Corporate Culture Vulture

As anyone who’s held a job for more than say, five minutes, can tell you, every workplace has a distinct culture. And finding a place where you’re a fit with the culture and the culture is a fit for you is as important to your workplace happiness as finding a Mr./Ms. Right is to your love life.

No, you’re not looking for THE ONE.

There’s no such thing.

But there are definitely places where you’re going to enjoy working, and there are definitely places that you’re going to despise.

I was fortunate during my full-time career to have only one job that was a complete and utter misfit, and that was Wang Labs.

I knew right away.

Truly, if my APC – the Wang PC that we dubbed “Almost a PC” – had been working on day one, I would have typed up a resignation letter.

That APC didn’t work, so I decided to soldier on and ended up staying 2.5 years. Yet despite having very fine colleagues (an almost saving grace), the years were just plain miserable.

It wasn’t the dysfunction.

If there was one element that characterized every place I’ve ever worked it would be dysfunction. You could almost say I pretty much specialized in it. I always assumed – perhaps incorrectly – that there was a parallel universe composed of fully functioning workplaces. But I wasn’t interested in working there. My big fear was that it would be boring. After all, aren’t happy families companies all alike, while every unhappy family company is unhappy in its own way? (Thank you, Mr. Tolstoy, for providing an insight that I could borrow from.)

So I had a very high tolerance of, perhaps even a hankering for, dysfunctional companies. Having interesting work, working with good and smart people, was what I was after. Sure, this theoretically could have happened in a company with a healthy (i.e., non-dysfunctional) culture. But this apparently wasn’t what I wanted out of my work life, and I traded off working in wildly interesting (and downright gleefully entertaining) companies (all of which, I must add, failed) for working in a well-run company that might have had a better shot at success. Or even – imagine that – succeeding. (Whatever that means…)

It also wasn’t the politics at Wang that drove me nuts.

Come on, people talk about politics at work as if it were something awful.

Okay. It can be. Corporate politics can be nasty, unnerving, and destructive, and I’ve worked in a couple of places where the pols might as well have been doing opposition research, conducting push polls, and running negative ads.

But politicking is also how ideas are advanced, challenged, strengthened.

Sure, this is an ideal read, but workplace politicking doesn’t turn me off.

And the politics at Wang – at least at my level – were pretty darned minimal: running for vice-president of your fourth grade class, rather than campaigning for the U.S. Senate.

No, at Wang it was the numbing, stunning, pervasive, crippling bureaucracy that got me down.

One characteristic of the bureaucracy was that all power emanated from the top. I was told that by the time I joined, things had eased up a bit, i.e., founder An Wang was no longer approving things like, say, the paper that a datasheet was printed on. But it was still pretty darned awful.

Having some bureaucracy is helpful. I.e., it’s good to have a known process for any number of tasks, and establishing and maintaining the process is going to require you to have some level of bureaucracy. Just. Not. Wang’s.

Given my interest in corporate culture, my corporate culture vulturism, as it were, I was interested in Paul Hellman’s recent Boston.com column on the subject.

Paul knows what can happen if you find yourself in a bad culture:

Because even the best job—in the worst culture—will kill your satisfaction, and your success.

(I do need to reinforce my earlier point that you may well attain job satisfaction and a modicum of success  - personal not corporate, and thus not sustainable - in a dreadful culture.)

Paul thinks folks should find out what a corporate culture is like before you accepting an offer. He suggests that you don’t rely on generalized questions that are going to elicit vague, less-than-helpful answers, and provides some suggestions for the types of questions that will get at the specifics:

1) Stories: "Tell me about someone who's been really successful here" (not just based on technical skill, but on modeling key values). "And tell me about someone who hasn't."

2) Behavior: "Suppose I worked here, and met all my performance goals for the year. What other behaviors would contribute to a high performance rating? What would get me a low performance rating, even if I met objectives?"

Good advice, but I have another suggestion.

It may not always be feasible, but, before you take the plunge, why not spend a bit of time in the new place.

This can be risky, especially if you don’t end up taking the job.

People, after all, have been known to blab.

But if you sit in on a group meeting, attend a company rah-rah session, spend a day shadowing your potential boss or potential peer, you’ll get a pretty good idea about what the company’s culture is all about, even when you discount the fact that your presence will likely having some sort of impact on everyone’s behavior.

I worked for many years at a small company that was wildly dysfunctional and plenty political, yet which had a culture that made people love the place. (This sounds crazy, I know. You had to be there.) Before we made a hire, we invited all prospective employees to sit in on our weekly Friday lunch, a kind of rough and tumble brown-bag meeting (with dessert provided by a different employee every week). If someone could make it through Friday lunch and still want to work with us, they were in. Or were joining at their own risk.

Did it work?

Mostly.

Once in a while someone who just wasn’t our kind of employee decided to join us, but mostly we attracted folks who were a good fit. Maybe this was to our detriment. Maybe we could benefited from a few different perspectives. But, on reflection, this really wasn’t our problem. People didn’t have any issue with pushing and shoving and making their ideas and feelings known. (Why we failed is a tale for another post. Or maybe I should revisit my book.)

Anyway, reading Paul Hellman’s column reminded me of just how important culture is.

And reading his column also reminded me that we were classmates at the Sloan School at MIT.

Yay, Class of 1981.

Which, by the way, had an excellent class culture of its own…

Home of the bean and the cod? Nah. Home of the psychiatric technician.

I am a complete and utter sucker for lists, rankings, “mosts”, whatevers, that reveal something or other (or maybe even nothing) about a region, city or state.

Matters not how shoddy or imbecilic the approach used to come up with the lists, rankings, “mosts”, whatevers. Best not to look to closely at how anyone comes up these lists. Methodological rigor is seldom involved. The assumptions behind the rankings tend toward the specious.

But reading through them – and reading into them -  is just plain fun.

As in last summer, when we learned that my sister Kath (small city), my cousin Ellen (mid-sized city), and I (big city) all live in cities that made the snobbiest-for-their-size places to live. Not bad for three girls whose maternal grandparents got to Ellis Island with fifty bucks in their pockets.

Or a couple of weeks ago, when I read about travel predictors, by state. No surprise that the most likely destination for residents of Massachusetts was Ireland. But given the crappy weather on both sides of the pond, you’d think we’d be more interested in the places our fellow New Englanders seeks out: Aruba (Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island) and Costa Rica (Vermont).

Interesting, useless non-information! Big data are da bomb!

The latest one I’ve seen is a list of the job that’s “more common in that [one] state than anywhere else in the country.

In order to come up with a list of the most unique jobs by state, Mental Floss teamed up with Economic Modeling Specialists Intl., a CareerBuilder company, and analyzed a metric called location quotient, which "compares the percentage share of a state’s workforce in a given occupation to the percentage share of the nationwide workforce in that occupation," according to Mental Floss. In other words, the location quotient measures what jobs are most specific to a given state. (Source: Huffington Post)

Admittedly, this list -  from an analytical perspective -  is more rigorously concocted than most. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for an outfit called Economic Modeling Specialists, given that my husband was an economist/econometrician, and given that my first job out of business school was working as an economic and financial modeler. (Oh, wait, certainly the latter should have convinced me that modeling can be bull-shitty modeling to the extreme. I remember one manager demanding that we throw extra variables, no matter how far-fetched and implausible, into our models to “pump the fit.” Did it really help NYNEX forecast new phone demand by throwing swimming pool exstallations – whatever that means – into the equation?)

And I have to say that, from a grammatical perspective, reading the words “most unique jobs by state” makes me cringe.

Nonetheless, it’s great fun to read through the list: Sure:

It's no surprise that there's a high concentration of actors in California, but who knew Kansas was the referee capital of America?

Not to mention finding that Massachusetts comes to the fore in terms of psychiatric technicians. I will interpret that as our having better-than-average concern for mental health, rather than that we have more people who suffer from mental illness. Which is sort of borne out by another list I saw that had The Commonwealth among states with a rate of serious mental illness lower than the national average.

Anyway, walking through the list is interesting. And mostly doesn’t hold all that many surprises (other than Massachusetts, Kansas, and – maybe – Arizona: semi-conductor processors: who knew?) And what is there about public transportation in Maryland that makes them home to so many subway and streetcar operators. (Streetcar operators: are these job titles never updated?)

In the no surprise category, why wouldn’t Arkansas, home to Tyson food, have a high rate of food processing workers? And, while on the subject of ghastly jobs, think all you want about where the hog butcher of the world might be, but why wouldn’t Minnesota, home to Hormel Foods, have more slaughterers and meat packers?

Delaware  - thank you, Irénée DuPont -  has more than its share of chemists. Washington – thank you, William Boeing – has more aircraft assemblers.

