I've eaten at Chick-fil-A maybe a dozen times, usually while traveling, which means I typically go to different places. Regardless of what part of the country I'm in, I'm always met with a smile at the counter, served in moments, given food that resembles the picture on the wall, and while I ate, was repeatedly asked if I wanted my sweet tea (!!!) refilled, also with a smile. And that is in the lo...
the recent news that microsoft was looking to buy mojang's minecraft had the elementary playground in a frenzy. at one point a kid ran up to anthony, shouted the news in his face and when anthony didn't really respond the boy grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him and screamed that he was totally under-reacting to the news. alex and i had a timely dad-lunch scheduled later that day. our entire hour was filled with talk of the sale.
after going over the perils of tinkering with something at its peak (never mess with a winning game) i asked alex what he thought Notch, the rumored hold-out owner should do. without much of a pause alex said, "well, he seems to love what he does and given how many people play minecraft i guess he has enough money to pay for his house and live, he should probably not give up the thing that makes him most happy."
to my emphatic retort of, but alex, it's a billion dollars.
his reply.
but what if he can't find another thing that he enjoys as much as this. then he traded something he loved for something that he doesn't.
i'm often struck at how quickly kids can boil down adult decisions.
after a little more digging into the story we learned that while Notch loved the creative and creating side of his minecraft project, he very much did not love the business side of things, so the release of the project made more sense than initially thought.
when the news of the sale finally hit, every minecrafter i knew, young and old alike, were visibly pensive at what was in store for their beloved technology in the hands of an organization known for fumbling easier slam-dunks than this.
on june 5th at 12:55pm in an exchange that took a total of 35 seconds, marty walter made her very first phone call from her very first cell phone.
while marty was examining the cheapest flip-phone models the store had to offer, bella kept drifting towards the sexier, smart-phone options. seeing bella's longing glances, the young salesman sidled up next to her.
SALESMAN
you want a smartphone?
BELLA
oh my god. yes. they are so awesome.
SALESMAN
what is it specifically you need it for?
BELLA (stammering)
uhhh. well. uhhh.
SALESMAN (turning to marty)
that's what they all say to that question.
don't check consumer reports. check with the guy who fixes what you want to buy.
oh. and another interesting thing about the dishwasher bit. when the repairman, one of them at least, was at our house assessing our broken washer, after backing out of the washer, standing up and drying his hands on his rag, he explained that what we're experiencing is now rather common. he said
this has been picking up ever since the washington lobbyist got new rules in play about using smaller motors in dishwashers, motors to conserve energy. the part they missed, is they just changed the motors but nothing else and the new, smaller motors weren't powerful enough to drive the machines so the motors burn out quicker. and for reasons i can't explain replacing the motor most times cost more than buying a new machine. so first the old models would run longer and could be easily repaired which means after fifteen years you might send a motor to the dump. but now the machines break after five years, get replaced with a new machine, because that's cheaper, so now we're taking the whole appliance to the dump instead of just a motor. and three times as often.
someone recently turned the tables on me and asked if i ever received any good business advice. as you might guess, i'm a better question asker than answer giver, concise answer giver at least.
the greatest lesson i ever learned did not come in a moment but was instead a slow drip of learning over many years, decades really, but an over-arching message was present. my two main mentors were my mother and a female boss i worked for for several years (and i've spoke of before). the message they delivered is that success isn't solely governed by a skillset but also by a host of tangential qualities surrounding a skill set: respect, presentation, honesty, vision, commitment, kindness, persistence, belief, to name a few of the sorts of qualities included. yes, of course, you have to have the base skills but the point is those skills alone aren't enough to deliver success or fulfillment. the import of all of these factors, blended and balanced in work and in life, were repeatedly demonstrated and re-enforced by my two mentors, and their noting them, in my behavior and professional endeavors during our time together. you might call them, en masse, the intangibles.
truth is i learned the intangibles before i learned my end skillset, as i would again be taken under the tutelage of new people who gave me the professional tools i still use today. but i feel it was the presence and honoring of 'the intangibles' that helped to distinguish me among my peers early on and continue today to effectively guide me into and through new waters.
and putting it that way, the intangibles, makes me think of the quarterback tom brady. athletically, tom brady is one of the lowest graded quarterbacks to ever go through the nfl combine (the testing ground where nfl hopefuls are evaluated). yet, he has gone on to be one of the highest achieving and best-regarded quarterbacks in the history of the nfl. were you to ask him and those who coach him, play alongside him, or compete against him, you will often hear words from 'the intangibles' toolbox mentioned.
