Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Casualty of War

Scooter Libby isn't the only one feeling the pain of getting caught leaking information. Last week, Conde Nast fired one of Gawker's uber spies.

Gawker is the Manhattan-centric blog that snarks everyone and anything that is not deemed as hip as the Gawker's own inner circle.

Last week Gawker printed an internal memo meant for Conde Nast employees' eyes only.

Really riveting stuff -- a memo about their internal mail server being down.

Normally the spy used his g-mail to forward such scintillating and "stop-the-presses" information.However, on this particular occasion, the spy made a fatal error. He used the Conde Nast email system instead of delivering the covert data via g-mail.

As fast as you could say Patrick J. Fitzgerald ,Andrew Krucoff was dismissed.

This is how Gawker addressed the firing.

"We write lots of mean things about lots of people we’d love to see get some comeuppance. We run lots of leaked memos and internal communications, some of them rather embarrassing to the company from which they were leaked. What’s truly remarkable is that someone was just moments ago fired — and it’s someone we very much like — over an item that wasn’t mean, that didn’t attempt to deliver any comeuppance, and was in no way embarrassing to the company from which it was leaked."

Gawker is missing the point. And the ridiculous part is they know the point. The issue wasn't what was leaked or that it was harmless info, the issue was that a Conde Nast employee was leaking information--- even as inocous as a memo about an internal email server being down.

For Gawker to take on a "gosh darn what's the harm attitude" and to feign surprise that Conde Nast or any company for that matter would fire an employee for sharing that info, is simply disingenuous and laughable.

Gawker knows better. They also know that their uber spy lost his job because of friendly fire. Their pathetic response -- a plea to their readers to help Krucoff find a job.

Excuse me?  How about a public apology to Krucoff. How about Gawker hiring Krucoff?  Afterall,Gawker betrayed his trust. He served. He delivered the goods. He helped Gawker fuel their war.

As Valerie Plame will tell you, once you've been outed-- its kinda hard to stay in the spy game. Gawker needs to step up to the plate and protect their own.

While the memo that got Krucoff fired may not be embarrassing and harmful, most of Gawker's posts about Conde Nast are beyond acerbic.

What a newcomer to Gawker may not pick up from reading this particular post is that Gawker is at war with Conde Nast.

In 2003, when Gawker was a new phenomenon, mediabistro.com wrote about Gawker's Conde Nast obsession

"It's so media-obsessed—even, specifically, Conde Nast-obsessed—that it spent a good chunk of a recent week discussing and analyzing the ban on garlic in the mag company's famous cafeteria and whether said ban might mean Si Newhouse is a vampire."

Gawker is popular because they snark, they bite, and they delight in humiliating their enemies. It's a great read. but like all great powers, they can be blinded by their obsession.

This particular battle had a casualty. It was Andrew Krucoff. He lost his job. Gawker will survive just fine. Although it does feel like the master of comeuppance just got comeupped and maybe a dose of humility would be a bit refreshing over there.

Episode 3- My American Office

This post has been moved to December 21,2005. The reason for the change When it was originally posted I was not affiliated with vblogcentral-- a great service that enhances the viewing of videos online.

I decided to migrate all of my old videos to new posts so that it would be easier for people to watch each episode.

Thanks!

 

Stolen Time

After reading my post on  Mental Health Days Tess sent me an email which she agreed I could share. Tess is no fan of mental health days. She prefers "stolen time."

Here is what Tess has to say about Stolen Time.

"Stolen time is those few minutes or an hour or so when you are on the clock but are off site because you are going to a meeting or coming from a meeting that maybe ended before your usual work day. This is time when you are not accountable to your boss or your family. Your boss does not expect you back at work because the travel time would get you there just in time to leave. (This assumes that you have a reasonable boss.) Your family does not expect you because work usually ends at time x and it is an hour earlier. What to do?

Personally, I go shopping and run personal errands that would otherwise intrude on a weekend. The shopping is almost always an optional activity which often results in pleasurable purchases such as a new pair of shoes for myself or a "just right"; gift that I just stumble on and would not have found without that ";stolen time."

Sometimes the stolen time just results in a quiet half-hour with a cup of tea and a good book. Those rare moments occur when the meeting is in the morning and near home -- meetings never begin before 9:00 and I usually get to work at 8:00.

I had an hour or so of stolen time earlier this week., I had a late breakfast with my husband [and then left for a meeting]. After the meeting (again, too little time to effectively return to work) I went to Barnes and Noble and browsed for half and hour, picking up a surprise for my daughter. Then I actually did some "work", stopping at Home Depot to pick up some supplies for our school clean-up day. Even that, however, had a pleasant feel since no one could interrupt me as I compared prices

I suspect I am lucky in that my boss and secretary use my cell phone number sparingly -- only for REAL emergencies. It only rang once the whole day.

