by Randy Cassingham
Some packaging really makes me ...well... cranky.
Take these two packages of socks, for instance, that I bought from the same store on the same day. Both are packages of six pairs, and both are the same size. One is easy to get into, the other is not.
Far from it.
by Matt Deatherage
I spend most of every day researching and writing, and the rest of the time I'm either taking care of the back end of my business, or sleeping. Most of the time, I keep the ringer on the phone off, because interruptions can be costly. I go to bed late and get up late because it's easier to write at night, so I don't want calls from the office forwarding through in the morning hours anyway. We have 24/7 voicemail if any of our customers find that e-mail really won't do.
Back in October, I started getting phone calls from some out of area number. The name was something spammy, like "marketing" or "research". The callers never left voicemail, and usually called between 9AM and 10AM every day, before my reliable waking hours (most days, I go to bed at 4AM). Sometimes I'd get 2-3 of these calls per day. Sometimes I'd get calls I'd have to answer before I'd be at work, so I'd have to forward calls to ring at home -- and then it would be these annoying mystery callers. I'd hear the phone ring at 8:30 or so in the morning, so I'd wake up but couldn't get to it before voicemail picked up and they'd hang up.
by Randy Cassingham
A lot of public relations professionals are just that -- professional. Sometimes, though, an inept practititioner -- a "flack" as they're often known -- tries to intervene and ends up doing more harm than good.
In my column This is True, which reports on strange-but-true articles from newspapers (with a usually funny "tagline" added on after the story, as a comment), I wrote this item about a criminal's attempt to steal from Home Depot. It was in the 30 April 2000 issue: