Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

The Tower of Babble

If the phone had not rung at 1:50 a.m. from my friend Lynn's security service saying an alarm went off in her house, it was canceled and she had not called in or answered her phone, I would definitely not have seen the segment on Countdown with Keith Olbermann about a new voice scrambler called BABBLE.

"Babble’ from Herman Miller, designed to add masking human noise to hide the contents of your conversations from nosey office mates. The Babble takes your own conversation clips and spits them back out at random, making it hard to track your actual, current conversation"

I was not worried about my friend Lynn, explaining to the security service that she never answers her phone, takes days to listen to voice mail and doesn't have an email account or a Blackberry.

However, I was wide awake. The Babble caught my attention. The Countdown staff did not give it rave reviews but they gave it okay reviews and this is how The New York Times described the product.

"Two people in an office here were having a tête-à-tête, but it was impossible for a listener standing nearby to understand what they were saying. The conversation sounded like a waterfall of voices, both tantalizingly familiar and yet incomprehensible.

The cone of silence, called Babble, is actually a device composed of a sound processor and several speakers that multiply and scramble voices that come within its range. About the size of a clock radio, the first model is designed for a person using a phone, but other models will work in open office space."

During my five years as a reporter at WWBT-TV in Richmond, Virginia I worked in an open space newsroom. I didn't take a lot of personal calls in those days,and private conversations were held in the ladies room or with photographers going to and from stories.

However, there was one reporter, Steve, who really had a pet name for his girlfriend ---Turkey. And as lovers often do, they talked on the phone quite frequently, replacing their birth names with their pet name,"Turkey". One five minute call could have 20 Turkeys in it, and of course they ended each conversation by either saying,  "I LOVE YOU TURKEY" or "I LOVE YOU TOO,TURKEY".

The Babble has a future.Even at $400 a pop, it could  be a bargain making people's days incredibly more enjoyable and yes, productive. The Babble might not be perfect yet, but I'd rather listen to babble than to Turkey love.

You Guys

"I hope you don't mind me pointing this out," she began, " and I'm sure you are not aware of this, but you say 'you guys' quite a lot." 

She was a participant in a two-day meeting. I was the facilitator.

"I thought you would want to know." As way of explanation she added, "I'm a facilitator as well and about a year ago people started mentioning that the term is really not appropriate. Look around," she instructed, "how many guys are in this room?"

There were approximately twenty-five people in the room. Three were male.

Checking Merriam Webster I was not in the wrong. Guy, according to the dictionary is a gender neutral term when used as a plural.

PERSON -- used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex <saw her and the rest of the guys>

Nevertheless, I wasn't going to use a term that someone felt was offensive.

Did it throw me off my game? It did a little. I decided to refer to the group as "Ladies and Gentlemen" and that did cheer me up--made me feel like I was the circus announcer in the big tent.

This was not the first time in my career that a participant had issue with a word I was using. Several years ago I was facilitating a workshop on branding to public health nurses. At one point I used the word "branding" to describe what we would be discussing that day.

During that break,my client advised me to use another word for "branding" because the group felt it was too violent.

I thought it was a joke. He was serious. The group took offense to how ranchers brand their cattle and he informed me that to use that word would be too upsetting to the audience.

It was easier to come up with a substitute for you guys.

Which brings me to the reason I use you guys in the first place. It was my substitute word for Y'all-- a term Minnesotans were not tolerant of when I moved her from Richmond, Virginia in the late 70s.

Should I go back to saying Y'all? Or use the now Y'all plural--all Y'all? Just say folks? Everyone? People?

What do you say, Party People?

Would the Real Petronius Arbiter Please Stand Up?

The PowerPoint presentation I was watching had a quote about reorganization that caught my eye. Actually, the quotee and the date of the quote caught my eye:

    It seemed every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be reorganized...I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. 

-Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.    

    

I was so taken with the quote that I decided to do a little research on Mr. Arbiter. I liked the way he thought. I was impressed with how discerning he was and how relevant his B.C. thinking was in my 2005 world.