There are plenty of other states in which the “most unique” job harkens back to days of yore, when every state was known for some industry. (Wisconsin is the Dairy State. Or used to be: now it’s the foundry mold and coremaker state.)

But Connecticut’s still the Insurance State, specializing in actuaries. Oregon has loggers. Oklahoma has wellhead pumpers.

One of my favorites is Indiana, where boilermakers rule. So it looks like Purdue’s mascot remains safe. (No need to change it to the Purdue semi-conductor processors or the Purdue survey processors.)

Another of my favorites is Illinois, which leads the pack in terms of correspondence clerks.

Correspondence clerks! Talk about harkening back.

Has such a profession actually existed since Bartleby was a scrivener, since Bob Cratchit toiled away under Ebenezer Scrooge?

Oh, I’m sure it’s the fin serv folks who send us letters, but it sure sounds quaint.

And just think of all those Chicagoans, toiling away in downtown skyscrapers, toiling away at correspondence. Have they traded in their quill pens for something more modern? Are they typing away on manual Remingtons, pounding away to make sure they get through all those carbon copies? Have they upgraded to IBM Selectrics – use white out to correct mistakes, and Xerox to make multiple copies. Or are those correspondence clerks using e-mail these days? Do they tweet?

Ah, the wonder of the list…

 

 

 

 

 

Sky Rockets (and Diggy) in flight

In the weeks leading up to his death, my husband came up with a list of places he wanted a bit of his ashes to go, and I’ve been working my way through his list. And through the small canister of remains that Mt. Auburn Cemetery held out from the bulk that are interred there, in a lovely spot on Azalea Way.

One evening, when we were talking about “the list”, Jim mentioned that he was willing to spend a good deal of money to have his ashes sent into space. A good deal of money. As in half of what was in his IRA.

And while I am not one to deny a dying man his wish, I told him that it would have to be a two-fer, because the only way I’d pay that much to have Diggy slip the surly bonds of earth would be over my dead body.

“Oh, yeah,” he said and laughed. “That must be the brain tumor talking.”

But I told him that I’d find a way to get him there cheaper, and I immediately found a couple of places on line.

He liked Celestis. I did, too.

After all Celestis’:

….heritage encompasses over 30 years of global leadership in private sector space missions and applications including:

• the first ever private launch into outer space (1982),
• the first private, post-cremation memorial spaceflight (1997),
• the first lunar burial (1999)

Jim was a science guy, a math and physics nerd, with a complete fascinating with space exploration. So Celestis looked like it had the right stuff.

Plus it’s also the memorial spaceflight provider to the stars: hippie guru Timothy Leary, Gene Rodenberry (originator of Star Trek, which means little to me, but Jim was something of a fan), and Gordon Cooper. Gordo was not necessarily Jim’s favorite astronaut, but, as played by Dennis Quaid, he was definitely Jim’s favorite character in The Right Stuff.

So for a lot less than Jim was initially willing to spend, he’ll be heading into space a bit later this morning, sky-rocketing off from Spaceport America at 10 a.m. Eastern.

UPDATE:  The launch pad was struck by lightning – maybe Diggy’s not ready to launch – so his spaceflight has been postponed.

Right now, I’m kind of wishing I’d gone to New Mexico for the launch, but I’ll be able to watch it online. (I had considered going over to Mt. Auburn for the event, but didn’t want to trust that I’d be able to watch it on my aging Blackberry.)

UPDATE:  I’m no longer kind of wishing that I’d gone to New Mexico for the launch.

The option that we/I chose is just the straight up-and-down (think Alan Shephard), rather than the more expensive orbit flight (think John Glenn), or the quite pricey lunar orbit or deep space launch (think Neil Armstrong and Captain Kirk). 

Unless there’s some disaster, I’ll be getting Jim’s space capsule ashes back, and these are the remains that will remain with me, ‘til my death do us part.

Meanwhile, in my experience, something funny almost always happen around the death of a loved one.* Especially if you have a sense of humor and/or are Irish.

For my Aunt Margaret, it was the day-glo souvenir whistles sitting in baskets in the ladies’ room of the funeral parlor. (It almost goes without saying that it was an Irish funeral parlor…)

For my mother, it was my 4 year old niece asking what was in the box. (A question that my 5 year old niece could easily answer: “Grandma!”)

There were a number of things that happened around Jim’s death that would fall under the comic relief category, but I’ll stick with the one having to do with prepping Jim’s ashes for flight.

When you sign up for Celestis, they send you a kit that includes a small cylinder and a funnel.

Now, if you just looked at the funnel dead-on, it didn’t seem as if the opening at the narrow end of the funnel was that narrow. But talk about the eye of the needle.

As I began to sift bits of Jim’s remains, little pebbles (I refuse to think bone chip) kept getting caught in the narrow end of the funnel.

After a few minutes of pushing little pebbles through the opening with a lobster pick and/or tweezing them out so they wouldn’t block the progress of the fine ashes, I realized that I was going to have to make those remains a bit more granular.

I fleetingly thought ‘blender’, but that was way too ick a thought. So I fetched the little brass hammer I use to put pictures up – a hammer that we always refer to as our ‘lady hammer’ – spread out a towel, covered it with Glad Wrap, measured out the right portion of ashes needed to fill the cylinder, and started whacking away.

If ever I felt like a crazy lady, it was standing in my living room, pulverizing my husband’s remains, while “Bang, Bang, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” rolled around in my head.

Anyway, Diggy would have enjoyed the scene. As he would have enjoyed his skyrocket in flight.

Of you go, Diggy.

I’ll be thinking of you. (Not that this makes today any different than any other day.)

It may not be where no man has gone before, but it’s a place where this man hadn’t been.

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*Unless it’s a child…

One more reason to avoid taking selfies

Personally, I don’t actually need another reason to avoid taking selfies. I have plenty enough already.

My principal reason is just plain having zero interest in taking one.

Still, always wanting to expand my skillset, and fearful that there might be some sort of emergency that would require me to take one – or that I might get caught up in an outbreak of narcissism or something – I thought I should at least know how.

Now, there are plenty of things that I don’t know how to do. There are plenty of things that I do poorly. But, as it happens, mastering the art of the selfie is well beyond my feeble grasp. Oh, I suppose my selfie-competence exceeds my ability to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel while blindfold. But it’s pretty darned poor. The few times I tried, I mostly took a picture of the top of my head. The one time I managed a head shot, I looked like Mama June on Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo. (If you don’t know what she looks like, the short version is morbidly obese and squint-eyed mean. And, no I won’t be posting that selfie. It’s already been deleted from my Blackberry.)

So, no, I don’t need yet another reason why not to take a selfie.

Nonetheless, as a public service announcement, I will offer this one to my dear readers who are no doubt madly, wildly, faithfully taking self portraits and posting them in and on places I don’t go. So here goes:

…a new crop of digital marketing companies are searching, scanning, storing and repurposing these images to draw insights for big-brand advertisers.

Some companies, such as Ditto Labs Inc., use software to scan photos—the image of someone holding a Coca-Cola can, for example—to identify logos, whether the person in the image is smiling, and the scene’s context. The data allow marketers to send targeted ads or conduct market research.

Others, such as Piqora Inc., store images for months on their own servers to show marketers what is trending in popularity. Some have run afoul of the loose rules on image-storing that the services have in place. (Source: WSJOnline)

And just so we could figure out how this particular bill becomes a law, the article even has a handy-dandy infographic:

Needless to say, I had to traipse on over to at least one of these sites, and I went and picked Ditto, where, we are told that “1.8 billion photos are shared on social media every day. Have you seen what they say about your brand?” The home page then cycles through a couple of sub pages, one of which shows a map of the U.S., which shows a handful of images avec logo linked to a specific location.

Now, maybe everyone gets to see the same map, or maybe the map will always have something specific to your area, but mine came up showing that someone in Virginia has “shared” a picture of a cup of Dunkin Donut (a made-in-Boston brand), and that someone had uploaded a picture of their kid in Fenway Park wearing a Red Sox jersey and cap.

The header on the map page is:

Reveal when, where and how people experience y our product. 

Well, I don’t really think that the Red Sox need to pay Ditto anything in order to discover what I could tell them for free: that on any given summer home game evening, 90% of the people at Fenway Park will be wearing Red Sox gear. And, depending on how the game/season is going, they may or not be smiling.

And, well, I don’t really think that the Red Sox need to pay Ditto anything in order to discover what I could tell them for free: if the Sox are up, the fans will be smiling. If not, the average fan will be grimacing and swearing under their breath about having Clay Bucholz as your ace. (Actually, this only goes for the adults. The kids will be smiling regardless of what’s happening on the field.)

