April 28, 2007

No surpises here!

Remember my (in)famous grilled cheese and bacon post from last month?

You Are a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

You are a traditional person with very simple tastes. In your opinion, the best things in life are free, easy, and fun. You totally go with the flow. And you enjoy every minute of it! Your best friend: The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Your mortal enemy: The Ham Sandwich

I do like sandwiches, so I couldn’t turn my back when I saw this quiz. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, of course. You’ll pardon me if I snickered just a little when I saw it though, right?

Technorati Tags: food, sandwiches, quizzes, grilled cheese sandwiches

Another reason I’ll stay a small business

I was the manager of a branch operation for a regional pest control firm back in the eighties. Day-to-day operations didn’t run smoothly at first. The previous manager had hired several people because he “liked” them on first meeting. The day after I took over I called in one of our technicians and showed her the customer complaint file she had accumulated. Her primary offense? She didn’t wear a bra under her company-issued, pin-stripped button-down shirt. She also only closed two of the buttons. The tail of the shirt was gathered up and tied in a knot under her breasts, leaving her midiff and breasts exposed as she moved around doing her work. Many of our customers were not comfortable having her come into their homes for service. The old manager had never even mentioned the complaints to her - he was too busy enjoying the view himself. The employee and I had a long talk about professional image and I was later able to promote her to a more responsible position.

About a week after I took over the branch I was returning to the office late one afternoon and spotted four of our company vehicles parked in front of a bar around the corner. The trucks were rolling billboards, plastered with decals all the way around. Employees had twenty-four/seven use of company vehicles. I sent them all home and called an office meeting for the next day. Once again I talked about professional image and abuse of privileges. The problem seemed to be resolved until a a few months later, when one of the same employees caused a wreck while backing out of the parking lot of the same bar. He was drunk. The one-hundred gallon tank on the back of his truck was filled with termiticide. Our vehicle and another were badly damaged, but at least we didn’t have to deal with injuries or a pesticide spill. Pesticides should be mixed and used up on the job site to avoid such a possibility and to comply with regulations. The employee was well aware of this and these were not his first infractions. I fired him at the accident scene.

When I went to work at the California headquarters of a national firm I had twenty-one field service employees under my direct supervision. My first action was to establish a uniform training program. This incorporated an OSHA-compliant safety training and documentation program. I had to write the company OSHA policy myself, as well as the basic training manual for each branch of service. I had been amazed to find that neither of those had previously been utilized by such a large and well-respected firm. It was a full year before I felt reasonably confident that I had well-trained employees who weren’t abusing my license every time they performed a job.

Documenting employee training provided me with a measure of protection from liability for employee actions, but by no means made me bullet-proof. Field supervision (including unannounced visits to job sites) and ongoing training also reduced my liability, but I would have still been targeted if regulatory sanctions or court cases had ever ensued. Those things didn’t happen, but the job was incredibly stressful. I fired one employee when we were able to document that he was stealing prescription drugs from customers. Another refused to “train out of” sloppy pesticide handling and I had to let him go. I was temporarily transferred to Oahu as a trouble-shooter when the branch manager developed a cocaine habit and began doing un-authorized side-jobs for cash. His work was as unprofessional as his attitude and we spent months re-doing work that our company had never received a penny for but that was, ultimately, our responsibility. Repairing our reputation took much, much longer. Subsequent events kept me in Hawaii, where I eventually started my own business.

The best pre-hire screening, training and supervison cannot guarantee how your employees are behaving when you’re not watching. That brings me to the events that motivate me as I write today. My former employer provided quality assurance inspections for several pest control companies here in Hawaii. One of the operations that contracted for that service was sold in recent years. The purchaser had been the company’s manager and licensee. I met him on my first workday in Hawaii, worked with him for two years (until I left my employer) and have maintained infrequent contact with him since then. I know him to be professional, detail-oriented and concerned about he quality of service his company provides. He’s a family man who uses his kids in local TV advertising for his company, and is very personable and warm-hearted. This week I’ve been trying to imagine how he must feel, because one of his employees has been arrested in connection with the disappearance and probable murder of a Japanese citizen who was visiting our fair islands. Statements released yesterday concerning forensic evidence paint a grim picture and seem to point to the employee as the likely perpetrator of a heinous crime. It’s still unfolding news. Last night it was reported that a murder victim was recently found within yards of where this new crime may have occurred. This may indicate that the accused is a multiple-murderer. The story has been headline news since the woman first disappeared and my acquaintance’s company name has been included in every recent story.

Addressing how horrendous this is for the victim, her family and friends would be pointless. That’s obvious and they all have my sympathy. My focus now, though, is the impact this is having on the employer. It’s easy for me to imagine some of the things that must be going thorough his head. How could I not have known? What could I have done to avert this terrible thing? What is going to happen to my business?

