Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

When Business gives you lemons....Merchandise it,baby!

Yesterday, I shared the story of Henderson Bas aka TheNiceAgency about a nasty email their CEO sent to staff regarding the need to clean the office.

Instead of hoping the  episode would simply disappear into the night, the agency did what has become a North American tradition--sell merchandising.

Shortly after the scandal broke, the agency changed it's home page to:

It was either very popular or the agency has a great sense of humor.

And not to be out, Cafepress has a complete line of products commemorating the episode.

Tags: FunnyBusiness, advertising, merchandising, business culture, work, employment

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Bad Bosses Beware: we're entering an era of online corporate lynchngs

One of the key messages brand consultants tell their clients is that you have to "live your brand." Walk the talk. So, if you had an ad agency with the URL theniceagency.com you might assume that it was, well, a nice place to do business, and a nice place to work.

Evidently, the company that coins itself "the nice agency" isn't so nice...that is if you are to believe the flurry of emails and comments shared about the agency's president, one Dawna Henderson,who is portrayed as the Cruella DeVille of Toronto.

A couple of weeks ago, an employee leaked this email to Adrants. According to a later post, the employee who forwarded the email was fired.

Subject: Spring Time Round -UP
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:12:30 -0500
From: Dawna Henderson
To: [email protected]

The agenda for today's Round Up has changed

Because the assigned team failed to coordinate this month's Round Up - and we don't want to waste the time that has been allocated - everyone will be required to participate in henderson bas spring cleaning.

Beginning at 4pm, each of you will be responsible for cleaning your individual pod (just not moving stuff around) and making sure the area around your desk is neat & tidy. Once your area is perfectly clean and organized, you will each be required to participate in office cleaning. Tech and creative will be responsible for the kitchen which includes the fridge and above the sink cupboards. The PMs and AMs will be responsible for cleaning the down stairs coat closet and making sure every single screen & keyboard in the building is cleaned.

Once you are finished cleaning your pod and assigned areas, please come and find me as I would like to make sure the office is cleaned to my standards.

To this month's Round Up team instead of buying snacks and drinks for the group, you will be required to purchase the following cleaning supplies before 4pm today - paper towels, Fantastik, Pledge for electronics, J-cloths, and computer screen wipes (@ Grand & Toy). This is not an option.

If anyone has any problems with this, please be sure to thank this month's Round Up team. Do not come and whine to me.

Rules: This is not a joke.
1. all computers must be turned off from 4:00PM- 5:30PM
2. no calls are to be taken
3. attendance is mandatory
4. everyone's shred box must be emptied
5. no one can leave until the offices are clean
6. no smoke or coffee breaks

- dawna

--

henderson bas
TheNiceAgency.com"

You can't make this stuff up! If someone forwarded this email to me,I definitely would have thought it was a joke-- partcularly because of the signature line : The NiceAgency.com. But, if you got to adrants and read all the comments about Dawna, you get the sense that this is one woman who has abused her power.

The online outting of Dawna as a bad bad boss is a new phenomenon that business executives must now face. Bad behavior will no longer be kept behind the corporate door and limited to industry whispers.

Bosses gone wild now face the very real possibility that their exploits will be  exposed for the world to see.We are entering an era of online corporate lynchings and as long as there are employees who are so fed up that they don't mind getting fired, there is little corporatons can do to prevent them...sort of.

Demanding better of employees is one way to prevent this kind of humiliation. Listening to employee complaints and doing something about it is another.

Granted, in this case, the bad boss also happens to be the president of the company ,but she does have a board of directors and they should know and care that the corporate culture is untenable. They should demand that she treat her employees with respect. That is the responsibility of The Board.

Some people may  view this public exposures as a very bad thing for business. I think it can be very positive on many levels. While one person sacrificed his/her job at  theNiceAgency to get the word out,  you have to believe that there is going to be closer scrutiny on Dawna's behavior.

Surely, she is accountable to someone who cares ---I would assume that some of her clients are appalled to be associated with her and the potential loss of business is a strong motivator for behavior change.

Knowing that your remarks are on the record, so to speak, changes what you say. It forces people to think before bellowing.

Just a hunch,  but I think the fear of public humiliation can go a long way in helping  some Cruella DeVille Wannabe's clean up their act.

And that would be a good thing.

Image Credit: Flickr Image by lopolis

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Name

Are you ready to decumulate or does thinking about it just make you pisster?

Chances are if you check your dictionary you won't find decumulate. At book club last night, Colleen tried looking it up in an Oxford Unabridged Dictionary . It is one of those humongo dictionaries that requires its own stand because it is too big for an ordinary human to lift off a bookshelf.

Colleen didn't find it.

You definitely won't find pisster in the Oxford Unabridged-that's  because it is a designer word --made up by Renee.

However, when I typed  decumulate into Google this morning, I came up with over 700 entries.

What gives? Should  I trust Google over The Oxford Unabridged?

Colleen, who says people at work regard her as the "Grammar Maven"--- okay actually  she says people  call her the "Grammar Bitch", but because I am on a mission eliminate the word bitch from corporate culture, I want her moniker to become the Grammar Maven--- was outraged that one of  the executives in her company had the word decumulate in a presentation.

No one at book club had ever heard of the word decumulate and we simply assumed that it was part of a corporate trend to verbalize and invent words to make themselves  sound smarter.

Think agreeance ,incentivize,prioritize.

However, it seems that decumulate, while not part of the Oxford Unabridged lexicon, has been bantered about by finance types for well--a long time. Maybe its based on some type of  finance humor that the rest of us just don't get.

