Category Archives: Commentary

Greetings and solicitations

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Okay, boys and girls, Aunty Diane is going to teach you a few manners that will come in handy when you call people unsolicited to plead for your cause or plead for money.

1. After introducing yourself, ask if this is a good time to talk and listen to the answer. Take it seriously. The person may say no simply because he or she doesn’t want to be solicited and doesn’t want to say so. Ask if they wish to be called back. If they say, “Yes,” you’re in luck. If they say, “No,” calling them back repeatedly isn’t going to endear your organization or your cause to them. And, for the record, 5:30 p.m. is probably not a good time for anyone to be on the phone listening to a solicitation.

Bottom line: Ask, listen, and respect the answer.

Today someone from a political group called me and lurched right into her scripted spiel without asking if I cared to hear it. She was oh-so-earnest, it was painful. Twenty seconds in, I said, “Excuse me.” No pause in the spiel. A few seconds later, “Excuse me.” No pause. A few seconds later, a tad more firmly, “Excuse me, but how did you get this number?” This threw her off a few seconds, then she told me I must have given it when I signed up for this organisation (which I had never done), I must have this, I must have that. I said, “This is my work number, which I would never use in this context.” After a little more debate back and forth, during which I could tell that going that far off script was a strain, she muttered something about crossing it off the list. Why, thank you.

Don’t take it personally, but you could have asked first if I wanted to talk and saved yourself — and me — the trouble.

2. Give the person the opportunity to respond during the conversation and listen. I mean, LISTEN. Yes, you’ve been trained not to, and you’ve been trained to give your spiel as quickly as possible to wear the person down and to get as many calls in as possible, but when you don’t listen to me, I don’t wish to deal with your organization. Ever. I don’t want to associate with anyone whose core values don’t include listening. It’s a skill I find few people have mastered, but you can at least pretend to try.

One weekend I was ill with a stomach virus. Ill, weak, dehydrated, exhausted. My phone rang; I thought it might be my elderly father, to whom of course I always wanted to speak, so I dragged myself over to the phone and picked it up. The spiel began. It was to be a 20-minute survey. I said, “I can’t do this; I’ve been throwing up for three days.” Spiel continues. “I’m really sick . . . please . . .” (this was in the days when, thanks to my parents’ training, I was too polite to hang up on anyone). Spiel contines. I’m lying on the floor, barely able to hold the phone, trying not to vomit my stomach (which hadn’t had anything in it for days anyway), and in tears. After a few more attempts, I finally hung up. And I haven’t looked back. Now I hang up if it’s clear to me the other person isn’t listening. The sad thing is, this was not a recording or something of that nature. This was a man who simply didn’t have the social skills necessary to realise that he should apologise, shut up, and hang up, or to express some basic compassion.

3. If the people to whom you report say you must spit out your spiel quickly and not let the prospect interrupt, if they train you not to be polite or show basic courtesy, if they train you not to treat the prospect like a human being with whom you are interacting, get another job. You will be happier, trust me. I don’t think it will change anything; someone will always be willing to take the job or to volunteer if it’s a cause they believe in. But while the young woman today clearly believed in her cause and was trying to reach as many people as possible, she alienated me. And I don’t think any organization that relies on people can afford to do that very often and expect to succeed.

If you’re not a phone solicitor/salesperson, take note of the above anyway. And the next time you’re at work, take note too of how many times you walk up to people, especially your underlings, and just start blabbering at them without any pleasantries whatsoever, like, “Do you have a minute?” (And waiting for the answer.) And discover how much easier it is to work with people when you treat them like . . . people.

iPod baby

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A marketing genius has come out with a line of baby clothing modeled after Apple’s iPod MP3 player — genius because iPods now outsell stereos, and everyone from preteens to middle-aged soccer moms can be seen sporting iPods (or, occasionally, the less fashionable alternatives). Part of the reason for the iPod’s success, aside from size, weight, and portability, is its design, which mirrors the sleek, space-age, nearly seamless look of Apple computers like the iBook, PowerBook, and Mac Mini. In today’s market, the pricier Macintoshes sell as much for their looks as for the operating system or computing power. (You’ll probably still find most business-oriented programmers and IT buyers sticking to WinTel.)

