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Customers Are Not Illegal (Yet!) So Annoy Them Until They Go Away!

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Let’s face it – customers are annoying. They’re constantly asking for things, and they touch everything – ­and there’s no telling if they washed their hands the last time they went to the bathroom. Customers are gross. They should be illegal.
But unfortunately they’re not illegal. There’s an election coming up, and I’m hoping to hear something in the presidential debates about finally banning customers once and for all. But until that magic day comes, here are a few simple tricks you can use to make sure that you have to deal with these people as little as possible.

Keep Weird Hours! Banks are great at this. “Oh, sorry, we’re closed. Yeah, it’s Arbor Day. I know, most people don’t realize how important a holiday that is, but we take it really seriously around here.” But the best examples of this are college professors. Ever notice how they’re only in their offices for three hours a week, and how none of those hours are next to each other? They’re masters at avoiding their students. In case you were curious, that’s why they call it a master’s degree.

Don’t Offer Shuttle Service to the Airport for Your Customers! Who Have Early Flights In case you’re wondering, no, this is totally unrelated to an actual experience I had a few weeks ago with a rental car company that I’d never used before and will never use again. This completely fictitious example was made even more amazing by the fact that this particular hypothetical rental car company was located off-site, (more…)

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Ye Olde Keynote Speaker

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012
It is impossible to tell you how excited I am to be writing about today’s post.  You see, every year I do one presentation that falls so far outside the norm that I don’t even truly know how to explain how I ended up doing that particular job.  One year I performed in a loading dock on a pallet of unfinished deck boards for a guy who hired me while riding his lawn tractor.  One year, way back in my stand-up comedy days, I performed at a high-school after-Prom in rural Kansas for a school whose parents had chosen comedy over hiring a hypnotist because some of the parents felt that hypnotism was a form of black magic.  (Seriously, I could not make that up.)  If you want the full stories on either of those, just write me and ask!

his year, though, the most unusual request of the year comes courtesy of Data Center, Inc., a core processing company based in New Jersey that held their annual customer appreciation conference in Kansas City.  I’ve done a lot of work in Kansas City, and one of the bureaus that often hires me is located there.  So when I got a call from Brittanny at Speaker Exchange about a potential job, I thought it would sound a lot like the other times she’d called me.  And it did – until she started talking.

Brittanny:  “So, Jeff, I’ve got this client who might be interested in hiring you for September 17.  Are you free?”

Jeff:  “Why yes I am, Brittanny!  So far this sounds like a totally ordinary phone call.  Is there anything strange or unexpected that I should know about?”

Brittanny:  “Funny you should ask that, Jeff.  Because it just so happens that the theme of this conference is The Renaissance.  And they really want somebody who can tie into their theme.”

Jeff:  “I’m sorry, Brittanny, I must have a bad connection.  I thought you just said that their theme is the Renaissance.”Brittanny:  “Yep.  The Renaissance.”

Jeff:  “You mean like dragons and knights and stuff?”

Brittanny:  “Yep.  That’s what I mean.  The Renaissance.”

Now when I was a kid I was a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so I’m actually a bigger fan of the Renaissance than most people.  I have indeed had a giant, monstrously unnaturally turkey leg at a Ren Faire or two.  But I’ve never thought about how modern business can or should be run the way they did things back in 1564, mostly because today it’s sort of illegal to pour boiling oil on people.

Jeff:  “Um, I don’t really know what to tell you.  I don’t talk much about the Renaissance.  Nobody does.”

Brittanny:  “I know that.  But you’re creative, I thought you could think of something.”

And then it hit me.  A friend of mine from college, Paul Bielacyzc (good luck saying his last name), runs a company called Aradani Studios whose business is selling fantasy art and prosthetics to a legion of fantasy fans all around the country.  And he has a ton of costumes.  So many, in fact, that I thought….

Jeff:  “Hey Brittanny.  Let me call my friend Paul.  I’ll get back to you.”