so that would be my advice to a young professional. mind the details. all of them. and if you chose to ignore one, like say proper dress or good vision, make sure you are neglecting it mindfully and for meaningful, defensible reasons as there are plenty of unknowns ahead of you and it would be a shame to let an avoidable issue slip into your blind spot that might impact your opportunities or potential.
while that may seem long-winded i promise you, it could have have been immensely worse. just ask my daughter or wife. they would confirm you got off easy.
so how about you? did you get any good business or life advice along the way that made a difference for you? if so, i'd super-love to hear about it.
a few years ago i asked my students to attend a talk given by a special guest visiting our school. the man speaking was an alum of the university and now the ceo of a large investment firm. he stressed, emphatically, the importance of excellence and making sure that all of your work and all of your interactions were thoughtful and nothing short of outstanding. in the class i teach, excellence in your work served as a cornerstone, if not the entire point, of our lessons and we were deep enough into the semester that my students knew being excellent and thoughtful took time, like a lot of time (e.g. to make a good, passable twenty minute presentation can take four to five hours, but to make a great, memorable presentation you're looking at more like like fifteen to thirty hours, depending on how soon the inspiration comes). to this principle one of my students asked the man, "i understand the importance of being excellent but can you speak to how one is to find the time and energy to be excellent all of the time?"
to say i wasn't proud and impressed by my student's cogent question would be a full-on lie, especially next to the other ridiculous questions being wasted on this guy. unfortunately the man's answer kinda just stuck to the rallying cry of there is no rest for the successful and they are always working and they are always excellent which was a mainstay of his overall talk.
the next day in class we discussed the talk. someone commented that they felt his answer to the girl's question was lacking. i agreed but then defended him saying that it's hard to have a bulk of questions fired at you, moments after completing a talk, and get all of them perfect (which unfortunately soils his be excellent all of the time argument). i told them given his experience and how thoughtful his talk was if he were given a few minutes to properly ponder the question he might have said something like:
being excellent does take time and energy and there are not enough hours in the day or cycles in our minds to make everything we touch be excellent, but the true mark between the successful and those relegated to basements and back offices is successful people know when it is important to be excellent. because not all tasks and moments are equal and thus not all tasks and moments should or can receive equal attention.
fact is, i wouldn't have been surprised to see this man clap his knee while in his first class seat home as he thought of a better answer to the young, eager girl's question. he might have even mumbled audibly as he realized the missed opportunity to have been excellent.
in leading up to the interview with my uncle, i started practicing my questions on random folks i was hanging out with. before going to pennsylvania to meet my uncle, we spent a week at a beach with a few families. while out in the breakers one morning, i asked one of the dads, also a man who has had a markedly successful professional run thus far, if he ever received any advice that made a difference. he thought through a few rolling breakers and then lit up.
yes, yes i did. when i was young, before leaving home, my dad told me that if anyone asked me if there was something i could do, i should always say yes i could do that and then be a really quick learner. and that's what i've tried to do and most times, almost always, it has paid off.
to add support for his claim i learned he was a ski instructor in oregon while in grad school. i asked where he skied as i knew he grew up in the midwest. he said he hadn't skied. the obvious next question dealt with his 'ski instructor' credentials. the story goes, he was told a resort or school (i can't recall) was looking for a ski instructor. after talking to them (and telling them he could do it) he went to the mountain, got outfitted with some skis and started skiing working his way to the challenging terrain and skiing it until proficient. when it came time for class he proved ready and everyone came away happy. in the end i guess it's as my father-in-law said in regard to parenting "you just have to be smarter than your kids". perhaps the same holds true of teaching.
to add another important detail here, a mutual friend of ours, e-love, has also said of chris, the "say you can do it" guy, that he is the most extraordinary natural athlete he has ever seen. to support e-love's claim, after chris creamed us in tennis i asked when he, chris, learned to play and if he played in college. e-love interrupted the answer saying, "you don't want to know the answer to that question troy". of course i pressed on and e-love was right, i didn't want to know that the guy who just annihilated me in tennis and has the form of a former division 1 athlete, started playing a year ago and for the most part just pretends he's trying to hit a baseball.
the day after chatting with my uncle jerry about business, i had lunch with a cousin of mine, also named jerry. cousin jerry is also a bit of a business savant (these two jerrys perhaps being the best businessmen in my entire family). i told him of my uncle's advice. he smiled and said, "yeah, that's good". i then turned the question to him and asked if he's had any advice he lived by. his reply.
