Category: Uncategorized (Page 8 of 8)

Like most Americans, I am working many jobs.  I have parlayed my career as President of a systems consulting firm into the following occupations.  I am a software engineer and a data base administrator.  I am a test marketer.  I work as a data entry professional.  I manage key corporate functions such as order fulfillment and accounts receivable.  I am a retail check out professional and I bag groceries. 

Combined, these activities require more hours a week than my previous Presidential position. 

Every time we leave our homes, we typically start to work for someone else.  Many years ago it all began with gas stations. Believe it or not, filling stations used to provide “full service assistance”.  You would pull into your neighborhood Sinclair station and an employee would fill your tank, wash your windshield, and check your oil level.  If asked, he or she might even check your tire pressures.  Big Oil figured out that if they passed these duties back to the customers, they would not have to hire any attendants.  So in the 1970’s, we became gas station employees.

With the advent of technology, it seems that every entity has leveraged a way to transfer jobs from their staff to their customers.   

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were grocery shopping at one of our favorite national grocery chains, The Galloping Ghost Grocers, home based in Grange Illinois.  All the full service checkout counters were closed.  The Manager said that they were short staffed and the two professionals who were assigned to the counters had called in sick. We would have to ring up our groceries at a self checkout station. 

There were help wanted signs saying that starting salary for all positions was at least $17 dollar per hour.

We usually avoid the self checkout lanes if we have a lot of produce. It often takes an inordinate amount of time to identify and ring up the weird fruits and veggies we require.  First step at self checkout is to scan our Galloping Ghost shopper’s card.  It isn’t recognized.  We input our phone number.  It isn’t recognized.  We won’t get credit for our BOGOS and sale prices, so we push the “HELP!’ button.  The manager comes over and informs us that the preferred client system is on the Fritz.  She inserts her key and presses a few buttons to override the system.  We will now be appropriately credited for our discounts.  We put the poblano peppers on the scale and follow the instructions to look up the price per pound.  Poblano peppers pop up but they are priced at $35.90 per pound.  We push the “HELP!” button again.  After a delay, the harried Manager comes over.  She agrees that the price is incorrect.  I offer to return to produce and get the accurate per pound price.  She thanks me and proceeds to help another troubled customer.  It turns out that the accurate price is $3.59 per pound.  We reengage with the Manager.  The magic key comes out and the price is adjusted.  She thanks us and says that she will send a request to the systems professionals to correct the price in the “system”.  Four items later, we plop the Organic Ecuadorian Arugula on the scale.  We cannot find Arugula in the produce look up tool.  “HELP!”  The beleaguered Manager returns.  She cannot find Arugula either.  She leaves the magic key in her pocket and says “Just keep the Arugula. I’ll add it to my list of pricing problems for IT to fix.”  We ring up the wine and the station shuts down until an employee, who must be at least 21 years old, checks our identification.  You guessed it.  Another visit from, our now close friend, the Manager.  Magic key, click, click.  After a mere 40 minutes, we are now ready to finalize our purchase.  I tap my American Express card on the card reader (Amex gives us 4 times the points for grocery purchases).  I get the message INVALID CARD.  Please wait for assistance.  After five minutes, the Manager returns again and informs us that Galloping Ghost Grocery and Amex are having trouble communicating at the moment.  Do we have another card?  Yes we have a Visa. She inserts the Magic Key, clears the Amex snafu and we complete the transaction with Visa. 

The Manager apologizes profusely, says how much she enjoyed meeting us, and invites us to her daughter’s wedding next fall.

It occurs to me that my wife and I have just spent 45 minutes as employees of Galloping Ghost Grocers, Inc.  We have been checkout clerks, produce department managers, software evaluation and testing professionals, banking liaisons, liquor compliance specialists, and bagging professionals.  Based on our patient and amicable interaction with the frenzied Manager, we should also be paid as mental health counselors.  Minimum compensation would be $17 an hour but the IT testing services, banking liaison and mental health counseling services would be at a much higher rate.  Let’s assume blended rate of $48 an hour.  45 minutes for me.  45 minutes for Sue.  Galloping Ghost owes us $72.

So I decide to invoice Galloping Ghost Grocery.  Using QuickBooks, I type up an invoice to Galloping Ghost from the Acme Ancillary Services Company, detailing the services that Sue and I provided today.  The subtotal for our efforts is $72 and I deduct $3 for the donated Organic Ecuadorian Arugula.  The bill is legitimate and accurate.