Mental health days always make me feel guilty. Stolen time does not-- which is interesting since one counts against my sick-bank and the other does not."

NOTE: Tess is a pseudonym and I have redacted key information about Tess's family which would make it too easy for people to figure out who she really is.

The Bus Driver

Buses in Europe must give change. At least that's what the driver on the Number 4 traveling from south Minneapolis to NE Minneapolis assumed.

The young man from Romania put a 20 into the fare box. It didn't give him change. Our buses don't give change.

The system isn't prepared for missteps like that.

The bus driver began to explain the "process" the young man would need to follow to get his money back.

Halfway through his own complicated explanation, the bus driver got another idea. Since the meter box confirmed the young Romanian  had indeed paid 20 dollars, the bus driver called his supervisor and asked if it would be okay if he allowed all passengers paying cash to simply give the young Romanian their money-- until they had collected the $20.

Everyone who was willing to hand their money to the young man  got some kind of extra pass.

It was working swell. Everyone on the bus was rooting for the young Romanian, hoping that enough money would be collected.

Then, an extremely inebriated gentlemen ( it was Saturday around 4:00 p.m.) decided that he would take the pass and keep is $1.50.

Thinking that he didn't understand the situation ,several of us tried to explain why he needed to hand the money over to our European visitor.

The man was very drunk. He was also very uncooperative. At this point the driver said, " Either you pay or I call the police."

Defiant, the drunk rider says, " Call the police."

You could hear the collective groans. The bus had stopped. It wasn't going to go anywhere until this situation was resolved. People were pleading with the gentlemen to just pay the $1;50

He didn't care. Until the police came. Then he quickly sauntered off the bus.

I got off two stops later. The young Romanian was still on the bus. The driver said he was welcome to stay on the bus as long as it took to get his money back.

I have no idea what the young man chose to do.

As I stepped off the bus, I told the bus driver how  impressed I was with his efforts to help.

He could have followed policy. But he didn't. And because of that, a young visitor may have gotten his change--it could have taken an hour extra, but when he walked off the bus he hopefully had the $18.50 he was supposed to have.

Rules are meant to be broken.

Technorati, where are you?

After posting my take on Newsweek's Special Report HOW WOMEN LEAD, I waited for Technorati to add me to the list of blogs that were commenting on the story.

I'm still waiting. I pinged.

What's the deal? Granted, my take on the story is definitely not as complimentary as most of the bloggers but I'm feeling like a blogging wallflower here.

Women & Leadership

It was with great anticipation that I began reading the October 24th issue of Newsweek, a SPECIAL REPORT entitled, "How Women Lead". The cover article asks the question " As a growing number of female executives rise to the top, how will they change the culture of the workplace?"

Anticipation can be a heart-breaker.

I had hoped to read about women's leadership styles. I wanted to learn if there were specific characteristics that these women shared that set them apart. I wanted to hear if they created a different kind of culture within their own organizations. I wanted to know if business would be different if more women held leadership positions.

Instead, it was the same old same old: profiles about women and their thoughts on what it takes to be a success: Success is not leadership. Madonna is a success.

It was such a lost opportunity.  Instead, I read about Oprah, Karen Hughes,and a handful of other successful women.

We know Oprah has power and inspires the masses, but how does that translate into day to day leadership with the people who work with her day in and day out? You won't find out reading Newsweek.

What does her staff have to say about her leadership style? You won't find out in Newsweek either.

The article talks about women breaking the glass ceiling. Actually, I think women have broken the glass door. They've entered the workforce but the ceiling just has a few dents in it.

Most experts agree that the glass ceiling is not broken and will not break for a long time.  To insinuate that the ceiling is breaking just because there are a handful of women in leadership positions, misses the point. They are the exceptions.

While I enjoyed reading Astronomer's Vera Rubin's story , it was more about persistence rather than leadership. Rubin's work led to the discovery of dark matter.

"The chairman of the department said I really ought to present these results at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Philadelphia, but he added that, of course, I wouldn't be able to because my first child would be only a few weeks old. Then he said that because I wasn't a member, I wouldn't be able to put my name on the paper anyway so he could put his name on it and present it. So I said, oh no, I can give it. My talk was brief. I didn't know a soul. Afterward, there was much discussion about why the results couldn't be correct. I thought these were very cross astronomers."

As part of the Special Report, Newsweek looks at Xerox, a company that does have a impressive amount of women in top leadership positions. According to the article nearly 1/3 of all top managers at Xerox  are female. .

How does this affect the workplace?