You know, I actually want to like Ditto. It’s a local company, with a lot of MIT-ers associated with it. Not that I’ve spent my career promoting the greater good of mankind, but I’m not the big-brain-inventive-genius type, eitther. So I sincerely ask: aren’t there better things to use those big MIT brains on, other than helping consumer goods companies more effectively market crap by exploiting the privacy of the their customers? (Clever marketing bit on their management team page, by the way: everyone’s wearing, holding, or using something with a big, fat logo on it.)

Why would Instagram and Pinterest enable Ditto et al. to grab all these pictures of, say, cute kids in Red Sox jerseys at Fenway Park?

The photo-sharing services…hope the brands will eventually spend money to advertise on their sites.

And:

Instagram, Flickr and Pinterest Inc.—among the largest photo-sharing sites—say they adequately inform users that publicly posted content might be shared with partners and take action when their rules are violated by outside developers. Photos that are marked as private by users or not shared wouldn’t be available to marketers.

Wonder what percentage of Instagrammarians and my friend Flickrs read the fine print.

Not something that someone who is both anti-selfie and selfie-challenged has to worry about.

David Rose, who founded Ditto Labs in 2012, said one day his image-recognition software will enable consumers to “shop” their friends’ selfies, he said.

I have no idea whatsoever what this means. But I’m sure as hell happy that none of my friends will be able to “shop” that picture of me looking like Honey Boo-boo’s mother…

Adulthood 101. (Oh, grow up.)

Last week, while heading out to dinner with my sisters, we passed a place that my sister Kath – whose town we were in – was hoping was a new restaurant.  But Society of Grownups? As my sister Kath wrote on her blog:

What the hell kind of tragically hip name for a restaurant is "Society of Grownups?" And who would want to eat there anyway? (Source: My Rolled Trousers)

When we got back to Kath’s after dinner, we – natch – took to The Google to suss out SOG, and found that it’s an insurance company (Mass Mutual) operation aimed at wooing twenty-somethings interested in planning their financial futures.

It will surprise no one who knows my sister Kath that she has a funny and trenchant take on this:

Good idea, to provide financial education to recent college graduates and young adults, and probably a smart marketing initiative from a stodgy old insurance company who probably took a look at the demographic of their current clients and found they were all Trouserville cohorts, circling the drain with paid up life insurance policies grasped in their ancient claws. And who is going to start a storefront center for finding your inner geezer?  No future in that.

While it’s difficult to improve on Kath, I will point out that there actually is a storefront center for finding your inner geezer: Fidelity’s spot on 155 Congress Street in downtown Boston, which seems to be something of a hangout for the gray brigade.  Nothing hipster about it, unless you consider a printed-on-paper copy of the day’s Wall Street Journal hipster. The  only personal touch is a fishbowl full of miniature Hershey bars on the counter, in case one of us geezers waiting to talk about our IRAs starts feeling a bit peckish or faint.

While the SOG website has many links to sensible financial tools and advice, the overall gestalt of the enterprise seems to be cloying cutesy-ness, which may go down well with the Instagram generation but seems downright patronizing to an old codger.

If you think that “cloying cutesy-ness” is anything approaching an exaggeration, take a look at the Society of Grownups for yourself. And compare and contrast the SOG approach to the look and feel of Mass Mutual when they’re talking to the rest of us. While Mass Mutual has the standard boring fin-serv picks (products and solutions, planning tools and resources, business needs):

Society of Grownups believes you can pursue adult goals like starting a family, opening a business, or saving for retirement without losing your sense of adventure. Come to a few of our classes and events and you’ll see what we mean.Welcome to the Society of Grownups. Helping you find your inner adult.

Can’t disagree with trying to make young adults more knowledgeable about things financial. With so many of them coming out of school with a ton o’ debt, I’m sure that plenty of them could use a bit of advice. And given how many Boomer knuckleheads are nearing retirement age with near-zippo in terms of savings, getting focused on saving up for the years leading up to The Great Beyond is a good thing.

But “helping you find your inner adult”? Isn’t this what life does to you? Do you really need to sign up for a course named “When Money Buys Happiness: Spending on The Things You Care About” or “Beyond the Hostel: Planning Grownup Trips”? Aren’t these things you can figure out for yourself?

I’m such a crank…

You’d think I’d be happy that there’s a place that encourages “the kids” to crawl out of their online caves and actually meet people face to face, a place that provides an alternative “scene” to a drunken groping bar.

But it does, as Kath says, seem patronizing, as if any appeal to the common sense (and self-interest) of a generation has to be couched in “fun”, tongue and cheek terms.

And isn’t “finding your inner adult” something that actually is part of the “adventure”, not something that’s antithetical to it? Isn’t “finding  your inner adult” something that sort of comes naturally along the way?

You get a job and realize that, now that it’s your money, not theirs,  so you can spend it on whatever you damn well please, including a Bob Dylan album or mini-skirt that they might disapprove of.

You get your license and drive a little too fast on that curve and find yourself up over the curve, two inches from the telephone poll (fortunately) and no cop in sight (double fortunately). So the next time you’ve got the car, you slow the hell down on that curve.

You help your friends through their crises - loss of boyfriend, loss of faith, loss of parent, bad trips, hangovers – and, along the way, figure out how you’re going to cope when those crises come your way.

You get an apartment. You wear down your landlord into replacing the crappy fridge. You take yourself to small claims course – and win – if the landlord wearing-down doesn’t happen fast enough.

You go away, far away, and figure out how to cope when it’s pouring rain, you’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s late, and the hostel is full. (Note to Society of Grownups: if you’ve actually done the hosteling routine, you really don’t need a travel course to figure out hotels.)

And then you get a real job. You negotiate a raise. You hire someone. You coach someone. You fire someone.

You find “the one”, and end up getting married. Or not, and end up staying single. Living with someone, living on your own: both very good ways to find your inner adult.

You have kids – the ultimate ‘oh, grow up’ experience. Or not, but end up being part of someone else’s village. No, it’s not the same, but whether it’s their kid or yours, you figure out how to clean up a baby covered in crap up to his neck. Try to comfort a child who seems inconsolable. Show someone the joys of kite-flying. Stop them from doing something dumb (or maybe just something annoying). Answer a scary big question. Realize that, as much as you want to do it, sometimes there’s no way you can take the heartbreak and pain away. Help kids understand that things mostly do get better. Explain to them that, yes indeed, life is sometimes sucky and unfair. And, let’s hope, convey to the children you know and love that life is always an adventure, and that there are a lot of good and fun things about being a grownup.

And that there are a lot of not so good and fun things about being an adult, but that this is okay, too. Things like coping with the illness, the death of those you love. All part of life, all part of what we’re here for.

According to the Society of Grownups:

Every generation has its own dreams. And its own ideas about success. But the only path to happiness is the one built on your individual goals and values.

True, all. (Although I might argue that every generation’s dreams and ideas about success pretty much end up the same. We all want to find love, companionship, meaningful work…)

And, yes, that “path to happiness” is yours and yours alone.

But do you really need the Society of Grownups to realize this?

Restoration Hardware: the gift that keeps on giving

Over the years, blog topic-wise, I’ve considered Walmart a gift that keeps on giving. And while I haven’t done anything Walmart-ish in a while, they remain of interest, and may well appear in Pink Slip in the not so distant future.

But I don’t want readers to think that all I do is use my metaphorical Payless Shoe shod foot to kick the folks from Bentonville.

Nope. More than occasionally, I pull on a metaphorical Ferragmo boot to kick the higher end-crowd. And a repeat offender here has certainly been Restoration Hardware. Whether it’s their pretentious “store as museum” attitude, or the unsolicited (and, frankly, pretty monochromatic and boring) 14 pound catalogs that continue to litter the doorsteps in my neighborhood, RH is an entity that continues to cry out for a good blogging.

Their latest is the introduction of RH Financing.

In keeping with their serene and subtle approach to marketing – no Bob’s Discount Furniture Bob-inator for them; no Bernie and Phyl and their quality, comfort and price; not Elliot Jordan letting his grandkids eat chocolate ice cream on his Sunbrella-covered couch – RH invites us to buy their wares on credit using their very own serene and subtle color palette. No screaming “no money down”. Just tastefully laid out. And – I’ll admit – mincing no numbers when it comes to calculating just what it’s going to cost you monthly, and in total, if you decide, say, to slap $100K worth of furniture on your RH card, and spread the payments over the next seven years.

Am I the only one who thinks that if you can’t afford to RH your digs without paying for it with a seven-year loan, you should probably be thinking of an alternative.

I mean, I’d sleep on a mattress stuffed with dried corn cobs, and eat off a 1950’s metal tray table, before I’d step toe in a Bob’s. And I do find Bernie and Phyl, not to mention their offspring, pretty annoying. But I think Elliot Jordan’s kind of cute. (He actually may live around here. I know I’ve seen him on the street.)