A few days later, this is the picture I sent Brittanny, along with a note saying, “Will this help?”

A day later I was hired.  And I did the job yesterday, and it was awesome.  I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun picking out the clothes for an event than I did for this one, and I was actually complimented on my willingness to ‘go the extra mile’.  Ha!  If only they knew how much fun this kind of thing is!

So there you have it – the craziest job of the year so far.  But now I’m hoping that people will be inspired to put all kinds of strange riders into my contracts.  Bring it on, people!  The weirder the better.  Remember, going to a conference and learning things doesn’t have to be boring.  Just be warned.  If I see you playing with your iPad while I’m talking, I’m going to shoot you with arrows.  Lots of them.  Pointy ones.  It’ll probably hurt.

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Jargon Time!

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Hello everyone!  I’m in a pretty good mood today.  I’m in Durango, Colorado, about to present at the college here, but I got in early enough to go skiing for half a day.  It’s gorgeous, and my life seems to be heading in a happy direction.  Which of course bodes ill for this post, since I’m just not sure how I’m going to channel the proper amount of righteous indignation to come up with a topic.

Thankfully, a friend of mine has been kind enough to provide a topic for me.  She recently sat in a meeting where (as in common in meetings) nobody spoke any real words.  Instead they loaded up the truck with pseudo-fancy terms that do an excellent job of masking the fact that nobody has any idea what anybody else is talking about.  All hail the jargon fog!

So, in honor of that concept, I’d like to share a few terms with you today that will help you survive any meeting in which you feel like you are completely over your head.  Whatever you say will still probably not make any sense, but at least you’ll get your coworkers to nod thoughtfully as though they actually understood you.

Circle the wagons – There’s nothing like a phrase that literally has to be explained to everyone under 30.  “You see, Jim, back in the frontier days, when a wagon train was under threat of attack, the wagonmaster – yeah, that’s what they called him, I read it somewhere once – the wagonmaster would organize all of the wagons into a circle for a better defensive position.  So think of our products as wagons, and the market forces are, you know, like a tribe of barbarians that want to attack our wagons.  You follow me?”

Sea change – This literally makes absolutely no sense to anybody.  It actually derives from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” but if any of you can explain what it actually means, I will mail you a box of cookies and a signed, framed photograph of me wrestling a boar.  (Which I happen to have, just so you know.  Seriously, you can Photoshop anything these days.)

Piggyback – Nothing pleases me quite like the idea of a fully grown adult riding piggyback on a colleague’s shoulders.  Inexplicably, the phrase “I’d like to piggyback off of what Sally just said” is simultaneously considered more astute than “I’d like to add to what Sally just said” AND is somehow not considered sexual harassment.  Really, Todd, you’d like to piggyback on Sally there?  Sounds like a surefire trip to HR to me.

Any noun used as a verb – The one that comes to mind right now is ‘dialogue,’ but you can do this with literally any noun, and so you should.  Be creative!  Examples:  “I need you to rabbit that report to me ASAP” or “Let’s table this topic for a minute and telescope over to the next item on the agenda.”

There are a billion more here, people, but I’m going to go do something else now.  Feel free to share your favorites, though!  Seriously.  Do a big giant brain dump right here so we can get out of our silos.

Brain dump.  Nobody sees a potentially inappropriate connotation there?  Nobody?  Because I sure do.

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Thoughts on Diversity

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Hello again, and welcome to another Martin Luther King Day.  Today we honor one of America’s most impressive orators, a man who helped usher in the most sweeping social change in the United States since the Civil War.  The civil rights’ movement of the 1960s would probably not have accomplished as many things or commanded the same amount of attention without his contribution.  So I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on diversity, since diversity is the watchword of the day.

In general, diversity is considered to be vital for the success of any institution.  The human body could not function without the intricate interworkings of its many diverse parts; a football team could not succeed without the masterful interplay between players at different positions with different skills and objectives.  In many cases, diversity is the key ingredient to give you any hope for success.