Full stop.

How dare he worry about his business in the face of such a tragedy! He doesn’t have a choice. His family’s livlihood is tied up in the company. He employs dozens of people who are depnedent on him to keep the company afloat. He has landed in the midst of a public relations nightmare. He’ll lose long-time customers who “just don’t feel comfortable” doing business with his company anymore. It will be quite a while before people quit cringing when they see those same trucks they’ve seen on the news every night lately. New business is likey to slow to a trickle. He, his family and his employees will be stigmatized by some for not knowing/not doing. His entire staff has had an emotional blow that is likely to surface in their ability to function in their private and work lives. He has to persevere. He has to set aside his own personal trauma and rescue his business from this mess. I think he has the stamina and the leadership ability to do it. I hope I’m right.

Employers are constrained in what is and is not allowed in pre-employment screening. Drug-tesing, background checks and criminal records searches are all allowed in some areas. Psychological testing frequently is not, or at least it wasn’t back when I had such concerns. With or without such aids, how responsible is an employer for a workers’ personal behavior off the job? The sad fact is that we can’t know everything there is to know about anyone. People tend to hide the darker side of their nature. Some are very good at it. That doesn’t mean that we won’t feel responsible when an employee does something terrible. It does mean that we shouldn’t.

When I was in the earliest dreaming, rough-planning stages of starting my business, I had a foundation-level decision to make. How big did I want my business to be? How much service did I want to provide and how many employees would I need in order to provide it. Past experiences quickly came to the forefront of my memory and made the decison easy. I did not want anyone to have the ability to sully a reputation I had been building for almost two decades in the industry. I was not interested in the possibility of sacrificing my professional license to the actions of a well-trained but careless employee having a bad day. I did not ever again want to have to apologize to a client for employee pilfering on my watch. Been there, paid the dues, got way too many tee shirts to show for it. My decision was to establish a one-woman operation and accept responsibility only for myself. My imagination never took me to the outer limits of the havoc a business can become embroiled in due to the actions of an employee. Until this week. This week it hit home.

Technorati Tags: business, busniess management, public relations, employee relations, employee training, business responsibilities

Playful encounter

This is probably one of the most amazing videos I’ve ever seen. A couple of warnings before you click, though:

1. It’s a shark encounter. Not the usual - this one is like watching someone play with an oversized puppy.
2. The audio starts automatically and is set to LOUD.
3. You may find it a time suck. I’ve watched it three times.

I’ve done a little diving in the waters around Hawaii. I’ve been down there with sharks a few times. It’s always been on night dives and my buddies know where the sharks like to hang out after dark in the caverns off of Makaha Surf Beach. I’ve admired them and kept my distance. I’ve never been frightened of them, but I’ve never done what you’re about to watch either. It’s a pretty safe bet that I never will. Enjoy! An, um … don’t try this at home!

I found the video while visiting over at my friends Briggs and Carol’s place. They’re local realtors and client’s, so if you take a look at their web site (a click away from their blog) you’ll probably see a place or two that I inspected for them. Nice folks. You should go say hello!

Technorati Tags: sharks, diving with sharks, shark encounters, diving

Magical display

I don’t pay much attention to commercials on TV. I don’t even see most of them. Being the restless sort, I use “breaks” to wash a few dishes, refresh my iced tea or do whatever else pops into my head. But one local commercial has caught my eye several times. A young man fidgets in a livng room while waiting for his date. A picture frame sits on a table beside him. He watches as a series of pictures is displayed, the girl’s father in various macho poses, looking ever more ferocious. He gets the message and the ad ends as the girl enters and a sheepish-looking boyfriend assures the father that he will have her home by ten.

I know now that the digital picture frame was not TV magic. It’s digital magic and quite real. Digital Framez can be loaded with photos directly from your photo card and you can use a remote control to select how they are viewed. If that’s not quite amazing enough, a digital picture frame can also be programmed for video and music. The one shown here is a ten-inch frame of high-quality wood, and there are several other sizes and finishes available.

I’m a bit of a technophobe; you all know that. I can go from frustration to meltdown in thirty seconds flat when confronted with new technology. It’s not pretty, as those of you who have helped me install widgets and bells and whistles on my blog can attest. I’m still a little intimidated by some of the controls on the new camera that I’ve been using for a month now. That being said, I’m quite impressed with how easy it is to put pictures into lcd digital frames. Take a look at this:

How easy is that? Take your pictures or movie, insert your memory card into the digital photo frame and “Voila!” Enjoy your pictures!

The stereo speakers are built into each digital picture frame. Free software is included to help you resize your photos or store more pictures in your memory cards. I don’t know about you, but I think I’m seeing a digital photo frame in my future.