I’m also looking at that $100K figure and laughing.

For the tax filing for my husband’s estate, I have to provide a calculation of Jim’s personal property.

The value of his clothing can be pretty much calculated by throwing it in a ragbag, putting it on a scale, and computing the going rate (cents per pound) for rags.

Our furniture isn’t all that much of different story.

As I sit in our combo living-dining room computing the cost of everything in here, including what’s on the walls and the tchotchkes on the mantel, it barely makes it above $10K, even if I fake up some value for my grandmother’s claw foot table and rickety little desk. Or the side tables from my sister Kath.

Of course, as with our other furniture, it was all acquired over time. The dining room table, chairs, and credenza predate the leather sofa, which postdates the “antique” (i.e., acquired at a junk store) glass-fronted cabinet we store our CD’s in.

I have some very interesting things hanging on the walls, but the most expensive art object is actually the frame for the Achille Philion  poster – An Attraction without a Parallel. We paid $100 for it at an antique/junk store in Vermont a million years ago for . It cost $700 to frame. (Just found one online at an antique poster gallery, and apparently it’s worth a bit more than $100. Weren’t we the clever art investors!)

Anyway, our other rooms are furnished with a similar combination of decent quality, not so hot, hand-me-down, and antique/junk store. With stuff on the walls nicely (i.e., expensively) framed, but not of really high value. (Other than Achille Philion. He rules!)

So, if I can furnish 1200 square feet with interesting, personal, rugged (whatever we paid for it, our stuff tends to stand the test of time, that’s for sure), shabby chic for a grand total of maybe $20K, so could someone else.

Now that’s an awful lot of money, money that most folks don’t have sitting in their checking account.

But it’s really not that hard to start out modestly, buying the essentials and scrounging where you can, and building up over time.

And you wouldn’t have to borrow $100K from RH in order to do live comfortably.

Of course, no one will mistake my home for an RH catalog, or any body’s showroom.

But it really is an “us” kind of place.

That said, when I do some renovating, I will be replacing some of the pieces. Of our three Jennifer Convertible couches, only one is likely to make the cut. And that oversized chair where I’ve read so many books and taken so many naps, well, I think its days our numbered.

I have a budget vaguely in mind, not to mention a style.

Neither the budget nor my personal taste will put me any where near RH.

Not that I’d be tempted to sign up for their credit line.

Who’d want to be paying off furniture for seven years?

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A tip of the old chapeau from my sister Trish, who passed this one along to me.

Hey, Mr. Nadella, I know you really didn’t mean it, but the karma route just plain doesn’t work.

I read with interest about the brouhaha the new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella set off last week:

…when he told an audience of tech industry women they should trust they will get raises when they deserve them -- despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

"It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along," Nadella told a crowd at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, ReadWrite reported.

"That's good karma. It will come back," Nadella continued. "That's the kind of person that I want to trust, that I want to give more responsibility to."(Source: Huffington Post)

Well who wouldn’t want to give more responsibility to someone who’d take it on for nothing? That doesn’t make it right on either side: the non-giver, or the non-receiver.

I like to think that Grace Hopper – who I suspect was a plenty tough old gal – is snorting in her grave somewhere. (For those who don’t know who Hopper is, she was a mathematician and pioneering computer scientist who has both a Cray Supercomputer and a U.S. Navy Destroyer named after her.)

To his credit, Nadella apologized and admitted that he was wrong, and with a level of sincerity that went beyond the mealy-mouthed “I misspoke” and “I’m sorry if someone was offended by what I said” faux-apologies that are such the mode these days:

"Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap," Nadella wrote. "I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work ... If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask."

Here, Nadella gets is right.

For years, women have hung back in the workplace just waiting for their contributions to be recognized and rewarded. And then sitting there stewing when some guy who was likely less competent and definitely didn’t work as hard got tapped for the promotion, and scored the big raise. Having had a career in the technology business, I understand first hand how difficult it can be for women in such a male-dominated culture. And I also understand how women play right into it, letting ourselves take the wait for karma to kick in approach. Unfortunately, this  just plain won’t get you ahead in a world where the boys are all yelling “Pick me. Pick me. Pick me. I’m a good hitter. I can catch.” While the girls stand quietly on the sidelines, left for last pick, while wondering why, given that they know for a fact that they’re a better hitter, and better with the glove, than Mr. Pick Me will ever be.

I knew from the get-go that, in terms of getting a promotion, waiting for someone to recognize my worthiness was not going to cut it.

Pretty much every time I got a promotion, it was because I raised my hand and said I’d do something. Not that I had much competition in vying for what were mostly thankless tasks in companies that went nowhere. Still, as I clawed my way up to senior this and director that, it was mostly because I put myself in the position to say “I do.”

I worked for years at a small software company, apparently long enough to outlast everyone in my way and find myself on the management team as director of marketing. The others on the team – it almost goes without saying, all guys – were all VPs. I wanted to be a VP, too.

After waiting for “it” to happen, I decided to advocate for myself, making the case to the company president. And, as I made my case, making sure that I had the backing of all the guys on the management team.

Although I hated the way my promotion was announced – a story for another day – I did get the title. And no raise.

Now, I knew that I wasn’t going to make what the guys made. They actually had broader job scope and greater responsibility. But there was no way I was going to let a zero-based promotion to VP happen.

So I went back to the act-on-my-own-behalf well that I’d drawn from to get that vaunted VP title, and drew up another bucket of ego, resolve and ammunition.

I made my case – including data I got from headhunters – and got a 20% raise that put me at the sweet spot salary level I was looking for. Given that bonuses are tied to salaries, this turned out to be a very good thing.

I probably worked full time for another eight or nine years after I scored this raise, and, while I’ve never run the numbers, between salary and bonus this 20% raise probably earned me well over an additional quarter of a million bucks.

If I’d waited for karma to find its way to my desk, I would have been sitting there further down the food chain, making a lot less money, and making myself crazy wondering why all those jerks were deliberating on the future of our products, group, company while I was doing “real” work.

They say that karma’s a bitch, but that can’t be right.

If you’re expecting karma to eventually come to your rescue, you’ve really got to keep in mind that sometimes karma’s just a plain old garden variety a-hole.

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While I was working on this post on Friday, I took an e-mail break, and there was a note from my friend Valerie, sending me a link to the Nadella story. Karma? You decide.

I Dream of Columbus. (A little Columbus Day gifteen for you)

Columbus Day has always been one of my favorites, and I’ve written about the “whys” a few times in the past. (Nifty Little Holiday, My Head Still Hurts, My Head Hurts.) (And, yes, I do realize that C. Columbus was really no hero, and that we really should have a holiday that recognizes native Americans, etc. - but we are mostly a nation of immigrants, and someone was bound to discover "us" at some point.)

Anyway, last year, I took the day off to bring my husband home from MGH, where he’d had a malignant tumor removed from his brain earlier the week before. At that point, we were guardedly (extremely guardedly) optimistic about “things”.

As it turned out, there was not much reason for optimism, guarded or not. But that was then, and this year, despite all the sadness associated with “a year ago” memories that everyone who’s lost a loved one if likely familiar, I am going to enjoy this nifty little holiday. And since I’ve already said most of what I have to say about this nifty little holiday (see above), I thought I’d leave you with a couple of at least tangentially relevant songs from Mary Black, the great Irish singer. The first is Columbus:

 

 And the second is Ellis Island, which is, after all, what old Christopher Columbus kick-started, no?

 

Happy Columbus Day!

Enjoy Mary Black...

Hey, NFL, thanks for remembering the ladies. Now let’s all go out and buy Barbie-pink Ray Rice jerseys.

A few years ago, the NFL decide to do a bit of good by raising a bit of awareness and a bit of money by jumping onto the October Is Breast Cancer Awareness Month hot-pink bandwagon. So the league fiated that, at some point during the month, players had to wear something pink, refs had to throw pink penalty flags, and cheerleaders needed to shake pink pompoms, so that fan awareness would be raised that there’s something out there called breast cancer.

As Erin Ryan of Jezebel pointed out in a post last week:

Breast cancer awareness is so ubiquitous that if deadly diseases attended the same high school, breast cancer would probably be voted prom queen. (Source: Jezebel)

But, hey, if you have to pick a disease to, why not pick one that everyone’s aware of – and one that probably everyone knows someone who’s had it?

One of the most horrific things about cancer is that there’s no such thing as one big, bad monolithic “cancer”. Each cancer is something different in where and how it manifests itself, what and who it attacks, and whether and if you’re likely to survive. Not to mention that how your body responds to most cancers (and how it responds to their treatment) is unique to you, and impacted by everything you’ve eaten, breathed in, and done, and every place you’ve been. Which is why, for so many cancers, survival remains a complete and utter crapshoot.