"Around headquarters, there are subtle signs of what executives describe as Xerox's kinder culture. Instead of shaking hands, executives sometimes greet with hugs. Midlevel employees seem remarkably at ease among top officers. By most accounts, employees feel free to refuse to schedule 7:30 a.m. meetings because of day-care constraints. Under Xerox's evaluation system, behavior can count as much as performance: even high-achieving bosses who publicly berate subordinates or are insensitive to employees' personal lives can be quietly pushed aside. "We deal with problems, but we deal with them in the way a mother would deal with her children—we're gentler," says Burns. "It's more maternal."

The article did manage to get a bit snarky,

"When you listen to such happy talk, it'd be fun to hook each member of this mahogany row to a polygraph so she'd dish on what it's really like to work here. "

And this dig that according to the the National Association of Female Executives, seven companies are ranked as better places for women to work than Xerox.

If the Special Report disappointed, Anna Quindlen did not.

"There's always been the notion that if women ran the world it would be a kinder, softer, more peaceful place, plowshares instead of swords. Those fantasies haven't turned out to be entirely true. Ten of the 14 women in the Senate at the time voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution, and suicide bombing has become an equal-opportunity endeavor. The debate about whether there's a distinctly female style of leadership rages on. In her book "Closing the Leadership Gap," Marie Wilson, founder of the White House Project, quotes a female member of the clergy on the subject. "For over 200 years," said the Rev. Patricia Kitchen, "the United States has been steered by male leadership who tend to lead from a self-centered, self-preservation perspective." By contrast, "Women around the world are inclined to lead, their families and nations, from an other-centered perspective."

The report does include a section called 12 Leaders on Life Lessons but again, its the same old stuff. Nice advice:"be creative, be supportive," but that is advice that all genders receive.

My hope was to learn about the subtle and not so subtle differences that women leaders bring to the workplace. Instead I found out that Newsweek considers it leadership that women at Xerox are comfortable refusing to attend 7:30 a.m. meetings because of daycare conflicts ( how about not having 7:30 a.m. meetings), and that Karen Hughes took her son along on the presidential campaign trail. That may be nice, but what does that have to do with leadership?

Perhaps the real reason that Newsweek didn't answer the question they poised, "How will they change the culture of the workplace?" is that there is no answer to that question.

Mental Health Days

I thought the statistic would be higher. According to careerbuilder.com  about40% of workers admit that they take sick days when they aren't sick. Only 40%? I would have estimated it was at least 70%.

While I may think the statistic is low, it evidently is higher than last year's survey which found a paltry 35% admitting to taking an un-sick day.

My very first boss, Lou Heckler was a big proponent of mental health days. This was back in the early 70s and Lou encouraged us to not only take mental health days when we needed them but to tell him.

I took a couple and felt guilt free. Evidently the Lou Heckler approach to mental health never caught on because nearly 50% of people who say they "fake  a sick day" do so to take a mental health day while another 20% take a fake sick day to care for someone else who is sick.

So here,according to careerbuilder.com are the four best excuses. Careerbuilder.com swears  these excuses were really used.

• "I'm too drunk to drive to work."
• "The ghosts in my house kept me up all night."
• "I'm too fat to get into my work pants."
• "My son accidentally fell asleep next to wet cement in our backyard. His foot fell in, and we can't get it out."

The MOVE--I should have known

Even when you have to move your office from one cube to another, it's a pain. Chances are somewhere between changing phones and Internet connections, you can be sure that something is not going to work. Of course, if you work in a cube, you have tech support to solve the problem.

When you work in a home office you end up spending hours  trying  to problem solve the problem yourself.

I moved on Saturday. I thought I had taken care of the phones, the Internet provider and the TV cable so that we would be good to go Monday morning.

Who was I kidding?  Everything is requiring  follow-up phone calls. And follow-up calls to the follow-up calls.

Now, I wouldn't have a problem with there being a problem.  What I do have a problem  with is technical support that either doesn't care or doesn't know how to fix the problem.

What I don't enjoy is having to call technical support so often on the same issue that I have my case reference number committed to memory.

So, some time today, the cable folks will be back because the technician who stopped by on Saturday didn't test stuff to make sure it worked. If he had, he would have noticed that nothing was working.  If I had not been obsessed with unpacking, I might have paid more attention.

Note: since writing this, the cable guy did come back. Unfortunately I was on a teleconference and he evidently didn't understand the problem. He left.The problem wasn't fixed. Finally, after spending 30 minutes on the phone with Omar the problem was resolved.

Then there are the phones.

Who knows why I did it, probably to take advantage of a special program, but my business line had been handled by Qwest while I used At&T for my local  phone service. The emphasis is on USED TO use AT&T.