The reaction to the iPod clothing shouldn’t surprise me — I should know popular taste and the branding frenzy by now — but it does. The universal comment seems to be that these clothes are the “cutest ever.” Yes, making your baby into a rolling advertisement for a digital music player is cuter than anything that has ever come before. If Enron had produced stylish, cutting-edge consumer goods, then we’d have said Enron sleepers are the “cutest ever.”

Tying this into The Reinvention of Work by Matthew Fox, I wonder if iPod baby garb isn’t part of the logical progression from the agricultural world to the industrial age to the electronic/computer one. Animals have always been very popular on children’s clothing and bedding — bunnies, ducks, lambs, geese, even cows. For boys, there was the universal appeal of transportation, machinery, and sports — engineer/train, construction, race car, and sports themes.

But the cutest ever is dressing your progeny to look like a high-end consumer electronic product. On the cuteness scale, iPod baby clothes rate a gag, if not a projectile vomit.

I suspect that what’s cute about the clothes and what makes them marketing genius is that they are designed to get attention and to associate you with something hot (or cool, depending on your generation). In a world of six+ billion people, we all crave attention. Like those three-wheeled sports joggers that most babies seem to find uncomfortable (check out their expressions), iPod clothes pander to self-conscious masses who want to “stand out” to “fit in.” (An advertising slogan.) We can’t stand not to be seen, and we want to blend in only in the socially prescribed way, through the support of appropriate consumer goods. Our affluence and our sophistication must not go unappreciated — or unobserved. What better way than to be identified with a pop market icon? “Look at our baby. It’s not enough for us if you say he’s cute or precious — of course he is — but you must note that he has come into the world right — unconsciously promoting a hot product that will be obsolete by the time he gets to kindergarten, perhaps even day-care.”

Of course, by then he will be a walking billboard for other products.

How cute is that?

Update, 10 January 2019: World population is 7.5 billion at the Population Clock.
Update, 11 November 2023: World population is more than 8 billion.

Have a happy period. Always.

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Click here for a story about possibly the worst ad campaign ever. Always.1

All right, it’s probably not the worst ad campaign ever, but it’s one of the few that makes me want to find the “creative” who came up with it and teach him/her something about life. I saw it on the bus today, three colourful panels, each with an inane comfort saying that was so forgettable that I can’t recall the one I tried to remember (something about cookies in a desk and eating them — you know, one of those things you shouldn’t do when you have PMS because it makes the symptoms worse). But the tagline is the killer:

Have a happy period. Always.

I started having my period at 11-1/2 years old and continue to have them in my mid-40s. They were painful from the get-go, and in my mid-20s I developed PMS, which has worsened every year since. My period is a time when I feel heavy, crampy, exhausted, depressed, and sick of life. It’s not me; it’s a trick of hormones and physiology that I don’t have much control over. The moment my period is over I feel renewed and refreshed, like someone who’s gotten their life back.

There’s nothing “happy” about my period except that blessed day each month when it ends.

And the brand of napkin or tampon I use simply ain’t going to make a difference.

To P&G and their ad agency: I have some thoughts about “happy periods.” Call me.

1 Link removed due to story disappearance. But you can read another woman’s reaction to the “Have a Happy Period” campaign for Always here.

“Felons & Guns: No Friends, No Family, No Future.”

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Felons & Guns: No Friends, No Family, No Future.

CTA transit ad

This is one ad in a series that has appeared on CTA buses, often on the back. The themes are similar; if you’re a felon and you’re caught with a gun, you may end up saying farewell to everything you care about, often depicted as a woman and children. I don’t remember who the sponsor is, but I think it’s an agency. 

Who is the audience for this campaign? Does the sponsor believe that hard-core felons are driving behind CTA buses, slapping their foreheads in enlightenment, and thinking, “Man, I’d better get rid of that gun or I’ll end up with no friends, no family, and no future! That would suck!”

