Thank You for Completing Our Survey
Thinking about big life questions after completing two (wildly different) customer satisfaction surveys.
Category: Management and Work
Bits and pieces on business and supervision – doing and undergoing – and working nicely (or not) with others.
Psych!
Some thoughts on how to de-escalate tricky questions.
Button, Button
Not entirely random thoughts generated by a trainee cashier’s button, but close enough.
Is That the Best You Can Do?
Netflix traffic accounted for 34% of North America’s downloads during the busiest hours of the day this year. Drew Fitzgerald, Wall Street Journal, 2014 May 14 Maybe you already knew that Netflix accounts for one-third of internet downloads. But maybe you didn’t know that I accounted for another one-third of …
We Appreciate Your Business
Thank you for calling the blank-blank-blank. All of our associates/agents/technicians are currently serving other customers. We appreciate your business. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. In the recovery period after the Great Crash, I’ve spent quite some …
We Know Where That Information Is
Have you seen a blue binder? From his glassed-in perch, the bulldozer operator frowns for a moment at the note in his hand, looks down suspiciously at the guy with the mop of curly hair who is looking up at him hopefully, and then checks the note again. Yup, that’s …
Instructor, Instructee
Learning (in part) not to accept responsibility for another’s problem, and not to need to make others happy with me, and to accept my own rightful authority in a job. He asked the same question six times. I was indignant. Yes, and you answered six times. He was amused. …
Bee-beep, Bee-beep, Bee-beep
Working in a rental unit’s kitchen (hard to claim “cooking”), my irritation with a different microwave’s timer beeps causes me to consider my own skills as a supervisor. Bee-beep. I look around as the timer sounds off. What was that for? Oh yes, the tea. Why would I remember …
To Be? That is the Question
An article about elk advocates – no, strike that, “elf advocates” – gives me a whole new way to think about who I am. Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a …