The Importance of Earnest Service

I’ve carried around Pico Iyer’s opinion piece, “The Joy of Quiet,” since January 1. In The New York Times “Sunday Review” section, the author wrote about an agency CEO who was interested in stillness; product designer Philippe Starck and his publicized** hermit-like existence which he claims allows him to remain cutting edge and a $2,000++ a night hotel room that boasts it has no TV in its rooms.  (**Starck is known to exaggerate.)

Iyer wrote: “Has it really come to this?

“In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them - often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.”

Do you spend 8.5 hours daily in front of a screen-TV and/or computer? Iyer quotes Nicholas Carr as saying the average American does. I do.

Iyer points out that “The urgency of slowing down - to find the time and space to think - is nothing new…………………. ‘Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,’ the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, ‘and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.’ He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Iyer wrote.

He reports that increasingly the people he knows are turning to yoga, meditation or tai chi, weekend breaks from the Internet and long walks without mobile phones. He admits “I try not to go online till my day’s writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan in part so I could more easily survive for long stretches entirely on foot, and every trip to the movies would be an event.”

Iyer’s not alone. This week, Pope Benedict the XVI “extolled the sounds of silence,” wrote the Associated Press’ Nicole Winfield. “He said a little bit of quiet makes people better listeners and better communicators by giving them more time to think about what they are hearing and saying.

“And in a world inundated by Tweets and 24-hour news coverage, that precious time to think and reflect gives words greater value, he said.

“‘Joy, anxiety and suffering can all be communicated in silence - indeed it provides them with a particularly powerful mode of expression,’ he said in his written message,” Winfield wrote.

I first heard about the Pope’s message on the John Gambling show on WOR 710 Radio. Gambling, a Quaker, spoke of how much he looks forward to the quiet hour he spends with his thoughts each Sunday at the meeting house.

And new to the MetroNorth commuter trains I take upstate are quiet cars.

I write most of my blog posts on the weekends in a public library and welcome the environment. I’m used to working in a noisy office but in the library I feel abused when people carry on lengthy conversations in decibels appropriate to a noisy bar.

I admit to welcoming breaks from handheld devices, texts, phone calls and emails. I haven’t tracked when and where most of my “aha!” moments happen though I’ve noticed that when water hits my head in a shower I often think of clever press release headlines and solid approaches to new business proposals.

I wouldn’t be a candidate for a place that silence is enforced for days nor do I see myself living in rural Japan like Iyer [or rural anywhere]. I usually have the radio or television on for company when I’m alone at home. And I use music as background to distract me from unwelcome office chatter if I’m having trouble focusing on a task.

Do you take Internet/smartphone/text/tablet/email breaks? Where/when do your best ideas and solutions come?

The Frommers travel guide team came out with a list of ten worst airline terminals. Some familiar names in this list are: Chicago Midway; Newark Terminal 2; Laguardia’s US Airways terminal and JFK Terminal 3. [Terminal...what a word for an airport anything! Whew.]

Three friends who recently returned from Florida, California and Brazil, complained about airport travel. Grievances related to shabby and/or silent treatment by airline staff and all noted that they were especially frustrated because they couldn’t demand a change in attitude. As one put it, regardless of affront, the level of being ignored or of crabby responses, “Submissive passenger behavior is vital so as not to be tossed off a flight.” 

In spite of their vivid descriptions of missing numerous connecting flights then faced with no information, unhealthy over-salted snacks, increasingly miniscule seats with no legroom that are a squeeze even for petite passengers and examples of offhanded, cavalier, inconsiderate behavior by stewards, I decided to focus on the waiting in line aspect of travel.

I chose lines because I relate to this anxiety. I hate looking like a klutz. I feel slightly nervous when waiting my turn at the wonderful Trader Joe’s on 14^th Street in NYC and this store does everything right. There are two lines feeding into as many as 20 cashiers and a “starter” who points to a customer and tells him/her the number of the cashier waiting to ring up their order. The cashier holds up a paddle with the number. I’m apprehensive that I won’t see the paddle among the scramble of carts, customers and cashiers all around and that I’ll cause collective eye-rolling.

Seems I’m not alone in feeling befuddled in line confusion. The Transportation Security Association retrieved over $400,000 in change in the US last year, almost $47,000 at JFK and $19,000 at LA International to name just two airports.

One of my friends, a young man who just returned from Florida, said that he wanted to advise/prepare a buddy who hadn’t traveled since the security regs started so as to help smooth the process for him. He didn’t know where to start. He said “Some airports make you take off belts, others don’t-so I’ll suggest he best wear pants that don’t need a belt.

How many layers of clothes should he wear to simplify the undressing process?” [In winter, I routinely wear three and a coat.] Airports differ so we decided the friend best leave any sweater and/or light jacket in a carryon. Forget boots with lots of laces or even sneakers with laces: Slip-ons slip off  fastest. We left in the air the answer to the next question: What’s the best place to store your ticket and passport/driver’s license after you’ve shown it so you don’t leave it behind along with your change, keys, smartphone and other stuff slated for the tray. 

And I thought I felt apprehensive about promptly finding “my” cashier at Trader Joe! What advice do you have for travelers so as to alleviate travel stress in lines, conversations with airline staff and otherwise?

A comment to a post by Nenaghgal last week inspired today’s post because it set the stage for my reaction to a recent development that struck an off note with me in this economic environment.

Nenaghgal wrote: “In general there is very little waste at the company I work for here in Ireland, Nicholas Mosse Pottery, in fact, I’m incredibly impressed with the way this place functions. We are highly eco-friendly so we recycle, reuse everything, and I mean everything so I won’t go into specifics but I am proud to work with a company that has such high standards. More companies should take heed.”

I add that more people should take heed as well.

You no doubt heard that Elin Nordegren, Tiger Woods’ ex-wife, bought waterfront property in Florida for $12 million and bulldozed the six bedroom house [photo below, left]. It’s her choice and her children aren’t hurt by her decision as she has millions more where the 12 came from. And it is nobody’s business what a person does with his/her money.

Nordegren House by Splash News

Nevertheless I wondered why she couldn’t find a house she liked better that needed minor nips or tucks or a piece of waterfront property with no house. Flattening a house seemed like a waste when money might be better spent to feed hungry families, educate wayward children, inoculate little ones who would otherwise be exposed to contagious diseases or provide clean water to towns and villages around the world where there isn’t any. The real estate agent claims the house was in disrepair according to The Daily Mail’s mailonline.

I fundraise for a foundation. We cheer when we find partners to sponsor events and initiatives. The volunteers don’t calculate the hours spent to bring in the welcome money against the total which isn’t near $12 million a year. So you can see why I appreciated Nicholas Mosse Pottery’s frugality and picked up on Ms. Nordegren’s extravagance. For all I know she gives twice this amount to charity and we don’t hear about those checks. Wouldn’t it be grand?

John Bussey wrote about Milliken & Co. in “The Anti-Kodak: How a U.S. Firm Innovates and Thrives” in The Wall Street Journal. This traditional American textile company stands alone. All the others are gone. It, too, lost the fight to keep out cheap textile imports but it never tossed in the towel.

Bussey wrote: “Today, Milliken makes the fabric that reinforces duct tape, the additives that make refrigerator food containers clear and children’s art markers washable, the products that make mattresses fire resistant, countertops antimicrobial, windmills lighter, and combat gear protective.”

He continued: “Along the way it has amassed thousands of patents, focusing on specialty fabrics and chemicals, floor coverings and performance products. Milliken boasts that we come in contact with its many products almost 50 times a day.”

At the end of the article Bussey wrote: “While Milliken doesn’t disclose its financial data, Mr. Fly says revenue and profit have been rising steadily. Mr. Salley says the company is also debt free, has double-digit returns on invested capital, and has increased in value more than 30% since 2007 alone.” John Fly is a Milliken executive and Joe Salley is chief executive.

I’ve always had fun thinking of services. In my first business, Delivered Delicacies, I represented the best of Manhattan’s offerings in various food categories–pastry, bread, pasta, prepared food etc.–and delivered a customer’s choices the same day to Brooklyn Heights. At that time the neighborhood was a food Sahara Desert. I also love to think of things I need or want and can’t find that I could manufacture or wish someone else would.

Please, pharmaceutical companies, invent a small, easy-to-swallow vitamin and calcium pill. A friend gave me a bottle of a super vitamin C cocktail to boost my immune system in cold season for which I am grateful, but the pills are horse size. I wouldn’t mind taking two of anything-just make the pills diminutive and maybe slippery.

How about a never-fail, easy-to-use, practical deer repellant? Deer are a costly nuisance. They eat our bushes in winter and flowers in summer, leave ticks around that make us sick and/or cause horrible car accidents. Most of what’s available either requires landscaping company staff to install, costs a fortune and lasts for a minute-until the next snowfall or rainstorm-or is ineffective. When the tree man came to appraise the extensive damage after the October snowstorm and determine a repair plan, with the help of the man who keeps our lawn looking spiffy, he sprayed our bushes with something that is supposed to work for a year. Here’s hoping. The house will look pretty awful with a bunch of brown sticks here and there.

I’d also love an MRI-like gizmo that sees into soil so plumbers can discover where clots in pipes or broken ducts stop septic systems from working.

I think of this next invention every time I’m in a picturesque place and see bottles, cans, food containers and garbage strewn on country roadsides, scenic highways like the Taconic and even on city streets. This hypothetical gizmo would pick up fingerprints and shoot them to a central fingerprint place [I know, I know....big brother] or maybe hidden cameras would capture license plate numbers. The garbage-tossers would get a fat fine and be deterred from ever again ruining scenery in bucolic settings and cityscapes. If they didn’t pay their fine, after a certain amount of time, their car wouldn’t start.

What inventions do you wish for? What other companies can you point to that are like Milliken?

I wish I could be a fly on the wall when some business decisions are made. Here are a few that I’ve noticed recently.

If you have a Canon printer with its four small cartridges and large black one, you know how expensive printing is. And there’s no getting around it. A combo pack is supposed to save money, but it comes without the small black cartridge, which means you have to buy that separately at full price. Doing the customer a favor? No: Making more money for Canon? Yes. Altogether now, what color do you use most? Precisely: The one that’s missing from the pack! There’s another combo option: Buy the four small ones without the big black one. You can’t get all the ones you need in one box marked SAVINGS [all capital letters, theirs].

It’s a good decision for Canon. For now this customer is stuck and annoyed. But when the printer dies, I’ll be on the lookout for alternatives–and I like the printer.

Merrill Lynch has informed its brokers that in 2012, to be eligible to make a fee from new business accounts, the customer’s minimum investment increased to $250,000 from $100,000. I first heard about this last weekend on Ric Edelman’s weekly “The Truth about Money” radio program. Given how technology has made it so much easier to turn a profit on brokerage accounts said Edelman–his company can do so with $3,000 minimums–he was surprised at Merrill Lynch’s move. I’m not. Why would anyone want the middle class, a shrinking demographic, as a client? It’s also a good way to get rid of brokers who aren’t connected to the hedge fund crowd.

Verizon Wireless retracted a $2/month “convenience fee” for customers paying by phone or online. They instituted the surcharge to encourage customers to sign up for automatic payment where there would be no such fee. [Customers paying by check weren't to be similarly penalized no doubt because the leap to automatic payment would be too dramatic.] The FCC was looking into the fairness of this fee. Verizon Wireless’ PR stance was that they eliminated the fee because they were listening to their customers whose uproar on Facebook and Twitter garnered headlines. Who cares what the impetus was for the change of policy. Customers don’t have to pay an arbitrary, cockamamie fee and that’s what counts.

I saw a city worker writing out a ticket at the garage next to my office building and warned the attendants. I thought they might be fining a car parked in their alley. The attendants shrugged and said that they were being fined because their sign [at right] was on the sidewalk. I pass that sign daily. There’s plenty of room for pedestrians on hte street. The fine is obviously an income-generator for the city. And we hear daily how small business is going to be the salvation of our economy. The city isn’t doing its part to help. You can see by the photo, left, that a car driving east on 44^th from Third Avenue can barely see the Pa of the hanging parking sign peeking behind the neon red East sign, much less the entire word. Further, making the parking price clear is a benefit to consumers.

Any good or bad business decisions you’d like to share?

I love to read or hear about cat and dog antics whether they do typical or atypical things.