Which is why I’d like you to spend a lot of time thinking about farming.  See, farmers plant one type of crop on a given patch, but they can only do that for so long because that giant monocrop will eventually suck all the life out of the earth.  Then, at the end of the year, they harvest everything, and you’re left with a giant pile of dead stalks and leaves, a wasteland of emptiness where nothing will grow again for several months.

In a word – awesome.

So there you go, folks.  Strive to make everyone in your business operate identically to everyone else, and soon you too can stand proudly at your office window and gaze out upon the brown, barren, lifeless vista you’ve helped create.   Have them do the same thing over and over and over again until you suck the life out of them the way that monoculture sucks the life out of the ground.  You can do it.  I know you can.

(I grew up around a lot of corn.  In case you’re wondering.)

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How to Keep New Potential Members out of Your Association!

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Hello everyone!  I’m getting ready to head yet again to another conference, filled with association members who will most likely try and persuade me to join their group.  Maybe I will.  Perhaps I’ll stage an impressive coup and install myself as Association Dictator For Life, then wage a vicious purge against all of the members who didn’t seem very excited to see me become their overlord.  But I’ll probably just end up having some cheesecake instead.

Anyway, I come in contact with a few dozen associations every year, and I know that 99% of them are looking for new members.  But I’ve wandered through a few associations that will never get any new members, because the things they’re doing are not new-member-friendly.  And since we all know that new people are both scary and evil, I thought I’d share some of their techniques so that you too can keep strangers at bay for the rest of your life.

Don’t Say Hello! – New members always have the new-kid-at-school look about them.  They stand off by themselves, nursing a drink and hoping that somebody will introduce them to the circle of cool people.  Which is why you should ignore them like everyone else is.  They’re not cool.  If they were cool, they’d already be in the circle of cool people.  And if you talk to them, you’ll lose your status as a cool person.  And then who’s going to go with you to Prom?

Don’t Explain What Your Group Really Does! – If there’s anything more amazing than having absolutely no idea what a given association does or how it might help you professionally, I don’t know what it is.  The best advocates of this approach will end every sentence with, “You should really just go check out the website.”

“But you’re right here, in front of me, and you can make words like I can.  Couldn’t you just, you know, tell me what you guys do?”

“I said you should check. Out. The. Website.  Good day, sir.”

Fail to Update Your Website!  I’ve seen some of them that are literally two years out of date.  You’d assume that those associations wouldn’t exist anymore, wouldn’t you?  I sure would.  But that’s not always the case.  This is also a stellar tactic if you’ve just told me to check out the website, by the way.

Enjoy, my fine readers, and good luck.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a purge to conduct.  Somebody took the last piece of cheesecake off the buffet table before I could get to it, and that somebody has to pay.

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My Last New Year’s Post Ever!!!

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Hello, and Happy New Year!  By now you should have already seen my super awesome New Year’s video (if not, click http://www.jeffhavens.com/?p=464), and so you should already have a few good ideas about how to gear up for the year to make 2012 one of your most successful ever.

However, you should also be aware of the fact that the Mayan calendar has predicted that the apocalypse is set to arrive sometime around December of this year.  I’m pretty sure they knew what they were talking about, because John Cusack was in a movie about it.  So I don’t see a whole lot of reason for you to plan anything long-term.

Fortunately for you, I have a few ideas that should help you cope with the impending end of the world.

Don’t follow up! – If somebody doesn’t return your phone call right away, it’s probably because they don’t like you.  And why should you bother pestering them?  The world is going to end soon; the last thing you should be doing is trying to close a difficult sale.

Tell Everyone What You Really Think of Them! – I’m not exactly sure why this implies that you’ve secreted disliked the people around you forever and are only now giving yourself permission to say so, but that’s apparently what this phrase means.  So get to work.  They’ve been a thorn in your side for long enough.

