What If Everybody is Correct?

I swear by Postal mail-outs of articles I’ve written, each article relevant to the person and industry who receives it.

• He swears by phone calls.

• She uses email.

• They knock on doors and leave a letter.

This business seems to have mastered the business of marketing for free by interviews, speaking engagements.

Every entrepreneur gets new business in one particular way.

Oh! We all do a bit of phoning, a bit of emailing, go a little bit Postal, but each one of us sticks to a specific method that, we believe, is rewarding for our efforts at promoting our business.

• What If we are all Correct?
• What if a careful postal mail-out keeps you in the front of your prospects mind?
• What if a careful emailed newsletter keeps you in the front of your prospects mind?
• What if a TV appearance once a week keeps you in the front of your prospects mind?
• What if it didn’t matter WHICH channel I used, just as long as I used it WELL?

Talk to Me !

The Fortnightly Phone Call

So here I am, churning out letters to postal-mail to contacts, some of whom I’ve not yet met. (“Not Yet”, Never “Never”!).

And I know that spending 3 hours printing, stuffing and licking isn’t generating revenue.

So my mind wanders to the 3 or 4 projects that are bubbling away in the background.

And it dawns on me that every TWO weeks, I ought to be calling up the project manager – not the fellow I work with on a day-to-day basis, but the fellow(s) one or two levels above, for a 2-minute chat.

If there is something especially relevant, that’ll be the topic, otherwise, so help me, I ought to be inventive enough to come up with something of value to drop in their ear.

Then I’ll click the “Two Weeks” button on my contact list and get back to the printing, stuffing and licking.

Talk to Me !

Sending an Unsolicited eMail

When is an unsolicited eMail not spam?

Good Morning
I have a letter I'd like to drop in the mail to you, but am unsure of the correct postal mailing address.
I have two addresses:-
67890 Adelaide Street West Suite 2060 Toronto, M5H 3P5
and
12345 Adelaide Street East Toronto, ON M5C 1H6
Might you please advise me which address to use?
Thank You.
Chris Greaves
416-621-9348

Here is a president who has been sitting in my contact list for over a year.

Why?

Because he doesn’t appear in the company’s phone directory, the receptionist’s response is always “Leave a voice-mail”.

The usual hurdles.

I would not normally send an unsolicited email, but in this case I’m getting cold on the trail and my time is better spent tracking down people who can be contacted.

So it’s an eMail from someone he’s never heard of ...

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When is a Non-Retainer a Retainer?

A few years back I had dreams of being on retainer. Something along the lines of “Fifty dollars a month gets you up to four hours work in any month; non-accumulative”.

Adjust the figures and terms as you see fit, but you get the idea.

Too many people were picking my brains (Rough Translation: I was permitting too many people to pick my brains) and getting away with it, and I was broke.

This week I realized that I have a few clients who treat me as if I was on retainer, when I’m not.

Typically I’ll make out a proposal for a small job, say $1,000 of work, and be whittled down to a fragment of the task at $275.

That’s fine if over the past 24 months we’ve been doing $50 of business each month, swings and roundabouts.

But when this niggling event occurs in isolation, it’s just plain meanness on the client’s part.

And I’m not sure that I want to do business with that sort of person.

Talk to Me!

Re-Tweeted Your Tip

CN> Yesterday, I re-tweeted your tip and it was picked up here ...

http://paper.li/composting/composting-resources

The archived link is http://paper.li/composting/composting-resources/2011/06/25

There we see:-

The link “ChrisGreaves.com - WinTips“ points to http://www.chrisgreaves.com/WinTips/WindowsRtoOpentheRunDialogBox.htm

Clicking this link takes us to:

Not much there.

The Services and Products links are particularly austere.

The Home link takes readers to my corporate web blog and menus system.

I should DROP the two extra links from those compiled pages, or else make the menu point to the regular Word Press sites.

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Cruel, But Necessary

From time to time I get emails from people who would like to take some work off my hands.

I don’t have enough work to be taken off my hands.

And if I did, I’d just put in longer hours, because I love the work I do.

(I’m one of the lucky ones who gets paid to indulge myself in one of my passions).

The work I get is sometimes critical, sometimes not, but it’s always geared to my skills and attributes, so client’s can be shuffled and juggled, providing that I’m open with them.

The problem remains: how to let down would-be gurus without closing the door.

One solution is to see if they would be able to do what I do.

Hi!

Here are outlines of some recent jobs I've done in Excel.

