clean shaven. Never wear more than a watch and one ring. (Women are allowed to wear earnings that are small and do not dangle.) Never show any piercings and be careful to cover all tattoos. (Here in Hawaii, to comply with that last rule, all interviews would have to be conducted in Hazmat suits.)

If everyone were to follow even the basic advice of the “experts,” we would all end up looking and sounding like Stepford interviewees, rolling off a conveyor belt direct from the factory.

When I first moved to Hawaii 15 years ago, I tried very hard to fit in. Back in 1994, a potential employer actually suggested that I would do better in the job market if I would dye my hair brown and learn a little pidgin. More than one headhunter recommended that I “dumb down” my resume so as not to intimidate potential employers.

I finally had to give it up. In the words of cartoon character Popeye, “I yam what I yam…” I am a successful businessperson who is terminally haole (Hawaiian slang for Caucasian), terminally optimistic, terminally unique and I decided that those who couldn't handle that really shouldn't have anything to do with me. (There is a reunion of people who choose not to deal with me each year. It fills Aloha Stadium.)

It’s tough times for job interviews these days. There are so few jobs and so many candidates. And I worry that all of this interview advice is bad for everyone involved. Each side is trying so hard to put on a “good face.” Don’t kid yourself – the employers are doing the same thing. Employers are glossing over their financial difficulties (I have had some experience with this one) and purposely failing to disclose arduous job expectations in an effort to lure the best prospects.

Transparency is more important today than ever before. This corporate culture demands an almost unrealistic work output in order to keep afloat (unless, of course, you work for the government or a bank). We just can’t afford to play games with each other in the job market. Both employers and employees have a right to know what they are getting themselves into.

So if you interview me over the next few months and you frankly don’t feel up to handling that much personality without a couple of stiff drinks, just warn me and I’ll try not to be so, you know……me.

When Immediate Gratification Isn’t Fast Enough

Email, Facebook, Twitter, Tweets, LinkedIn, Texting, Skye, PDAs, wiki, blogs, Ryze, Tribes.net, Jabber, IRC, etc. The hottest topic in business these days is the importance of leveraging social networks as a business tool. It seems imperative that we join groups and communicate RIGHT NOW!!! I can’t help but wonder, is this really a good thing?

True story: I was editing a job at a video house in Los Angeles a few years ago, and I took a minute to run down the hall to the bathroom. Three minutes tops, I swear. When I got back to the editing suite, I discovered that a Hollywood producer had called my cell phone and was livid when I didn’t answer. Not annoyed - livid! I immediately returned his call and got an earful. “I went to the john. Did you really expect me to take my phone into the stall?” I joked. Yes, he did. I believe that his exact words were, “Your bodily functions shouldn’t be an inconvenience to me.”

Now admitedly, this was Hollywood, where everyone has an inflated opinion of the value of their self-worth. But still…..

My husband and I have a friend, several friends actually, who upon failing to reach one of our cell phones immediately calls the other to ask, “Where is Kay/Brad?” My mother used to do this constantly, hunting me down like a bloodhound on an escaped convict. When did it get to be my responsibility to be available to everyone 24/7?

I understand the concept of social networking. I’m trying to embrace it – really I am. But it’s getting to be a fulltime job.

E-mail is bizarre; even with my spam filter, I get about 60 to 70 emails a day. Those are divided fairly evenly between

1. opportunities to get a Ph.D. using only my “life experience,”

2. notifications of terrible deaths of government officials in Nigeria who have inexplicably left $6,000,000 of absolutely legal money and desperately need to run it through my bank account and, finally,

3. friends who send me jokes, YouTube clips, photos of cats, links to newspaper articles and, very rarely but occasionally, some actual information of interest.

I have a question: Does getting a link to a YouTube clip constitute legitimate social networking? Even if it is that really amazing clip of Chris Bliss juggling to a Beatles medley? I doubt it.

Facebook is an actual social network although it’s awfully time-consuming and I’m not sure just how it’s going to help me further my career.