Probably not. First, I would guess that many felons aren’t risking a home with a picket fence and all that comes with it. I would also suspect that many of them are violent criminals and gang members who don’t have caring attachments to people in the first place. Appealing to them as though they were middle-class suburbanite office workers is most likely ineffective (assuming they see these ads at all).

It’s hard to tug at heartstrings that may not exist.

My thought is that these ads are aimed at stolid citizens who’d like to be reassured that something is being done about those gun-toting felons on the streets. The sponsor can say that they’re making it clear to felons who can read that gun possession has consequences. It’s too bad that they’re consequences that many felons may be unlikely to concern themselves about. I don’t feel reassured about anything except the fact that time, effort, money, and resources were wasted in a futile way.

I feel confident, however, in the absurdity of life.

What do we want to be today?

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On his former bulletin board, Bensozia, John says, “I think something about the technology [IVF] just scares people, and so they invent weird reasons to oppose it.”

Society has created technology, and technology has recreated society, a society where “no” is not an acceptable answer. Whether the question is as simple as, “Can I get that proposal by the end of the day?” or as complex as, “Is there any drug, treatment, or procedure that will stem my illness and prolong my life?,” the answer must never be in the negative. As the second Star Trek movie emphasized, “There are always alternatives.” If there are no alternatives, they must or will be invented. Treatment for cancer is simply an interim step; the demand is for a cure.

As for the proposal, once it could be sent overnight via FedEx, with harried office workers straining to meet the 9 p.m. pickup. Now they can email it, which means great pressure, especially when technological solutions tend make every decision maker even more of a procrastinator. But the answer is still never, “No.”

We cannot accept “no“ from nature, either. Everything that she throws at us that we don‘t like is a “problem“ to be “fixed,“ according to our industrial age-inspired ideology. If the human machine is broken, if it can‘t conceive, for example, and if it can‘t be repaired, then another mechanical solution must be found. Grief, loss, helplessness — these are seen as negative emotions to be avoided or subverted. But how can we feel joy without feeling grief? How can we understand the depths of love without experiencing the pain of rejection? How can anyone grasp the highs without the lows? Is a flat-line existence of comfort, complacency, and getting everything you want living?

Is that why reality TV is popular? People with carefully regimented, controlled lives seek out the avarice, bitterness, and bitchiness that lie behind reality TV. On weekends, some — seemingly a growing number — of thrill seekers pursue extreme sports like ultramarathon running in the desert or activities that are as dangerous as possible, like rock climbing, bungee jumping, or whitewater rafting. Anything to feel a rush, to feel alive.

Maybe we could feel alive if we stop treating life as a problem to be fixed and our bodies as machines to be repaired, if we could accept real pain (not the manufactured kind) and death as readily as we accept joy and life, appreciate shadow as much as light. If we could understand ourselves as living organisms. The more we aspire to some kind of unnatural perfection, the more we soil our home, the more problems we create, the more we feel thwarted, and the more we want and expect.

Obviously, most of us take advantage of medical technology, me included. Knowing where the lines should be drawn — or if the lines should be drawn at all — is a question that can’t be answered to everyone’s satisfaction.

We are like children in the universe, children whose intellect exceeds our wisdom by far, with the gap growing imperceptibly every day. As Frankenstein learned, simply because a thing can be done does not mean that it should be done.

When you can’t accept “no” as an answer, when you can’t accept that there may be limits to science and technology, even to the human mind and the prescience of its wisdom, you deny one of the things that make us human, an evolving organism. And that may be what is frightening. If we can’t let ourselves be human, what do we want to be?

Red in tooth and claw

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On Sunday’s 60 Minutes, the last story of the hour was about the conflict between humans and grizzlies outside Yellowstone. It does sound like the bear population may be too much for the physical space and needs to be monitored and managed. I don’t believe in the idea of turning over management to the state because there are too many cowboys (literally and figuratively) itching to kill some grizzly. To avoid that, the federal government needs to do a better job.

