natasha's corner

Someone built this tiny snowman at my train stop. It totally made my day as I was waiting for the train in the feels-like-sub-zero temperature this morning.

I dream in emails, worn-out phrases
Mile after mile of just empty pages

– Keane, “Perfect Symmetry”

“If we say your package will arrive on December 2nd, then it will arrive on December 2nd – even if we have to ship it back and forth for a couple days.”

This seems to be FedEx’s philosophy, anyway…

I expect my package to arrive tomorrow at 7pm sharp, even if the driver needs to circle around the block a few times.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post complaining about non-standard headphone jacks. And now the saga continues.

Apparently, the new T-Mobile G1 phone, hailed for being the first “Google phone” (meaning it uses Android as its operating system), doesn’t even have a headphone jack! The newer models are now shipping with an adapter so that people can actually listen to the music they put on the phone.

The T-Mobile website states:

With the included 1GB memory card that you can expand to 8GB, you can listen to your music with the built in music player or on any computer. That means you’re never without your favorite tunes, no matter where you go.

They should add “as long as you have an adapter.”

Come on, this is pretty simple stuff – if you have a portable music player, you should have a jack to plug in your headphones. I thought the iPhone was bad enough with its recessed headphone jack that only fits Apple headphones. But at least it has one.

I’d really like to know the justification for not including a headphone jack on the G1. It seems like such an obvious oversight.

Computer: “Warning: out of dark matter!”

Leela: “That’s not a warning! A warning is supposed to come before something bad happens.”

Computer: “1 second until engine shut down.”

Leela: “That’s more like it.”

– Bender’s Game

- – - – - – -

– The Daily WTF

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves as well. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen accidents, meetings and material assistance that no one could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

– Goethe

This made me do a double-take. Why would it think this photo had anything to do with the BostonCHI meeting? Well, that’s because it was uploaded while the BostonCHI meeting was going on (and it was in my calendar).

I don’t know, doesn’t seem all that intelligent to me. Others disagree, though.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

– Steve Jobs

Last week my husband and I visited Greece. It is a truly beautiful country, no matter where you go – and we went just about everywhere (well, as much as we could in 9 days). One thing that immediately struck me about the country, or perhaps more about the people, was the level of personal service.

It started with our first hotel in Athens. We arrived tired and sweaty from having gotten 3 hours of sleep in the last 32 hours and a long walk which didn’t seem so long on the map when we decided to do it instead of taking the metro. It was still well before check-in time at the hotel and our room wasn’t ready yet. However, there was a room at a sister hotel and we got “upgraded” to that one. When we asked where the other hotel was, the woman behind the counter told us to sit down and relax, her colleague from the other hotel would come get us. We waited about 10 minutes when the woman came over and said she’d take us over herself. The sister hotel turned out to be just a block away and we ran into her colleague on the way, who took us the rest of the way there.

Sure, we could have found the hotel ourselves, but they personally made sure we got there. American hotels would just hand you a map and send you on your way.

The second example of personal service came when we rented a car. I made the reservation on Expedia and we went to the airport to pick it up. We were dismayed to find that the company we rented from (Thrifty) did not have a booth by the other rental companies. It turned out we had to call them and they would bring the car to the airport for us.

We agreed on a place to meet and only had to wait about 15 minutes until a man from Thrifty came and found us. He had a colleague with him who presented us with the contract. I probably would have thought this was pretty sketchy if we hadn’t already pre-paid for the car. They asked us where we wanted to drop off the car, which surpised us. We had assumed we’d return it at the airport. However, that was very out-of-the-way from the hotel we’d be staying at the night we planned to return the car. We gave the Thrifty guy the address of our hotel and told him when we could meet him there to drop off the car. We did pay a little extra for this, but it was almost as much as the metro would cost us to get to the hotel from the airport and would save us a lot of time. They showed us our car and we were on our way.

At the end of the road trip part of our trip, we met another Thrifty guy at our hotel and he took the car. It took the guy almost an hour to get to our hotel by bus since the metro wasn’t running, but he was there and saved us from making that nightmarish trip on a bus through Piraeus (the port for Athens).

Again, we could have picked up and dropped off the car ourselves at some rental facility, but instead they brought the car to us. Very different from my experience renting cars in the US where everything is set up for maximum processing efficiency. Get on a shuttle, stand in line, sign papers, get a key with a number, find the corresponding parking space number, check out as you leave the lot. Returning a car is equally process-efficient and equally impersonal.

The final stand-out example was at a restaurant in Nafplio. It was our second day in Greece and we were just starting to get used to just sitting down at a table in a restaurant instead of waiting to be seated. We happened to pick a place that was frequented mostly by locals and apparently didn’t have a menu. As we sat there, confused, the head waiter gestured for us to come inside and look at the food. If you’ve never been at a restaurant in Greece, the head waiter pretty much runs the place. He is typically the only waiter AND the host. He keeps track of all the diners, brings everyone’s food, and rings up everyone’s bills. He is a very busy person. So the fact that this guy took us over and personally explained all the choices in the kitchen to us was a big deal. He didn’t talk down to us, even though it was obvious we were clueless tourists, and provided us with the same level of service as the locals.

When is the last time your American waiter took you to the kitchen and explained all the choices on the menu?

It was an interesting experience being treated like a person and not like a customer. We get so used to being “processed” as customers in the US that such personal attention is truly a breath of fresh air. It’s not that Greeks are more friendly – if anything, they’re less friendly, at least to Americans. It’s just a different mentality of seeing people as people, not customers and thinking of your business as a way you reach out to people, rather than as a service you provide. You don’t lose any professionalism by being more personal, but you do gain trust because we trust other people more than we trust anonymous friendly clerks. Trust is very valuable because people will come to you if they trust you and they will recommend your business to their friends. It’s a worthwhile and enjoyable endeavor. After all, business owners are people too.