Anyway, there’s no denying that breast cancer is a worthy cause.

But this is the NFL, so it’s not just about do-gooding. Because one of the upsides of do-gooding, if you’re the NFL, is that is kind of shines up your image a bit. Just look at all those big, strong he-men wearing girly-girl pink stripes on their pants, pink chin straps, pink cleats. Real men wear pink! Real men are really concerned about breast cancer!

It’s really hard not to go just a tad bit cynical here.

Okay, I’d be more cynical if they’d come up with this just this season.

Given all the terrible publicity they’ve had of late around player assaults on women, it would be completely outrageous for them to feign concern about a disease the mostly occurs among the female of the species.

Still, so it’s hard not to suspect that, when they decided to get pinkified a few years ago, it wasn’t also about the leagues desire to increase the proportion of females in its fan base. And, since it’s the NFL, it’s hard not to believe that it’s also about the merchandising. Somebody in the NFL marketing department, someone who probably specialized in powder-puff outreach, no doubt figured that there’s gold in them thar’ pink hills. And that us gals so like to don we now our pink apparel, we’ll rush on out and buy all sorts of cool pink items – and help “the cause.”

Although I do love the color pink, I must say that I find most of the merchandise just ghastly.

Like these boots, for $109.95 which, even as ugly boots go are pretty darned ugly. What would UGGs super-model Tom Brady say about them? Bet Gisele Bündchen wouldn’t be caught dead, or alive, in them.

Or this relative bargain, a scarf for a mere $17.95. Officially licensed! Woven graphics! 100% Acrylic!

Or this swell laptop case, for just $269.00.

But, oh, you may be thinking.

The proceeds of sales of these items are going to a good cause.

And it even says right there on most of these items that the NFL donates 100% of its proceeds to something to do with breast cancer.

The NFL claims that its pink philanthropy efforts "support the fight against breast cancer" by "promoting awareness" and providing funds to the American Cancer Society. But what they're mostly promoting is, uh, buying NFL gear, the profits from which are overwhelmingly pocketed by the NFL.

That’s because a schnook who actually wasn’t thinking might think they were actually donating the full “value” (i.e., the cost) of the merchandise, rather than just the NFL’s skim. But that 100% of proceeds actually translates into something closer to 11.25% (according to Business Insider). Most of the money goes to the companies who make the stuff and to the companies (often the NFL itself or the teams) that sell the stuff.

That 11.25% is not nothing, of course.

But in NFL terms, it’s next to nothing.

While the NFL brings in billions in revenue annually – last year’s take was $9.5B – their donations to breast cancer causes have supposedly averaged about $1M a year.

Not that they are any obligation whatsoever to support any particular “good cause,” and breast cancer’s as good as any. And I surely wouldn’t expect them to do fund-raising for a closer-to-home disease – say, something associated with the brain damage that so many players incur on the vaunted playing fields of the NFL.

Still, I find the whole pink thing a bit patronizing, especially when coming from the National Football League.

If the NFL really gave a hoot about women, it would provide counseling services to those players – and there are plenty of them - who can’t turn the violence off once they’re off the field, and who consider women sexual playthings and/or punching bags.

Charity begins at home.

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This topic was suggested to me (and the Jezebel link sent) by my cousin (and fellow blogger)Ellen, who posted so eloquently on what it actually means to have – and survive – breast cancer, and her reaction to Omnipresent Pink Month.

What’s shakin? Bacon!

I heard somewhere that the one food item that vegetarians found most difficult to part with was not the lofty filet mignon, or the humble hamburger, or even the eponymous main ingredient (after water) of chicken soup. Nope, what the meatless crave most is bacon.

Who can blame them?

Is there a better get-you-out-of-bed-in-the-morning smell than that wafting out of the frying pan, where a rasher or two (okay, why stop at two?) of bacon is popping and sizzling away in its own grease?

Is there any other ingredient that can so radically improve the most pedestrian of salads, going above and beyond what walnuts, dried cranberries, gorgonzola or barley are capable of?

Does anything hit the tummy spot faster on a summer afternoon than a BLT made with a fresh-picked tomato that actually smells, looks, and tastes like a tomato, not one of those pulpy pink substitutes that comes in the little plastic tray surrounded by cellophane?*

I am apparently not alone in my fondness for bacon:

In the past decade, bacon has grown into an industry generating more than $4 billion in annual sales. It has moved from a breakfast meat to a food trend touching an incredible array of consumer goods, both edible and not, from bacon-heavy fast-food burgers and bacon-infused desserts at fine dining restaurants to bottles of bacon-distilled vodka and even a sexual lubricant formulated to smell (and taste) like bacon. More than cupcakes, ramen, or kale, bacon has become the defining food trend of a society obsessed with food trends. (Source: Business Week)

Well, I don’t know about bacon-infused desserts, let alone about any bacon-ish sexual lubricant. (Sounds pretty ghastly to me.)

But I certainly can see that it would become more of a trend than the others.

Cupcakes I love. I have a niece who specializes in decorator cupcakes, and she’s come up with some great ones for family events over the last few years.

Last weekend, I went to a wedding that did without a wedding cake, and served cupcakes instead.

But I still don’t think that all these cupcake shops that have sprung up over the last few years are going to last. I know that one small chain – Crumbs? – went bust recently. And I just don’t see that the business model of selling cupcakes only is built to last. (For the record, there are at least four cupcake shops within a 10 minute walk of my home and, yes, I do occasionally buy cupcakes.)

Ramen I don’t see so much as a trend as it is an economic reality. Just as every young person who comes to Boston lives at some point in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood, so, too, does everyone who’s ever been a student go through a ramen phase. And it’s always good to have a package or two on hand when you only have five minutes to make yourself dinner and/or you have a salt craving and you don’t happen to have a deer lick nearby.

As for kale, I would characterize it as a crusade rather than a trend. I don’t mind kale, but I won’t go out of my way for it, and I prefer the ornamental variety to the edible.

Other food trends that are out there are food trucks, specialty coffees, Greek yogurt, and craft beer.

What sets bacon apart, trend-wise, is its origins.

Unlike most food trends, which start with the high-end foodie and/or hipster markets and find their way into the mainstream, bacon was in the mass market to begin with. And its boom isn’t being credited to some fancy-(checked-)pants TV chef coming up with bacon-infused anything. 

I’d never thought about the bacon market one way or the other, but it has historically been seasonal, peaking in the summer when BLT-lovers had access to the real-deal Ts:

When the tomatoes ran out by October, bacon retreated to the breakfast table till the next summer. The pork belly futures contract was born at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1961 as a result of this cycle: Farmers with an excess supply of pork bellies sold them to cold storage warehouses, thus locking in a price long before tomato season hit. Pork belly traders made money speculating on the spread between the price of bellies on those contracts and the price they got when they finally sold the frozen meat to a smokehouse, where it was made into bacon.

Who knew? Other than pork belly traders on the Chicago Merc…

Anyway, things chugged along, bacon-wise, until:

…the 1980s when powerful health and diet trends transformed the American food industry. Based on evidence that saturated fat and cholesterol were at the core of everything from heart health and obesity to cancer rates, eating lean became the collective mantra, and the food world responded by marketing to fat phobia. Diet sodas became the rage, margarine replaced butter everywhere, and the words “Fat Free” could sell a car. Bacon, which is essentially two-thirds fat, was doomed. “First the fat scare began, and then the nitrate scare,” recalls [Joe] Leathers [late of Hormel]. “That was big. That was really the first food scare. I’ll bet you bacon sales fell off 35-40 percent.”

Fear of fatness prompted the pork industry to come up with its “Other White Meat” campaign. Which was such a hit, it turned people further off of bacon. In fact, just as “we” did with cigarettes, pork producers – stuck with all those warehouses full of pork bellies no one wanted – started to export pork bellies. And:

…farmers tried to salvage what they could from leaner loins and chops by breeding thinner, more muscular pigs.

But there’s only so thin and muscular a pig can go, and there’s no doing away with the fact that,one way or another, a pig’s going to have a belly.

So pork farmers started pressing their industry to put less focus on the Other White Meat, and more on bacon.

They [Pork Board marketers] came up with a plan to reposition bacon as a “flavor enhancer” to the restaurant industry, because there was a greater chance of diners accepting bacon when they ate out.

And they also went after fast food, encouraging them to start adding bacon to burgers. This eventually took off thanks to improvements in precooked bacon technology, which yielded bacon that actually tasted like bacon, without the risk and bother of cooking bacon (grease fires, disposal).