What bothers me, however, is the woman who moved to the area from California with her children so they could be closer to nature — then whines about the danger to her children the grizzlies posed, etc., etc. Well, yes — getting close to nature can be risky. If you don’t really want to be that close to nature, I suggest you move to a place like, say, Chicago. Of course, someone like you would find something here to whine about, too, something expectable like, say, traffic.

She decided to move to suburban Cody. Please, do us all a favor and stay there.

Reinventing work

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Our status, our position, is not determined by the work we do outside but by the work in our hearts and how we assist others. The effort to recognize and speak the truth is the greatest work that any of us can do.

Dhyani Ywanoo

We may be forced to take a job serving food at a fast-food place for $4.25 an hour in order to pay our bills, but work is something else. Work comes from inside out; work is the expression of our soul, our inner being. It is unique to the individual; it is creative. Work is an expression of the Spirit at work in the world through us. Work is that which puts us in touch with others, not so much at the level of personal interaction, but at the level of service in the community.

Matthew Fox, The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time

I think I’m going to like The Reinvention of Work. Like The Goddess Within by the Woolgers, it was written in another decade and predicts a movement that shows no signs of occurring today; in other words, it appears to be wishful thinking. It’s also insightful and thought provoking about why there should be such a movement and how it could benefit each of us and the community (world and local) in which we live.

In his introduction, Fox talks about “jobs” versus “work.” To put it much too simply, a job is something you have so you can pay the bills, while work is something that feeds the spirit and benefits the community.

There are two perspectives from which I see this. The first is based on a holistic wellness initiative we have undertaken at work that focuses on the six dimensions of wellness:

• Emotional • Mental • Occupational • Physical • Social • Spiritual

To be well and to live well, one needs to balance the six dimensions as much as possible. We all know someone who can run marathons and compete in triathlons but who pays no attention to their emotional or spiritual needs. Or someone who loves their job and works 70 hours a week but who is socially unfulfilled or who eats poorly and exercises little. Do we all know someone, or anyone, whose life is reasonably balanced emotionally, mentally, occupationally, physically, socially, and spiritually? Do we know someone, or many, who feels discontent about an aspect of life that they can’t identify or who is depressed, lonely, and frustrated, and unsure why?

I think that Fox would agree that part of our “inner work” is to identify the dimensions of wellness in which we are strong and those to which we need to pay more (or any) attention. This requires us to believe that whole wellness is important for more than our health and longevity. After all, many of us don’t pay attention to our health until it changes significantly. Even then, after of diagnosis of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes, it’s a struggle to change our habits. And life expectancy is a mystery over which we have limited control. Conditions such as depression seem to play a greater role in determining life expectancy than one might assume.

No, wellness is not just about health and life span — it’s about quality of life. That means much more than staying physically healthy, maintaining a good weight, adhering to a sensible diet, making an effort to prevent disease, and the like. It means more than brushing after every meal and getting X minutes of aerobic exercise every week. It means paying attention to yourself as a whole person. If work makes us “ornery, angry, frustrated, violent, hateful, and humiliated” (Studs Terkel), then we need to reevaluate our level of occupational wellness, to “reinvent work.”

It seems to me that the occupational dimension of wellness has a disproportionate influence on the others, as work is essential to the human soul. If you are occupationally well, I imagine you are likelier to be well in most of the other dimensions.

The second perspective is based on some changes we have undergone at my own workplace to streamline work flow and improve time lines. These ends are good. Certainly, when there is a smooth process in place and it is followed, and when roles are well defined, work can be a lot less stressful. If you don’t know what’s expected of you and when, you feel lost and without purpose. You won’t know if you’re doing the right thing, how it fits in with what others are doing, or how you are being evaluated. And — this is critical — you may not even understand the purpose of your work, the proverbial “big picture.” If you don’t know that the bolts you drive into metal all day hold critical parts of the vehicle together, or even that you are part of building a vehicle, how satisfied and rewarded can you feel?

