nonstick weblog

My dad just called me to ask me where the small blue tub is. They live in California. I live in Utah. All 5 of my siblings live within 20 minutes of my parents. But my dad calls me. I tell him I have no idea. I didn’t remember seeing it when I was there over Christmas. Did he look in the laundry room? How about in the upstairs bathroom? Sorry, Dad. I have no idea. Maybe you should call one of the kids who actually live near you.

This is the role of the eldest child. I was the one who had to read all the mail, as my parents didn’t read English. I was the one who had to create the rental agreements for their properties. I was the one who had to call the phone company to yell at them for messing up the bill. It’s dropped off a bit since I moved away. I miss it.

You learn something everyday. I just got my Sprint PCS bill. It was for $81. $43 of which was for accessing the internet. I was sending myself ringtones. Bad idea if you don’t have the $15 Vision plan. They charge $.03/KB. $.03? That’s not a big deal. Unless you want to download anything significant, like a proper ringtone. Then you end up spending $43 for 5 ringtones. I guess this is why you should just buy their ringtones.

It looks like we need to start asking my kid if she needs to go to the bathroom before we leave the house. This morning was the second time where my kid waits until my husband gets to the end of the block before saying she needs to go potty. Granted, she does wait until she gets back to the house and she does potty. Still.

Trying to get her out the door now includes: Put on your coat, it’s cold outside. Where are your socks? You can’t wear crocs without socks in the winter, it’s cold outside. Come here so I can wipe your boogers. Where’s your hat? Thank you for getting me my shoes. Do you need to go potty? If you don’t go now, you will have to wait until we get to school. And if you have an accident, you will have to sit in wet pants. – That always gets her to potty. She hates sitting in wet pants.

Coinstar is an awesome concept. Charge 9% to count people’s change and give them paper money. Put these machines in places where people have to go, the grocery store, the bank. Enlist the store or bank to be your middle man. Have the customers redeem their credit from the teller or clerk. It’s great.

Now they have this new thing. If you take your money in the form of an ecertificate or gift card, you don’t have to pay the 9%. One of the things you can get is a Starbucks card. Eureka! Coinstar has a new customer.

Today I collected all the change I had laying around the house. We keep cups and jars around the house to corral our change. We wouldn’t do well in Europe where they use Euro and and 5 Euro coins. We always pay with paper money. But I digress.

I took all this change to the local Albertson’s. I selected the Starbucks card and put my change in the machine. It counted $44.11. That’s a lot of lattes. I confirmed that I wanted the Starbucks card, the machine thought a bit, then told me sorry, it can’t give me a Starbucks card, here’s my receipt to redeem my $44.11, minus 9% for their trouble.

I was pissed. I needed to get out of there to pick up my kid. And the damn machine was trying to cheat me out of my $3.93 (that’s a Grande Latte, folks). It should have told me up front it couldn’t give me a Starbucks card. I hunted down the Albertson’s manager and told her my predicament. She volunteered to call Coinstar to see what they could do. The Coinstar people told her to give me my full $44.11 and that they would reimburse the store the $3.93.

If not for the Albertson’s store manager, the headline story in tomorrow’s Salt Lake Tribune would have been “Woman attacks Coinstar machine at local Albertson’s. Yesterday afternoon, a woman was arrested for trying to destroy a Coinstar machine at a local Albertson’s. The reason is still unclear. Witnesses say she was in a rage, screaming at the machine as she repeatedly charged it. They could not understand most of what she said except ‘Starbucks card’.”

I just got a birthday card from Southwest Airlines because I am in their frequent flier program. I didn’t get any free miles or drink coupons, but still. My husband hates Southwest because of the cattle call. But I don’t mind. It’s the process. As travelers we need to know how to get ahead given the process. It’s like when you take off your shoes and coat at security without someone telling you to. You know the process, so you do what you can to be more efficient.

Anyway. I really appreciate the card. I don’t get one from United or Delta and I have been a long time customer of both. The card is an example of how Southwest think of their customers. Like friends, like family. Southwest is the Chinese grocery store where I am a regular customer, where the owner is the cashier, who gives my kid a lollipop everytime we visit. That’s why, all things being equal, I always fly Southwest.

My husband and I just finished watching this week’s Tivo’d episode of Scrubs. I love it. The episode was about this woman who heard everything in song. Whenever any of the doctors were within ear shot of this patient, they were singing their lines. It became Scrubs, The Musical. Who knew these docs could sing? I was pleasantly surprise with Cox’s performance.

I told my husband not to delete the episode, because I want to watch it again and again and again.

This whole customer communcation thing is hard. I am working on a presentation for external customers and I keep having to remind myself that our customers only care about things that provide value to them. They don’t care how smart we were in conjuring up the solution or the details of the solution. They care about how the solution resolved their issue, whether the solution will deliver all it promises and whether they have to incur any addtional expense in implementing it (money, people, time, etc). But we are all like that, aren’t we? We only care about how things effect us. What is the bottom line? Does the car work? Is the food hot? Were my needs met? The saying “It’s about the journey, not the destination” only applies when it’s your journey. You want to catch a person’s attention? Make the story about them, not about yourself. Ok, back to this presentation.

I just discovered my new favorite blog Ask the Geezers. It’s this new blog where you can submit your management questions and a panel of managers post their answers. Management Q&A? I’m not a manager, it’s not relevant. Ahh. But it is. A lot of the questions so far are around business politics. It’s all about how you navigate the often murky and changing waters of interpersonal issues. As they say, if you have more than one person involved, you have politics.

I just finished You: The Owner’s Manual. It’s by a couple of medical doctors who decided to state how your body works in laymen’s terms.

I loved it. It talks about how your body functions, what it needs to function and why. For instance, did you you know that cholesterol is the band-aid for scratches on your artery walls? But that LDLs are preferred because they are “smoother” and do not accumulate build-up like HDLs do?

Did you know that every one has cancerous cells? They are errors in cell replication and the chance of errors increase with the speed and quantity of replication. (There must be a sigma project here.) So if you take care of yourself and cells need to be replaced less often, you are less likely to have rouge cells. Did you know that most rouge cells are killed by your immune system and it’s those that slip through this safety net that become cancerous? So we should take care of our immune system as well.

Did you know that healthy poop is unbroken and S-shaped, like our colon? Another thing to praise my daughter for. “Such a good girl. Not only did you poop in the potty, it’s a nice healthy poop!”
It’s a great book. I feel like I could be a character on House.

I am the oldest of 6 kids. I have 2 brothers and 3 sisters. The sisters, children #3 and 4, are turning 30 this year. I was in shock when I realized this yesterday. It’s means, gulp, I am older than 30 and have been so for a few years. It never really hit home, birthday after birthday. Oh well, I suppose I have to give up my wild ways and settle down, get married and have kids. Wait. Already did that. What am I supposed to do now?