Oh how Google can break your heart. It took just two minutes to burst my bubble. Mr. Arbiter evidently didn't have this brilliant insight in the year 210 B.C.  Giving Mr. Aribeter credit for this quote is like saying that Haagen Daz ice cream is European. Evidently, it's just brilliant marketing. At least that's the position of one Jim Reeds who has dedicated a web page to document his research on why the quote is a fake.

The page documents many of the sources that have helped create this urban myth, and it provides Mr. Reed's explanation for why he believes it was not Mr. Arbiter, but rather a bulletin board joke, which created this much, sought after quote.

"...it seems more likely he is simply an early continuator into print of a long-standing bulletin-board joke. Many correspondents, most notably Richard Dengrove, have told me about a note by J. P. Sullivan in the May 1981 Petronian Society Newsletter (12(1), p.1) addressing this important question. Quoting (without permission):... let me give my tentative account, which I hope other readers can correct, of its provenance. Some disgruntled soldier of a literary bent, whether commissioned or noncommissioned I do not know, pinned this “quotation” to a bulletin board in one of the camps of the armies occupying Germany sometime after 1945 (the style suggests a British occupying force). Since the sentiment is impeccable, whether applied to military, governmental, or academic administration, it has enjoyed a cachet borrowed from Petronius ever since.”

Oh, Petronius, were it but you? And if thou aren't, would the real Petronius Arbiter please stand up?

The Year of The Blog

FunnyBusiness is one year old today. So here are some highlights of my very bloggy year.

Open-Toed Shoes is by far my most popular post. I didn't have a theory why this post on business dress code trends was so popular until I posted Big Butts Need Not Apply --this entry was about fat discrimination in the workplace. For a while this was an extremely popular post.

That's when it occurred to me that possibly people weren't reading about Open Toed shoes for dress code information but because of a foot fetish.

So my big learning from a year of blogging is that the foot fetish is an under-reported phenomenon.

The foot fetish is actually a lot more common than we think. The most recent statistics say that about 1.14% of the population has a liking for feet, which is roughly more than 68 million people worldwide. About one and a half million of these foot fetishists reside in the United States. These numbers are pretty staggering considering that society labels feet as being a taboo body area, and foot fetishists as being freaks. We generally think of feet as being dirty and ugly. People that are aroused by feet are really not that much different than people who are turned on by things like big breasts or long legs, they are just not related to as easily. If people in society could truly understand the desires of a foot lover then perhaps the whole foot fetish would become more accepted.

I also learned  that ENTJs really like themselves, that having a brother with a popular blog  and being listed as a recommended blog by Guardian Unlimited,can be wonderful traffic builder.

I learned that more people in England and western Europe read this blog than people in the mountain time zone--thank you sitemeter.

And while I don't even track my revenue from Google Ads because it's so pathetic, I am optimistic that one day this blog will produce revenue.
If I just knew how to do that.....

The Working Interview

"I have good news, okay news, and not so okay news," said Noah, my 21-year -old, soon- to- be senior in college son, who for the first time in his life has had problems finding a summer job.

"The good news -- I got the waiter's job. (It has been six weeks since he returned home from college for summer vacation.)

The okay news -- the dress code is black pants, black shirt and black shoes and I don't have any of those." (As of last night that is a $90 investment -- Noah got stuff on sale. Still needs the shoes.)

"The not so okay news," said Noah," I don't get paid for the first two shifts to make sure I work out. But, they will let me eat the food."

Okay, so for the privilege of auditioning for a waiter's job --- a job Noah has worked for several years-- we (that is the royal we) get to spend nearly $100 on clothing that Noah will never ever wear again.

Checking Google for "auditioning for a waiter's job" the only listings I find are of the theatrical kind. So if he isn't auditioning, what is he doing?

It's called The Working Interview. In the more acceptable form, corporations bring in a "temp" to do a job and if they work out, the corporation offers the "temp" full-time employment. However, this usually involves the "temp" being paid by a temp service while they are participating in the working interview.

