Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Yes, Virginia....

Talk about the best Chanukah Gift a working woman could receive this week -- an email from Erin Rasmussen on behalf of my favorite all women talk radio station. The gist--Dr. Laura is being replaced by the Satellite Sisters on FM107.

Beginning Monday, January 2, the Satellite Sisters will replace Dr. Laura. The sisters are five best friends and real-life sisters scattered around the country and around the world connected to each other and the FM 107 community by satellite. I think you'll enjoy their friendship real-life conversations. Please tune in Monday, January 2 from noon to three. Let me know what you think about the newest members of our FM 107 family. We appreciate your support and we at FM 107 wish you all the best in the coming year.

Makes me smile every time I re-read this.

Episode 2_My American Office_Royce Holladay

NOTE: This episode was originally posted on October 11th. I decided to reissue this vlog because I am now using vblogcentral which greatly enhances the view-ability of vlogs.

Disclosure: Royce is a former client.Earlier this year I consulted with Human Systems Dynamics on brand communications.

Royce Holladay is a consultant, a former teacher, a former education administrator, an artist, a novelist and a blogger. She is a "paper" away from her earning her PhD.

Her office is the basement of her home in Minneapolis.

Toby's Mini Carnival of Holiday Cheer

Holiday Greetings! In the spirit of the season, Toby Bloomberg aka Diva Marketing has put together a wonderful assortment of holiday posts.Known in the blogging world as a "carnival", these posts ( including two from FunnyBusiness) are wonderful reading.

Thanks Toby!

MardiGras Rosary Revisited

NOTE: THIS ENTRY FIRST APPEARED ON SEPTEMBER 7th. The EBAY AUCTION mentioned in the clip ended in September. Kim raised hundreds of dollars for the Katrina Relief Effort.

In 2000, bead artist Kim Gernsbacher Swiler went to an estate sale in her native New Orleans and found a sack full of "treasures"--circa 1960s Mardi Gras glass beads. Kim immediately knew they were special. The glass beads have long been replaced by plastic beads, and these glass beads are very scarce.

Since 2002, Kim has been using the beads to create a limited edition line of Mardi Gras Jewelry including necklaces, bracelets and her trademark Mardi Gras Rosary. These rosaries are currently being sold in the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. If you are interested in finding out more information about Kim's rosaries or other jewelry, just send me an email and I'll forward your info to Kim.

Episode 3_This American Office_Avery Appelman

Note: This episode was originally published on October 24,2005. However, that was before I started using the services of vBlogCentral which  immensely enhances the viewing pleasure of vlogs. For the rest of this week I will be republishing my former vlog entries to this new service.

Avery Appelman is a criminal defense attorney and the managing partner of Appelman& Olson , a MInneapolis law firm. While Avery takes his work very seriously, he has a wicked sense of humor. As you will see, he agreed to be on an advisory board for Tom Delay for the fun of it, even though Avery calls himself a "lefty".

Note: Avery is a former client. In 2004, I did some consulting with Avery's law firm Appelman &Olson.

Duct Tape, Tampons, Holiday Cheer

Now, you would anticipate that duct tape lovers would have all sorts of ideas of how duct tape can help through the holidays...there's the holiday bow and the elf outfit and a host of other ideas on Jim and Tim's website ( the guys who brought you the Duct Tape Books)

However, this year the prize for innovative holiday home decorating goes to the folks at tamponcrafts.com. Check out the site for instructions  on how to make your tampon angel, menorah, snowflake, lights and silver bells.

As the web site says,

"Your period comes every month, but Xmas comes only once a year. So bring that menstrual joy to this holiday season with these tampon tree decorations. From a string of tampon lights to a star at the top of the tree, feminine hygiene has never been so festive! "

God Bless American Ingenuity.

Wag The Dog Fa La La La La La La La La

Oy. It started during Sunday lunch with my parents. My mom was irate: why were retailers insisting on calling it Holiday Shopping instead of Christmas Shopping?

"You're upset about this?" I asked,somewhat surprised and I might add  very confused since my mom, born in Israel, has never had a Christmas Tree, attended a cookie exchange, gone Christmas caroling or even sent anyone a Christmas Card. She opts for the very secular Seasons Greetings.

It wasn't until much later in the day that I figured out where her outrage was coming from--- She, like many octagenarians ( okay she won't be 80 until March)  are Fox News Devotees.

Fox has been wagging the dog concerning a mythical  War on Christmas for the past year--charging secular progressives are behind a plot to destroy our country.FOX is making a convoluted connection with the trend  of retailers to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas to all things evil .

Using the logic that smoking weed will lead to heroin addiction, these pretend war advocates claim that saying Happy Holidays instead of  Merry Christmas somehow promotes legalized abortion, drug addiction and gay marriage.

If my mom is any gauge of their success, they are winning this mythical war. As my daughter would say...annoying.

Now, from a retail perspective--if businesses start going into the "red" by advertising Ho HO Holidays instead of Merry Christmas then Merry Christmas it will be.

For retailers, its all about the 'green"--show them the money and the advertising will follow. It's not complicated.

USA TODAY has two editorials on the controversy. The left deals with the issue of the pretend war while the right deals with constitutional freedoms.

T. Jeremy Gunn ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief  opens his editorial with anecdote of what happened last year when a protest group came caroling at the ACLU's Washington Offices.