Wake Up Late! – In a world full of impending doom, there is absolutely no cause to be setting an alarm clock.

Make Risky Investments! – Ideal options here include wagering all of your assets on double-zero at the roulette wheel, or betting everything you own that Donald Trump will never again pretend to run for president.

These are just the ideas that came to me; I’m sure if I spent some more time thinking about it that I could come up with things more immediately relevant to your business.  But why should I bother?  The world is about to end, and I’ve got better things to do than think.  I’ve got panic room rations to start collecting.

Happy New Year!

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The Tyrant’s New Year’s Resolutions!

Monday, December 19th, 2011

Hello, eager readers, and happy merry holidaytime.  In honor of the upcoming new year, many of us will make resolutions to lose weight and go to the gym and spend more time with our families and all kinds of other crap that we won’t actually bother with.  So I’ve come up with a collection of New Year’s resolutions that any aspiring tyrant can rally behind.

Repeat after me.  Do this out loud, please, and in company.

I resolve to give myself a larger bonus next year, which I will fund by getting rid of my company’s 401K matching policy.

I resolve to drink the last cup of breakroom coffee at 9:14am and not brew another pot because I know I won’t need another cup.

I resolve not to answer my cell phone unless the person calling outranks me.

I resolve to be at least 15 minutes late to every meeting that I schedule, and to leave 15 minutes early from every meeting that I’m forced to attend.

I resolve to ISSUE ORDERS IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS SO THAT PEOPLE APPRECIATE HOW IMPORTANT MY REQUESTS ARE!

I resolve to tell everyone how amazing my latest vacation was, and to showcase pictures of all of my new purchases.

And last, at least for today, I resolve to pay less attention to my personal hygiene and stand closer to people while talking to them.  It’s a new year.  I deserve this.

Happy merry holidaytime, everyone!

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Are Your Employees Unhappy Enough? Because They Could Always Be Unhappier.

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Woo-hoo!

First off, all articles should start that way.  “Woo-hoo!” is a much better greeting than “Hello.”  But in this case, my enthusiasm is well-earned.  Because I just read an article that gave me a few awesome ideas.  It turns out that a 2009 employee survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Managers found that the top five factors that most closely correlate to employee satisfaction are:  job security, benefits (especially health care), compensation, opportunities to use skills and abilities, and feeling safe in the work environment.  Finally, I’ve got some concrete evidence!

So, are you ready to oppress those parasites who sit next to you every day?  Then here we go!

Constantly tell your employees that you have no idea what the future holds!  This has the benefit of being a technically true statement, since nobody knows what the future holds.  But there’s a huge difference between saying, “No matter what happens, your job is safe here” and “I wouldn’t get too comfortable until we get the quarterly earnings back next month.”  Don’t do that first one, idiot!  Option 2 all the way!

Systematically eliminate benefits!  I’m guessing you’re already working on this one.  Way to go!

Squeeze your employees into areas outside of their expertise!  This will help them learn valuable new skills.  But more importantly, it will ensure that they slowly but inevitably forget why they took this job in the first place.  “I’m a marketing and design guy; do I really want to be pigeonholed in customer service forever?”  (Hint: the answer is ‘only until I find a better job’.)

Place caltrops and other death traps around the workplace!  OK, so you’re probably not going to do this one.  Most people don’t know what a caltrop is, and I have no idea where you can buy them.  But you could at least postpone maintenance on your factory long enough that ceiling tiles occasionally crash to the ground with no provocation.  “How long do fire extinguishers work?  This one was put here in 1974.  Well I guess we’ll find out whenever there’s a fire to try it on!”

I’m so excited that this article is coming to you just in time for the holidays.  Because if there’s a better Christmas present than the sight of an entire office full of dejected and miserable employees, I don’t know what it is.  Have fun!

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A Christmas Present for all the Managers Out There

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Hey all!  Today’s article is going to be short, but it’s also going to be amazing.  Why?  Because I’ve found a piece of empirical information that should warm the hearts of all the managers out there in Managerland.  Are you ready?  Here we go.