One thing led to another, and:

“Around 2000 is when bacon became the third condiment behind salt and pepper.”

I don’t know about that, but all of a sudden pork bellies were bringing home the bacon, and the Pork Board shelved the Other White Meat strategy in favor or “Bacon Makes It Better.”

Which some top chefs decided was true. So they started adding it. (Someone had to be the first person to wrap a scallop in bacon.)

Then social media started spreading the word, and the word was bacon.

By 2008, bacon had completed its journey from an ignored, unwanted meat to a viral meme—the edible equivalent of cat videos. That year, according to the website Babycenter, 11 out of every million babies born in America were named Bacon.

Well, I suspect, or at least hope, that Bacon in these 11 in a million cases is a family name. As in Roger, or Francis, or Kevin.

In any case, we’re apparently on a health-be-damned bacon tear.

And it’s no wonder.

Let’s face it. One thing about bacon, it does make a lot of things better.

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*Actually, the answer is, yes, there is an even better bacon-based sandwich, and that’s the Gus.

Invented over 50 years ago by my brother Tom (a.k.a., Gus) and me, the Gus is easy-peasy to make, and may well be the best sandwich ever. A Gus is composed of bacon, lettuce, cheese, and kosher dill pickle, served on pumpernickel slathered with mayo.

Now, the original recipe called for American cheese and white sandwich bread, which were staples Chez Rogers, but, as tastes evolved, so did the Gus. Pumpernickel subs for the white bread of yore, and Cheddar is preferable (and more likely to be on hand) than American. Iceberg lettuce, however, was the original and, when it comes to the Gus, still the greatest.

I don’t indulge in a Gus all that often – far less frequently than I make myself a PBJ. But, when it comes to sandwiches, it’s still the one.

If you want to be Disney, well…

I once worked for a small software firm that had it’s eyes on the prize of becoming “the next billion dollar software company.” (Actually, saying that I “once worked for” this outfit makes it sound like I was in and out. In fact, I spent the better part of a decade there.) I joined in 1990, and, at the point, the billion dollar software company was Microsoft.

To say that we never quite reached our lofty goal is, ahem, an understatement.

I believe that we peaked at stated revenue of $40M, but this number was reached only because our ultra-crazy, ultra-conniving CEO counted money he managed to personally suck out of our investors as revenue. In actuality, I believe that our high water mark in terms of revenue earned the old fashioned way, by actually selling goods and services, was close to $10M. A far piece from $1B.

But a man’s reach – and a company’s, too – should exceed his grasp and all that.

Rovio, like my little software company, has a BIG AMBITION.

And their BIG AMBITION is not to be the next Microsoft. It’s to be the next Disney.

But Angry Birds has, apparently, been trying to build its empire one angry bird at a time. And it’s not working out quite as well as they wanted. As of last week, the company was mulling lay-offs of one-sixth of its workforce.

It’s been clear for some time that the best days for Rovio’s original business—smartphone games—were probably behind it. The premier Angry Birds game peaked in 2012, and the company’s decision to use the same characters in new titles hasn’t produced any blockbusters. Neither of its two newer releases, the racing game Angry Birds Go! or a game aimed at girls called Angry Birds Stella, are among the 250 highest-grossing smartphone games in the U.S. (Source: Business Week.)

(As an aside, it’s actually pretty stunning that there are enough smartphone games out there that someone keeps track of the 250 highest-grossing ones, isn’t it? Sometimes, I do just have to show my age. Say it loud, say it proud: I’m an old geezer.)

Apparently, Rovio hasn’t been able to keep up with changes in smartphone gaming, namely a shift to no upfront fee, but charging “for extra lives or other digital merchandise within the games themselves.”

(As an aside, I can’t imagine paying for digital merchandise, unless it’s something consumable, like a book, a song, or a greeting card. Sometimes, I do just have to show my age. Say it loud, say it proud: I’m an old geezer.)

What Rovio has done to rev up its revenue is to expand in physical merchandise – surely you’ve seen at least one kiddo with an Angry Birds backpack – and is working on a movie.

This isn’t all that terrible a strategy, at least in the short term. Consumer products now make up nearly half of Rovio’s revenue.

But here’s the thing.

Not only didn’t the Disney Empire get to be the Disney Empire overnight. It also didn’t do it by relying solely on Mickey Mouse, which was, more or less, Disney’s Angry Bird.

Within a few years, Disney had introduced a few more characters who became staples, including Donald Duck.

And it branched out into non-Mickey, non-Donald cartoons, like the Three Little Pigs. (Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?) Not to mention full length features: Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan. 

Beyond Mickey Mouse watches, I don’t know how much merchandising was initially done around any of the characters in these movies, but, with the exception of Fantasia, they all had merchandisable characters, most of which have stood the test of time. Stuffed Dopey doll, anyone?

By the mid-fifties, Disney had a TV show – The Mickey Mouse Club – and the merchandising had definitely begun. (C.f., Davey Crockett coonskin caps.)

Disney also started producing full length “real” movies, like Old Yeller. (“Here, Yeller. Come back, Yeller. Best doggoned dog in the west.”)

Then Disneyland opened. The opening was, I believe, televised. It might have been brought to us in The Wonderful World of Color, which was the Disney Sunday night show for years, but in our house, I was watching the opening of Disneyland in black and white. Which was still plenty enthralling.

All this is to say that the Disney Empire wasn’t built on Mickey Mouse’s narrow little shoulders alone.

From the get-go, Disney was adding away.

The kid who hated Donald Duck might like Scrooge McDuck.

If you thought Bambi was a sap, you could fall in love with Dumbo.

All those Mouseketeers to develop a crush on. (My heart throb was Tim Considine, the cutie-pie who “starred” in Disney’s Spin and Marty series.)

And so on down to every little boy in the world wanting to be Buzz Lightyear, and brides-to-be wanting to wear a gown just like Princess Elsa’s in Frozen. 

Angry Birds?

I suppose you can vary the color and the expression a bit, but, basically, yawn.

I’m no business genius, but the way to build a Disney Empire is to do what old Walt did: experiment and diversify.

As Walt’s Cinderella taught us, “A dream is a wish your heart makes.”

But a business, it seems to me, is a wish your brain makes. (That and a little bit of luck…)

Please make sure all personal items are stowed in the bicycle basket, take your feet off the brakes, and prepare for landing

Throughout our many years together, my husband and I had a couple of prime travel destinations. Foremost over the years was New York City, the place where, in fact, Jim would have preferred we live.

In our early days, we often took the long-gone Eastern Shuttle, which ran pretty much every hour and required no reservations. You just showed up and Eastern pretty much guaranteed that if you didn’t get on the first flight, they’d put on a “second section” for the overflow passengers. We used to lollygag around the waiting area, hoping that there’d be a second section, and that we’d get on it. This was because the second section was often an older plane that featured this sort of living room configuration where you sat face to face opposite your seat-mate. It looked more like what you’d find in a comfy train compartment rather than what you’d find on a plane.

I’m sure that they were the standard airplane seats of the time, but I kind of remember them as cushy arm chairs.

Of course, compared to today’s steerage class seats, they were cushy arm chairs.

And those skimpy, narrow-gauge crammed-in seats may be going to go from bad to worse.

Some economy-class seats have already lost about 30% of their weight in the past 10 to 20 years, says René Dankwerth of RECARO, a seat-maker. But there is scope to do more: padding is being made thinner by replacing foam with netting; reclining mechanisms are being removed from some short-haul planes. Most of the extra room thus created is used to squeeze in extra rows of seats.

Skift, a research firm, notes that this has prompted a seating war among the planemakers. First, Airbus increased capacity on its A320 short-haul plane from 180 to 189 to match that of Boeing’s 737. Boeing responded with a new, 200-seater 737. So Airbus is now promising a 240-seater. The new planes will be no longer than their older versions.(Source: The Economist)

But wait, there’s more. Or less. Because there are only so many ways to cram more seats in to a fixed amount of space. And the answer on how to do so isn’t all that obvious or easy. This is not the airline equivalent of asking Sarah Tucker how to make “pudding in a cloud.” This is a tough one. And Airbus, bless their body-packin’ little hearts, has come up with one possibility. The company:

… has patented a bicycle-style seat on which air passengers would perch rather than sit.

If you’re wondering what this might look like, Business Insider dug up the patent application for us:

Airbus knows that being stuck in a cramped space on a plane is uncomfortable, and admitted as much in the patent filing. But the company apparently believes passengers would be willing to handle the discomfort in exchange for a cheap flight.