Three weeks later, we receive a check from Galloping Ghost for $69.  I expected more scrutiny from the Accounts Payable professionals in Grange Illinois.  Apparently, the horrendous system problems we encountered were plaguing the entire Ghost customer base.  The professionals in the home office may have been more focused on those challenges.  Our small invoice may have slid through the approval process because they were trying to resolve much bigger operational issues.

With my consulting experience, I realized that we had passed a significant threshold.  The Acme Ancillary Services Company is now an authorized vendor in the Galloping Ghost A/P system.  My assessment was correct.  Every time we shop at Galloping Ghost, I document the services that we provide for this particular visit.  We continue to send valid and accurate services invoices for the work we are doing.  Each invoice has been approved and paid.

Grocery shopping is just a fraction of the time we spend as employees of other entities.  We work for big box electronic stores, national hardware and home goods outlets, drug stores and warehouse clubs.  We work for at least fifteen different medical and dental services.  We work for a diverse array of restaurants, from fast food and home delivery to upscale dining. We are very busily employed by the travel industry:  airlines, hotel chains, car rental companies, and resorts.  We have jobs at five different clubs: golf clubs, beach clubs, and dinner clubs.  We work for at least twelve different streaming services.  We have dozens of jobs in the technology industry (cell phones, computers, TV’s, sound systems, tablets, golf range finders, etc.).

My wife and I have full time employment providing these services to hundreds of employers. Galloping Ghost pays for our services.  So should everyone else. 

I put my technical expertise in to high gear.  First, I have made it easy to track our services.  After I spend two hours finding acceptable air accommodations with Delta, I make a few clicks in QuickBooks and I have documented the time we spent and applied the appropriate, travel agent, billing rate.  The billing data is captured.

Next, I created an App to automatically process the invoices and subsequent payments. When I am asked to approve the terms of an App on my phone or over the internet, my App is electronically triggered as part of the response.  In essence the terms of my App say that, by accepting my response to your App, you accept the terms of my App.  Key provisions of my App are:

Acme Ancillary Services, LLC will be paid for the services Mike and Susan perform for your enterprise.

The rates for all of the services are documented in the attached rate schedule. 

You will be billed electronically and payments will be submitted electronically.

So far, more than a hundred entities have “accepted” the terms of our App.  We track our services to all of them and the billing is automatic.  If we complete a survey for the Pismo Beach Medical center or Uncle Ben’s furniture store, they get an invoice for Market Research provided by Acme Ancillary Services, LLC.  The $23 an hour rate is included in the rate schedule of our App and was agreed to by the vendor when they accepted our App.

Amazingly, Sue and I each average about 46 hours of billed services per week.  We, actually, receive payment from about 35% of the entities that we work for. 

Even though all of the entities owe us money as the result of accepting the terms of our App, we do not pursue the non-payers.  We do collect about 85% of the compensation we bill. In essence, we maximize our collection rates by only doing business with enterprises that pay us.  Galloping Ghost pays us.  Merry Markets does not.  We shop at Galloping Ghost.

In summary, we have been forced out of retirement by nearly every commercial enterprise in America.  It is totally unfair that they have usurped our retirement and do not pay us for the labor we provide.  We really cannot avoid going back to work.  St. Bob’s Health Care won’t take care of us if we do not invest all of the hours required to maintain their portal.  So at least Sue and I are recovering slightly more than $100,000 each year for providing these services.             

We are constantly reminded by our elected officials that we are “A nation of laws”.  Almost always, this comment precedes an attack on an elected official on the “other side of the aisle” for violating a sacred rule that should never be broken.  Minutes later, the attacking politician openly refuses to obey a different law that he or she doesn’t like.  Typically, the justification for not following this particular law is “This is not what we do as Americans”.  We are not a nation of those laws but we are a nation of these laws.  This is very confusing.  Which laws are we a nation of?

I agree that we are a nation that has an incredible number of laws.  Unfortunately, many of them are totally unhelpful to society.  In addition, there are a number of circumstances where we should have a law and do not.

Here is a brief litany of real laws that I am sure we all find helpful.  In Alaska, Flamingos are not permitted in barbershops.  Also in Alaska, it is against the law to wake up a sleeping bear in order to take a photograph.  In Alabama, it is illegal to play dominos on Sunday.  Another important religious rule in Alabama makes it illegal to wear a fake mustache in church for the purposes of invoking laughter.  In Tennessee, you cannot lasso a fish.  It is illegal for a donkey to sleep in a bathtub in Arizona.  In Iowa, a statute that offers great protection, prohibits one armed piano players from charging fees for their services.  