One study of healthcare workers found that when employees were working for a boss they disliked, they had significantly higher blood pressure.  Boss-induced hypertension could increase the risk of coronary heart disease by one-sixth and stroke by one-third.  And employees who work for bad bosses for four years or more are 64% more likely to experience a serious heart problem than employees who work for good bosses.

I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.

…(a moment passes)…

IS THAT FREAKING AMAZING OR WHAT?!?!?!?!?  Your managerial practices can actually hasten the death of your employees!  I’ll bet you never knew what truly awesome power you wielded.

In case you didn’t already know, the three most significant influences on an employee’s happiness are: relationship to immediate superiors; relationship to coworkers; and the length and ease of the commute to work.  You are in charge of one-third of that happiness.

So the next time you see your employees, remember this.  You can treat them well and receive their loyalty and increased productivity as a result of your efforts.  Or you can send them to an early grave.  The choice is yours.

But I’m hoping you’ll pick the ‘early grave’ option.

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Profile in Tyranny: The Guy Who Wouldn’t Hold the Door

Monday, November 21st, 2011

It’s about time for another one of these, wouldn’t you say?  Given that I haven’t posted a Profile in Tyranny for a while, you might think that I’ve managed to go a few weeks without running into somebody I’d like to hit over the head.  And you’re correct.  It’s been a good November.

Until today.

Before we begin, though, it’s important to point out that your tyranny can be large or small.  The word tyranny generally implies an awesome and all-encompassing strategy of systematic oppression, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  You can tyrannize in small, everyday kinds of ways.  Like my tyrant today did.

This morning I spent an hour or so taking care of a shipment of books that has come to my office.  Each of the boxes is around 45 pounds, and there are a million of them.  The actual number is around 90, but after you’ve lugged 70 45-pound boxes up and down a flight of stairs, it starts to feel like a million.

Anyway, in order for me to take my books from where they are to where they need to be, I have to open a door that swings towards me, which involves one of three things:

1)      Me balancing a box on one hand while I open the door with the other (which I can do, by the way, because I am enormously muscular and will soon make my big break on the World’s Strongest Man competition alongside my tire-throwing mentor Bill Kazmaier, one of the luminaries in the rarefied world of lifting ridiculously heavy things and putting them right back down).

2)      Trying to balance the box on one raised knee while I stab wildly at the door with my briefly free hand.  For a split second, this approach makes me look like The Heisman Trophy, until the box slips out of my hands and blocks the door I’m trying to open, which means I end up having to push it out of the way, open the door, and then pick it up again.

3)      Opening the door with my elbow, which is not only fun to do but adorable to watch.

Option 1 got used up after the 35th trip, and option 2 made me want to set all my boxes of books on fire after about the 50th trip.  Which means that for the last 40, I’ve been stuck with option 3.  I look like a penguin trying to fly, flapping my useless vestigial winglets in a hopeless attempt to gain some altitude.  Except I’m just a one-winged penguin, which is doubly stupid.

By now you’ve got to be wondering: where’s the tyrant in all this?

I’ll tell you where he is.  He’s standing right beside the door between trips 55 and 62, watching me open the door with my elbow and making absolutely no move to help me.  He has arms, and legs, and he wasn’t on his phone.  He was just watching.  We made eye contact.  More than once.

Look, you don’t always have to let me merge in traffic, because sometimes I’m being a jerk and driving as far as possible down the upcoming construction lane just so I don’t have to wait my fair share of the time.  And you don’t always have to say ‘Hi!’ back when I say hello to you, because sometimes you’re busy or distracted or just didn’t hear me.  But when you stare directly into my eyes while I’m holding a 45-pound box and don’t shuffle two feet to your left to save me the trouble of opening the door with my elbow, that’s when I mentally cross you off of my Christmas list.

And don’t even get me started on people who don’t hold the elevator.

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