Perhaps you'd let me know how you'd go about solving them.

Just pick 3 or 4, don't do all, and write up a few lines on each, so I can gauge your skill level.

1: We have an Excel workbook with 2,300 companies extracted from our database and we would like to issue a one-page fax to each company. Have you a way of dealing with this?

2: Could you do a search for all companies on the TSX and TSXV with the name "gold" as part of the corporate name, and narrow it to those with a market capital of $20MM to $80 MM? Please call me for further details.

3: I need a bit of help, about two hours training. We are a luxury travel company, with six worksheets used as templates to build quotations. I would like to make the workbooks “Work Better”.

4: What did you do back in the day when you had to work with 200,000+ records and Excel could only handle 65,000 rows. Is splitting the total into 3 sheets the best solution?

5: Excel issue... Two columns...

Name; URL

name1; url1

name2; url2

How do I make the name column hyperlinked by using the URL column?

6: We need the amount of capital raised for resource companies (with $5MM market cap or less) in Canada over the last 2 years (since June 2008) so it can be compared to our company. The data should be amenable to be put into a bar chart, e.g. GLD raised 16 million; The average resource co with less than $ 5 million market cap raised XXX$, the top 10% decile raised YYY$.

7: There is a spreadsheet that several people use to input data. The president wants to receive an email when the value in a cell is equal to a certain criteria.

8: I'd like the database to send automatic email remainders to clients that confirm their course reservations - 10 business days prior to the 1st booking date of each registration.

9: I have a client that is looking for someone to teach one-to-one VBA for Excel macros for a finance person. The trainer must have a very professional demeanor as this is for a large formal corporate client.

10: We have a set of seven workbooks which calculate ROI on our products, but the worksheets are getting out of hand. Can you come up with a coherent design so that we can maintain and expand our offerings to our sales force?

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What You Don't Know can Hurt You

I stole the title from the Canada News Wire article of the same name.

I try to research a company before I go a-calling, right down to my shirt and tie.

If you’d like to improve (if not perfect) your chances of getting a good reception, and making first impressions count, start a list.

Start A List

Start a list of the five or ten things that you consider essential for a demonstration that you’re on their team even before you meet.

Add to the list as you stumble and make mistakes.

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Call To Action

A recent CopyBlogger post sent me scrambling.

If you want someone to take a specific action, you have to actually ask them to take that specific action.

Well, DUH!

I took a quick look at my dozen or so mail-out pamphlets in PDF form and discovered that not one of them had a Call To Action.

Well, Double-DUH!

So I quickly pasted the text below into each pamphlet. I had to do a few style adjustments, but hey! That’s what styles are for – to speed up and regulate changes to formatting across a wide set of documents.

Now let’s see what happens ...

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How’s Business?

How’s this for a conversation starter at your local diner:

“Congratulations! I see business was up last month”

How would I know?

Easy.

I eat at The Montreal Deli at least twice a week, and usually keep the receipt for expense claims.

That means that at the start of each month (I keep receipts in monthly envelopes) I know the starting docket number.

If I know the docket number at the start of the month, I know the difference in docket numbers between each month.

And that means I know how often the waitresses have presented a bill to a table or to a person.

I eat there often enough to know that the clientele is homogeneous; it’s in a quiet part of town, frequented by regulars. It’s not near the convention centre downtown, or alongside a major highway outlet mall.

So the number of dockets is a fair representation of business levels.

Now the same applies to Bruno’s and McDonalds, right across the street from me.

If I wanted to pitch to them, a few months of “two apples” or “$1 coffees” gets me all the data I need to keep an eye on them.

What retail area would you like to process? Here’s an insight into how things are going on.

• · Your local pizza parlor?
• · Florists shop?
• · Dollar store?

They all give you quantified data.

Pretty well for free!

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Finding A Niche

"If it was easy, if it was possible, one of the big manufacturers would have done it already."

The quote is from a CNN Article titled “ Race to be first with 'son of supersonic' ”.

It struck me as ever-so-true.

I enjoy doing those seemingly-impossible tricks with computers that most clients glance at, shrug, and say “It can’t be done”.

So, of course, mostly they don’t call me.

But when they do, they are agreeably surprised to find a solution on their desk within 24 hours.

Who Knew?

So What’s Your Niche?

Find something that is

• Not easy
• Not possible
• That you can do

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Digging in of the Heels

The client tells me that their client is finicky.