Post sponsored by Digital Framez

Technorati Tags: digital photo frames, digital picture frames, Digital Framez, sponsored product review

April 27, 2007

Let’s help Adopt an Angel!

I know that y’all know all about the Bloggers Choice Awards (which I’m losing badly & it’s all your fault because you forgot to vote!) One of the entrants ran into a little problem, and they’re such a worthy cause that I thought maybe you would help out. ANJOS PARA ADOÇÃO (Adopt an Angel) is an animal rescue organization doing very good things in a poverty-stricken area outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The site is written in Portugese, but the pictures tell the story of animals rescued, nurtured and cared for, and then put into loving homes.

Adopt an Angel was nominated for a Bloggers Choice Award, but had to be disqualified. Rules stipulate that each person can only vote once for each blog in any given category. This is monitored by checking IP addresses. There was also no original conisderation given for blogs that are not in English. The entire community around Adopt an Angel was very proud of them for being nominated, and they all rallied in support. Because it’s a very poor comunity, there are few computers. Supporters flocked to a local internet cafe and a few other public computers and the vote was going really well until it was noticed that they were all coming from just a few IP addresses. The Bloggers Choice Awards committee, thinking it had detected fraud, disqualified the blog and erased it from the ballots. They were not being heartless - they were just trying to be fair to all entrants.

Now that the situation has been fully explained, Bloggers Choice has created a brand new catagory, Best Foreign Language Blog, and put Adopt an Angel back on the ballot. Still, with limited access to computers, their biggest fans can’t vote. That’s where we come in, my friends! It will only take you a brief moment to help restore this communy’s pride. Since they can’t vote, we need to do it for them. You’ll have to register for the site in order to vote, but that only takes a moment, I promise, and it’s a secure site that will protect your information. Once you’ve done that, vote for Adopt an Angel. Here’s their badge:

Remember, one vote per IP address! Do this good thing, please? Mahalo nui loa (thank you very much!)

Technorati Tags: animal rescue, Sao Paulo, Blogger’s Choice Awards, blog awards

April 26, 2007

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

You know you’re having a bad night when you take stuff out of the washing machine and this is what you find. Anyone care to take guess at the cause of the mess?

EDIT: Friday, April 27, 2007 @ 2:06 as promised:

The washing machine ate Lancie’s bed! I would have accepted mattress, pillow, pad, or stuffing for an answer. Some of you got pretty close right there at the end!

Good show! We’ll have to do this again some time! Mahalo for playing!

Heh! A little memory jolt

I went to the grocery store a little while ago. A car that was parked near me had a little statue of Mary on the dashboard. It made me realize that I haven’t seen that in a long time. People here dangle warrior helmets from their rearview mirrors and might have dried leis on the dash. They put memorial decals on their rear windows - RIP Sonny Boy, that kind of stuff - but not so much religious emblems. I see a lot of rear windows crammed with stuffed toys. I’ve never understood that. If your old enough to drive, why would you have a stuffed toy collection advertising your juvenile nature every time you take the car out? But anyway, back to the dashboard statue. Having grown up right outside of New Orleans, a very catholic part of the country, I guess I saw them as a normal thing that people do. That and catholic medals hanging from the rearview mirror. Usually St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the medals here either. Is it a catholic thing or a regional thing? The Catholic Church has a strong presence here, but not nearly as strong as where I come from, so it could be that. But people in Hawaii have a whole different set of aesthetics from any place I’ve known well, so it could just as easily be cultural/regional. If I ever become a world traveler I’ll have to make it a point to notice personal car decor, because now this thing is stuck in my mind and there’s really no other way to answer it.

Technorati Tags: catholic, catholic medals, catholic statues, regional culture, Hawaii, cars, decor

Clutter update

Not much to report, really. I’ve made some progress, though, courtesy of the mouse invasion. I no longer have an over-abundance of scented soaps and candles and have managed to resist the urge to relace the ruined ones that I tossed out. The pantry has a lot more room since I was forced to throw away fully half of the food that was in there. I haven’t done a total restock of staple items yet because I haven’t replaced the destroyed Tupperware containers that didn’t deter the mice. Hope springs eternal, so I’m sure that the replacement containers will do their job next time I’m overrun with beasties. Quite a few kitchen linens have been demoted to lesser duties like car washing and are out in the shed. A few (not nearly enough!) books have been distributed to other readers.

The office remains my biggest problem area. Files are stacked haphazardly on top of the file cabinets and work table. Junk mail is mixed with bills and payments. Books I’ve used for research lately are crammed into the corner of the computer hutch. I’m beginning to think that I need to hire one of those heartess organizing companies that comes in and gets things in order. You know, the ones that throw away all of the crappola that’s smothering me but I can’t seem to let go of? Yeah, those people. Not becuase I can’t do things for myself, but because I don’t. Maybe they could also install some consolidation software to get my business applictions and files more organized in my computer, too.