Noah's working interview involves no pay. He assures me that it's perfectly legal to have new employees work without pay for a few shifts.

My friend Darralu says her daughter's boyfriend had to go through the same audition process at Chili's.

So besides restaurant work, are there other jobs where employees are requesting a "working interview"? Is this a small business trend? If it is, what is an acceptable period of time for The Working Interview?

The French Defense

In the past year people have been fired for blogging, smoking, and eating too much. Now, some former waiters at the poshier-than -posh 21 Club in New York have filed a $5 million discrimination suit claiming they were fired because they are French.

"In a civil suit made public on Monday at Manhattan Supreme Court, the three men, Rene Bordet, 68, Jean Claude Lesbre, 63 and Yves Thepault, 68, said the restaurant's management falsely accused them of drinking wine on the job and "created and fostered an environment rife with anti-French sentiment."

Both Bordet and Lesbre worked for 10 years as waiters and floor captains before being fired in 2004 after accusations of drinking on the job. Thepault, who worked for 14 years as a waiter, was fired in 2005 for gross insubordination after an argument with a chef over a hamburger, court papers said."

Okay, the hamburger does map me right to fries and that gets me curious as to what the 21 calls their fries. Are they french fries or the ever obnoxious freedom fries? 

Speaking of fries,turns out the republican congressmen who championed the campaign to change the name of french fries to freedom fries says he is now against the war.

Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".

Mr. Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding that the three cafeterias in the House of Representatives' office buildings ban the word french from menus, said it was meant as a "light-hearted gesture".

Tell that to Rene Bordet, Jean Claude Lesbre, and Yves Thepault.

Emoticons

Having spent the weekend thinking about "patterns" in human systems, I was particularly struck yesterday when an article about Emoticons  appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune ( access to article may end on June 28th).

Talking about patterns -- I just wrote a post about emoticons on Saturday  for my entry into this week's Carnival of the Capitals. ( To read the entry scroll down to Saturday's post)

Here, in all its glory, is the  MY BUTT IS ON THE LINE emoticon.

Getting back to the Strib article, not surprisingly, people have a massive love/hate relationship with them. The article  included an interview with Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University who is recognized as the father of emoticons --something he created in 1982.

Fahlman is as surprised as anyone by the massive expansion of "smilies and frownies."

The High-Tech Dictionary now displays 239 emoticons, including #:-o (shocked), ]:-> (little devil) and 7:) (Ronald Reagan). There are also hundreds of electronic emoticons, many based on the familiar yellow smiley face.

That face is one reason why many people recoil at emoticons, especially those who can remember the glut of smiling yellow "Have a Nice Day" buttons in the 1970s.

Others just don't get it.

"I'm not quite sure what the purpose [of emoticons] is," said Trumble. "Does this reflect the mood of the sender, or require me to join in this nonverbal expression?"

While I don't use emoticons every day, I do find them extremely useful in emails. However, like all universal symbols, they are of little use, if the recipient has no idea what they mean.

Can you match the symbol with the meaning?

1./\ /\ /\                                        a. Brain Dead

2.12x@>                                     b. see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil

3.  %-6                                        c. laughter

4. M-), :X, :                                  d. a dozen roses

Answers:  1-C,2-D,3-A, 4-B 

>-)

Carnival of The Capitalists

Check out Carnival of the Capitalists this week. Wayne Hulbert at  Blog Business World is hosting and he invited me to contribute a post-- my first Carnival ever. Thank you Wayne!  Lots of wonderful stuff to read.

Universal Signs

"Hey," said Royce, " Do you know the Universal Symbol for "My Butt is On The Line?" At this point,she took a piece of paper and drew a doodle that could have widespread application for the business world( scroll to bottom to see Royce's Universal Symbol)

Royce and I were attending a three -day workshop on organizational systems. The group had been speaking a patois that is not part of my everyday lexicon--physical science, cohorts, chaos and complexity theories and human systems dynamics. I was feeling somewhat out of my element.