It is a specialty word from the spend family. See you can spend money that you earn, borrow on your credit card or home equity line. But when you decumulate you are spending  a specific genre of money-- money you have accumulated( money in 401(k), IRA, mutual funds).

Why they couldn't  just say "spend" is another issue.

And that brings us to pisster(.You won't find that in the Oxford Unabridged either. It is a designer word  part of "the pissed off" family of words. You use it when you want to let someone know that regardless of how unhappy they are, you are even  unhappier.

When someone tells you about a situation and they say, " I'm really pissed," you can retort, "I'm pisster."

While pister is just a fun designer  word that probably  won't wind up in a Power Point presentation, there are plenty of other decumulates that probably will. And that begs the question," What does it mean for our society when the Oxford Unabridged is no longer the  to go- to authority for all things words?

At what point in your life do you give up one source of authority and rely on another?  I know a whole lot of people who are going to be pisster if the Oxford loses out.

Image Credit: Flickr image by Sibi

Note: Colleen and Renee are pseudonyms.

Tags: Communication, finance, business, FunnyBusiness, language

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Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? Welcome to Corporate Blogging

On the one hand there's the Wall Street Journal declaring yesterday that "Corporate America Has Joined The Blogosphere" ( just not WSJ since I can't link to the article --subscription,baby) and on the other hand there is a major brouhaha in the PR sector thanks to the launch of Strumpette the randy, bawdy and tell all blog of a character named Amanda Chapel that promises to deliver "a naked journal of the PR Business"

In it's launch just last week, Strumpette demonstrated that she/he/they( it is a blog written by a character) knows how to get publicity. As the character shares in her bio:

"Bottom line professionally speaking, I am 5’ 4” tall, athletic, Pantene shoulder-length black hair, perfect perky boobs. I present well and am most accomodating. I’ve slept with clients. I sleep with my boss. I am the consummate PR strumpette. When I was 7 my mother told me I'd "never get anywhere with that mouth." I've apparently dedicated my life in proving her wrong.

I have a BA degree in Economics with a minor in Italian Literature from Columbia. I graduated cum laude. I went on to get a law degree from Dartmouth but flunked out after two semesters. They were just way too snooty and serious. To be fair, I think I was just bored."

Type in Strumpette on Technorati and you'll get a sense of how obsessed the PR sector has become in (a) Outing the creatives behind  Strumpette  and (b) utter dismay that this whoring character is a traffic-monger.

From d:notes:

"I think this is a wee bit of a stunt and it sounds like the brainchild of a man more than something a successful woman would do, but either way I think it's great stuff. Professional life is often boring so I'm loving the spice.

Little bit of a display problem in MSIE 6.0 I noticed with the comments getting truncated on the left and right hand side - check this page as an example.

http://strumpette.com/archives/66-Place-Your-Bets,-Ghoulish-Office-Pool-Spreads.html#comments

Other than that, my theory this is some guy doing this but it's interesting to see that the interest (in the form of comments) is pretty much exclusively from men. I guess that's usually how it works "

From :infOpinions? :: Public Relations:

"T he worst aspects of PR and Word-of-mouth (WOM) were laid bare in one pitiful post this weekend. Filled with stereotypes and void of character (while masquerading as one), Strumpette busts on the scene and is quickly exposed by - a student.

A blogger, calling itself Strumpette attempted to be cute with a post about Steve Rubel.

The funniest part of the whole post, to me, is that a UK student PR blogger - Stephen Davies - was the first to point out that this is a lame copy of Spin Bunny, the first PR gossip blog - and from the UK. (That link/site is dead, by the way.) Who knows, it may be Spin Bunny coming out of the rabbit hole. I doubt it, though. That blog was creative."

And from Andrea Weckerle's New Millennium PR

For all you PR students out there, especially the women, here's apparently the winning formula:

• "Piggyback on a big name"

  • Describe your best two assets. Repeatedly.
  • Mention your willingness to accommodate your clients and your boss.
  • Include a saucy photo.
  • Play up to the gents.
  • Above all, remember that modesty doesn't get you anywhere.

Which takes us back to the WSJ and it's article "Corporate America has joined the Blogosphere". While it is definitely an interesting read, and if you have a subscription I do recommend it, it is also amusing.

Here's the interesting part:

"Despite the concerns, a slew of big companies, including General Motors Corp. and Boeing Co., have jumped on the blogging bandwagon in the past year -- joining high-tech firms like Sun Microsystems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. For these companies, the bigger risk is being left out of an online phenomenon in which an estimated 5% of Americans maintain blogs and 20% read them, according to a February Gallup poll.

"The biggest risk with regard to blogs is not having one" because companies then miss out on a burgeoning communications medium, according to a report from Gartner Inc., a Stamford, Conn., firm that advises many companies on technology issues".

Here's the amusing part:

When you click on the hyperlink to General Motors or Boeing, it doesn't take you to their blogs. It takes you here...to their stock performance.

Now, in their defense, at the end of the article they do have a cute little chart that includes some of the top corporate bloggers and their URL's...its just that you can't get there from the WSJ because they are not hyperlinked. Maybe its time for the WSJ to join the blogosphere?

Notes: I was inspired to write this post after reading a couple of posts by Marianne Richmond on Blogher. And, to be completely transparent, Boeing is a client.

Image Credit: Flickr image by Ross Mayfield

Tags: Strumpette, PR, Blogher, Blogging, Communication, FunnyBusiness

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"I love my job. I love my job. I love my job"

Found this on flickr when I was doing some research for a post on business culture for Blogher. Thank you pcurtain!

Thought it was the perfect way to start the week.

Powered by QumanaTags: FunnyBusiness, work, employment, business, culture, humor