Clean Up Your Own Mess!

Note: Is this a business story? You bet it is. Dog poop and business practices have more in common than any of us want to admit.

Let me tell you about my dog poop story. When I was a kid I had a Cocker Spaniel named Skippy. OK, actually I had three dogs in succession – all Cocker Spaniels, all named Skippy. Perhaps it was through my various “Skippys*” that I learned that husbands are much like dogs – if one runs away or is hit by a car you can always get another. Just keep giving them the same name and move on with your life. But I digress…..

I loved those dogs. My parents were trying to teach me responsibility (they were always trying to teach me something – the key word there was “trying”). Anyway, we had a fenced-in yard and we would let Skippy-du-jour out the back door to do his business. It was my job to pick up the poop in the yard because, supposedly, Skippy was my dog. Never mind the fact that my father chose the dogs and purposely picked a duck-hunting breed as my own personal pet-of-choice. Nonetheless, my dog – my responsibility.

One year I got a bit lax about the dog poop and I learned a valuable lesson that has served as a personal parable for life. Here’s what I learned:

If you, or in this case – your dog(s), make a boo-boo in the yard, it helps to clean it up right away. You can try to ignore it but chances are somebody will step in it and track it through the house and there will be BIG TROUBLE. Or if you’re lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) you will be able to continue to pretend it never happened and it will just lie there endlessly with the sun's rays pouring down, heating things up until the whole backyard smells to the high heaven. Keep ignoring it and eventually winter frost will come and the snow will cover it up. By then you will have conveniently forgotten that it ever existed in the first place. Happy, blissful snowy winter!

Alas, Spring inevitably arrives and with it, the thaw. The dog poop has, regrettably, not disappeared during the winter as you had hoped; it was just covered up. But now it reappears with the crocus and, guess what? You still have to clean it up. Only now it’s all soggy and mushy and it falls apart when you try to lift it. Now it’s twenty times harder to get rid of and more likely to leave behind residue. BTW, if you think that dog poop loses its odor by being frozen you are sadly mistaken. I am saying this from experience. You can Fabreze the crap out of it (little pun there!) but it will take a long time before the vague scent of eau du dogie leaves the air.

I have never forgotten the dog poop story of my youth. We all have messes that we have to clean up in life. Some of them are of our own making, some are accidents and some are messes that others made but become our responsibility to handle. No matter how the mess started or with whom, it’s always better to go right out and clean it up immediately. It may be an unpleasant task, but the longer it lies festering in the hot sun, the more unpleasant it will be to get rid of in the end.

Even when we are trying to do the right thing all of the time, it sometimes seems as though cleaning up our own messes is a full time job. How can someone with such good intentions unintentionally step on so many people’s toes? I am not perfect, but I try to do my best. My attitude is:

1. Recognize your mistakes and own up to them;

2. Clean up your own messes without being asked; and

3. Don’t go away mad. But do go away.

Are we having fun yet?

*Is the plural of Skippy, Skippys? Or Skippies? I struggled with this.

The Sadness of the Hawai‘i Women’s Business Center

Brief disclaimer: Feel free to skip this. It isn't funny. It isn't even very interesting to anyone but a handful of people. It's just that occasionally you have to get something off your chest and say what needs to be said. That doesn't make it important to anyone other than me. I understand that.

I haven’t written anything lately because, frankly, I just don’t feel very funny. My heart is heavy as I mourn the closing of the Hawai‘i Women’s Business Center (HWBC).

I have been careful not to speak about the Center since leaving as its Executive Director last summer. But with its passing, I think that there are a few pretty serious problems that should be brought to light and discussed. They have to do with Washington bureaucracy run amok, the failure of community support on the most fundamental of levels and a political circumstance that makes it impossible for a federal agency to go to bat for a local not-for-profit organization that it helped parent.

The Hawai‘i District Director of the Small Business Administration (SBA), Jane Sawyer, was one of the founders of the HWBC. She and co-founder Cherylle Morrow, HWBC’s final program director have both done superlative jobs in holding things together through the devastating economic storm of the past couple of years. As far as I know, HWBC was the only free economic development center in the state whose mission was assistance to Moderate to Low Income (MLI) women.

This is a loss to me, personally, because I worked so hard to build the Center up and I have so much invested in it. The loss is overwhelming to clients who depended on the Center to assist them in becoming self-sustaining. But it is an even greater loss to small business in Hawai‘i and the community as a whole, whose government and financial industry have let them down once again.