COUSIN JERRY
i have two business rules i live by. first, i'd never buy a horse from an amish man and second, i'd never buy a hotel from a pakistani.
TROY
hah. i bet they're not teaching those lessons at wharton. can i ask why or how those rules came about?
COUSIN JERRY
sure. if an amish man is willing to part with a horse it means that horse is no good because that's the only way an amish man would let a horse go and if a pakistani can't make a hotel work, i'd wager there's no one around that can because you know that paki has tried everything under the sun to make a go of it, and if he can't make it, i'm pretty sure i couldn't either.
these answers are for-sure every bit as colorful as my cousin. further, i'd put cousin jerry up against any mba you could find to solve a business problem. in part because at the end of the work day and after dinner, i bet your mba wouldn't be sliding back in his car to go work a few repossessions before bedtime (see 'and then some' in part 1).
out last brita pitcher lasted ten years. granted it very much limped along with a loose handle and cracked shell the last few years but it held its ground in admirable fashion. finally it purified its last reservoir and had to be put down.
the shiny new pitcher made the other seem totally monochrome. alex (9) excitedly filled the space-age model. together we watched the water accumulate in the anointed base with surprising speed. he then tipped it over the glass for the maiden taste test. as water began to flow from its spout, the lid fell off the top and dumped the water still being processed out all over the counter. being the paternal supervisor i instructed alex to step away as he was apparently not ready for such adult labor (said in a over-inflated gruff voice). i re-affixed the lid, re-filled the container, began the pour and had the lid near shoot off like it were a child's pop gun. to this alex said "see dad". to this i looked at him with my annoyed "yes i see alex" face. after realizing the lid just did not and would not fit i did what any back-boned american consumer would do—i accepted our society's inferior workmanship and put a rubber band around my brand new piece of technology and pined for my other one and the days that produced something as decent.
in addition to the lid not staying on, seemingly by design, there is a gap in the water reservoir that makes it so if you fill the container up all the way, the top 1/8 of inch worth of water leaks from the back running out the bottom of the handle, also seemingly by design. seeing things like this makes me wonder if employees are given like seven minutes to plan for something their company hopes to make for years and make millions of dollars on. what the hell is going on? however does something this completely flawed ever get made. it's utterly astonishing. sheesh.
and speaking of apple, i almost forgot about a recent interaction i had with them. one of the imac's in my office flaked out so i took it to our local apple store for repair. i made an appointment with the genius bar, boxed the machine up (rookie move not to keep the original packaging!) and went to the appointment. it was a few weeks after christmas and at 10am on a friday, the sprawling store looked just as crazed as it did days before christmas (buy more stock!). a man standing at the door, took the heavy box i was carrying from me and led me to the check in spot. typical apple care thus far. i reported into the ipad-equipped angsty kid with bangs in his eyes, spandexy jeans, and an ill-advised lip piercing. the apple host(ess) informed me that due to a higher than expected volume of customers today they were asking patrons if they minded doubling up with technicians. not so typical. reading this as a "share your time with someone else or don't get helped" kind of option, i said that would be fine. i was then told they were running about fifteen minutes late. i nodded again in impotent compliance.
just as i stepped back to wait my go, a man approached the two employees managing the queue and brusquely began
CUSTOMER
you can take my name off the list. i'm going to go buy a pc.
TROY (laughing genuinely)
ha. that's a good one.
CUSTOMER (looking at me sideways then back to the apple-fanboys)
no, i'm serious. i'm tired of this. every time i do this, i go make an appointment in your over-designed website only to come here to be told that you're running behind.
APPLE KID
i'm sorry sir. it's just that a lot of people are needing help with their christmas purchases.
