This excerpt is from the cover letter of a salesperson:

Telemarketing There is no better.

willing to work Short Term, Long Term, Temp. Commision, depending on rate of pay.

Currently i am working a sales job, however, i do not like it, although i am very good, great at it I am only making $7 an hour.

Pass.

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I’m not British so waiting is not my specialty.  This factoid is from the JustSell.com daily newsletter:

According to the National Restaurant Association, the average consumer is willing
to wait 23 minutes for a table for dinner. That number rises slightly to 31 minutes if it’s
a weekend.

If you replace minutes with seconds, you will know my threshold for waiting at a restaurant.  My wife, who will wait 45 minutes to get into a good restaurant, has initiated a behavior modification plan to correct this weakness in me.

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This BusinessWeek.com article – How to Avoid the Commodity Trap – caught my fancy but I have to admit, it is a bit short on the “How to” part.  The main thrust of the article is to treat your customers with respect.  That is solid advice, but I was looking for more.

But what the article lacks in tactical description, it makes up for with anecdotal stories.  The article is a fun read.  It closes with the author retelling a personal experience:

My last example is personal. Two years ago, I dented my car and took it to a body shop for an estimate. A large tattoo-covered man stood behind the counter. And behind him, on the wall, hung a sign that did not inspire confidence in the respect that this establishment had for its customers. The sign read: “We screw the other guy and pass the savings on to you.” I inquired meekly: “I hope I’m not ‘the other guy’?”

Can you imagine that sign hanging in the lobby of some corporation?  Actually, there are a few companies that I can imagine using that slogan.

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Since I suspect many of you will be hopping on an airplane within the next few days, here is an article from Yahoo Finance titled 10 Biggest Bonehead Moves at Airport Security.  It is a funny article especially if you have been caught in one of these scenarios.  I usually cause one of these scenarios:

4.) Sporting Lace-Ups When Loafers Will Do

You don’t need to wear your father’s slippers, but you shouldn’t wear his army boots either. Nowadays, everyone — and that means you, Your Honor — has to take off their shoes for X-ray inspection. So wear shoes that can be easily put on and taken off. And if you don’t want to walk through the security area in bare feet, wear socks. Clean socks. Socks with no holes.

9.) Being Unprepared for a Patdown

Not everyone gets patted down, but if you’re selected for the extra security screening, it can be a little creepy.

Patdown searches are supposed to be done by someone of the same gender “except in extraordinary circumstances,” the TSA says, and you can request to be taken into a private area for the procedure if you prefer.

Number 9 hurts.  Although I consider myself to have cherub-like innocence as pure as the wind-driven snow, I get patted down every stinking time at the security checkpoint.  My wife laughs at me and Lee mocks me, but it is like clockwork.

I was in San Francisco’s airport at 1:00am catching the red eye back to Minneapolis.  Only 2 other people in line and I’m pulled off to the side for the wand inspection.

Another time I was at Gatwick airport in London and I can tell you this – the British do a complete frisk of all areas.  So if you are traveling via airplane this Christmas weekend, I strongly encourage you to read the article beforehand.

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This info is trivial, but entertaining.  From the JustSell.com daily newsletter – the 2007 cost of the 12 days of Christmas from the CNNMoney.com website:

Here’s the breakdown of the 12 days…

1. Partridge in a Pear Tree – $164.99
2. Turtle Doves – $40
3. French Hens – $45
4. Calling Birds – $599.96
5. Gold Rings – $395
6. Geese-a-Laying – $360
7. Swans-a-Swimming – $4,200
8. Maids-a-Milking – $46.80
9. Ladies Dancing – $4,759.19
10. Lords-a-Leaping – $4,285.06
11. Pipers Piping – $2,213.40
12. Drummers Drumming – $2,397.85

I had no idea the price of Lords-a-Leaping had gone up so much.

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I heard a radio commercial this morning for one of these credit card debt consolidation companies.  The closing line from the commercial:

Must have over $10,000 of credit card debt to qualify.

Qualify?  Exclusivity in a club for which most people would not want to qualify.  Excellent spin.

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From a cover email I just received in response to an ad for a regional sales manager:

Hi, Lee. I am _____. I live in __, however, I am international, or regional, or national, or whatever the job calls for.

It gets worse.  The candidate worked in a collection-type role and included 2 pages of collections (amounts, dates, commission, payment type).  He included the first and last names of the people from which he collected the late payments.

Unbelievable.

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Seriously, this happened to me.  When my son was 2 or 3 years old, he took my work cell phone and dropped it in the toilet (is there a better motivation to make sure everyone in your house flushes the toilet?).  I couldn’t find it, I called the number and couldn’t hear it.  I asked my son and he slowly led me to his bathroom where he raised the toilet seat and there it was.

Yup, I reached down into the water (was flushed, thankfully) and pulled it out.  I removed the battery and washed the entire thing with Lysol …twice.  I let it dry out for 2 days and it worked.  However, I still got rid of the phone in just a few months since I couldn’t look at it the same.

Now Yahoo offers up this article – How to Revive a Wet Cell Phone.  This story may only interest me, but there are some good tips in this short article:

The Cell Freak has all the collected wisdom on the topic, including some advice I’d never heard, like soaking the phone in 95% alcohol to dissolve all the water trapped inside. I’ve personally had good luck with low-level heat for wet phones and laptops: A few hours on the lowest setting inside an oven (150 degrees or thereabouts) can dry out a gadget and make it good as new.

Great ideas.  Of course, an ounce of prevention…

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The Herman Group newsletter this week discusses the amount of gaming that goes on in an office.  Gaming as in playing video games.  Seriously.

We estimate that computer gaming is costing United States employers millions of dollars every year. According to a recent survey of computer gamers, 24 percent of white collar workers admitted to playing during work hours.

The most critical finding is the frequency with which these workers play. Over half (53 percent) said they play at work at least once a day. Seventy-nine percent said they play at work several times a week—or more. Eighty-four percent said that, on average, they play casual games at work for between 15 and 60 minutes each day and 11 percent said they play casual games at work for an hour or more each day.

I laughed out loud when I read this.  I used to work for a technology company selling capital inspection equipment back in the mid ’90s.  The Internet was relatively new so online game play was not common (maybe not even available).  Unfortunately, the video game Doom was a huge hit and it could be played over a local area network.

Our entire support group was addicted to the game and playing it over the company network.  I think the game totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 guys playing it simultaneously.  They would sit in the back and it would be quiet outside of some furious keystrokes.  Then there would be 3 guys simultaneously yelling “Ohhhhh.”

It was really unbelievable.  I was trying to close new customers with our highly complex products that required a fair amount of support.  Yet the support guys were busy hunting each other in a video game.

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You know, I have had fourth quarters where I was tanking on my commission plan.  Yet, I never thought of this idea to make up for it:

A bank teller in Clearwater had a million reasons not to open an account for an Augusta, Ga., man Monday, authorities said. Alexander D. Smith, 31, was charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of forgery after he walked into the bank and tried to open an account by depositing a fake $1 million bill, said Aiken County Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Michael Frank.

Fantastic.  My favorite line from the article is the last one:

The federal government has never printed a million-dollar bill, Frank said.

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