(I hate acronyms and it pains my fingers to type them but there are going to be a lot of them in this article because the federal government is an organization that has never met an acronym it didn’t like.)

The Structure of the Operation: The HWBC had two funding mechanisms:

1. a national component, as part of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)
2. a local component, as the Center is required to match all federal funding with local dollars

Congress created and funds the federal Women’s Business Center (WBC) program through an earmarked line in the SBA budget, much like the federal Small Business Development Center (SBDC). The SBDC is similar but much older and better supported.

The Hawai‘i Women’s Business Center was funded in part through matching funds from the Office of Women Business Owners (OWBO), the division of the SBA that oversees the WBC program. Unfortunately, only about 30% of our funding came from the SBA and all of that was in “matching dollars,” which meant that we had to find outside funding for every dollar that was “matched” by the SBA – and then only for a limited amount each year. That still left approximately 70% of the HWBC operating budget coming from outside resources.

The Hawai‘i Women’s Business Center was unusual in several ways, all of which have to do with community support. Many WBCs are attached to their local Chamber of Commerce or other local economic development organization that provides on-site staffing. The Department of Economic Development in the administration of Mayor Mufi Hannemann was generous in allowing us space within a city-owned building at a substantially reduced rent. As much as that was appreciated, HWBC was one of the few stand-alone centers with no assistance from an on-site partner. (We did not share a receptionist, an accounting staff, pooled record-keeping resources, etc.).

Community Investment: Additionally, many WBCs enjoy strong economic support from their local banks, often as a part of the financial institution’s federally mandated Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requirements. Much has been made of the fact that the Center opened in 1998 with startup money from American Savings Bank. True and appreciated. But it has been years since any local financial institution has made a substantial donation or grant to the Hawai‘i Women’s Business Center. This was always a mystery to me since all banks are required to reinvest in their communities by federal law. It is also to the advantage of financial institutions to see that entrepreneurs applying for SBA-guaranteed loans have been nurtured to a degree that their success is better assured.

How the CRA Works: The CRA was created by Congress in 1977 to prevent banks from excluding or “redlining” low-income or minority communities from access to credit. It was designed to encourage banks to meet the credit needs of the “entire” community in which they operate. In 1997 the ways in which banks could meet the CRA mandate were broadened to include investments in the community as well as loans. There were also provisions for special consideration of minority and female owned institutions and partnerships as well as broader interpretation of community investments aimed at economic development of LMI segments of society.

So What? As Dr. Seuss once said, “Things like this are important to know – and that’s why I’m bothering telling you so.”

At virtually every other WBC, they enjoy a partnership with a variety of local financial institutions through grants and donations. Some are programs to support a bank's CRA performance evaluation, others are donations from the banks' foundations. Either way, this makes sense to me, since non-profit WBCs help women start businesses (which will need a bank), improve financial literacy (good for banks), become self-sufficient and increase family assets (also good for banks and S&Ls). Additionally, the HWBC assisted clients with a variety of SBA loan applications as well as working to obtaining traditional financing through a local banks or other lending institutions by helping to develop a workable business plan, raise credit scores, and fill out complicated paperwork and other forms of assistance. All of this is good for banks both directly in the formation of services and indirectly by creating a stronger community economic base.

So why did Hawai‘i banks fail to support the HWBC in ways that other communities were able to take for granted? I don’t know. I never figured it out. This is not a criticism of the local banking industry. It’s just what’s so.

State funds: Unlike our sister-organization, the SBDC, which receives funding from the Hawai‘i Legislature through a line-item in the state budget, the HWBC has never been part of the state’s funding plans. Many other states have included WBCs in their economic development budgets or fund the WBCs through grants-in-aid. The state of Hawai‘i, however, has never given the HWBC a grant-in-aid, despite many requests. Why doesn’t the state support the HWBC in ways that many other WBCs are able to take for granted? I don’t know. I do know that money is tight and there have been practically no grants-in-aid given over the past several years. But even before the current economic crisis, the State of Hawai‘i has never seen fit to award a grant-in-aid to the HWBC. This is not a criticism of the state legislature. Once again, it’s just what’s so.

Federal Funding: When the SBA began funding the WBCs through OWBO, the allocation was $150,000 per year. In the two years that I was Executive Director of the HWBC, we faced significant and steady annual cuts in the per-center program budget. Annual allocations have now fallen from an average of $150,000 per year per center to as low as $80,000 per center.

