FunnyBusiness: Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line

Hell has no fury like a restaurant scorned

Two years ago it would have been unheard of. Today, in the equalizing world of Web 2.0 and blogs, those that are scorned by mainstream media scorn back.

Such is the case of The New York Times food critic Frank Bruni vs restaurateur turned blogger Jeffrey Chodorow.

The short version: Bruni writes a scathing review of Chodorow's new restaurant. Chodorow takes out a full page ad in the New York Times questioning Bruni's qualifications and to announce he is starting a blog where he will among other things shadow the reviews of the NYT food critics.

Is that delicious or what?

First,  Bruni 's no star review of Chodorow's latest restaurant venture.

Hanging upside down from the ceiling in the nearly pitch-black dining room are sharp, gleaming samurai swords, about 2,000 of them. The server volunteered that number, appended with an assurance that the blades, firmly anchored, shouldn’t cause any concern. The food and the bill should. Although Kobe Club does right by the fabled flesh for which it’s named, it presents too many insipid or insulting dishes at prices that draw blood from anyone without a trust fund or an expense account.

Then came Chodorow's full page ad.

"Mr. Bruni comes to us from Rome where he was not the local “expert” on Italian cuisine; he wrote about politics. In fact, there hasn’t been a real food critic with food background (except perhaps Amanda Hesser) at the New York Times since Ruth Reichl (now editor-in-chief at Gourmet magazine). Perhaps that’s also why your reviews are so all over the lot, with great restaurants getting bad reviews, fair restaurants getting great ones, one star reviews that read like two star and three star reviews that read like one star. Your readers would not expect your drama critic to have no background in drama or your architecture critic to not be an architect. For a publication that prides itself on integrity, I feel your readers should be better informed as to this VERY IMPORTANT fact, so that they can give your reviews the weight, or lack thereof, they deserve."

Near the end of the ad, Mr. Chodorow shared his true intention. From now on, he is going to shadow the food critics at the NY Times and great his own reviews in his newly launched blog.

"In the interest of fairness, I am also introducing my personal blog, which will be a compilation of my food-related experiences and musings and a special section entitled Following Frank and After Adam, in which I will make a follow-up visit to restaurants they write about for the purpose of reviewing their reviews. My blog will appear at www.chinagrillmgt.com/blog. "

So far over 60 people have shared comments on Chodorow's blog. Their comments are mixed from calling him a cry baby to applauding him.

Nothin' like  a food fight to get you smilin' in the morning.

  to Chip Griffin who wrote a great post on the restaurant wars.

Image credit: New York Times, Robert Presutti

Should FunnyBusiness be my starter blog name?

                    

              
                      

Call it blogger's naivite. When I named this blog, FunnyBusiness I wasn't thinking long term.

I wasn't thinking that there was a newspaper columnist who owned the url for funnybusiness who might one day decide to start blogging.

I didn't think that another group of bloggers would launch their own blog called, Funny Business.

When you are in business, not thinking ahead is a problem. I have a problem.  In the next few days I will make a decision of whether to continue calling this blog FunnyBusiness or come up with a new name that  is less replicable.

I'm on the fence. But I'm thinking. You can read more at Blogher

Image Credit:Flickr Word Art

Will Cingular dooce the author of "Just me, twiddling my thumbs until the apocalypse"?

Like many bloggers before him, Jared Watts writes about his job-- a job he disdains. Unlike many he probably won't be dooced for his rantings.

Work is tumultuous at best. Our manager made us all come in yesterday morning at 8am for a staff meeting…now let’s keep in mind that our staff consists of a whopping four people…definitely something that necessitates some grand spectacle. At the meeting, he basically said y’all suck, and here’s how, and then he talked to us for about an hour about how this job should be the number one priority in our lives. Every moment at work should be spent actively working, even if we have to make up jobs to do (I’m sorry, but this store is a total graveyard, and we have nothing but downtime). Sorry, I’m not going to invent jobs just to pass the time that I’m already passing just fine thank you.

As Yuki Noguchi writes in the  Washington Post  article, " Kids Say The Darndest Things", Jared Watts is blogging about his job at a Cingular retail outlet. Jared's dad is Wayne Watts --the senior vice president and associate general counsel of AT&T Corp., Cingular's parent company.

Jared makes a clear distinction between writing about the company and making personal attacks against his dad who he says, "supports him a 100 percent and is responsible for getting him the job he lovingly disses in his blog. For his part, the dad relied on a company spokesperson to express his views. As the article says,

His father, speaking through an AT&T spokesman, said: "I care very much for my son. And like many fathers and sons, we have differences of opinion on many subjects."

  Jared says what he wants to whomever he wants. His dad opts for the company spokesperson. Talk about a generation gap-- the line shouts volumes.

So does Jared's blog -- which ,while particularly brutal, could, if the company chose to listen, provide them with a real sense of what its like to work in the company.

Now the Post didn't provide a direct link to Jared's blog-- just directions how to get there. Not sure if that is some kind of  editorial policy of not providing links ( I am after all reading the article online and a link would have been appropriate and user friendly) Nevertheless, I was eager to surf for Jared.

While AT&T Cingular might view his rants as the thoughts of a"spoiled 21 year old", I am reading it as the kind of honest interpretation of a job that companies need to hear.