I still don’t get Twitter. Although I actually do tweet from time to time, but I’ve never learned a single interesting piece of newsworthy information from a tweet and I’m beginning to think it’s a complete waste of time (please don’t tell Aston Kucher, though). And if you’ve got a PDA, you can text your tweet to Twitter. Furthermore, my friend Kathy Kamauu (who is an expert in this stuff) assures me that I can automatically update my LinkedIn status every time I post a tweet in Twitter via a Ping.fm account. Because it’s terribly important to revise my user timeline faster! Faster, faster, faster….

Why? And at what cost?

Lots of employers will now only accept a resume via email. Remember when you agonized over which paper stock would make your resume stand out from the crowd? Forget that now. You have lost control over how your resume will look or how their particular printer will format the pages.

A few years ago I was between gigs and already had a big trip to France planned and paid for so, on a lark, I applied for a temporary month-long telemarketing job. I scored well in the written materials but during my face-to-face interview, right out of the gate the guy asked me, “Quick, what is your worst fault?” I paused for a moment because, frankly, I have an array of crappy attributes from which to choose and I was trying to decide which was my most despicable. After exactly five seconds (he was keeping track) he told me, “Never mind, you already failed the test. You can leave.”

“Gee, what just happened? I wanted to give you an absolutely truthful answer.”

“We don’t want a truthful answer,” he explained. “We want a fast answer. If they have even five seconds to think, they might realize that buying a timeshare on Kauai is probably not a practical thing to do. We don’t want ever want you to stop to think because it allows them to think, and thinking isn’t good for business.”

In other words, thinking is a bad thing. Speed is a good thing today typing w/out capitals or punctuation is faster UR seeing the future of tomorrows business letters LOL

The Death Wish Café

“I’m sorry, Brad, but I can’t serve you the grilled focaccia for breakfast any more. We have it in the kitchen, ready for lunch hour, but the chef won’t let me sell it to you at breakfast.”

Now my husband has been a good customer since they opened their doors for business. The whole staff knows him by name. He often brings in friends at lunch, which helps to increase their exposure to new clientele.

Brad doesn’t eat red meat, fast food, milk, visible eggs or cheese. He’s weird that way. He also gets sick of oatmeal every day for breakfast so when his favorite restaurant added focaccia to their menu, he began ordering it grilled and was in seventh heaven. I don’t know why, because to me it’s just wads o’ starch, but he likes it. He’s weird that way.

So after months of this treat, he objected to getting it snatched from his jaws. “Why can’t I get the grilled focaccia?” he asked.

“I don’t know. The chef just won’t do it.”

“Go try again. Tell him Brad is asking politely.” So off she goes, into the open kitchen. Brad can see her in discussion with the chef. The manager of the restaurant eventually joins the group. Frankly, it’s a long conversation for one lousy piece of focaccia.

“I’m sorry, Brad. But he says, no. We’re trying to cut down on food costs.”

Now how refusing to sell focaccia to a waiting customer cuts down on food costs is a mystery. Brad thought that maybe it is a time factor: maybe the chef is too busy to be stopping to grill a special focaccia order. But he looked around the restaurant. It’s after 9:00 a.m. and there’s only one other couple in the joint. He can see into the open kitchen and the chef is just standing there, chatting with a waitperson. Frankly, I’m a multi-tasker: I can chat and grill focaccia at the VERY SAME TIME. But maybe that’s just me.

So Brad tells the waitress, “Go back and tell the manager that I’m willing to pay extra. I don’t care how much it costs. I want a piece of grilled focaccia.”

More three-way huddling in the kitchen. The Geneva Convention took less time to negotiate. Finally the waitress emerges beaming, “The chef says that he will serve you a piece of ungrilled focaccia and the manager gave me permission to toast it in the toaster.”

Brad’s response: “Are you f***ing kidding me?” OK, no that wasn’t his response – at least not out loud. He sure was thinking it. But he’s a nice guy and so he merely said, “Never mind. I’ll just drink my coffee and leave.” When he went to the cash register the manager told him, “The coffee is on the house, Brad. I’m sorry about your breakfast.”

Brad tipped the waitress generously, walked out the door and has never returned.

In a lousy economy you’ve got to get creative in order to stay alive. And one surefire way is to increase your customer service. Sure, you’re constantly trying to find new customers, but your number one priority is keeping the customers that you already have – keeping them happy and comin’ back for more.