"To tell the truth, the ACLU is not often serenaded by Christmas carolers. So it was with some excitement that the staff went outside and joined in the singing. They brought with them cookies and warm drinks to share. One staff member, who is an ordained Baptist minister, did a little witnessing about his faith to some astonished proponents of family values.

Fox News did broadcast the event (as a part of its "war against Christmas" campaign). Although the visiting singers were shown, the cameras failed to include any footage showing that everyone had participated in the caroling. Rather than reporting the facts, the anchor preferred the propaganda: "We believe the ACLU heard the message loud and clear, but they don't care."

Randy Singer, author of The Judge Who Stole Christmas writes that the law doesn't mandate a secular Christmas

."...if we eliminate religious symbols from the public square, can the Christmas holiday itself be far behind? This is the specter of Christmas future. Let's not pretend. Christmas is a national holiday with religious roots that ultimately extend back to a manger in Bethlehem. If we want to preserve the Christmas holidays tomorrow, public officials today should continue the tradition of displays reflecting the diversity of our society — both religious and non-religious.

Under our Constitution, there's nothing wrong with acknowledging the historical origins of a religious holiday. Elected officials and federal judges are not required to replace our pluralistic society with an atheistic one.

We are a diverse people with rich religious traditions. There should be room in the square for us all

Which of course is what the retailers are trying to do by saying Happy Holidays in their advertising-- they are trying  to make room for all of us.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukah! And to quote T. Jeremy Gunn from his editorial,   "and for believers in all other traditions: Thank you for enriching our world!

DropSend--cool tool

Just discovered a cool new tool--DropSend-- it's an application that allows you to  email  big files without eating up storage space on your email server.

Correction. DropSend may not be a new tool. For all I know the world has been happily using this service for a couple of years.

It's new to me. File this under If I knew then what I know now.

Last Spring I was working on a project where the client was constantly sending me humongo files In turn,my email provider was constantly sending me  threatening messages  that I was exceeding my storage limit. If I wasn't by my computer at just the right moment to clear out the guilty files, I would risk the very real possibility of having   emails bounce all over the country.

If I had been thinking at the time,  I would have searched for a service that takes care of that sort of thing. I wasn't thinking. It was there all the time.

If DropSend works as well as I think it will ( I haven't actually used the service yet...just discovered it)...I will use it to send video files to some of my clients that I am working with to incorporate vlogging as part of their marketing efforts. 

Like many of these applications, there is a free usage plan-- you to send up to 5 large files a month. The pricing goes up to $19 for unlimited sends. It also includes online file storage. You can store up to 250MB for free. If you go with the Professional Service you can store up to 25GB.

Having had computers crash, die and become violently ill from a host of viruses and spy attacks, I am a strong advocate of online storage -- while its a pain to fix all the computer problems it is the best insurance in the world to know that my important documents are alive and well and living on someone else's server in cyberspace.

My American Office _Episode 4_ Paula Kaplan Berger

I met Paula Kaplan in 1969. We were both freshman at the University of Missouri. We both went to "J' school. I went on to be a reporter. Paula went to law school. Today she is a partner with Neal Gerber Eisenberg in Chicago. She practices real estate law.

This is her office.

Tipster

When you work in a coffee shop, a good day or bad day depends on large part on how many tips you get.

It's been nine months since Rikki started her career as a barista. Saturday was a very good day. She made over $20 in tips.

This is her first job. She works one day after school and on the weekends.

While the job has taught her many lessons,her biggest is that their is a hierarchy to the tip jar. At her coffee shop, there is one barista that everyone wants to work with because he racks in the tips more than anyone else.Saturday was her lucky day.

It paid off in espresso beans.

When I asked her why she thought this particular person was king of the tips,she didn't hesitate. Her answer stunned me.

She said,"He's cute."

Before Rikki mentioned anything about tip inequality, I just assumed that people typically put their loose change in the tip charge and that the person behind the counter was not that relevant to the "amount" they left.

I have never discussed with any of my friends what their coffee house tipping policy is .Now I realize that this impression of tipping policies is simply a self -generating belief- that's what I do so I've been assuming that's what everyone  else does.

Do people  really put in more money in the tip jar for a cute guy?  Would this indicate that more women then men frequent coffee houses?

If the demographics are not skewing female,  could the explanation be due to deep rooted societal biases?

Do these customers give  cute guys bigger tips because customers assume guys have more expenses than cute girls. 

Is the assumption that cute guys need and deserve more money than cute girls because there is a belief (albeit a false one) that  cute guys pay for dates while cute girls get taken out on dates?

Or is Rikki's observation, simply wrong? Is there really no such thing as  gender bias when he comes to giving and or receiving tips?

Here's the thing. Even if Rikki is wrong, she has this perception and in this case perception is  her reality. Her experience is forming her world view.

After nine months on the job, after nine months of counting, analyzing and observing her tips, Rikki has formed the belief that men will receive greater rewards for doing the same job, simply because they are guys. And if they are cute guys, they will really be rewarded.

Her lesson and her belief: it doesn't matter how nicely she greets them, how great she serves them, her tip jar will always be a bit smaller than king of the tips.

It would be nice if I could say,"This is just your imagination. Men couldn't possibly receive  bigger tips than women.

It would be nice if I could say, "I'm sorry that is happening but when when you get a "real" job  your income will not be affected by your chromosomes.

Of course I can't say that.

NOTE: RIKKI is a pseudonym.