Monday, August 23, 2010

Attn Direct Mailers: US Postage Rates Increasing

If you like to mail things as much as I do, you'll be dismayed to learn that US postage rates will go up on January 2. Better get those promotional mailings out now.

My favorite direct mail piece is the postcard. Besides the fact that the postage is cheaper, postcards cut through the clutter. The recipient doesn't even have to open the envelope. Just flip it over and read the message.

Like E.B. White, postcards challenge us to write tight. If space permits only 50 words but you have 60, something has to go.

Most of all, postcards are physical. They have an eye appeal and heft that email can never rival.

And they're so darned cheap. I just ordered 500 4-color cards for $33 from printsmadeeasy.com. That's only 15 cents each--half the cost of a postcard stamp on January 2. Better get those mailings out now.

Postcards--when you care enough to send something better than email.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Das Kapital

A young friend of mine has taken a bold stand: even though she studies at a prestigious art school, she does not plan to do an internship. She’s as dismayed as I am at the number of companies swelling their rolls with free workers.

I’ve found some interesting work on CraigsList. If I hadn’t, I would abandon it altogether, thanks to the number of companies “hiring” interns, bringing students in to do real jobs. In lieu of pay, they offer no more than to work with colleges to arrange credit. Generous ones also pay for lunch. (What was I saying about “Will work for food”?)

Even if the “hiring” managers, who think they’re getting free workers, don’t know, their HR departments should: these “internships” violate the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The US Department of Labor offers the following definition of an internship

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainee;
3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;
5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the completion of the training period; and
6. The employer and the trainee understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.


In short, if companies look for free labor to supplant paid workers, if they want students to perform like skilled employees, they’re in violation.

If they allow an unpaid student into their shop for experience, maybe even to mess up a project or two, cheers to both the company and the student.

Most of the many, many internship postings I’ve read claim to be from startups short on staff and money. Most of them look for students in the “glamour” professions like art, marketing and writing. Nobody posts for interns in positions like bookkeeping or maintenance. I guess those kids are too smart to give away the milk for nothing.

I assume that in the startups' business plans they budget for office space, taxes and their own salaries. They omit funding for glamour jobs, counting on students to perform that work for free.

Instead of student labor, these people should be tapping their social capital.

Goodwill is most important at the beginning and end of a business. At the end of the business, when you try to sell, it’s an intangible asset. But also at the beginning, when you don’t have enough money, you need goodwill. You need that goodwill to raise enough money to convince lenders you deserve more money.

You also need the skills to promote your business. Congratulations to you if you have the skills to do it yourself. If you haven’t, you should have the enough goodwill to convince your friends to help you out. I help my own friends all the time. If you have neither skills nor goodwill, maybe you should rethink your plans.

Most kids in school today are training to be knowledge workers. Their art, writing and marketing skills are their capital; their creative output is their work product. You wouldn’t steal a cobbler’s last or new shoes or a chandler’s wax or candles. You shouldn’t use kids’ knowledge for free, either, even if everybody else is doing it.

Here’s how to “flag” postings for unpaid interns on Craigslist. Open the posting. If it offers no money, click on “prohibited” in the upper right corner. The posting won’t disappear right away, but if enough people flag, it will. When that happens enough, companies will get the message.

On behalf of everyone who likes to be paid for their work, thank you.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

No Mulligans for Slater

Customer service workers the world round have cheered Steven Slater since Monday.

Slater was the JetBlue flight attendant who'd grinned and borne passenger rudeness one time too many. After a passenger dropped the f-bomb on him on Monday, he delivered a maledictory speech on the plane's PA system, grabbed a beer and deployed the emergency chute.

On Thursday, though, he asked for his job back.

No mulligans, Steven. A last stand is a last stand. That's why we honor and remember them.

What if Chief Joseph had said, "I will fight no more...unless I can round up more warriors."?

Asking for your job back says that you value the job more than you do your pride. That customers can heap indignity upon you, knowing that even if you lose your cool, you'll crawl back and ask for more.

You say you love flying. Wouldn't you love it just as much jetting from speaking engagement to speaking engagement plugging your new book Emergency Exit: Mollifying Your Customer-Facing Staff?

That strategy didn't work well for Chief Joseph, but Chief Joseph didn't have the internet and YouTube to promote himself. Nor did he have Craiglist, which apparently abounds in unpaid ghostwriters. Judging by all the Craigslist postings in New York and New Jersey, all you have to do is call the honor of writing your book an "internship" to find free scriveners. So stand your ground.

(My posting 80/20 Rule was just a little ahead its time, apparently.)

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Follow Me (apologies to Phil Collins and Genesis)

Stay with me
My friend, I hope you’ll always be
Right here on my list if ever I read you
Oh, my friend

With long lists
We look trendy, 2.0
And every day is such a perfect day to tweet
In cyberspace

I will follow you. Will you follow me
All the days and nights that we know will be?
I will stay with you. Will you stay with me?
Just one single tweet in a single week.

Twitter counts
Every follower, so long lists
Imply we’re so popular
Not out of it, fading away.

I can say
Our time is short, but I don’t tweet
Very much, so we’re better with traffic shared
Infrequently

I will follow you. Will you follow me
All the days and nights that we know will be?
I will stay with you. Will you stay with me?
Just one single tweet in a single week.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Facebook: Finally

I got tired of saying "No, but I'm sure I could learn it," when prospective employers asked me if I used Facebook for social networking.

Lo, I could. I signed on yesterday and I already have 66 friends, mostly thanks to the fact that my friends already had plenty of mutual friends. Had I joined two years ago, I would have had to make a lot of those connections myself.

May I say that it took me all morning? I'm sure it won't take so much time in the future, but even so, that's a lot of time.

What I found spooky was that, as a first-time user, Facebook seemed to know a lot about me. I did not upload all my email contacts, and yet Facebook suggested half a dozen "People You May Know." It was right.

Uncanny.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

I Like This Calendar, Too

At the beginning of every academic year I usually buy a new calendar so that I can note all the important dates through the following June. Younger members of the family, whom one would hope could do this for themselves, swear that they aren’t allowed to write anything but homework assignments in their daily planners.

The handiest format to manage multiple schedules is a grid with space for each family member. I’ve complained in the past that most of these calendars feature dancing hippos, as though someone managing three or more schedules was in fact childlike.

I’m pleased to announce that yesterday I found a dignified new calendar with spaces for five people’s schedules. The Day Runner Mom’s LifeTracker™ is blotter-size, with 3 1/3 x ½ inches to each person’s daily appointments.

Instead of balloon and candy corn decorations, it sports a tasteful abstract chocolate brown and sage design. In other words, if I had to manage multiple schedules at work as well, I wouldn’t be ashamed to put this calendar on my desk.

Also, it has an absorbent finish instead of a glossy one. Glossy paper looks prettier, but only until I forget how slowly it absorbs ink. Then I turn over the page before the appointments have dried, and I smudge the entire month.

My sole quibble with the LifeTracker is that it only runs through June, 2011. Usually academic calendars run through the end of the following year. If I end up loving it, I won’t mind going back to the store next summer, but I would have appreciated the flexibility to procrastinate a month or two.

Like the Post It Weekly Planner pictures and product information about the LifeTracker are hard to find online. I like to think that’s because it’s such a hot new product that Mead’s web designers haven’t caught up with the product designers.

A word from the calendar aficionada: if this sounds good to you, I advise you to get your Mom’s LifeTracker early. Last year another Mead product, the five-star flex hybrid notebinder sold out in August and wasn’t available anywhere until October.