They need a graphic/text/hyperlink signature for their Outlook emails. The signature must not “break” under general reply conditions from addressees.

The real problem, therefore, is to obtain a list of mail clients that my client’s clients use (Outlook, Thunderbird, web-based gMail etc) and build a signature that doesn’t break under regular conditions.

So we also need to define “regular”.

Any work done on my part to build a signature without knowing the boundary conditions is doomed to be a disaster, because the client’s client is finicky, my client has told me so, and they will leap at any chance to declare my efforts worthless when they fail in a previously-undisclosed mail client.

This is a time for me to dig in my heels and hold fast, insisting that the client’s client themselves declare a list of mail clients.

It is a necessary but unpleasant part of my job,

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Passion

Item 1:

You are a passenger in a car; the driver learns that credit cards won’t work at the exit; hides a bankroll of fifties, offers his credit card and is waved through for free.

Item 2:

You are with your very rich widow friend. She grabs two punnets of strawberries and surreptitiously stuffs three more strawberries into each punnet.

Item 3:

You are with a client. The bill for coffee and muffins comes to $5.47. Your client whips out a calculator and calculates 15% of $5.47.

Item 4:

Your client can’t send an eight MEGA-byte proposal through the email to a customer. The proposal is to supply a $230,000 machine. Your client won’t slip you $250 to reduce the document to a manageable 230 KILO-bytes!

Item 5:

Another client wants to bypass the postal strike and switch to fax/direct deposit, but jibs at paying you $1,000 to do a full and complete tenacious service to get the message out to all 2,300 customers, opting instead for the $275 one-pass fax-what-we-can process.

Your task:

Identify those parties whose passion is to die with their bank account at its highest balance ever.

Now, let me ask you this:

• What is YOUR passion for this short life?

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We’ll Just Take The Wheels

Beware This type of client:

The client wants to travel from Toronto to Ottawa.

I ask a few questions over the phone and hack out a proposal for getting them from Toronto to Ottawa.

There are several options – by foot, bicycle, train, car, plane etc.

Given their circumstances I propose Car.

Package deal

Car, maps, meals, gas, the works.

Client looks at the fee, not the proposal, and elects to take only the wheels, the 60-pound circular things with rubber tyres, on the grounds that all the easy solutions involve wheels, so obviously that’s they key factor.

But the wheels alone are NOT a solution, and either I am going to end up building a chassis and pushing them to Ottawa, or the client is going to be unhappy.

Talk to Me !

Double-Dating

If there’s one thing better than taking a CFO out to lunch, it’s taking a CFO AND the Vice- President, Investor Relations & Corporate Governance out to lunch.

Why not?

• Lunch typically costs me $40 for two.
• For three it would be $60.
• For the extra 50% I get to impress (we hope!) twice as many people.
• My travel costs are the same.
• My dry-cleaning and laundry costs are the same.

Plus, my theory is, the two of them will feel more relaxed when dealing with me.

It is, after all, a two-to-one issue; not that anyone is fighting.

Let’s see how it works.

Talk to Me !

Feedback from Mailing

I received a nice email from one of my contacts :-

I was surprised to get a real letter from a real person. ;-) I was pleased to read it, I can scan it of course, but do you have it in electronic form? Again, many thanks, it was helpful.

I’m thrilled that it had impact. My first approximation is that 10% of people impacted will take the time to respond.

The PDF was a generic one on Goals, so I’ve ramped that particular article up to be first-choice to send to those people who I can’t think what to send!

Cathy gets one ...

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Your Opinion Matters To Us

• Tell Us What You Think
• Comment Card
• Feed Back

As the world shifts over to a service-oriented approach to business, we see more and more of these cards.

Does anyone really take notice of them?

I suspect that each organization has a junior clerk who reads and tosses them, hanging onto the ends of the bell-curve to make a 3-minute report to the monthly staff meeting.

But then, I’m cynical

I know that a carefully written letter, printed, signed, and mailed off to a couple of VPs gets more attention than filling out one of these cards ever can.

I stand out when I take the time to mail a letter.

Here’s What You do

Grab every such card you can, from restaurants, government offices, gasoline stations, airlines, hotels and type each question into a checklist for yourself.

First thing each morning, before you head out the door, or prepare for the first incoming phone call, read through the list.

When the phone does ring, have your list somewhere you can see it.

Where?

That spot on the wall behind the monitor where your gaze wanders as you lose interest.

Or propped up on the window-ledge where you’ll see it as you swivel ninety degrees left to stare out of the window.