"[To maximize financial returns on aircraft for low-cost airlines], the number of seats in a cabin must be increased, to the detriment of the comfort of the passengers," stated Airbus in the patent filing. "However, this reduced comfort is tolerable for passengers in as much as the flight lasts one or a few hours."  (Source: Business Insider)

I guess this will preclude the heavy-set from flying, since they would no longer be able to buy the adjacent seat. I guess this would preclude folks flying with babies, unless they wanted to bring along the kiddie-carrier seats they used on their own bikes. I guess this would preclude any passengers “requiring special assistance” – who’s going to help granny up and down off her bicycle seat? I guess this would preclude anyone getting any work done, grazing the Sky Mall catalog, or just taking a nap. Or enjoying a pack or pretzels and a shorty can of apple juice.

But at least you wouldn’t have to worry about the passenger in front of you relaxing his seat back into your lap. And it would only be for a flight lasting only one “or a few” hours.

What next?

Strap-hanging? Piling folks up like stacks of cordwood? Offering baggage-class, in which passengers could opt to fly in the cargo hold?

If they stick with the bicycle seat approach, maybe they could add pedals, and have passengers pedal to keep the cabin lights on. They could award “persistent pedaler” miles.

Admittedly, Airbus may never actually put this plan into action. But at least they’ve got the specs ready if they need them.

Me? I might just stay at home from now on.

Brookstone to the rescue

Pink Slip has been a long-time fan of Sky Mall, and was quite disturbed last spring when the rumor mill had it that they might be closing up their highly entertaining and eccentric shop.

Since that terrible news broke – say it ain’t so! – I’ve flown a few times, and was very grateful to see that fabulous catalog tucked in the pocket of the seat in front of me. Not that I’ve ever actually purchased anything from Sky Mall, mind you. But just to see what I’m missing. Oh, what a relief it is!

I was also relieved to get a Brookstone catalog in the mail the other day.

Actually, it came addressed to my husband, who was quite a Brookstone fan, especially when you take into account that he was one of the least materialistic, least shopaholic people I know. (I would say that he was the least, but then my brother Rich comes to mind…)

Over the years, we got a few items from Brookstone.

Our Tempur-Pedic mattress and pillows. A couple of fans. A clock-thermometer combo. A tiny ceramic heater. An air filter gizmo. The occasional gift item. And, quite infamously, a massage chair that I finally made Jim get rid of.

Brookstone was one of the few stores that Jim actually enjoyed browsing around in.

And I always considered it fairly high end.

Then I opened the catalog…

All I can say is that they seem to be giving Sky Mall a run for its money.

No, I’m not talking about those plushy robes that look an awful lot like a Snuggie. Or all those, ahem, “personal” massagers that I don’t remember ever seeing on the shelves when Jim and I strolled around a Brookstone store. That stupid looking wine and snack tray. Or even the cordless, Pre-lit Cone and Berry Kissing Ball with Hanging Chain.

No, what I am talking about is the Drop Shots Magnetic Beer and Shot Glass Set.

What, you may be asking yourself, is this one for.

Well, if you really want to know:

Finally, a way to drink boilermakers, depth charges and other shot-infused drinks without having the shot glass fall back and hit you in the face.

How do they do it?

The shot glass has a magnetic bottom that sticks to the magnetic bottom of the beer glass.

Only $29.99 for a set of two. (Come on, who wants to drink a boilermaker on their own?)

Seriously, is this really a problem?

Seems to me that if you’re drinking boilermakers to begin with, you’re probably not all that concerned if a shot glass drops out and smacks you in the nose.

Use Drop Shots to make: Boilermakers, Sake Bombs, Skittle Bombs, and More…

But don’t forget to:

Drink responsibly.

Sure thing.

Then there’s some kind of apparatus (also $29.99) that lets you chill a single bottle of beer. And for those beer drinkers of the can persuasion – and with a few more bucks to indulge their drink accoutrement needs – there’s the Outlaw Beer Holster ($34.99).

Clips to pants. In Black, Brown, and Pink.

Oh, sure, thanks for the pink version. But no Hello Kitty?

Then there’s something that I’m not quite sure what it’s used for.

It’s called Slot Shots, and it’s a divided shot glass (two slots or three slots), enabling you to “pour different ingredients into separate compartments for amazing drink infusions.”

I’m all in favor of oddball mixed drinks, and love looking at the oddball mixed drink menu when I go out.

But do you need a divided shot glass to make one?

And what do you call a drink that combines scotch and gin in equal parts, which is one of the “recipes” on the coasters that come with the divided shot glasses? Sounds pretty nauseating to me.

I don’t mean to be picking on the drink-related items. Not at all.

It’s not as if I’m some sort of Carrie Nation.

So I’ll move on to Perfect Bake, a $69.99 baking set – three bowls, a scale, an oven thermometer, and a tablet stand that comes with a free app that coaches you through the baking process.

The recipe being demonstrated is the one for chocolate chip cookies that comes on the back of the Nestlé's chocolate bits package.

I have three bowls, a scale, and an oven thermometer that I paid nowhere near $69.99 for, and, seriously, who needs “real-time baking instructions” for chocolate chip cookies. Just follow the recipe on the back of the package.

And I don’t see the point of the Hickies Elastic Lacing System that “turns your shoes into slippers” by replacing the laces with multi-colored elastics. Seems to me that, if you don’t have your slippers with you, you can just uses those sneakers as sneakers as, well, slippers. (Or is this just another way for grown-ups to weasel out of teaching their kids to tie their shoes?)

I will say that the 3Doodler, “The World’s First 3D Drawing Pen”, caught my eye. Looks like a lot of fun – and only $99.99.

Why do I think that my personal 3Doodles would look nothing like the scooter, dog, glasses, or bicycle?

Mine would, no doubt, look like a messy blob of melted crayons.

Still, it was the one Sky Mall type item that was actually of interest.

Not that I’m going to order anything, but note to Brookstone: please keep sending that catalog along.

I just had to laugh…

I suspect that it will be quite a while before I stop getting mail addressed to my husband.

In truth, I don’t want it to stop.

I like looking through his alumni rags from Rutgers and Harvard.

I like thumbing through the catalogs that come in his name.

I like seeing his name in print, even when it’s on junk mail that gets his last name wrong. (I.e., uses mine.)

And some of that junk mail just brings a crazy smile to my face.

As in the missive received the other day from Glen’s Custom Tailors (H.K.) Ltd, The Suit Connoisseurs, offering my late husband “luxury at an affordable price.”

I just had to laugh, as would anyone who knew Jim and his sartorial habits.

I am no one’s idea of a fashionista, but Jim made me look like I’m besties with Anna Wintour.

Where to begin with Diggy’s closet?

He owned one suit, worn for the last time to a wedding in 2011. That suit was a very good one, but it was probably 30 years old.

Jim had had it tailored a few times, as even before he became ill he had decided to lower his BMI a bit and dropped down a size or two. But, hey it was a sack suit, and as long as the jacket and pants were taken in, and taken in, it looked like a reasonably well-fitting sack suit.

Jim wore the suit with one of his Brooks Brothers dress shirts, and a tie I brought for the occasion.

Although he seldom wore one, Jim had  a few decent ties, including a bowtie that I actually managed to tie once. We were heading out to dinner at a Fancy French Restaurant in NYC, back in the day when you had to get dressed up to dine at a Fancy French Restaurant in NYC. I think the restaurant was La Caravelle.

Anyway, it took me forever to tie that bowtie – we had to call the restaurant a couple of time to push our reservation out a bit – but I final succeeded. Unfortunately, it was only after I’d completed the job that I realized Id been following the instructions for the little boy version. Oh, well. It was a tie. It was tied. And Jim looked cute.

In addition to his suit, and those ties, Jim had a couple of sports jackets – one Navy blue (what else), the other an Irish tweed (what else).

In addition to whatever Brooks Brother’s shirt Jim wore to that wedding, he had a few other dress shirts (mostly from Brooks Brothers) and a handful of  more casual long-sleeved and short sleeved collared shirts (mostly from L.L. Bean). Plus a bunch of polo shirts – logo-wear I cadged from clients, or ones I ordered from L.L. Bean.

I knew that those shirts were still hanging in his closet –  I’m hanging on to them, and suspect I will to infinity and beyond; they’re mine to have and to hold, for better or worse (as with most of Jim’s clothing, they lean to the worse side). But I was surprised that his suit and sports coats are still here. I thought I’d given those to St. Francis House. (Tomorrow they go to the dry cleaners.)

Jim also had a couple of pairs of wool slacks, a couple of pairs of khakis, and a couple of pairs of jeans. A spring jacket; a rain parka (corporate swag from my corporate days); and a parka.

He owned one pair of sneakers; one pair of casual shoes; one pair of dress shoes; and one pair of boots. Two belts. A summer hat (white cotton), and a wool scally cap.

As with any of his clothing items, these were replaced when they were falling apart and no longer capable of repair.