Had I gotten rid of the old phones when I last updated? Can’t remember if I mentioned it here or not, but I filled a large box with phones, caller ID boxes, an old answering machine and various cords and cables. That went to United Cerebral Palsy last time they picked up. I also gave them my excess bed linens. I live alone and rarely have houseguests. Why in the world did I have two hall closet shelves filled with sheets and pillowcases, in addition to the ones in my own closet and the one in the guest room?

Actually, seeing it all like this I have made considerable progress. Hold on while I pat myslef on the back. {brief pause} Still a lot to do, but I’m getting there, a little at a time. My son still has not come for his visit. I know I’ll get scads doen in the days leading up to that. Can’t have him being too ashamed of his old mom’s housekeeping, can we?

[tags]clutter, disorganization, organization, mice, United Cerebral Palsy, charity

Do you have audio on your blog?

I want to install an audio player on my blog. I’d like to make some of my favorite local music available to those who would like to listen to it when they visit. I will need to be able to load it with music from my own CD collection (after I figure out how to get that into my computer) and have a menu so that my readers can select what they want to hear. I need suggestions for a player that will install easily (keeping in mind that I’m a complete doofus with these things) and that would be user-friendly for whoever drops by. Searching for audio players online isn’t helping me much because I don’t know whose testimonials to believe. I trust the opions of my regular readers, so I’d really appreciate some feedback from those of you who know these things.

Oh, and I guess the quesiton I should be asking first is whether it’s legal to put selections from my own CDs out there. I’d hate to have to buy music downloads online for things I already own, but I’m not interested in infringing on anyone’s copyrighted material either. Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

Mahalo!

Technorati Tags: music, mucis downloads, audio players

Daytime drama

Do you remember the little secluded beach I showed you a week or so ago? I took some pictures from the lanai of a condo I was inspecting here on the Waianae Coast. I mentioned that I do a lot of inspections there and had two more already in my date book. There were interesting things going on when I went back, but I met a guy named Pete on the way home that day and he was interesting too, so I postponed sharing the story. Today is a slow news day, so here ya go.

I noticed a helicoptor hovering over the coast as I approached my worksite. We don’t get a lot of the helicopter tours out here, but there’s a stong military presence and helicopters are used to search for missing swimmers and surfers, too, so seeing one is a common event. I knew this wasn’t a fire control helicopter because those are either yellow or red. When I got to the building I could tell that the ‘copter was circling that area, and when I went upstairs to the condos there were people on almost every lanai watching the scene.

It was obvious that the police were looking for someone. The little peninsula where the drama was unfolding is almost all mountain, with a coral ledge skirting it. The area has been left in its natural state, so theres a lot of brush. Walking in such areas is hazardous because natural coral ledges are full of holes that can be hard to see. Broken ankels are common, and occasionally someone will disappear into an unseen blow hole and get sucked out to sea.

The boys in blue were out in force, so all of us lookie-loos were sure that the search was on for a true desperado. The noise from the helicopter above was almost deafening, but I could hear the residents of the first condo I was inspecting discussing the scene. They hoped the police were finally going to run off an old homeless guy who had pitched his tent on a flat spot just out of the bushes. They pay a lot for those condos, so we can all understand their outrage, right? He was living rent-free and spoling their view. People of substance can be pretty resentful of such things.

I let myself into the second condo, which was vacant. There’s not a lot of wood in those places - the doors and door jambs, cabinetry and a small section of the ceiling near the entry door - so I finished the interior inspection pretty quickly. As I let myself out onto the lanai to inspect the surf board locker I heard a cheer going up from the watching residents nearby. The chase was over and the good guys had won.

All I could think of was how young this boy looks. The Waianae Coast has a serious drug problem, along with the criminal activity that it spawns. It’s also the preferred dumping ground for stolen cars from all over the island. We don’t get a lot of police support in controlling those problems, though Dog the Bounty Hunter films a lot of his segments out here. The police only seem to respond to more “serious” crimes, though none of us are really sure what meets that definition. It leads me to conclude, though, that this boy is in for a long, hard ride through the criminal justice system. It’s a system almost guaranteed to turn out hardened criminals, so we were probably watching the beginning of the end of his life.

We all went merrily on our ways, content with our happy lives. Well, mostly happy. I met Pete about a half-an-hour later, so that perked me right up. There’s still that homeless guy spoiling the view, though.

EDIT: If you are a newer reader and don’t know me - I advocate for the homeless on the Waianea Coast. Comments above are dripping in sarcasm and, sadly, reflect the actual attitude of some local residents.

Technorati Tags: police search, Waianae Coast, Hawaii, crime in Hawaii, Dog the Bounty Hunter, homelessness