It appears that criminals are serving time in prison for violating these laws.  Neither Donald Trump’s prison reform legislation nor Joe Biden’s executive actions freed anyone from jail for breaking these important rules.

Frankly, I think all of these edicts make more sense than the Affordable Care Act and the entire body of federal law devoted to taxation.

I always find it interesting to watch someone zooming on a TV news program from a law library.  The back drop is a few thousand leather bound books containing a few of the legal regulations we must adhere to in the United States.  The screen is not nearly large enough to show all of the volumes in the entire library.

No doubt we have plenty of laws.  The problem is that we could toss most of them and yet we have not addressed, in these millions of pages of codification, some of the real issues we deal with every day.

What laws would actually be helpful?

The control panels on all elevators must be identical.  A nice nine word law.  Have you ever tried to find the “open door” button in time to hold the elevator for an elderly lady with a walker?  Less than .005% of the US population can do this before the door closes.  We think about putting a hand or foot in the door because we can’t locate the < > quickly.  We are worried that the auto open feature may not work in this particular lift.  I really want to help the senior citizen but I don’t want to start my day with an accidental limb amputation.  Whoops, too late anyway.  We have to find the right button in .6 seconds and we can never do it.

I have a friend who flew fighter jets for the navy.  I was very impressed to know this and asked him what skills were required to qualify for the job.  He said there are two tests.  You have to have 20/20 vision and you have to be able to find the “open door” button on an elevator before the door closes.  If you pass both, you’re in flight school but the failure rate is over 93%.       

If the control panels were standardized, we would all know where the switch is in every elevator in the country.    

It is illegal to exceed the posted limit for items in a grocery store check-out line.  The fine will be $250 and it will be assessed at check out.   I always appreciate the special people who jump in to the shorter lines in the express lanes with a half cart of groceries.  Surely the item limit is not intended for them.  Not only are there a lot of customers in the regular lines, they all have a lot of groceries.  Why, you can waste ten or fifteen minutes waiting to check out in accordance with the rules!  Ten minutes to me is a lot more important than ten minutes to you.  

I loved shopping with my father.  He was a straight shooting Italian who would speak his mind to anyone (Okay, I know that is redundant).  As the special person was unloading their cart my Dad would ask how long they had been playing golf.  The elitist would say “How did you know I was a golfer?”  My Dad would respond “Because you can’t count past five.”

A police officer should be posted at every store to enforce this law.

It is illegal to sell car warranties telephonically. The first offense will result in dissolution of your company.  The second offense will be punishable by not less than 5 years imprisonment.  Amazingly, one type of solicitation has changed the phone habits of nearly every American.  If we don’t recognize the caller ID or phone number, we don’t answer the phone.  We wait to see if the call goes to voice mail.  Most solicitations don’t make it that far and so we check voicemail to see if we actually should be talking to the unidentified caller.  What a pain!  In fact we should expand the law to include all forms of phone solicitations. 

Such aggressive tactics should not be so pervasive in our lives.  I have a friend who recently found a bottle floating in the surf at the beach.  There was a note in the bottle.  The note said: “We have been trying to contact you about your auto warranty…”

So we have a myriad of laws that are not helpful.  For example the regulation against waking up bears in Alaska is self correcting.  A recent check showed no incarcerations for this offense because no one lived long enough to go to trial.  In addition, we have a number of issues that require new legislation.  Notwithstanding, we are way over the top in putting millions of ill thought out rules into the legal code. How do we fix this?

First, we should pass a law that puts a limit on the number of laws we can have.  Even God Almighty saw a need for only ten simple rules.  According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, when Moses came down from the mountain he said “Good news.  I got him down to ten.  Bad news.  The one about Adultery is still in there.”  If ten is Okay for the Lord, we should easily get by with a cap of 1,000.  We cut back the code to a thousand rules.  Even with the bloviation of the legal community, the law library will shrink to less than three leather bound law books.  From there, we will require that you toss out an existing law if you want to add a new one.  When we add the elevator legislation, we delete the requirement to roll up the sidewalks in Toledo Ohio at sundown.     

At any rate, we need to reverse the trend of piling up ponderous new regulations to the detriment of our ability to enjoy life.  We should be a nation of very few laws that are relevant.  We need to ensure that one armed piano players are fairly compensated.  The citizens of Alabama should be able to enjoy an inspired game of dominos every day.  I join the SPCA in condemning the egregious regulation of Flamingo behavior in Anchorage.  We need to purge ridiculous rules and add a few that will actually make our lives better.