Although Jim generally watched out for his footwear – if he had a flapping sole, he went to the cobbler - I was generally the one to force the clothing retirement issue – from socks and undies to dress shirts. I would hold up some near-rag item - a frayed shirt, holey sock, stretched out Jockey shorts - and ask him why he hadn’t tossed it out. He would just shrug and say, “I thought you would.”

It goes without saying that Jim hated to shop. And when, on occasion I brought something new home for him (other than something free with a corporate logo on it, which he always liked to see coming), he always insisted that he had more than enough clothing.

Honestly, Jim would have been just as happy living in the Old West where, from what I take from the costumes on Bonanza and Gunsmoke, men were issued one outfit when they reached adulthood, and that one outfit took them through the remainder of their life. (Or at least for the duration of the TV show’s run.)

For the last year or so of he life, Jim mostly wore comfy pants – pull on exercise pants, nylon or fleece; comfy shirts – polo shirts, the softer the better; sweat shirts; and fleece tops. That and heavy socks.

After his death, I laundered everything that was decent and that I thought a homeless person could use and brought it over to St. Francis House.

I threw out the undies and anything that was not even rag-bag worthy.

I will now add figuring out what to do with the rest to my to-do list.

But the thought of Jim’s name finding its way onto a mailing list for a bespoke tailor who’s going to be in Boston for a few days in a few weeks…Even though, given he had absolutely no butt to speak of, and could definitely have used a pair or two of bespoke pants.

Well, I just had to laugh.

Something sure gang agley with our Secret Service

Over the years, I’ve worked in plenty of chaotic, dysfunctional organizations – organizations where things slipped through the cracks, where warning signs were ignored, where morale was abysmal, where people on all levels were acting out, where folks on the lower rungs eventually gave up trying to tell those on the upper rungs that things were gang agley.

And you know what?

Most of these organizations are long gone.

But it doesn’t take someone who punched many a clock in an f’d up organization to recognize that there is something terribly wrong with the Secret Service.

There’s no doubt in my mind that members of this service have a difficult job to do. It’s tense – especially if you’re charged with protecting the President or the VP. It’s demanding – especially if you’re charged with protecting the President or the VP. And, I’m guessing, not spectacularly well-paid.

Oh, yes, and – especially if you’re charged with protecting the President or the VP – you’re expected to quite literally take a bullet if one comes their way, or the way of their wives and kids.

Secret Service agents – at least the ones that are on protection detail vs. those who track down bogus $20 bills – have a tough and dangerous job, one that I suspect is, plenty of the time, plenty boring.

A few years back, the big scandal was that some of the agents were consorting with prostitutes during a Presidential visit to Colombia.

Well, that’s starting to look like good clean fun.

What can we say about the fact that, a few years back, some a-hole fired shots at the White House, hitting a window in the family quarters when one of the Obama girls and her grandmother were there.  Bad enough that this a-hole got close enough to fire shots at the White House.  But to wait a few days to actually notice that the White House was shot at? And to have the person notice be a housekeeper who found broken glass and crumbling plaster?

The Secret Service initially chalked what might have been the sound of shots being fired to a car backfiring.

Now, I don’t know all that much about cars’ backfiring, but I think it pretty much went the way of the Beverly Hillbillies’ jalopy once the catalytic converter was introduced.

Fast forward a couple of years and some mentally imbalanced vet jumps the White House fence – bad enough – and then manages to make it all the way into the White House before someone tackled him and took him down.

I can get one guard being asleep at the wheel, but this jamoke managed to breach several supposed layers of security.

Then there’s the latest revelation that, somehow, an armed civilian managed to share an elevator car with the President on a recent trip to Atlanta. Fortunately, that civilian wasn’t in an anti-Obama and/or trigger happy mood.

Yowaa! What is up with the Secret Service?

Rarely do I agree with anything that comes out of the mouth of Congressman Darrel Issa, who seldom lets an opportunity to posture, rave, exaggerate, play fast and loose with the truth, and otherwise get his mush on the news go by. But, with Issa, “I’m extremely concerned.”

“Most organizations have acceptable losses, in other words they’re right 97 percent of the time. In the case of the Secret Service, they have to succeed 100 percent of the time,” Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said on NBC’s “Nightly News” on Monday. “I’m extremely concerned.” (Source: Politico)

But I’ll give the final Congressional word to local boy-o, Congressman Stephen Lynch, D-South Boston, another pol who I don’t always agree with. These Secret Service incidents definitely got Stevie’s Irish up. In his words, “This is beyond the pale.”

Yes, I know that the Secret Service have a tough job, and a thankless one, at that.

As with so many jobs, no one notices what you’re doing one way or the other until you screw up.

But I’ve been in enough dysfunctional organizations to recognize one when I see one.

Maybe they just need a fix to their processes. Maybe they need an infusion of tech. Maybe they need a management shake-up. Maybe they need a head or two to roll – which happened yesterday, when Secret Service Director Pierson resigned.

But something’s definitely gang agley with this outfit.

But do they accept Medicare?

One of my cousins is currently on a spectacular transpacific cruise, with a mid-cruise stay in Sydney, a circumnavigation of Australia, and a flight that stops over in Dubai for a couple of days on the way home. (Another of my cousins has just finished up a one month post-retirement stay in Paris with her husband. What am I doing wrong???)

Anyway, although Dubai is all sorts of modern, and has all those wacky man-made islands, and indoor desert skiing – amazing what you can do when energy is no object – I really don’t have much interest in visiting the Mideast. (I have already confessed to my Euro-centric travel interests. No need to re-harp on it here.)

What I hadn’t realized was that, if you look beyond the wacky man-made islands and the fabulous malls, Dubai has also become something of a mecca for medical tourism.

Already one of world’s ten most visited cities, Dubai is counting on more people like [Russian Maria] Ivanova to mix their holidays with high-end treatments for a luxurious form of medical tourism, rivaling Thailand and India. Now, it’s trying to attract 500,000 such visitors, adding 2.6 billion dirhams ($708 million) to its economy by 2020, according to a Dubai Health Authority plan announced this year. (Source: Bloomberg)

A lot of that medical tourism is cosmetic in nature. Ivanova is heading there for liposuction. And, Dubai being Dubai, the hospital digs can get pretty fancy.

Other than a doctor or two, I don’t know what the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery Hospital has to do with American anything. The pictures sure don’t look like anything I’ve seen in the American hospital system, that’s for sure.

 

Don’t recall anything quite like this at Mass General.

Then again, we weren’t there for liposuction or a nose job.

“The presentation and the aura are just as important as the quality of care we provide,” said Michael Stroud, chief executive officer of the hospital, the largest of its kind in the Gulf region. “We are capitalizing on Dubai’s luster.”

Me? Quality of care is actually more important than “aura”, but what do I know?

That Dubai luster does nothing for me, but I will be getting a full report from my globe-trotting cuz when she gets back. Maybe she’ll be able to convince me that it’s worth a look-see.

As for their medical tourism industry, Dubai is up against price pressure from India and Thailand, and quality competition from the U.S. and Europe. So the country – I almost typed “company’ in there -  positioning itself as the high-end, luxury choice. Which is pretty much how they position themselves as a tourist destination. After all, I don’t imagine there’s much to see or do there that doesn’t have to do with gawping at things like a really tall building, a seven-star hotel, and that indoor ski slope. That and shopping ‘til they drop. To me, it would be like visiting a Flash Gordon planet.

There’s pretty good reason underlying Dubai’s focus on cosmetic surgery. It’s kind of their starter-medical area. Excel here, and then start focusing on the boring stuff that, like, kills people.

Dubai Healthcare City representatives say its focus on elective surgeries and a plan to build a wellness center will create a niche market. It’s still working to improve its care in areas such as oncology and cardiology to keep locals from going abroad for more complicated procedures….

“With any new country, you basically build up your health system,” said Amer Ahmad Sharif, managing director of the education division at Dubai Healthcare City. “No matter what you do, there will be some specialized types of care that you will not be able to cater for at a certain volume.”

Focusing on breast implants and tummy tucks sure make an interesting way to build up your medical system, but I guess it’s where the money is.

Anyway, I recently applied for and received my Medicare card, which I can begin using in a short while.

Not that I’m necessarily looking forward to having this memento mori staring me in the face every time I look in my wallet, but, hey, even when you factor in what you pay for Part B, and top it off with supplemental Part C and Part D, I’ll still be saving a few hundred bucks a month. Which I intend to earmark for my travel fund. (Let the travel begin!)

I don’t imagine that any of that travel will be medical tourism. Am I really going to start worrying about a bumpy nose at this point?

But if I were to do some medical touring, I’m wondering whether they’ll take Medicare.