Let every other business on the face of this earth be your guide. What do their experts think that you should be doing.

Then do it.

P.S. Just to get you started

The hours of service are convenient	I am available by telephone from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
I felt welcome	I start each conversation with a cheery greeting “Bob! How ARE you? It’s GREAT to hear from you. What’s up?”
I was served within a reasonable amount of time	I promise to deliver SOMEthing by the end of that day, a premise, a quick-view, a report, a draft proposal, hope,
I received clear and accurate information	I try to simplify my response on the grounds that the caller really just wants to know that a solution can be found. They don’t want to know what grade of motor-oil to use; that’s the mechanic’s job.
Staff members were knowledgeable and competent	If I don’t know, I ought to say so, and offer to find someone who does. Otherwise I ought to be saying “I did that sort of thing earlier this year for another client”.
Staff members were helpful	At the close of the conversation I ask “Was this helpful?”. No one ever says “No, not really”, not at such short notice, so they answer “yes”. I then ask them what they thought was the most helpful part of it all.
My needs were met	At the close of the conversation I ask “Is there anything else you need?”. The proportion of callers who respond “Now that you mention it, Yes, ...” amazes me.

Talk to Me !

Other Questions

My leading question to a client, the minute I am seated in their office is “What is your goal”.

On my way to their office I play a game called “Other Questions”.

What alternative forms can I devise:-

• What is your goal?
• What is your critical issue?
• Where would you like to be?
• What bothers you most of all?
• What would make you happy?

Knock Yourself Out!

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The Tax Audit

• I’ve never had one
• I don’t want one
• Here’s why

From what I hear, the days(!) are booked and either they come to you or you go to them.

I, and my colleagues, as far as I can tell, keep reasonably good records.

We sign things that read “To the best of my knowledge”, and might be out by $20 over the course of the year, but nothing to bring the government to its knees.

Yes, we stick meals on our expense sheets, but they are all too often a $3.95 cheeseburger at The Montreal Deli rather than chateaubriand at Ed’s Steakhouse.

And we rarely drink.

The bottom line is that if cash flow is low, you just don’t have the cash to throw on good stuff, so you can’t claim on it anyway.

We keep our records for seven years, and we have our statements prepared by a regular, experienced and old-fashioned accountant.

So Why do we Dread the Tax Audit?

Because it represents two or more days wasted, from our point of view.

Days spent re-hashing receipts and invoices, calculations we’ve made twice already.

Time that could be better spent marketing, staying in touch with clients, meeting new prospects, or even (perish the thought!) spending a day in a park contemplating our direction to make the business more profitable.

And more highly-taxed.

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Need to Apologize?

I was reading Seth Godin’s Blog and came across item 12

“If it is a cold-call email, and I'm sure it's welcome, and I'm sure it's not spam, then don't apologize. If I need to apologize, then yes, it's spam, and I'll get the brand-hurt I deserve.”

Ah! The Old “Apology” Trick.

It strikes me most commonly when I’m out with a friend. “I was thinking of {doing this}. What do you think?”.

95% of the time they shouldn’t do it.

It’s a parent-child thing; deep down inside the child knows it is wrong, yet if daddy says it’s OK, then we can go ahead and do it, even though it violates principles, because daddy said we could.

It happens in business too.

A Simple Example:

I’m thinking of doing a one-off email-blast to inform all my contacts that I {insert thought here}. Do you think that’ll be OK?”.

(Here they are playing on my “Answer is always YES” bent)

The answer is NO. If you feel that you need to ask permission, there’s a 95% probability it is the wrong thing to do.

In the email example, you KNOW you’ve been doing such a bad job of staying in touch with people that this is just a cheap way to get their attention.

It Won’t Work

They remember you, but they don’t care about you, yet.

If I need to apologize up-front for sending this email, that’s a sign that I knew, before I sent it, that I shouldn’t be sending it.

Test this yourself. Next time someone asks “Would it be all right?” about their impact on a 3rd-party, I’ll bet you should respond ‘NO!”.

Just DON’T do it

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People are Funny

"I just had an inquiry about a donation of my {product} from a school caretaker (because he likes what he does and would like to upgrade to my {product}). I replied that we are not in a position to donate my {product}, and that he would love the {product} if he enjoys what he does so much."

"He wrote back to inquire about the warranty on my {product}. "If it is such a great {product} it must have at least a 15 year warranty"."