I enjoyed Stephanie Clifford’s article, “Nine Lives, One Leash,” about her city cat Mac whom she taught to walk in a harness. It took a lot of work: Most cats don’t cotton to discipline and training although I knew one, Georgie, who would lift his paw on command to shake your hand as dogs do.

Clifford launched her cat training with professional guidance that cost $375 for two hours. It was money well spent as the cat was unhappy in her Brooklyn apartment when she no longer let him roam the streets alone. The counselor told her what to do and what signs of overdoing to look for so as not to permanently turn the cat off. It took six months.

Lots of my brave friends mix cats and dogs in a household or introduce a new pet to an only cat or dog household with little ensuing flying fur. I’m in awe.

Cibier

My neighbor’s cat Cibier strolls around the property and trots or races home every time he’s called. He didn’t once when he was ill. Hiding is typical of a very sick animal. He’s fine now and back to responding.

But not all the news is rosy for pets, especially those prized for hallmark characteristics.

In a New York Times article “Can the bulldog be saved?” Benoit Denizet-Lewis wrote: “In January 2009, Adam Goldfarb of the Humane Society of the United States told The Augusta Chronicle that bulldogs, often referred to as English bulldogs, are the ‘poster child for breeding gone awry.’ The article came in response to a scathing British documentary, ‘Pedigree Dogs Exposed,’ that highlighted the health and welfare problems of purebred dogs and claimed that breeders and the Kennel Club (the British equivalent of the American Kennel Club) were in denial about the extent of the problem.”

Denizet-Lewis continued, “Broadcast on the BBC, ‘Exposed’ spawned three independent reports into purebred breeding, each finding that some modern breeding practices - including inbreeding and breeding for ‘extreme traits,’ like the massive and short-faced head of the bulldog - are detrimental to the health and welfare of dogs. Bulldogs were noted in all three reports as a breed in need of an intervention, with one going so far as to question whether it is ethically defensible to continue breeding them at all.”

Tracie Hotchner on her radio show “Dog Talk” mentioned the Denizet-Lewis story and added that extreme breeding practices also harm pugs, American German shepherds and chocolate standard poodles.

What do you think about training cats? Are Mac, Georgie and Cibier extraordinary cats or is it a myth that felines don’t usually take to discipline? What about breeders who respond to the public’s desire for dogs with specific traits–yes or no?

Children in public schools are being starved by the processed food served at lunch according to a range of articles and op-ed pieces: “Processed foods still dominate school lunches,” “Finally Revealed: Processed Food Rebates Dominate School Cafeterias,” and “How the Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch,” to pick just three. This is an especially shameful state of affairs because much of the food given schools is of the fresh variety, ruined of nutrients, if you’ll excuse the expression, in the process. 

But the school children here aren’t being starved only by nutrition-free food. According to retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor on “Bloomberg edu” and in countless articles since spring, Americans don’t know a whit about civics and the situation will become increasingly dire as many schools don’t teach it.

Schools receive Federal funding for math, science and reading programs through the No Child Left Behind Act, which also requires testing. They get $zero for teaching civics. Only half the states require that children study the subject. Justice O’Connor finds this alarming for the obvious reason that our government is designed for citizen participation.

On Bloomberg edu, the Justice noted that children spend some 40 hours a week in front of a screen-TV or computer. This is why she founded the icivics initiative and free website-icivics.org-with its games and lesson plans that make learning fun for middle schoolers and easy for teachers to include in their curriculum.

In a December 27 article in the LA Times, “Sandra Day O’Connor promotes civics education,” Howard Blume wrote “Only about a third of American adults can name all three branches of government, and a third can’t name any. Fewer than a third of eighth graders could identify the historical purpose of the Declaration of Independence.”

Blume reports that surveys by the Annenberg Public Policy Center find that “15% of adults correctly named John Roberts as United States chief justice, but almost twice as many (27%) could identify Randy Jackson as a judge on the television show ‘American Idol.’”

Might this be a reason so few vote in this country? As we approach a major election, does this alarm you? Do you think the majority of us realize how we are literally and figuratively starving so many children?

Lots of people fool themselves into believing that what they do is good for others even if it involves stealing, cheating or lying. I bet Bernie Madoff had such thoughts late some nights before he gave himself up.

The latest example is Sam Eshaghoff, [Newsday photo, right], whom Alison Stewart interviewed on “60 Minutes” on Sunday. At the end of the segment, he admitted if he had it to do over he wouldn’t but earlier he said that acing the SAT and ACT tests for high school students with terrible grade point averages changed their lives, gave them opportunities to go to colleges that wouldn’t have looked at them otherwise with the potential of changing the course of their lives.

Eshaghoff, who isn’t the only student doing this, didn’t say where the students got the $2,500 to pay him, but it’s probable that well-meaning parents, grandparents, uncles or aunts helped out or paid the full freight. Would they also justify their support of such behavior as helping their son or daughter? {Eshaghoff took tests for girls as well].

Can you give examples of Robin Hood like behavior? Are there exemplary exceptions?

I haven’t read George McGovern’s book “Terry: My Daughter’s Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism,” [Penguin Group (USA)], but the other day a talk show host mentioned one of the points made: That the McGovern’s should not have followed doctors’ advice. The doctors told them to leave their alcoholic daughter alone, which they did, and she was found frozen to death when she fell outside while drunk.

I wonder if their poor daughter might have been found dead at a later time, or if she might have killed others if she drove a car while intoxicated, but that’s not the point of this post.

The art of taking advice involves your instinct/your gut. If someone proposes a course of action that doesn’t agree with your approach/personality it won’t work any better than will starting a speech with a joke when you can’t remember punch lines.

When you are at your wit’s end and a situation is dire, or if a salesperson keeps nagging you, you might let down your instinct wall and agree to something, usually with dire results.

I give advice for a living. I take the responsibility seriously. I drill down to the crux of a client’s marketing priorities and issues as I see them and develop a plan that addresses them. Because people are used to instant information and communications at warp speed, increasingly clients expect results in months, sometimes sooner. I say: Don’t expect too much too soon because unless you are promoting the cure to war or cancer, most PR efforts take time. With bloggers and online venues, some smokesignals are seen sooner than when print and electronic media were our only choices.

My advice has never changed: Beware of public relations types who promise quick fixes and immediate, significant results.

Have you ever felt that you followed bad advice?

I thought that the cupcakes confiscated by the Transportation Security Administration officer at the Las Vegas airport over the weekend a bit much. He considered that the frosting fell into the forbidden gel catetory.

In the world of sports, Blue Hills Regional Technical “was leading, 16-14, when Cathedral’s quarterback, Matt Owens, slipped through an opening and dashed for a 56-yard touchdown,” Rea Cassidy Reported in the Boston Globe in “Call in Blue Hills-Cathedral game needs to be called back.”

“Here’s where the rules came into play,” continued Cassidy. “While running toward the end zone, Owens raised his hand, for about three seconds, in celebration. Apparently, Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association rules forbid a player to celebrate before entering the end zone. So, the touchdown was called back, and Blue Hills went on to win.”

Continued Cassidy: “We are a society that has so many rules it’s a wonder anyone is allowed to say or do anything anymore.” {The bold emphasis is mine.}

“In the case of this game, the rule was created to prevent taunting and poor sportsmanship. Fine. No one wants to promote or witness poor sportsmanship. So create concise rules that penalize players for malicious or deliberate taunting, rather than for jubilation during the biggest moments of their lives. I don’t want to go to games and watch kids celebrate like timed robots. They are not robots; they’re people,” Cassidy wrote.

In unrelated instances, a few weeks before, there was a spate of school suspensions of small children. One boy was punished for being a racist when he told a friend that a guest speaker reminded him of President Obama; another for sexual harassment because he said to a pal that he thought one of his teachers was cute.

Meanwhile, there are newbie congressmen and women who sit like sticks in Washington, refusing to budge from a strict doctrine when their inaction will hurt the economy, many of their constituents and might even affect the outcome of the Presidential election in a way that isn’t in their best interest. Their closed minds and smug intransigence blind them to the advice of their political leader and many of their party colleagues who are willing to bend for the greater good. Thank goodness someone drilled sense into some of them in the short term but their attitude has infected Washington and the quick fix political antibiotic that just happened won’t cure the patient.

Can you think of other instances of people carrying things too far or am I being too harsh in my examples?