So many things have changed in modern America.  It is wonderful.  Technology and revolutionary social values have opened a myriad of possibilities for new, interesting, and lucrative careers. 

The internet, infinitesimal computer speeds, and artificial intelligence have made it possible for someone to run a billion dollar company with less than five employees.  You simply pass as many of the business functions as possible to your customers and outsource a few to a handful of “pay per transaction” Apps.  If you have something that is in vogue on the internet, your biggest job is sweeping your cash accounts at the end of the day.

The key change in social mores is the total lack of importance of truth and fact.  A recent study asked a thousand Americans what is most important in their lives. Only seven of the thousand listed truth or veracity.  The highest ranking of the seven responses had it listed as thirty second, just behind “a clean birdcage” and “easy opening sardine containers”. 

So society has shifted. Truth is not at all important but “Believability” is.  You have to be believable but you don’t have to be truthful. 

“Your resume indicates that you have an MBA from Wharton but the school cannot verify that you ever attended Penn.”  “Wharton is wrong.  I received that degree in 1978 before computerization of student records.  I assure you that I have the degree.  GPA in the top ten percent.  They are digging through the archives and we will update you when they find the documents.”  This is believable.  Say it five times and it is established fact.

Some people are much better at fabricating plausible explanations than others.  I happen to be very good at it.  As a result, I have embarked on a career as a Believability Consultant.  I am charging clients $300 an hour to do things like this.

A CEO called me and said he was taking heat about executive bonuses in his publicly traded company. Some thought the Initial Public Offering was a rouse simply targeted to lining the pockets of the founder with the IPO proceeds.  “Your company has not shown a profit since it went public five years ago, yet you have paid maximum bonuses to you and three senior officers for each of those years.  All three are siblings.  Is this appropriate and ethical?”  My believable response was, “Absolutely! We are in a highly competitive business.  I need to have people I can rely on making key decisions.  I don’t know anyone better than my immediate family.  So I appointed them to the senior officer roles.  Do we deserve the bonuses?  Certainly!  It is much more difficult to run a struggling enterprise than a profitable enterprise.  Without the leadership and effort of the four of us, we may have been facing bankruptcy.  The bonuses were earned by well targeted strategies and hard work.”  My consulting paid off this time.  A year later the IPO money ran out.  The company filed for bankruptcy and the family was able to keep, without protest, more than $100 million in aggregated bonuses.     

Another client had this challenge.  “Senator, why is that you have gold bars stitched into your overcoat?”  My believable response was, “As you know, I am on the National Parks Committee in the US Senate.  To do the best possible job, I frequently visit many of these fine facilities.  Several years ago, I toured Mount Washington in New Hampshire.  This is the windiest location on the planet.  They have recorded winds in excess of 230 mile per hour.  I changed my diet and put on thirty pounds before the visit.  Notwithstanding, I took the additional precaution of adding weight to my outer wear to prevent being blown off the mountain.  Of course one of the heaviest materials, by volume, is gold.  I actually considered uranium which is notably heavier but the Atomic Energy Commission vetoed my request for the element.  The overcoat worked perfectly.  In spite of sub hurricane force winds, I am here to talk with you today.  Since the garment was so effective, I keep it in my closet for future visits to wind prone areas.”  Bloviate that six or seven times and it becomes gospel.   

A young executive retained me to respond to an inquiry from her boss about possible sexual misconduct.  “Did you have a romantic trist with your administrative assistant?” “No!” “Why did you spend the weekend with him at the Ritz?” “NatGeo wanted my opinion on their new series ‘Aardvarks on Parade’.  I always live up to my subscriber responsibilities.  I got behind in my viewership and reviews.  So I asked Marvin to sit with me and take notes while I binge watched 14 episodes. It was a lot of work in one weekend.”

In 2024, no one worries about veracity or facts.  They just don’t count.  All that matters is a plausible explanation.  For many, it is hard to come up with a solution.  Some of us are incredibly gifted at crafting believable scenarios.  Who will ever forget “That depends on what the definition of is is.”  Fortunately for my consulting practice, many are not gifted in the ways of believability.  So they hire me.     

I will tell you that my Believability Consulting practice has been wildly successful.  This statement may be true or false.  It doesn’t matter, however, because it is believable and I have reported it to more than five people.