Chances are if urination is involved, you will lose your job.  From SalesHQ.com’s article 15 Stupidest Ways to Lose Your Job:

When April 15 rolls around, urinating on the IRS might be on top of your to do list. But be careful—like audits, the IRS does not take peeing lying down. As first reported by The Smoking Gun, an IRS employee relieved himself in the freight elevator “on numerous occasions.” After the signature scent was noticed, a federal agent installed a surveillance camera and caught the urinator in the act.

Did the culprit have a bladder problem? No, he said he “did this because he felt he could get away with it.” If you think you can get away with something, make sure you actually can. The contract employee not only lost his job but got slapped with a $4,600 cleaning bill and a felony charge for damaging government property that carries a maximum ten year sentence.

I wish I would have known of this one around April 15.

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The epitome of optimism – a headline from abcnews.com:

Has the Recession Finally Ended?

I guess you could characterize this as “talking up” the economy.  Here is one paragraph from the article that made me laugh (emphasis mine):

Today also brought some positive news from the much-battered retail sector. For the first time in three months, retail sales in May rose, by 0.5 percent, according to the Commerce Department. The sales were pushed higher by increased demand for new cars and sales at gas stations. It was the largest increase since sales rose 1.7 percent in January following six straight monthly declines. While this is good news, part of the jump can be attributed to a recent spike in gas prices which isn’t helping average consumers.

“Sales at gas stations” is clearly the spike in prices as the last sentence states.  That would actually be working against consumers and the economy.  A .5% increase could clearly be nothing more than a spike in gas prices, couldn’t it?

My discussions with candidates has been fairly consistent - the economy is brutal and another spike in gas prices like last year would be a tremendous blow.  Telecommuting jobs will be in even higher demand if a significant gas price increase occurs.

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This quote is from the JustSell.com daily email.  I thought it was excellent:

“Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing.”

Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)
French Artist

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Short background here is that Delta bought Northwest Airlines and now I am in the process of switching my frequent flyer program to Delta.  Being a free miles junkie, I completed Delta’s online travel profile.  I thought it was simple background info/preferences for me.  At the end of the 15 questions I receive this information:

Speed Racer

Comfort Seeker

Opportunist

Grand Planner

YOU TRAVEL IN THE FAST LANE, WITH MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY.

As one of those rare, special people who gets things done quicker when there’s more to do, you prioritize your time to your advantage. You always find a way to be more efficient, and you never met an obstacle you couldn’t circumnavigate. With such a need to get things done, anything that keeps your runways clear for takeoff is a benefit indeed!

Your mantra is SAVE TIME, BE EFFICIENT, and BE PRODUCTIVE.

Good grief – even Delta is competition in the assessment business!  I appreciate their “Speed Racer” description.  I was expecting something along the lines of “spaz” since it would have been more accurate.

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I have a new favorite title for a sales ad:

Territory Manager, Swine-Minnesota

I’m not making that up, it is an actual title.  This seems remedial, but employment ad titles do matter.  Most of us remember the days of looking at ads in a paper where space was limited and costly.  Titles were less important then because the ad was still displayed.  Not today – I only see the title of the ad and the company in the electronic format.  The title has to be strong enough to elicit the click.

I think there are many companies that still miss that critical point.  And the major culprits are companies with substantial market share.  Apparently they are relying on their name to carry through the click.  Perhaps it works?  I’m not certain and neither are they based on their title writing.

One simply suggestion – don’t use “swine” in your title.

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This is from JustSell.com:

Obstacles cannot bend me.  Every obstacle yields to effort.

–Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian painter, sculptor and inventor

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Ok, I’m confused – from our local Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal:

Gallup, Healthways and America’s Health Insurance Plans earlier this week ranked Minnesota as fifth in the country for the overall health of its people. In the case of emotional health, Minnesotans were ranked fourth.

The ranking, derived from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, comes about a week after the Minneapolis metro area came in 19th in BusinessWeek.com’s list of the 20 unhappiest cities in the United States.

In Minnesota, we refer to the Twin Cities as the “metro area” and the rest of the state as “outstate.”  Apparently happiness is found in the outstate areas.  This distinction is even more pronounced this weekend as our state high school hockey tournament is underway.  You have to live here to appreciate the enormity of this tournament.

Anyway, isn’t this a sign that we have way too many polls occurring in this country?

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Ok, the title is overly dramatic, but I did see a company encounter an email storm this week which was…well, laughable.  This is a large company with thousands of employees.  One gentleman sent out an email about a specific account with a Word attachment.  What he didn’t know was that one of his distribution lists was wrong – it included everyone in the company.

One person on his list replied to all about printing the document.  That email started the storm.  Person after person started replying to all to remove them from the email list.

It gets better, the original author then sent out another email that simply stated “please reply if you received this email.”  Now it was a tsunami.  People started replying to all to the point where it overburdened the email servers and the entire company email was delayed 4-6 hours.  Of course this all happened in the morning so that email was effectively lost for the day.

Brutal.  One lesson here is to be judicious in your use of reply to all!

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A bumper sticker I saw coming back from lunch today:

My dog is smarter than your honor student.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love email.  However, there is a downside to it.  I am emailing with someone today and I have no idea what gender they are.

The fact that it is -25 degrees F here today may be impacting my cognitive ability which is fine as long as my car starts.

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