During this same period, the demand for services increased wildly. Historically, small business creation runs in a counter-cyclical fashion to overall national economic health. When the economy is running well at “full employment,” fewer people are thinking of starting their own businesses. When economic conditions deteriorate and layoffs increase, people launch their own ventures in increasing numbers. WBCs are on the front lines of this situation; as the economy tanked, women turned to entrepreneurship as a way to provide for their families. Walk-in traffic increased dramatically at the very time when our funding was being cut.

Loan Programs: Between the initial funding pool enacted in February 2009 and three additional appropriations, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) funneled a total of approximately $730 million to temporarily eliminate fees for SBA loans and increase the portion of each loan that the government guarantees, up to 90%. That has supported more than $27.5 billion in lending to more than 60,000 small businesses nationwide.

This was terrific news for small businesses in America, but it created a serious problem for already under-funded Technical Assistance Providers (TAPs) such as the Hawai‘i Women’s Business Center. TAPs are vital to the SBA program because small businesses such as one and two-man operations often need extra help in putting together a workable business plan, a fiscally responsible cash flow chart, an accessible back-up strategy and other tools required to guarantee that the borrower will be able to replay the loan in a timely manner. This is a labor intensive process on the part of the TAP and it is often accompanied by stringent time deadlines.

TAPs are required to attend seminars, participate in phone conferences and review reams of written information in order to learn the specifications of each different SBA loan program (I believe there are somewhere between five and seven different ones currently, including ARC). The TAPS then work with clients from helping them find the right program for their needs to actually submitting the paperwork. When the ARRA was first passed, it contained $25 million for staffing-up to meet demands for new programs. Unfortunately, not a cent of that money trickled down to the WBAs. The result was a LOT more work with another cut in funding.

Anyone who understands physics knows that you can’t cram 10 lbs of work in a 5 lb. bag. And, anyone who understands finances will appreciate how important the Technical Assistance Providers are to the program: A government-backed loan reduces the risk for the lender because if the small business borrower defaults, the government eats the guaranteed portion of the loan (in some circumstances, that’s up to 90% of the entire loan amount). So the less assistance small business folks are getting, the more likely they are to default on the loan. This would be a disaster for the federal government. This is federal bureaucracy at its most inept.

Buried in Paperwork: While we are on the subject of federal bureaucracy, let me point out that because of its legislated structure and funding, the WBC Program is complex. The paperwork is overly complicated and inefficient. In report after report, huge chunks of the exact same information is required to be typed into forms, in defiance of the federal Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980. During my period at the HWBC, I can honestly say that there were large periods when I was so inundated with redundant federal paperwork, I didn’t have time to do my job.

Untimely Payments: SBA grant payments are supposed to be made to the WBCs in quarterly installments (more or less). When I first came to the center in the summer of 2007, it was not uncommon for a Center to go four to six months (or more) without a payment. OWBO recognized that they had a problem and instituted new procedures designed to fix the problem. On September 20, 2007, Anoop Prakash, Associate Administrator of the SBA’s Office of Entrepreneurial Development testified before the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship. Prakash talked about “…grant disbursement backlogs and delays, and other customer service issues that have affected at least one-third of Women's Business Centers and have periodically placed them in difficult financial circumstances.”

Even after the restructuring that was intended to fix the system, testimony related to SBA Entrepreneurial Development Programs and the Role of Women’s Business Centers in an Economic Recovery submitted to the U.S. House Committee on Small Business on February 11, 2009, admitted that huge problems remained. “While there has been some significant improvement in the speed with which grant monies are disbursed, the paperwork burden remains exceedingly high – especially when compared with other federal, state and local procurement procedures that WBCs follow – and the program grant disbursements are not always made in a timely manner. In recent years many WBCs have waited months before they received the funds for the services that they were delivering throughout the course of the year.”

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to maintain reasonable cash flow in your business if your primary client regularly withheld all payments for half a year at a time? How would you meet rent and payroll? How would you continue to provide your services and products to your clients? How can any federal agency that purports to “provide business training, counseling and other resources to help women start and grow successful businesses,” withhold payments and behave in such an un-businesslike and unconscionable manner?

In the end, the loss of the HWBC is more than just unfortunate. It is a blow to small business in Hawai‘i and should be a serious concern, as it is indicative of several significant problems in both Washington, D.C. and in our community.

Shame.