That's when Royce decided that she would talk my language and offered up her doodle. Here's the thing. It has widespread applications that could enhance employee relations-- I encourage everyone to start using it.

In fact, I'd like Microsoft to incorporate it in its next version of Outlook.The MY LINE IS ON THE BUTT symbol  could be added as an email icon. Instead of using the ! to let people know that the message was important, the MY LINE ON IS ON THE BUTT symbol could be used.

And of course, it's a natural for post-it notes. If someone hasn't created emoticons just for the business world, here's your start. The idea has legs, someone just has to take it and run with it.

Theoretically, I love the idea of Universal Symbols. However, too often, only the people who created the Universal Symbol know what it means.

Do you know what these symbols mean?

In 1997 the Federal Trade Commission gave the clothing industry permission to use symbols in lieu of words to describe the proper care of clothing.

I would never have discovered these symbols if I had not spent an hour googling my brains out trying to find out the meaning of the symbols on my computer keyboard.

My computer  keyboard has universal symbols on all the "F" keys. I've never been an "F" key devotee but last week an IT specialist told me if I would just press one of my "F" keys I could solve a major problem I've been having with my computer.

Five weeks ago ,after the untimely death of Jalopy, I bought a new HP wide-screen laptop computer with a $200 rebate.

It's now been five weeks since I've been able to use my Samsung Monitor. When I plugged it in to new HP wide-screen, the two decided they just weren't going to communicate.

The IT specialist explained that on most computers you need to manually give permission for your computer to use an external monitor.

Since he was pressing the F4 key as he was explaining this to me, I modeled back, "So I press the F4 key."

"Not necessarily," he explained. "Different computers use different keys for this function."

In an effort to make it easier he said,"Look for the monitor symbol." Before I could memorize that symbol he warned, "Well,some computers use three rectangles as their symbol."

Computer manufacturers should take a hint from the textile folks who have a complete guide on their website telling consumers what the symbols mean. How hard would it be for the computer folks to provide this guide.? Better yet, how hard would it be for the computer folks to agree on the same symbols? Now that would be an elegant solution.

Speaking of elegant solutions, as promised, Royce's Universal Symbol for Your Butt Is On the Line.

Oh and in case you were wondering what those clothing care symbols mean.

1. Machine wash, warm ( if it had one dot it would have been machine wash, cold)

2.Non-Chlorine Bleach When Needed

3.Tumble Dry, Normal, Low Heat

4. Iron, Medium

The Comma Code

Over the years I have joked that  the "comma"is the bane of my existence. I have even said that commas and I just don't get along. Little did I know that for some people,what I was really saying is that I don't get along with As#h&les.

Evidently,in the corridors of  some very prestigious Boston Hospitals, and now in some fairly well-known businesses in Minneapolis,you can hear people adding the word "comma" to the end of a sentence.

If you hear this, these people do not have an odd punctuation fetish, rather they are talking in code.

THE CODE

When comma is spoken at the end of the sentence it stands for the word that follows that comma ---As#h&le.

Tracy Kidder, author of Mountains Beyond Mountains credits world-famous physician Paul Farmer for starting the comma code. According to Kidder this is the first sentence he ever heard spoken in the code.

"I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can't buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent.Comma"

As Kidder writes,

"I understood he wasn't calling me one--he would never do that;he was almost invariably courteous. Comma was always directed at third parties,...

Why stop at the comma? Think of the potential for punctuation euphemisms.  The folks at A.Word.A. Day have been thinking about substitutes for the run of the mill swear words, as well.

"In "Pudd'head Wilson's Calendar", Mark Twain elaborated on his attitude toward invective:

"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied often to prayer."

My friend Caroline has adopted Farmer's Comma. She says she's using it routinely at work and that it's providing amazing enjoyment. In fact, Caroline swears by it.

Note: Caroline is a real person who is now speaking comma, Caroline is not her real name.