By the way, back in February, the manager of this same restaurant was complaining to Brad that business was way down and they were worried about making it through to the other end of this recession. Their answer: They increased the prices on some of their most popular dishes. They INCREASED their prices at a time when people were watching their money.

I notice that when Downtown restaurant in the State Art Museum began seeing customer numbers drop they countered by adding a $9.95 combo dish to their sit-down menu. You can pick any three items from a daily list of five or six selections. They made sure that you could still have lunch with your client at Downtown and guarantee keeping your expenditure under $10. Now that’s smart thinking.

Raising your prices and lowering your customer service. That’s a death wish. Gee, but I miss that place…..

Please Don't Pee in the Pool

What is it about people who make trouble where they work? I’m talking about everything from emotionally destructive petty office politics to downright theft. There’s a reason that the old phrase “Don’t sh*t where you eat” has stood the test of time.

Here’s a doozy of a true example that happened just this week: A business acquaintance (let’s call him “the client”) contracted with a web designer that I know slightly (“the supplier”) to acquire a domain name and set up a basic website. For this task, the supplier was paid somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 (depending on whose version you believe at any given time). The website turned out to be nothing special but perfectly adequate. Over the years, I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse.

At some point, the supplier wanted more money. I don’t know why. I don’t care why. They had a dispute about additional funds and at some point the client asked for the passwords associated with his account so that the client could obtain control over the content. Not only did the supplier refuse to relinquish the passwords, but the supplier hijacked the site, and began posting derogatory comments about the client on it. This was not just the occasional snide remark, but genuinely outrageous and slanderous accusations posted on the client’s own website!

Is there anyone out there who thinks that this will end well? Me neither.

I live in Honolulu and, believe me, we may have a large population but Honolulu is a small town when it comes to doing business. If you have a dispute, take it to court. But hijacking a website to print ill words against your client, any client, is just plain business suicide. I can’t imagine anyone who would risk hiring this web designer given this behavior. Whatever anger this guy is publicly venting, the price that he is going to pay is his livelihood. Is that worth $10,000? Or $15,000?

I have another story about an idiot who violated the “Don’t sh*t where you eat” rule and killed a lucrative job as a video editor. If you want to hear it, let me know. Meanwhile, play nicely in the sandbox, kids. Don’t steal each other’s toys. And, please, don’t pee in the pool.

Didn't Their Mothers Teach Them Anything?

These are strange times in business. OK, these are strange times in life outside business, too. But I am particularly interested in the ethics and the basic courtesy that seem to be disappearing in the workplace: endless personal phone calls while clients stand waiting to be served; blatant abuse of sick days; monitoring employees’ personal emails; firing employees by email.

Didn’t their mothers teach them anything?

As a long-time business executive, I have witnessed all of the above and so much more taking place on a daily basis and I shake my head and wonder, “When did this sort of rude and, occasionally, downright unethical behavior get to be normal business practice?”

Last Friday, a friend of mine was fired. She has spent this weekend in tears. I feel terrible for her, but I recognize that people are losing their jobs every day. My problem is the manner in which she was fired: She didn't do anything wrong, she was merely the victim of the current economy. Last hired - first fired. I live in a state where employees are "at will," which means that they can be outsted with no notice and for no reason whatsoever. And there’s the rub.

My friend had no advance warning. They waited until the end of the business day on Friday and then called her into the office, confiscated her keys and escorted her out the door. Over the weekend, she discovered that they had made the decision to cut staff (primarily her) several weeks ago, but kept it to themselves. With a two-week warning, she could have started looking for a new job. She could have avoided buying that terrific but expensive new outfit, canceled her hair bleach (a blessing in disguise because, let's face it - it makes her look cheap) skipped the recent weekend Vegas getaway (he's only using her), and started tightening her belt. But instead she was blind-sided, shocked, humiliated. She was later told that this is just “standard business practice.”

When did this kind of callous, unconscionable behavior become standard business practice? Am I the only person shocked by these policies?

I am a virgin….well, OK, technically I have been married several times. But I am a virgin blogger who would like to discuss these strange times in life and business. I am hoping that others will share with me their adventures in the trauma unit that has become modern business and, with any luck, we will try to impart a few survival skills for coping in what is becoming an increasingly strange working environment.

And, along the way, maybe we can figure out the answer to the question: “Didn’t their mothers teach them ANYTHING?”