CUSTOMER
what's the point of an appointment system if you don't keep your appointments?! i've been waiting here thirty minutes. i have places to be and i don't have time to sit around waiting for help for a computer that's supposed to work in the first place. so i'm going back to a pc. at least then i know what i'm getting!
the man left. after he was out of the hipsters sightline, they spoke under their breath to one another, saying something along the lines of "yeah, enjoy your pc mister", a quip as inventive as each of the lad's fashion sense. i smiled at getting to take in the bit of impromptu drama. i then sat back and studied the varying levels of exasperation among the mixture of folks waiting for help.
very close to the fifteen minute mark i was approached. my machine was unwrapped and setup by the tech. i was sharing my time with a man a bit older than myself. he had a laptop which he was bringing in for his college age son. we both explained our problems and the tech began his diagnostics. in the quiet of our workspace, i asked the other customer if this kid was his oldest or if he had more. he lit up at getting to talk about his children. when done he asked about my brood. we exchanged brief technology-related stories about our kids only occasionally being interrupted by the apple tech with a question. enjoying this unexpected social encounter while getting my machine worked on turned out to be a pleasant addition to an otherwise irksome task and another inconvenience apple recently dealt me that in the end, proved more satisfying than i initially expected.
i believe unforeseen advantages to be one of the hopeful products of thoughtful and sophisticated design. granted had i been paired with a loud-phone talking, suv mom complaining about the brightness of her ipad screen, i may not be fawning so. but that is another by-product of design - they can all be improved upon, which is what keeps many of us getting out of bed each day.
in response to some feedback i received regarding yesterday's post.
i did not mean to imply saint louis has not shown any signs of the recession. i was saying saint louis was showing less signs of the recession than my friend's city was. out of respect for his personal situation, i'm not going to get into specifics, but they have public services looking at potential layoffs of 80% of staff and an 85% reduction of physical locations. and this from an organization that has never in its history laid a single person off, and that is a history that includes our country's great depression. in recent years my employer has not issued raises, instituted a hiring freeze and in a few instances laid people off. but i find this quite innocuous compared to firing 80% of your staff outright.
i was trying to be funny. i've long been told i'm one of those guys who is only funny when he's not trying to be funny and that my attempts at being funny always fall short and thus, me trying to "bring the funny" is ill-advised. this point is duly noted.
i agree the only really funny part of the post was my friend saying in-bev should have pushed the arch into the river as they rumbled through town and people reported visions of a giant big-boy like character stomping through saint louis and dragging the clydesdales behind him like a set of pet wiener dogs and knocking stuff over everywhere like a petulant child.
and for those that asked if my friend who said the funny line had a site and if so would i share it with them because then they could go straight to the funny guy and not have to wait for me to sprinkle his humor into my content. the answer is no, he does not have a site. he used to but no longer does. so there. you're stuck with me.
a friend was telling me about how his city and employer are being ravaged by the recession. i was shocked by his descriptions of rampant business failings and layoffs, mostly because i'm not seeing anything near those levels in my own city. a few minutes into the conversation the reason behind the difference occurred to me; my city has been in a state of recession for over fifty years where his city has not been.
saint louis has slowly siphoned off their significant local businesses long ago so we don't really have a whole lot left to die on the vine. especially with the fall of Anheuser Busch, our last truffula tree. when i made this observation, my friend, quick as a whip, added that when in-bev took AB they might as well have pushed the arch into the mississippi on their way out of town with one of our city's last and most storied family jewels.
so number seven on the reasons saint louis is a good place to live; we're conveniently recession proof given we have no businesses left to fail.
i was working on my computer one night during last month's sabbatical. the software updates notifier appeared. i'd been putting these off the last few weeks so decided to finally install the updates and restart my computer. i ran the updates and after the reboot continued to work for several more hours before going to bed. when i awoke in the morning, i went to my office, lifted the laptop screen...
no one is going to accuse the bomb pop people of shaving the size of their product from year to year. if anything, the bomb pop may be the only commercial item that is actually getting bigger over time. i recently noticed that breyer's changed the shape of their ice cream containers. i haven't taken the time to compare the ounce count between the old and the new but this move has surely given me the sense that i'm getting less than i used to. so if the container's seeming dimensions are nothing more than a mirage and they aren't ripping me off, the new design choice is a rookie move because it's surely sending the wrong message. lucky for them their rocky road kicks the ass of everyone else's rocky road. and lucky for me bella doesn't like the chocolate covered nuts that are part of the mix and spits hers into my bowl whenever one makes it into her mouth. granted most that i get from her are bitten and broken and come with bonus food debris clinging to them.
bella's school is having a fund raiser. i believe this to be an annual deal and one that hasn't changed much since i was a kid. fifteen years ago when i first entered the corporate workplace the occasional parent would bring their kid's sales sheet into the office. after enduring the guilt-based system first-hand, i swore i would never be that guy. and i won't. i even went as far as saying when i ...
when my folks left north carolina they decided to not sell their home and rent it instead. at this time i'd had some experience with people who owned and rented vacation properties. all of them said the same thing to me; if you ever have a rental property, employ a property management company. i suggested this to my father but he waved the advice off saying those companies wanted five or ten perce...
i was charged $3 because the front desk answered the phone
i just got back from a couple of work-related days in chicago. i realized too late that i was staying in a hotel owned by the hilton cult. it seems they are hip to the fact that some people hate their whoring ways and are now trying to hide behind differently named hotels. it worked this time. this time.
my first night i arrived late, tired and hungry. i checked the room service book and saw they had 'fresh buttered popcorn' for a perfectly respectable $8. i called down. i asked the order girl if the fresh buttered popcorn on the menu could also read 'recently microwaved popcorn'? with a soft chuckle she said that it could also be called that. it is often the case that things go more smoothly when everyone sits down to the table with a sense of humor.
fifteen minutes later an older gentlemen dressed in a suit arrived with a silver platter which held a silver bowl which held the still steaming contents of an ACT II popcorn bag. after asking to come in he walked this platter to a table in the room as if he were delivering filet mignon to a visiting ambassador. with a bow he handed me the black binder holding the bill. i opened it and found, to my expectant delight, the hilton family, even under the guise of another name, can still transform an advertised charge of $8 into a transaction fee of $15.87. i mean these people are fricken magic. after listing the original $8.00 fee, they listed the $4.50 delivery fee and then the listed the service fee and then the taxes. let's be clear, i've had car repair bills that had fewer lines than this. but there was one more line. this last line was blank and to the left contained the single word; Gratuity. it is my understanding that a gratuity is something left to someone after a service has been performed. does anyone know the going tip-rate for a good ole fashioned corn-holing?
one of the very last old, saint louis movie houses closed a few months back. several years ago it was absorbed by landmark when they came to town along with a few of the other small, privately held theaters. for several reasons landmark decided to cease operations of the hi-pointe theatre, originally built in 1922, and shuttered its windows.
but then, with the release of the new batman film, the hi-pointe's lights mysteriously came back on. while showing my support at a 10:15 viewing, i was told that a landmark employee based out of chicago quit his job, leased the space and is resuming operations of the historic theatre as a private business venture.
oh, and i was also told that next week is free popcorn week. so grab your girl or guy and take in heath ledger's farewell performance, which is worth seeing, in one of saint lou's last theaters with character. and i'd call about the popcorn. i may have heard that wrong or it may just be a few nights or whatever. i just don't want anyone getting pissy with me because i botched a detail. but, either way, at the hi-pointe you can actually load up at the snack bar for less than ten bucks.
and i have to comment on something said in the article linked to above. in it landmark ceo ted mundroff says that part of their decision was based upon the fact that "people prefer to go to multiplexes." i'm going to pause for a moment to collect myself before continuing. ok. almost there. alright. i think i can proceed now. let me start by saying HEY TED! SHUT THE HELL UP! and please, please, please don't ever again apply you imbecilic and self-serving notions about movie culture to me again. feel free to say your mother prefers multiplexes or your neighbor or some college frat brother, but don't ever imply that this is the true choice of the people. unless you are equating the sheer paucity of options left to the consumer after the corporations razed the land.
typically when i go to a movie theater i go to see A movie and i don't take my seat and reflect at how pleased i am that there are fourteen other movies playing at the same time in the same building as the one i actually came to watch. because you know what ted. the second i walk down the aisle of your multiplex theatre the first thing i feel is claustrophobic and that is because you shrunk and shrunk and shrunk the rooms so you could shoe-horn two or three or five more screens into the complex. but once i find my seat and sit down i'm welcomed by the inviting feel of a piece of fabric stapled to a piece of cardboard glued to a metal chair that is welded to a string of twenty other chairs so that when the four hundred pound guy eight seats away hefts himself out of his chair mid-film to refill his rubbermaid size tub of day-old, butter-it-yourself popcorn the whole row rocks because all the damn seats are connected to one another because the are cheaper by the dozen. but thankfully my mind doesn't dwell on this nuisance given the explosions and music and screams emanating through the wall of the films playing on either side of the room i'm in, movies, mind you, i did not come to see OR hear. so ted mundroff, someone may have put you in charge of a movie theatre chain and told you to do good but it is not because of your love of film or knowledge of the theater-going experience or even because you know what movie-goers like, want or need. it is because you know how to work a casio calculator and your gifts could just as easily be applied to shoes, valves or tampons. so again, don't ever pretend that you have my or any other customer's best interest in mind. it insults your patron's intelligence and reveals your lack of it.