Companies need to understand what their policies sound like to a non-invested employee who is just there for their paycheck,not their career.

While few companies would permit an employee to blog so honestly about their job ( and who knows how much longer young Jared will be hanging around) they do have another choice....the internal corporate blog.

Karen E. Klein's Smart Answers column in BusinessWeek Online  shares that companies can start using internal blogs instead of email and workflow management tools. The article includes interviews with two of my Blogging buddies  and Blogher Editors: Jeneane Sessum and Toby Bloomberg.

An employee blog will serve more as a "...centralized talking space for company news and views, customer wins, etc.," Sessum explains. "Blogs put the nexus of control, at least from a communication standpoint, in the hands of employees, thereby empowering them. At the same time, because internal blogs remain within the firewall, they are a good venue for honest communication and collaboration in a relatively safe environment for businesses that are just getting used to the idea of blogging and may view it as sort of renegade."

Bloomberg adds a word of caution: "Although it's not a top-down strategy, unless management and the company culture support this type of informal communication it is set to fail before the first word is posted. It's critical that the company provide training and encouragement, especially in the beginning stages."

The article also includes some quotes from Theresa Valdez Klein of Blog Business Summit -- which is hosting a conference this October focusing on how internal blogs can help businesses.  Information about the conference, which will be held in Seattle, is available at her site blogbusinesssummit.com.

 

There you go again...Comcast Got It All Wrong

Last week AOL fired a customer service rep caught on audio for doing his job . A blogger had taped his conversation trying to cancel his  service.

The soundtrack became an online hit. This week's online sensation is the napping Comcast technician. If you happened to be watching Cable News this weekend, this video got a lot of coverage. But it was the wrong coverage.

They focused on the fact that Comcast fired the poor technician, who after waiting on hold for an excruciating and obviously mind numbing 90 minutes to his own office,took a nap. The technician napping, wasn't the issue.

Comcast's horrible customer service was supposed to be the butt of the joke. Unfortuneately, Comcast's knee jerk reaction was to focus on the fact that the technician nodded off.

Who wouldn't fall asleep after 90 minutes on a  Cozy Couch?

The Comcast technician didn't deserve to get fired any more than John at AOL deserved his firing earlier this month. What he deserved was a Gift card to Starbucks.

A couple of weeks ago,I encountered the working conditions of a Comcast technician. I had offered to greet the Comcast technician at my friend Myrna's house while she visited her dad in the hospital. He was working in her bedroom. I was downstairs.

After 45 minutes I went in to check on his progress. There he was, sitting on the floor with the phone cradled in his neck..on hold with Comcast. At the time I found it amusing.While I was used to being put on hold for technical support as a customer, I had no idea that the internal folks were treated the same way.

What's with that? We chatted. He said he always was put on hold for long periods of time.It was just part of the job. The guy who posted the video--Brian Finkelstein(who created his blog Snakes On A Blog for the sole purpose of being invited to the premiere of Snakes on a Plane) wasn't upset with the technician. He was upset with Comcast. That message got lost in the humor of the napping technician video. As he said on his blog,Snakes on a Blog,

At one point Comcast sent a technician to replace my cable modem/wireless router. This should have taken five minutes. Instead, when he called Comcast to activate my new modem, he was placed on hold for nearly 90 minutes. When I asked him why he was on hold for so long, he told me that phone reps were busy filling out customer service surveys. Then he fell asleep on my couch. I could have made a few suggestions for their survey. Anyway, after they missed two appointments in the last 24 hours, I’ve finally lost all hope of Comcast actually getting my internet connection working. To commemorate my miserable experience, I made this video (including footage of the technician asleep on my couch)

As expected, Comcast fixed the problem. Turns ot it was quite complicated and took at team over 5 hours to finally get his interent working. Jim Durbin, at Brandstorming also thinks that Comcast missed the point recommending that if they had had a blog they could have alleviated the bad press.

1) Link to the video from the Comcast blog. Comcast screwed up, and admitting it is the first step to take. Link the video, admit how embarassing it is, and call up Brian to personally apologize. Give him six months worth of free service.
2) Work to correct the problem. The problem is not the poor tech. It's the fact that cable service is a mockery, and everyone from sitcoms to comedians to average customers make fun of the service of cable guys. They even made a movie about it!
3) Don't fire the tech. Make him into a commercial where he drinks a lot of coffee. Turn this around. Use the guy as an example of how they are improving.
4) Highlight your successes by tracking progress. Highlight your successes. Make your improvements public.
5) Focus on other positive ways you can use blog marketing.

There's another aspect to this story. Instead of punishing the technician for taking a nap , Comcast should be applauding him --at least that's the belief of Camille & Bill Anthony of The Napping Company who are tiredlessly (because they nap) campaigning to promote work- time napping. More on that at another time -- but their point is that napping increases productivity. I hope to have an interview with them later this week. So in addition to the Starbucks for a year card, I think Comcast should also become a sponsor of National Napping Day --which always falls on the Monday after Daylight Savings starts.

Meanwhile, Comcast and AOL should rethink their firings, apologize to the booted technicians and yes, apologize to their customers.

Hat tip to Church of the Customer for leading me to Brandstorming. This is cross-posted at Blogher

Note: In the original post I had incorrectly identified Jim Durbin as Frank Durbin. Franki Durbin is his wife. The error was correct on 6/30/06.