We’ve always had “tasking” meetings, during which we discuss what we are working on. I hate the name “tasking” because it metaphorically reduces our work, in Fox’s sense, to “tasks,” which to me evokes routine things that need to be done but that in and of themselves bring no joy — vacuuming, paying bills, cleaning the litter box — things that you have to do so that you can do what you really want to do, the kind of things that your parents told you that you had to before you could go outside to play. “Make your bed first” or “Help with the dishes.”

Now, there may be people who enjoy tasks, and tasks that promote a larger goal can be very fulfilling on a certain level — as long as you are conscious of the goal and your progress toward it. Clearing and cleaning a particularly cluttered space can be purifying. Vacuuming before a party may feel wonderful because you realise your guests will see a carpet and a home that suddenly looks like new. The drudgery of washing windows may be made bearable by the crispness of the view through the clean glass. Although these are tasks, they have tangible, desirable ends that feel good, once you’ve overcome the inertia to start them.

To me, however, our “tasks” don’t feel like that. Part of it is because they drag on for a long time, and during most of that time I have no control over anything that I’ve contributed. The time between the completion of my initial “task” (writing) to the final production can span several weeks, even months.

But mainly I think it’s because we’ve reduced our work, which is creative and has an end that is beneficial to our constituency, to “jobs” contained in “job jackets” that outline our “tasks.” It seems to me that the concept of the “job jacket,” which apparently comes from advertising agencies, inhibits the spiritual aspect of work.

We are handed folders with a list of assigned tasks and dates, complete our task, and pass them on to the next bee. From my perspective, it seems dehumanizing and isolating, similar to the earlier example of putting a bolt in a car part all day. It’s the white-collar version of a production line. The process itself stifles the creativity and the collaboration that most people say they crave.

Ironically, it is, at least at this point, not efficient. Deadlines are missed, and there is no one person who manages them or the projects. Rather, we have turned that function over to project management software, which is time consuming to use. Instead of utilizing our abilities and experience, along with face-to-face communications, to manage our own selves, our own time, and our own projects, we are reduced to having the people who use the software change dates and times and letting the software tell them what we should be doing, how much time we have to do it, and when it should be done.

Men were once enslaved by their animals and crops (hunting and agriculture), then by machines (industry). Now we are letting a different kind of machine make our decisions and manage our lives. How can this possibly nourish the spirit and empower the mind?

Let’s reinvent work. Let’s make it something to be cherished and enjoyed, not dreaded.

“Sleigh bells ring — are you listening?”

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The moment you heard your first Christmas song this year while in a store, you probably gritted your teeth and thought, “Oh, no! Not already!” or even, “Not again!” Is it because you dislike being reminded that your Christmas shopping time is running out before it began? That you face two months of heavy traffic, crowded stores, family anxieties and squabbling, irritable tempers, the dredging of awful childhood memories, and/or soaring credit card debt? Or is it simply that you can listen to Feliz Navidad only so many times before screaming, “Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!” Perhaps it’s a little of all these.

“Christmas is too commercial!” someone said to me many years ago. “What I want is a traditional Christmas.” I told her that it’s easy enough to forego the commercialism of Christmas and to pioneer one’s own traditions that have nothing to do with what others do and that have personal meaning. For example, if putting up a tree, real or artificial, is too much work or too stressful, why not fill the house with colourful or fragrant plants instead? If it isn’t Christmas to you without a tree, then instead of buying manufactured ornaments that have no significance at a faceless chain store, make your own (with your children if you have any). Not only will you have the satisfaction of having a unique collection of decorations, but you’ll be able to explore your creative side while engaging your kids in a family activity.

If the usual Christmas tunes you’ve heard performed by the same people over and over again have become associated with stress and anxiety or seared your nerves through decades of repetition, perhaps it’s time to expand your musical tastes at home (since you can’t avoid what the stores broadcast). For example, I have Anonymous 4’s On Yoolis Night, the Baltimore Consort’s Bright Day Star, Robin Petrie’s Victorian Christmas and Victorian Noël, Renaissance Holiday, and other assorted and uncommon collections of Christmas music you won’t hear at Target. There’s also The Soul of Christmas, with author Thomas Moore, the late Johnny Cunningham, and a group of talented Celtic performers telling stories, sharing thoughts, and singing and playing spiritual songs in a spiritual way.

I pointed this type of idea out to the “Christmas is too commercial!” individual, but by then she was focused on trying to find a relative a gift that would cost at least $80. “Maybe a designer cologne?” she suggested hopefully.

Whether you’re a devout Christian, a follower of another faith, or a committed atheist, you can appreciate that Christ (prophet, messiah, or myth) never endorsed the idea of commemorating his birth date (unknown) with spending competitions and oneupmanship or through bestowing such gifts as violent video games on 12-year-olds. A history textbook I’m reading notes that, economically and socially, shepherds were the lowest of the low, spending much of their time outside the protection of civilization. To whom were tidings of great joy brought? To whom does Jesus repeatedly compare himself? To shepherds. To the humblest members of society — to people who can’t spend $80 on a gift to impress someone. To people for whom any comfort or small luxury is a simple pleasure.

If so many of us hate the madness of the bustle, the crass commercialism, and the oneupmanship game that gift giving can become, why don’t we stop? Why don’t we listen to one of the most popular, enduring television specials — A Charlie Brown Christmas? Or the words of Jesus himself? Don’t wait for the world to stop. Be brave. Be the first. Set a new standard. Celebrate simply. And rediscover what Christmas means to you.

One hell of an entry

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Maybe it began with business casual dress, a development I didn’t mind as I’ve always loathed wearing dresses and panty hose. Or the democratization of the workplace, which promotes endless meetings so the “team” can come to a consensus about the plan or idea that the supervisor, manager, or executive wanted to implement in the first place. Democratization that encourages employees to write blogs to put a human face on the company — a human face the company wouldn’t hesitate to fire or “rightsize.”

What I mean is the use of what Star Trek writers called “colorful metaphors” by people at all levels in their written business communications.

It’s one thing to say to Bob in the hallway, “You did a hell of a job in that meeting.” It’s another to send an e-mail saying, “Damn, what the hell were they thinking?” Or so I thought, until I started receiving e-mails with the occasional salty and usually unnecessary expletive. At first I thought the senders were simply young and inexperienced and didn’t know that this was not appropriate in a corporate environment, but now I’ve realised it is I who am out of touch. After all, advertising now uses expletives and metaphors that, not so long ago, would have tarnished a company’s wholesome reputation. Today, however, words that were once impolite in polite society are even used as brands — Fat Bastard wines, for example.

I was thinking about this at the 2004 Web Content Management Conference cosponsored by IABC and Ragan Communications. One session description, with the precious and pass — title of “The mother of all intranets,” used the expression, “you better [sic] have one hell of an intranet.” Even business communicators have resorted to using (admittedly mild) “colorful metaphors” in print.

What strikes me is not simply the use of language that once would have been reserved for only dire circumstances (“What the hell do you mean, Mike Wallace is in reception?”). It’s also that professional communicators, creative people who should command the language, not pander to the populace, can’t think of a more descriptive expression than “one hell of an _,” a descriptor that is about as descriptive and useful as “nice” and that any grade school graduate could have produced. So much for “crafting” (a word I hate) copy.

If this is the future of business communications, who the hell needs business communicators?

Just when it couldn’t get worse

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Just as I thought advertising could not find any more lows to hit, this appeared in News of the Weird.

Pushing the Advertising Envelope

A State University of New York at Buffalo professor, in a recent ecology journal, expressed confidence that eventually butterflies could be genetically altered to permit advertising logos and other designs on their wings.

And in March, the British video game company, Acclaim Entertainment, announced it would “raise advertising to a new level” by offering to pay relatives of the deceased a fee if it could put small billboards on gravestones. [Trends in Ecology & Evolution-Chicago Sun-Times, 3-13-02] [The Guardian (London), 3-15-02]