"What comes with a 15 year warranty? Not even a car that you pay way more than a $200 {product}."

I’m inclined to agree. On the other hand, I’ve been reading way too much Isaac Asimov lately, so I offer these observations:-

Observation 1:

I offer life-time support on every issue on which I deliver training. You attend my class on Array Formulas in Microsoft Excel, and you can phone or email me forever afterwards asking about Array Formulas in Microsoft Excel. I figure that if you keep phoning me whenever you need help, instead of phoning my competition ...

Observation 2:

I happen to know this product. It has no mechanical parts. It can’t break, unless you take to it with a school caretaker’s hammer. How can the product fail?

Observation 3:

The use of the product might fail, putting in the wrong mixture, but then your warranty makes it clear that you warrant against defects of manufacture, not of use.

Observation 4:

So what if it fails and you replace it. One {product} out of 10,000 that you sell. At least the caretaker will brag to everyone he knows how he won a new {product} out of you. That’s called word-of-mouth.

Observation 5:

Of course your warranty (may as well make it lifetime as 15 years!) stipulates that the broken {product} must be returned in its original packaging in order to claim a refund or a replacement. S&H at purchaser’s expense, and only when accompanied by that “Product Order Return Number” thingy that everyone else stipulates.

Observation 6:

If all else fails, have you ever wondered why he’s only a school caretaker, and not a Neutrino Physicist?

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Out-of-Town Contacts Trump In-Town!

With unbecoming (in me) modesty I describe her as a “friend and colleague”; she runs a business in and around the Toronto GTA; she needs a new pickup utility vehicle.

I scour Canada News Wire looking for tips, leads, and come across this story .

At the foot is the contact information: “For further information: Media Waste Management Cathy Smithe (613) 836-8563”.

Now from Toronto (516/905 area code) the 613 area code is clearly out-of-town. Indeed Ottawa is a 5+ hour drive from Toronto, so why phone Ottawa when you really want a good contact in Toronto?

Because the contact in Ottawa will give you a good contact in Toronto!

Here, stripped of the introductory pleasantries, are the conversations:-

Me: Hi Cathy; my name is Chris Greaves and I got your contact information from the CNW story on August 5th. I was wondering who I might talk to in Toronto about ...”

Cathy: Hi Chris; you might want to start by calling Joe Bloggs at 416-123-4567; Joe is the person responsible for ...”.

Me: Thanks Cathy.

Of course, Cathy will be receiving a hand-written thank you DUCA card from me in a couple of days time. (Please see “ SUFE – A Second Use For Everything “, “ Thanks! “ or “ 8 Work-At-Home Pitfalls 1-4 “.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

Me: Hi Joe; Cathy Smithe from your Ottawa office suggested I call you.

Joe: Hi Chris! What can I help you with?

And so it goes.

It costs so little to make that call to Ottawa. It’s not a terribly cold call, since the call is made based on a public press release, and what’s more, there’s great opportunity to lavish praise on their charitable giving on THAT call.

There’s no big investment of time and resources in Ottawa suggesting the name in Toronto.

And when I call Toronto, it’s a referral from their own office! (Plus of course, the lavish praise on their charitable giving ...)

Once that Toronto call is made, I hand-write the thank-you card to Ottawa mentioning that I’d made contact.

PICK UP THE PHONE!

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Quit Phoning Me, OK?

I’m tired of your phone calls, especially the ones where you ask me “How’s it going?” and I respond by telling you how well I’m working through and over my contact list, phoning people, emailing them, postal mailing them, lunching with them.

And no, there’s not a flood of money yet; I’m building relationships and that takes time.

How’s your business?

Oh! So you hate “Cold Calling”?

Even though I’ve told you that I’m not cold-calling, I’m warm-calling because I an armed with a press release from yesterday; I have something to talk about .

Here’s the Deal

If truly you have a barrier to picking up the phone, then

• invest in some postage stamps,
• write half-a-dozen two-page (1 sheet) articles on your area of expertise,
• print them to PDF using the Free Primo PDF Writer ,
• start printing THOSE PDF files to quality paper,
• stuffing them in quality envelopes,
• sticking on your personalized postage stamp ,

There’s no harm in mailing someone a letter.

Especially if you’re too shy to pick up the phone.

Maybe on receipt of your letter, they’ll pick up the phone and call you!

(And if you’re too shy to phone and too shy to write, get a full-time job)

Talk to Me !

Bundle Up!

Here is a segment from a flyer from a well-known and successful chain of stationers:

When you buy a banner-stand, you get TWO FREE gifts, right?

Wrong.

You buy a banner-stand, a poster to go on the banner stand, and a display-case in which to carry the banner-stand and poster.

$99.99 equips you for some networking events.

But the flyer ...

Says that you get two free items.

So, what product or service do you provide that, rather than being bundled, can be disassembled?

Software Applications

Each program comes with FREE installation and one month’s FREE technical support.

Training

Each training unit comes with a FREE CD of exercises and a lifetime’s FREE technical support. (P.S. #1)

Counseling

Each series of sessions comes with one year’s FREE telephone top-ups and a beautifully-bound checklist for ongoing evaluation.

Massage Therapy

Each session comes with a different FREE sample of aromatic oils (P.S. #2) and a copy of Canada’s premiere magazine “Massage Therapy Canada”. (P.S. #3)

Worm Composting

Each bin comes with FREE installation and ½ lb of Red Wriggler worms (for FREE!), PLUS one cubic foot of prepared bedding (FREE!!) and a starter bacterial culture (FREE!!!)(P.S. #4)

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P.S. #1 Not as silly as it sounds. Lifetime support in whatever topic I’ve delivered is meant to encourage THEM to stay in touch with ME!

P.S. #2 What else were you going to do with the remainder of the opened bottle of oils?

P.S. #3 Since you’ve already read this month’s issue, why not pass it on?

P.S. #4 What’s the point of supplying a worm chalet without worms and bedding, right?

Uneaten Food

This Peninsula Press article caught my eye.

I'm starting to think that articles like this are heading in the right direction in the wrong vehicle.

Wasting food is bad, as is wasting any resource (food, people, time, ...)

But tying this message to three other highly debatable messages ("Food waste generates methane, a greenhouse gas with an impact on global warming that is 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide") is even worse, because it represents a missed opportunity.

In Detail

I happen to believe that (a) Global warming has been taking place for over 13,000 years - ever since the Wisconsin ice-sheet started melting

(b) Carbon Di-oxide is good for plants, and that means good for us.

(c) The oceans are very good at absorbing excess CO2 (see e.g. The White Cliffs of Dover), there's just a time lag that is longer than 70 years

(d) The earth is quite good at recycling methane, too (I suspect that the dinosaurs, vegetarians mostly, produced more methane than cows do today)

In Consequence

In consequence the article turns me off on 4 counts before it gets into its message.

Any reader who disagrees with any ONE of those four points is liable to adopt a defensive or negative attitude to the remainder of the article.

I can't see what's wrong with just saying "serving food that can't be eaten is insane", and develop that idea, without discussing the relevant safety merits of SUVs (which the author didn't do) or whether Rob Ford should close libraries (ditto).

Waddyareckon?

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Ethics – Part 6/6

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Here, to my mind, is the real question about ethics:

Question 10 (The BIG one):

If I had inflated my hours or under-tipped the hard-working waitresses, would YOU like to do business with ME?

Talk to Me !

P.S. You might like:-

Ethics of the Gut

Ethics of the Coin Toss

What is Your Biggest Asset?

Ethics – Part 5/6

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

You don’t need to subscribe to religion to understand the parable of the laborers in the vineyard .

It’s a parable, OK?

And it’s an excellent guideline for contract law.

Question 5: If you agree to work all day for one penny, you should work all day for one penny, right?

Question 6: If you agree to work for half the day for one penny, you should work for half the day for one penny, right?

Question 7: If you agree to be honest in reporting your hours, should you be honest in reporting your hours?

Question 8: Or tipping for good service?

Question 9: Always?

Make sure you have answered all qustions in all five postings before reading tomorrow’s post!

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Ethics – Part 4/6

Monday, August 1, 2011

• You dine at a local diner at least a once week. Sometimes four times a week. Breakfast meeting, or lunch with a colleague; supper with a friend.
• You tip generously above the 15% mark because often enough you order just a $6 salad with a glass of water (no ice!), and yet you get better service than the stranger who orders steak, beer, and rich chocolate cake.

Last night, distracted, you dropped a $20 bill on the tray alongside your friend’s $20 bill, $40 payment for a bill of $25 for two meals!

The waitress asked if you wanted change and, distracted, you smiled and said “No thanks”.

Question 4: Next time you eat at that diner, do you tip substantially less to recoup the excess you inadvertently left on the table last night?

Talk to Me !