Day: May 12, 2005

Was cold called today by a consulting company. How is this for BS (this is actual text from the website, my annotations in brackets]:

“Our mission is to empower our clients to create a sales and marketing operation at least as good as the best so that they can meet and exceed their revenue plan.

[What the hell do they mean by “at least as good as the best”?]

In practical terms we deal with client issues such as:

Defining the core offers, particularly where there is a high service content

[Figure out where we can bill the client up the wazoo]

Creating valuable customer propositions

[Make an offer you can’t refuse]

Installing an end-to-end sales and marketing process

[Which end? The rear?]

Formal and informal training for professionals and managers

[Your place or mine?]

Coaching individuals for better performance

[We are not amused]

Mentoring managers to exploit the opportunities created

[Exploit is the operative word]

Supplying critical skills on a short-term basis to support change”

[Sending in security staff to get rid of the compentent workers and outsourcing the rest]

To top it all off, they appeared in F**d Company for 3 years running. Just say no.

Have you noticed how grocery prices have jumped up recently? Your average 2 liter soda went from .99-1.09 to 1.39-1.59. New 1.5 liter soda bottles are now being offered in the $1 price point. Manufactures are afraid of losing market share if people perceive that prices are going up, so they will slightly reduce the size of the product. For example, typical bags of potato chips have been reduced from 5 oz to 3 oz for the same price.

Some things just don’t make sense. I happen to like Shredded Wheat. The full size is like 16 oz for like $5. The mini Shredded Wheat is like about $4.79 for 15 oz. However, the frosted mini Shredded Wheat version is $2.79 for 19 oz. Triscuits, essentially the same product as Shredded Wheat, is about $3 for 12 oz. Go figure.

It took me exactly 30 minutes to jet from the end of exams to a waiting B23 bus to Flatbush, then yet another perfectly connecting B train to Sheepshead Bay, and then a mad 3 block run to catch the second half of the Amazing Race finale. I thought it was really great that they got in some Carribean islands into the race — the race has been to India 3 times, the West Indes zero before this.

The general consensus was that Team Pink Slip (the Africian American couple were Enron and Worldcom castoffs) were the more “deserving” of the final teams, but others declared shannagans on how they managed to get on board an American Airlines plane that had already pulled back the gate. It’s actually not that rare — it happened to me when I was coming back from Washington, DC. They had closed up, but after a few minutes realizing that the next planes were totally full, they put back the gate and let me on.

I’m going to be in a 5K charity walk/run (believe me, I’m walking) 7 PM next Tuesday at Prospect Park beginning at 15th Avenue (Prospect Park station on the F line). A lot of the exam officials are participating too – we’re going to wear striped referee shirts and our exam gear.