Why We Don’t Need Another Nonprofit

Those of you who have been following me for the past couple of months know that I recently lost my job as the Executive Director of the Hawaii Women’s Business Center. It was nothing personal. Federal funds were cut to such a point that they could no longer pay my salary, or that of our office manager. I was sad to leave the Center, because I am still passionate about their mission, but the board and I were in agreement. In a dwindling economy, you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.

Since then, a surprising number of friends and colleagues have suggested that I should start a competing non-profit. Bless their hearts, I know that they mean well. But I consider this to be a mistake of astonishing proportions on a number of levels.

First of all, frankly there are just too many non-profits already out there in the marketplace. They often have similar goals and even though the work that they are doing is altruistic and necessary, the administrative costs involved in overlapping services ultimately hurts those who need them the most. As an example, I googled “drug treatment youth Hawaii” and quickly found 124 separate rehabilitation facilities and programs – and I didn’t even try very hard.

Let me be clear about this: I am not suggesting that we need fewer addiction programs in the state. I haven’t studied this situation enough to make a judgment such as that. But I do strongly suspect that we don’t need any more programs. I believe that we would get better ROI by putting additional funding into the programs already in place rather than by starting yet another.

Funds are dwindling – everywhere. There’s just not enough money to go around. The pie is smaller; the need is greater. In the past, it has been difficult for moderate and small-sized nonprofits to recruit suitable leadership, simply because nonprofits traditionally pay substantially less than their counterparts in the for-profit marketplace for positions of equal responsibility. Often the best candidates don’t even bother to apply. Of course, there will always be those of us (particularly baby boomers) who feel a calling for working in the nonprofit industry, despite the monetary downside. But the hard fact is that resources are diminishing, even for those of us committed to the altruistic goals.

In April of 2009, a survey of over 1,100 nonprofit leaders in markets nationwide was released by Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF). The key findings were pretty bleak:

• Only 12% of nonprofits expect to operate above break-even this year.

• Just 16% anticipate being able to cover their operating expenses in both 2009 and 2010.

• 31% don't have enough operating cash in hand to cover more than one month of expenses, and another 31% have less than three months' worth.

• 52% of respondents expect the recession to have a long-term (2+ years) or permanent negative financial effect on their organizations.

• 93% of lifeline organizations that provide essential services anticipate an increase in demand in 2009.

According to the Washington Post, a recent survey of member nonprofits by the D.C.-based Center for Nonprofit Advancement revealed that:

• one-third have no operating reserves or endowment

• 41 % are suspending or closing down programs

• and 44% are laying off staff.

So where will the nonprofits that do survive get their funding?
Oh, oh….more bad news:

It probably won’t be from foundations. On November 4th, The Foundation Center located in New York City reported that their latest survey shows foundation giving will likely decline in 2009 by 10%, slightly worse than their 8% estimated earlier this year. And as if that isn’t bad enough, the Center predicts further declines in 2010.

The extra money needed probably won’t be coming from the public either. According to a November 16, 2009 Associated Press report, only 38 % of Americans say they are likely to give at least one charitable gift as a holiday present this year, compared to 49 percent last year.

Looks like Santa is going to be skipping a lot of 501(c)(3) chimneys this year.

So will nonprofits fold up their tents and close their doors? Some will. But the smart ones will quickly discover that there is safety in numbers. Savvy nonprofits will band together with like-minded organizations and share costs. They will disclose strategic planning information so as not to cannibalize each other’s programming and educational bases. I predict that the ones who will succeed are the ones who understand their clients’ needs and allocate their budgets to doing one thing really well rather than trying to be all things to all people.

Those who sit tight and pray for a white knight to gallop in and save them won’t stand a chance in this economy.

So, to all of my dear friends who have encouraged me to start a women’s business center, bless your hearts but don’t hold your breath. I may be neurotic but I’m not stupid. The world doesn’t need another nonprofit right now. Let’s just support the ones we already have, OK?

P.S. This holiday season, the world probably doesn’t need another $16 scented candle, either. But there are families around the globe whose lives would be changed by the gift of a goat or a chicken. May I suggest that you check out Heifer.org or Oxfam.org, two nonprofits that help families in third world countries become self sufficient while providing nutrients for their children. Or give the gift of a smile – The Smile Train performs free cleft palate surgery on children around the world, changing their lives in societies who shun those born with deformities. With nonprofit organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Project Hope, Mercy Ships or your local Shriners Hospital for Children, there is very little excuse to spend money on candy (it rots your teeth and makes your butt fat), knickknacks (they collect dust) or jewelry. Do something good this holiday season. Please. Thus endeth the lesson

Share the Knowledge – There’s Enough to Go Around.

There was a period in my life where conventions and groups flew me all over the country to speak on the topic of how to bid production contracts correctly. Inevitably, after every seminar, someone would come up to me and ask, “Why is someone as smart as you sharing this information with your competition? Your knowledge is your bread and butter. Why give it away?”

Well first of all, when you’re as naturally blonde as I am, it’s always shocking when anyone accuses you of being smart. Usually people want to come up and tell me the joke about how you can tell when a blonde has been using your computer (answer: Whiteout® on the screen). But secondly, and more importantly, my answer always was and still is, “What’s good for the industry ultimately benefits all of us. Competition ups the ante and brings out the best in everyone. It keeps us sharp.”

Besides which, I don’t want some bozo to win the bid because he/she didn’t understand the process and then, after having gotten the job, went into panic mode with the client. Clients have a bad habit of lumping the idiots in with the blondes, oops… I mean professionals, and it makes us all look bad. Just because I taught someone how to do it properly, that doesn’t mean he can beat me at my own game. I’m not THAT blonde!

My point here is: don’t be stingy with your knowledge. There’s plenty to go around. Competition is a good thing.

My father owned a couple of small dress shops in Ohio. Whenever a new dress shop opened in the neighborhood, my father always sent a big spray of flowers for their opening. He actually helped a young couple get started with credit from vendors. He had another competitor with whom he regularly ate lunch and traded advice. When I questioned it, he assured me that anything that helped draw customers to that end of town was a good thing. Anything that kept potential customers from driving into Columbus or Cleveland or Cincinnati to buy their clothes helped keep home court advantage. And in the end, he was confident of his position in the marketplace. The attraction of a fresh store may bring the customer into town, but in the end she will wander down the street to see what is new at “Soldan’s” and he’d have more merchandise and better selections than the new guys so he’d inevitably end up with the sale.

My father was smart that way. He was lousy at raising a strange, quirky daughter but he was a terrific businessman.

I believe in healthy competition. I believe in sharing the wealth. I believe in love….no, wait, that’s a Beatles song. I am competitive. I want to succeed but I want to succeed because I’m smarter and deserve to succeed – not because there was no one to compete against. No one wants to win by default. Sure, it’s better than not winning at all, but the victory’s not as sweet and in the end, it makes you soft and lazy.

So go out there and help a competitor. Don’t help him/her a lot, mind you; just enough to make you feel superior and maybe just a little bit blonder. :)

“Ya gotta dance with them what brung ya.” (A Treatise on Loyalty in Business.)

It’s cheaper to get your printing done in China or Hong Kong. Even non-union shops can’t compete with Asian prices. So in a tough economy such as this, doesn’t it make sense to go for the lowest bid? I don’t think so, but I am in the minority. And that worries me.

I happen to live in Hawaii. I have been surprised to learn that this blog is read by people all over the country. Maybe not a lot of people, but still…. The concept of loyalty in business applies anywhere, it is just that in Hawaii we are so isolated and insular that the obvious often seems easier to recognize.

I am careful to bank at one of the few financial institutions that is 100% locally owned. My bank is not a wholly owned subsidiary of an international financial conglomerate. There are no absentee shareholders screaming for dividends. A Chinese family that understands the unique needs of the neighborhood and has a deep investment in the community’s future has owned it for generations. They have no plans to move their customer service department to Indonesia.

I try to buy my fruit and vegetables at the local farmers’ market. Not only do I get to choose exactly how many tomatoes I want (no prepackaged 5 lb. quotas) but I support a hometown family who will take my money and put it right back into the community through neighborhood purchases and state taxes. We grow avocados right here in the islands; why do I need to buy avocados from California? Furthermore, by buying locally, I reduce the environmental impact caused by fuel to ship fruit across the ocean.

I purchase my office supplies exclusively at Fisher Hawaii. Their décor is not as pretty as Office Max (boy, that’s an understatement!) but the money stays right here in Hawaii, and that’s important to our economy. Also, it must be a pretty good place to work because the employee turnover is zilch and whatever you’re looking for, they can quickly find it. It may be coated with five years of dust (both the employee and the item) but you name it and they’ve got it.