I called 10 days in advance. Explained I wanted the new service to start October 15th but couldn't disconnect the old address until October 21st because the water department needed the phone line operational to get a meter reading.

5 days later someone mentioned that when they tried to call my home line, it had a disconnect message. When I called AT&T and explained they had incorrectly turned off my phone, they apologized and said there was really nothing they could do about it.

"Once a phone is disconnected, we cannot connect it for just a few days." I asked to be bumped up to a supervisor who confirmed the policy.

Pointing out the fact that it was their error, did not impress them. Pointing out that if they didn't reconnect the line would result in losing me as a customer, didn't impress them either.

When the Qwest service rep was working on my phone lines he said that Qwest had a similar policy, explaining that it wasn't an issue of ability to do it, but that it cost too much to do it. No surprise there.

Although the movers were not coming until Saturday, I wanted to make sure my business line  and Internet lines were up and running Monday morning  so I scheduled the phone company to meet me at my new place on Friday afternoon.

Qwest gave me a three hour window from 3-6 pm. I got to the new place around 2:15p.m. Good thing I did.Qwest was there at 2:25 p.m. The Qwest guy added my business line, had me sign an invoice for $95 to add a jack and said I was good to go.

What he didn't tell me is that neither the new business line or the old business line would be operational for the rest of the day. It didn't go into voice mail.Just said it was disconnected. Note to whomever---if you were trying to reach me Friday, my phones are working.

Then there is the issue of my Linksys wireless connection. The good news is we were able to piggyback on Doodlebug's service and access the Internet throughout the weekend.  The bad news we couldn't connect to our own service. The first rep insisted I had a bad Ethernet cord. The second one had me go through some settings and promised I was good to go.

It wasn't until around 4:30 this morning, that the latest Tech support person figured out the real problem. Not exactly sure but it had to do with the order that the router, cable box and computer were unplugged and plugged.

It is now 2:00 p.m. I have my Internet. I have my wireless. I have my phones. My life is good.

Belief-O-Matic

It's Friday. The day after Yom Kippur. A perfect day to Share Belief-O-Matic

"Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic™ knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic™ will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing. "

Warning: Belief-O-Matic™ assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul.

It was during my Rabbi's sermon yesterday that I first learned about Belief-O-Matic.  Rabbi Glaser was introduced to it from a woman who was going through conversion classes . As he shared,

"The woman had told us that  while she had always felt she was Jewish, Belief -O-Matic confirmed it."

It was not too long after the meeting with the woman ended that the rabbis high tailed it to their PCs to check out Belief-O-Matic for themselves.

  Rabbi Glaser encouraged all of us to take the test. As he said, " The good news it's cool. The bad news it indicated I should be practicing neo-paganism."

I took the test. According to Belief-O-Matic I might want to consider checking into Universal Unitarianism. As it turns out, I'm in good company. According to Rabbi Glaser, Our head Rabbi, Marcia Zimmerman, took the test and she too was told that she was most closely aligned with  Universal Unitarianism.

As to my own religion--it came in 6th on my list.

Have a great weekend!

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It shouldn't be this hard

Last evening I tried to upload a soundtrack that I recorded on my digital recorder into my computer. Ethan, from The Vision Thing had invited me to contribute to his Pod cast.

For the life of me, I could not get my audio software to recognize my Sony digital recorder. I searched the web for instructions. I read the instructions. The instructions didn't help solve the problem. It shouldn't be this hard. Or take this much time.

Next step---I'll  call my new best friends at Ulead, the home of VideoStudio 9 and seek their advice. If my schedule holds out today, I will have time between 9:10 am and 9:20 am to accomplish that task. I also have to transfer my utilities to my new townhome and pack a couple of million boxes of stuff.

Since purchasing my new video editing software, I have called the good folks on the technical support line at Ulead  at least 3 or 4 times. They're great. Unlike the customer service line at their competitor PowerDirector, the technical support at Ulead seems to be free. PowerDirector charged me nearly $30 dollars for 2 months of technical support. Their hours of operation are 1:30 pm to 10:30 pm  and I was on hold for 30 minutes before I got to chat to my technical support person who had no idea how to solve my problem.

Of course podcasting is the least of my problems, I seem to have forgotten the name of a blog that I want to contribute my latest entry of My American Office. I have contributed to this blog in the past but for whatever reason its not showing up in my favorites list. Go figure.

I'm hoping someone can help me out. Here's the blog's description. It's like a news service, with bloggers from around the world contributing posts and reviews of pop culture, business etc. One of the criteria is that each post has to link to an Amazon product. It's driving me crazy I cannot remember the name of the blog.

Thanks ahead of time. It really shouldn't be this hard.

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