A friend and loyal reader of this blog, Nancy Farrell, inspired this post—suggested the topic in fact–in one of her comments.

She wrote: “What you experienced with the moderator was what my dad used to call ‘NIH’ for ‘Not Invented Here.’” Her father owned one of the PR agencies I worked for and is top of my best boss/best PR person list.

She continued: “It’s what happens when people reject any and all ideas or help unless they think of it or do it themselves. I had an idea for an event at one job that was dismissed outright. Imagine my surprise when months later I opened the newspaper describing that very event that had taken place! My then-boss said she didn’t remember whose idea it was. I told her that I remembered perfectly well but that I was glad that they took my idea and added to it and made it even better.”

I’ve known people like this as recently as now but I won’t go into that example. At one agency some of the staff was asked to blue sky marketing and PR ideas for a woman affiliated with the firm. She was difficult. Some would describe her as nasty on a good day. Downright insulting. Instead of listening and nodding to ideas she’d shred the idea and person who had made it into as many slices as she could. I hated being asked to attend one of these.

I would propose ideas to a past boss which he would nix out of the box. A few weeks later I’d say, “Remember that idea you mentioned about XYZ? I’ve been thinking about it and wonder if this might work.” I’d add a tiny element. Nine out of 10 times we’d go with it. He never remembered where it came from and I didn’t care as long as we could do it.

Have you worked as a volunteer or employee with NIH-ers?

   

Deli Delight

A friend dropped into Zabar’s on the West Side of Manhattan and bought a container of scrumptious apricot rugelach. When she opened it at home the treats were green.

“Wouldn’t you know it, the Zabar’s receipt is the only one I couldn’t find,” she said. [Happens to me all the time.]

She called and explained the situation to the manager. She said she doesn’t live in the neighborhood and that due to her schedule, she wasn’t able to return the pastries for weeks.

Without hesitation or hassle, once she’d located the charge, the woman told her not to fret, and immediately credited her account for $12.98. [Yet another good reason to use a credit card.]

Hotel Hesitation

Less than a week before, she was in a gracious hotel in Washington DC. At 11 p.m. she called the front desk to report a woman who was carrying on a phone conversation at the top of her voice in the hallway, right in front of her door. She was keeping my friend awake and she had to get up early. Because the woman was on speaker phone, the person she was speaking to also came in loud and clear.

The conversation lasted one hour and required a second call downstairs. The hotel’s excuse for the delay was that they had 15 complaints about noise that night and only two security guards to address the perpetrators. There was a party of 500 that night as well, the manager mentioned.

When the security guard finally came, he asked the woman if she had a room. She did, she said, but didn’t want to disturb her roommate!

My friend learned that another guest asked to receive $50 off her bill for noise disturbance and so she asked for the same consideration. The clerk said she didn’t have the authority to offer this but would pursue it. Five days later both were still waiting for the refund to appear on their credit cards. Meanwhile she continued to receive requests to respond to a survey.

Things go wrong. It happens to all businesses. Some know how to turn a ruffled feather into a handsome coiffe–or memory. To slip out of admitting to poor service, others depend on excuses of no import to the offended.

Have you experienced wonderful or lackluster service recently? When a business gives you an excuse for bad service does it satisfy or annoy you?

   

Sometimes a restaurant gets everything right. It’s not always so.

I had the best burger I’ve eaten in decades at a fairly new watering hole, Giulietta, in the Met Life Building in Manhattan. I always ask for “medium rare,” and most of the time I get shoe leather brown meat that’s tasteless.

This burger had a great combo of taste sensations stacked up between a tasty roll served with divine fries—enough for the table of four. Everyone seemed to like their choices.

The service was unpretentious yet topnotch. I’d been there once before and the waitstaff was over the top both times.

The décor is fun and puts you in a good mood. The pink and white stripes make you feel like you’re in Florida which is welcome in the Big Apple especially in the chill.

Another favorite restaurant [I never ordered a burger so I can’t compare it to Giulietta’s] is Osteria Laguna on 42^nd Street between Third and Second Avenues. The service and food are consistently equally good.

Where have you enjoyed perfect restaurant meals?

   

What’s peanuts to you might not be peanuts to me so it’s best to steer clear of such a reference though the president used the description regarding prices impacted by trade wars.

I almost failed economics—the answers were always counterintuitive therefore troubling to pragmatic me–so maybe some indications that trouble me may be similarly illustrative of chickenfeed in the big picture.

On Newsweek.com Hugh Cameron wrote “America’s Debt Is Now Bigger Than the GDP. Does It Matter?” Seems this hasn’t happened “outside of wartime since shortly after WWII.”

How long can I maintain my lifestyle, should my income fall below my expenses, while I do nothing to adjust it?

Back to Cameron who wrote: “According to advance estimates released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), America’s gross domestic product (GDP) totaled $31.22 trillion over the 12 months to March 31, now slightly under the $31.27 trillion in debt held by the country at the end of this quarter.”

Spirit Airlines, that made travel possible for people with low incomes, folded. It had declared bankruptcy before, but the cost of fuel couldn’t have helped its bottom line. And countless other airlines are cutting back on flights just as we enter peak vacation time. Peanuts for travelers and investors?

I was speaking with a customer service person about the cost of electricity and how my bill almost doubled from one to another month last year well before summer. She told me she wished her bill was as low as mine. Con Edison explained that the reason hers was $100/month for a small one bedroom in NO air-conditioning season was because she lived in a new building chockablock with high-performance sustainable elements. Don’t such upgrades lower electricity costs?

It sounds like I’d still have trouble with economics these days because so much of what I see going on doesn’t compute nor does it augur well. Maybe I’m looking at things wrong. How do you define peanuts in an economic context? Can you point to elements of the economy that reflect a turnaround?

   

One of my first editors turned me off of writing or uttering “needless to say,” noting, “then why write or say those words?” And if what comes after the needless descriptive is, well, needless, skip the rest of the sentence as well, she advised.

I thought of that when Eileen Dover shared two phrases that drive her nuts: “To be honest,” and “I’m not going to lie to you.”

I hear more of the first than the second, and I, like Eileen, have always questioned why someone would hint or draw attention to what they are about to say. Aren’t they red flagging what may be accurate while warning the listener that it might not be? I hear the phrase most often during TV or radio interviews. I don’t think the people I speak with regularly say the honest or lie phrases.

I suspect they are used most by salespeople, politicians or comedians.

Do these or other phrases drive you up trees?