and ted, there ain't a multiplex in this nation that has better:
when i was young and we lived in colorado my dad had a friend he played music with. his name was jim-bob. jim-bob was every bit as affable as you'd expect from a guy with such a feel-good moniker. the only detail i recall about jim-bob, other than his persistent grin, was his academic career. he was enrolled at colorado state university so long his credits started aging off. the problem was he was...
in 1999 i began planning to leave my employer after the company was purchased by an out of state bank. i put a single condition on the new job. the condition was this: i would only work for a company that would never be purchased. at the time of this missive i narrowed my local options down to two. the first was a well-endowed, private university and the second was this storied beer mill. they were the two institutions i felt were immune to and bigger than the standard ills of corporate greed. i guess i was wrong about one of them.
i was lucky too because my first job offer actually came from AB. in the end i turned it down for a couple of unrelated reasons. first i couldn't see dedicating myself to the promotion of alcohol. i myself don't drink and am more times than not annoyed by those who do. secondly, they had a long-standing policy of not giving vacation during the first year of service. they considered this point not negotiable and wouldn't budge. coincidentally, i felt the same and now, because of this dual stubbornness, i sidestepped a major professional catastrophe. had they been humane and granted me a respectable amount of vacation up front i may not have been paying attention when an opportunity opened up at my second employer of choice and where i currently hang my hat, in a building named anheuser-busch hall nonetheless.
but back to the acquisition. i don't know how many people realize how bad this development is for saint louis but it is a true and real tragedy. i read the article and almost wept crossing phrases like ...
The companies will, however, sell off "noncore assets" that they would not name to raise some $7 billion to finance the deal.
seven billion dollars! if that isn't a call in the night that the pillagers have crested the hill i'm not sure what is. i surely have experienced such language before and will say this is a mournful day for saint louis (and many other affected states) and not just because an iconic beer baron fell but because one of our cities last historic institutions just became a line-item in another company's ledger. a company who has no interests in the surrounding communities other than what they can trim and bleed from the people and real estate. AB has been part of the landscape for so long, it's hard to have a realistic notion of just how much they routinely re-invested in the city and subsequently, how severe the imminent raping will be. we are so far from corner taverns and neighborhood businessmen where the merchant's kids and your kids shared the same schools and the proprietor knows your name and what kind of house you own and what sort of drink you like after work that we're completely numb to the implications of it all. professional pride has been replaced with collective apathy and distrust. and whenever that is the case, community pride ain't never far behind.
even though i didn't join your ranks or consume your product, i was a big fan of what you did and am sad to see you fall. rest in peace AB. rest in peace.
my only real question is how did you come up with 81 cents?
on the morning of our last day at the fort collins hilton, i found our week-ending bill had been slid under our door. in addition to the expected and numerous charges there were several line items listed as LOCAL CALL $0.81. i went to the phone to see if such a charge was noted there. it was not. i then scanned other visible literature in the room and didn't see any such notification. i had faith that had i appeared at the front desk with the bill clenched in my fist, the charges would have been 'forgiven', with a smile even. i did not do this because it is the mere fact that they'd put me through this exercise for something as inconsequential as a local phone calls that made me agree to pay this final insult. and i wanted to leave with an appropriate amount of bile in my throat as to remember this experience.
bottom-line the hilton is meant for business travelers who aren't ultimately responsible for the net expense of their trip and not a family trying to enjoy a summer vacation. i can clearly see that. i just think they should be big enough to own up to their smarmy way of business and notify prospective guests that their purpose is one of fleecing and not pleasing their customers.
i write this through gritted teeth and taut sphincter
the hilton engineer noted in yesterday's post had mentioned that if i just needed to check email and stuff they had some computers in their business center off the main lobby i could use. needing to send a single message i stopped in there today. after sitting down and pressing the space bar to wake the workstation i was met with an introductory screen asking me to swipe a credit card on the side of the monitor to charge the fifty cents a minute usage fee to.
i'll give them one thing, the are impressively comprehensive in the fleecing of their customers.
it was big news when it happened. it continues to be a bit of a thing around here, rightfully so. that is