Throwing Your Weight Around

The office is a competitive place.  I have recently been catching up on Mad Men and I am sometimes amazed at how cutthroat the office environment was.  I am thankful that I have worked at companies where advancement was based more on merit than on whose ass you were able to kiss.  I am a strong believer in personal accountability, so I have frequently found myself fighting against office politics.

My company likes to say that we all work really hard to get the job done, and that we function as a really tight-knit team.  I agree, we all do work an exceptional amount to get the job done, but it's still every man for himself. Even in an environment where one client deliverable will have no less than five people handle it, no one works together.  Why is this?  Why does everyone have to try and mark their territory, and why are they doing this at the sake of efficiency?

Take for example, a recent dialog I was engaged in.  While working on a project for a client, we were informed that we needed them to send us a file.  We could not progress any further on our project without this file.  The client had also stopped responding to us.  It was mentioned to me that we may have the file (or a version of it) internally.  When I inquired about this, I was met with a lot of resistance.  I was told that our version may be just different enough to cause problems.  I acknowledged that I understood the risk and wished to move ahead anyway.

Keeping in mind that our work had come to a complete standstill, why would the project manager interject that using an incorrect version of the file may cause delays in the timeline?  Why did the PM fail to read the entire conversation and decide to piss all over everything just for the sake of saying something, anything?  Had the PM read the entire email string and understood the situation, we could all be working on a resolution to the issue instead of arguing over a work-delay now or later.  If we all chose to stop playing petty politics, this issue could already be resolved.  Instead, we have one very large roadblock being created by the project manager - the person who is supposed to prevent or navigate around roadblocks.

Personal Accountability

In the news recently, a woman has decided to sue match.com because she claims the site did not do enough to protect her safety.  The woman met a man through the popular dating site and was sexually assaulted by him.  She is suing for no monetary amount.  Interestingly, she filed the suit as "Jane Doe" in an effort to protect her identity, but she later started doing the morning news show interview circuit with the hopes of "starting a conversation about sexual assault."

Before I get started, I do want to say that I feel badly for this woman.  No one deserves to have their trust broken, especially when it leads to violence.  Sexual assault is a very serious issue, and I will give "Jane Doe" credit for bringing yet another facet of this issue to the forefront.  There, now that I got that off my chest...

When I was a child, one of the lessons my parents always drilled into my head was to not talk to strangers. There were countless after school specials and assemblies in school that also really drove this point home.  Strangers were people who put razor blades in your halloween candy and who kidnapped you as you were walking home from the playground.  I guess that my parents and other adult figures did a good job with this message because it's been one that has stuck with me.

As you age you obviously need to interact with people who you know very little, if at all.  Some of these situations are out of necessity, like speaking with a clerk at a store.  Some of these are out of convenience, like when you are waiting in line at the DMV.  Then there are the times when we intentionally put ourselves in the presence of strangers, like when visiting any online community.  Regardless of how popular the community is, as educated and mature adults, it is our responsibility to maintain an air of caution when entering into these situations.

The Jane Doe in question was definitely lured into this situation, I will give her that.  She actually did not get assaulted until the second date.  Things had to be going well enough that she wanted to see the man again.  What really irks me about the story, however is that she didn't do any searches on his name until after she was attacked.  If she had the smarts to do that in the first place, why would she not do that before (or even after) the first date.  She would have found everything she needed to know and could have avoided this situation.  Additionally, this woman is 52 years old.  There is no better way to say this than "she should have known better."

I'm incredibly bothered that dating sites are now scrambling to find a way to further shelter their users from the harsh reality of life.  Match.com has already committed to screening current and future users against the sex offender database - although they have also admitted that Jane Doe's attacker would not have been flagged by the method they are implementing.  

While Jane Doe does make a valid point about safety and perceived safety on internet dating sites, it is my opinion that her lawsuit is a waste of time and resources.  Had she done her due diligence like many others who frequent internet dating sites, she may have avoided her traumatic experience.  What I still can't understand is why Jane Doe isn't taking responsibility for her own actions. I can't quite seem to grasp why she has to file a lawsuit just for attention, which will summarily ruin something for the rest of us.

Glass Half Full

One of the things I have learned about myself is that I don't do things in moderation.  I have a hard time keeping cookies or chips in the house because I will end up eating the whole package.  It's rare that I will go out for one beer or one glass of wine.  I can't even have a pack of gum laying around without chewing half of it in an hour or two.

As the internet has pulled the corset strings on the globe and we all get a little bit closer together, I have learned that this mentality is about as American as a super-sized apple pie.  Everything in America is done to excess - we super size, we shop in big-box stores, we spend more than we earn, and we buy houses we cant possibly afford with mortgages that are too good to be true.  In addition to this, we eat.  Boy do we eat.  The American portion size is out of control, with some restaurant entrée portions containing more calories than a single human needs in a whole day.  Several celebrities have become quite vocal about this, and they are trying their best to bring portions and the American diet back in line.

The reason I bring all of this up is because I recently found myself outraged when I went to a quick-serve restaurant and did not get the gluttonous portion I have normally been served.  I've been to this eatery many times in the past, all with varying portion sizes.  I am fairly certain that the portion I am accustomed to was too much for one healthy meal.  That being said, why should I pay the same price for a smaller (but more healthy) portion?  If I can see that I have less food, why should you the company get the same amount of money?  And when do we reach our breaking points?

This has also been happening a lot in the packaged food industry.  Ice cream used to come in a half-gallon container.  A few years back the ice cream companies simultaneously raised their prices AND shrunk their containers.  I was in a grocery store recently and saw a container of ice cream proudly proclaiming "NEW HALF GALLON SIZE" as if the container itself was made of gold.  There is nothing new about the half-gallon size - it was just on hiatus.  If you take something away long enough, however, you can introduce it again as new and the consumer will be none the wiser.

All Things to All People

I read an article (read here) this morning about how WalMart is trying to become the world's largest general store.  The basic concept is that if you line your shelves with enough crap, you can capture enough of a portion of each market to be super-profitable.  Turns out that WalMart isn't the only store doing this.  It's a pretty popular trend, apparently.

I think it's a pretty stupid trend.  Way back when I was in Marketing 101, we learned about product-line extensions and brand-extensions.  For those without a marketing degree, a product-line extension is when you take an existing product and make some kind of incremental change to launch a new product.  Think about laundry detergent or toothpaste - whitening, brightening, with flavor crystals, etc.  Those are all product line extensions of the main product (Tide or Crest, etc).

A brand extension is when you take your brand name and extend it into a not-necessarily-related category.  The one example that always comes to my mind is Dannon Water.  Dannon is known for yogurt, but they tried to use the brand equity and consumer sentiment of their name to sell water.  In this case, it's been working.  Dannon Water still exists.  One of the main concerns with a brand-extension, as taught to me back in 101, was that you never wanted to dilute your brand's goodwill.

When I read that retailers are trying to be everything to everyone, this is immediately where my mind went.  I had recently been to Best Buy and noticed that they had a wide variety of fitness gear - some electronic and some not.  If I can buy free weights at Best Buy, why would i go to Modells?  If I can buy pet toys at Old Navy, where does PetSmart fit into my life?

Reflecting on this a little more, it made me realize that this phenomenon is kind of what's wrong with America. America used to be full of little boutiques and specialty stores.  It may have taken a full day to go to five different stores to buy five different items, but they were all hand-crafted quality goods.  It makes Americans look as cheap as the crap we import and stock in WalMart when we value our own convenience more than the quality of the goods we buy and the vendors we support.

I don't think that this trend is going to go away - it's just too appealing to buy everything in one store AND for the lowest price.  That being said, we should at least make a concerted effort to let 'general stores' handle the general merchandise while other stores still specialize.  After all, you cant be all things to all people - you will only ever be some things to some of the people.

"It's My F*cking Day"

As I am rounding out the last few months of my thirtieth year, I have already seen most of my friends and contemporaries get married.  I generally associate with low-key people who don't need bells and whistles to have a great time, so I didn't get to see much Bridezilla action going on.  It baffles me that some people can get so worked up about the finest details (most of which wont even be noticed, let alone remembered).  The icing on this wedding cake for me is the statement heard so many times when it comes screeching out of a to-be-bride's mouth: "But this is my special day."

You selfish bitch.  Even if you are running to City Hall for a quickie civil ceremony, there is one other person who has a very vested interest in the goings on of the day - the man who will be your husband.  Believe it or not, he may want to be involved in the wedding planning.  I'm sure he doesn't care if you pick lilac or lavender for your bridesmaid's dresses, but he might care about the venue or the taste of the cake.  Aside from the fact that he is co-headlining this event with you, about 50% of the guests will be there on his behalf.

In addition to your future husband, your friends and family are also sharing in this day.  They have to invest their time, money, and support for you.  While their expenditure is by no means on par with the cost of the actual event, it's still a lot to ask for people to give up an entire day of their weekend and drop at least $100 on you when you will probably spend no more than 45 seconds saying hello in between dinner and the cake cutting.

It makes me incredibly irate to hear a woman bitch and moan about how her perfect day is ruined.  For starters, life is full of twists and turns.  Aside from those curve-balls being half the fun of living, how we react and adjust to them speaks volumes about our character.  Nothing in life is perfect - even your $40,000 wedding.  If you are adult enough to get yourself married off, you should be adult enough to enjoy the day as it happens.