Sometimes I have to shop at Home Depot, but only if City Mill doesn’t carry what I need. Not that there is anything wrong with Home Depot; they seem to be a conscientious company that provides a lot of local jobs. It’s just that their profits (which were up in both the first and second quarter of 2009, by the way) get shipped to the home office in Atlanta. Now there is nothing wrong with Atlanta. It’s a swell town if you’re not trying to find an address on Peachtree Street (there are 71 streets in Atlanta with a variant of Peachtree in their name). But those profits aren’t helping build the infrastructure of Hawaii, and I live in Hawaii.

A number of years ago, I was the speaker at the local Ad Federation luncheon. I used to produce television advertising and I took advantage of my speaking opportunity to annoy several ad agency executives by publicly noting that while a recent Hollywood-based film was shooting on Oahu, a number of no-name imported California actors had been cast in local commercials. These were not actors with special talents. They brought no “star quality” to the spots. In fact, the parts they took were minor roles with a minimum of one or two lines, any of which could have been handled nicely by at least 10 competent local actors who weren’t working enough to be overexposed; but the clients paid a premium for out-of-town talent.

“What’s the problem?” someone in the audience challenged me. Well, here’s the problem: Those actors were already drawing a paycheck from the film. Shooting a spot on the side was just “gravy” to them. The residual checks were sent to their homes where they paid their rent (in Los Angeles), bought some groceries (probably at Ralph’s) and gassed up their cars at the Slauson Avenue 76 station. In other words, it generated absolutely no economic impact in Hawaii.

Furthermore, each job that went to one of these out-of-towners deprived a local working actor of his livelihood. Who knows? That might have been the month that the local actor couldn’t make his rent and was forced to quit acting to sell Hondas at Pflueger Auto. Why should the client care? Because next month he will need to shoot another spot, and that California hottie will be long gone. By the way, so will the local actor. The talent pool just got smaller and the client will have no one to blame but himself (or herself). Either way, everybody lost.

Investing in your community is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity. Frankly, we need the tax base. Tourism is down even worse than it was last month. The Lord helps those who help themselves. Encouraging local prosperity is just good business. Think about that next time you reach for those raspberries grown in Peru. Papaya tastes better anyway.

Let's Blame Amy!

Long ago, I owned a film production company and we had a summer intern named Amy Kohn. She was only with us for a few months and she didn’t have much in the way of job responsibilities but Amy was a lovely young lady and we all liked her a lot. After Amy had gone back to college for the fall term, whenever something went wrong around the office, it became a running joke to blame it on some bonehead thing that we pretended Amy had done or forgotten to do or, more often than not, something with which she had never even been involved. It was just a handy way to avoid taking responsibility for anything problematic.

This became such a useful pretext that years later employees who had never even met Amy regularly blamed things on her. It was part joke and part convenient excuse. Paperwork that was long overdue was in a folder labeled “Amy’s file.” A broken drawer had a post-it note stuck to it that said, “Amy, would you PLEASE fix this!!” Sometimes you would only need say, “Amy,” and roll your eyes and everyone understood that someone had screwed up big time but it sure wasn’t going to get hung on anybody present.

Everyone has an Amy in his or her office or life – a scapegoat for whatever is going wrong at the moment. Something for which you just can’t bring yourself to take responsibility. I don’t have a job right now, but it’s not my fault. Between the economic downturn and the cutting of federal funds, they couldn’t pay me so my position was eliminated. See, totally not my fault! I haven’t gotten a new job yet but in this dismal job market that’s not my fault either. In fact, I have several friends who are out of work and dead broke but they are not to blame. I also have a couple of friends who are single and wish that they weren’t but there’s nothing they can do about it. Their inability to get a mate or even a steady date in no way reflects their looks or their self-centeredness or their arrogance or boorish mindset or lack of commitment or (insert your excuse here).

Taking responsibility for your own actions is a bitch.

I’d like to write more about this but I really ought to be plowing through the heap of unironed shirts that are sitting on my dining room chairs. I meant to finish them yesterday but then we took my visiting brother-in-law out to brunch and it was so hot out that we escaped into a movie theater and by the time we got home it was too dark to iron. I mean, am I responsible for the sun going down? Of course not. The sun is up now but it’s getting hot again and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t sleep all that well last night. Also, I’m pretty hungry. I think I’ll wander into the kitchen and make myself a sandwich and then catch a little nap. After all, I gotta eat and get some rest. Who could blame me for that?

“Amy, would you PAH-LEESE get to the ironing?” (head shake and deep sigh here).

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?”