PSoTD

My sister-in-law is a chef in California's Bay Area. Short of winning the lottery or marrying a man of means, I see no way she'll ever be able to buy a house in the Bay Area. This is no knock on her nor a suggestion she do either of those things, just a reality check on the price of housing and the wage structure of many of the service industries, from teachers to printers to pickle salespeople. California is building a permament Apartment Class unless something drastic happens to the real estate marketplace.

If you want to visit an enigma representing America, visit Disneyland. It has been 20 years since the last time I visited Disneyland, and much has changed in that time. Of course, much has also remained the same. There is a genius about Disney in their development of attractions that is both admirable and creepy at the same time, mostly because it deals with mass control of individuals as crowds for purposes of leveraging spending. You can look at what Disney has done, for example, to make standing in lines for over an hour more interesting and acceptable, and there is a certain creativity in it. But, you must also remember, they intend for those individuals to spend that hour in line waiting for that 90 second ride, and they don't plan on spending much to do that.

Three days ago I looked forward to a return visit to Disneyland. Today, I look forward to not returning again for at least 20 years. I like people. I like amusement parks. I don't like the volume of people that Disney squeezes into their amusement parks. I'll take Knoebbels.

This is one of those moral dilemmas I face every year. Should I do at least some of my holiday shopping at Wal-Mart? My brain usually says no but my wallet likes to say yes.

It's funny, I was having a conversation about the company the other day and they really are a Jekyll and Hyde type of business. It seems like for all the bad they do, they also have done their share of good as well.

Good:
-Brought immediate aid to areas affected by Katrina (it was reported that 13 Wal-Mart trucks made it into New Orleans before even one bit of help from FEMA arrived).
-Allow a lot of charitable causes to camp outside their stores for donations.
-Donate a lot of money to kids in need.
-Prices are usually cheaper on everyday items.

Bad:
-Pay employees squat.
-Give employees squat for healthcare.
-Buy the majority of their merchandise from places outside the US.
-By opening a Super Center on every block, they chase local businesses out of town.
-Would rather close a store than allow employees to form a union.
-Stores tend to resemble a zoo at feeding time.

Personally I just hate going in there because of their tiny aisles jammed full of crap and customers. I suppose that if I try to boycott every company that does more harm than good, I'd probably never shop again. Heck, I'd never buy gas again!

Still, this holiday Wal-Mart won't be getting any of my money (regardless of what my wallet says).

From the Denver Post:

Colorado women - whether college-aged, coming into retirement or someplace in between - are increasingly giggling their way through in-home, Tupperware-style sex-toy parties in which gal-pal saleswomen coax away inhibitions by passing around products with names like Glow Boy, Honey Bunny and Magic Monarch.

Sexual-health experts, along with the companies profiting from these grown-up girls nights, say their wildfire popularity reflects an evolution away from the sexual revolution when women simply fought for the freedom to express their sexuality without retribution, to an even more open-minded approach to intimacy. Today, women want control over what happens in the bedroom, and couples realize lasting relationships blossom from lasting sex lives.

During the past three years, the number of Colorado women working as sales consultants for the Las Vegas-based company Passion Parties Inc. jumped from three to 111. Each of them totes creams, perfumes, gels, toys and lingerie to between two and eight all-female shindigs per month. And the Baton Rouge.-La.-based company Slumber Parties has 180 consultants working in Colorado with some visiting as many as four parties a week.

For years, I have thought less than highly about Longaberger Baskets and Tupperware for their "friend marketing" structures. But to see their idea applied to sex toys, outfits and other ways to spice up the bedroom hours makes me see them in a new light. Could there have been a Slumber Parties without a Mary Kay cosmetics blazing the consultant path ahead of them? I wonder.

From the People's Daily Online:

Women account for just 10.3 percent of board seats in the Top 50 Global banks and China outpaced US in this field, while women comprised 65 percent of bank employees, according to a new study from Corporate Women Directors International on Friday.

China outpacing the US with combined female board participation of 20.6 percent compared to 17.3 percent for the US banks ranked in the Top Global 50. The study also looks at the Top 100 US banks, where women do not fare any better with 12.2 percent representation, according to the report.

You might consider property in or near Ames, Iowa.

This kind of stuff is getting harder and harder to find...

Richard Morrison of the Times Online has an interesting piece about corporations and government and points out something that institutional management desperately needs to practice with regularity: humility.

The Romans had the right idea. They had a feast called Saturnalia when masters became servants and vice versa. Of course the exchange of status was strictly limited. The servants weren’t permitted, for example, to feed their masters to the lions while they were in charge. Even so, it was an exercise that reminded the ruling class of what it was like to be bossed around. And although one hates to give the hierarchy of the Catholic Church any credit for humility or a sense of reality, much the same thing used to happen on the Feast of St Nicolas, December 6. For one topsy-turvy day the bishop would relegate himself to dusting the candlesticks, and the humblest altar boy would be elevated to the bishop’s throne. Of course, they would never elevate an altar girl; that would have been the end of Christendom as they knew it. Nevertheless, by their actions they were issuing a timely memo to themselves that Jesus washed his own disciples’ feet.

Well, we can all think of modern organisations where the bosses make a point of stooping to pick up litter, or occasionally getting coffee for their secretaries, or even manning the customer-complaints line now and then. But not many. And some of those bosses do it only if there are TV cameras or impressionable visitors. My feeling is that it should become standard practice, not least because it would make businesses more efficient. Imagine what would happen if the directors of British Airways had to man the check-in desks over a bank-holiday weekend. Wouldn’t we find that, miraculously, all BA flights were bang on schedule?

The main reason, however, is that many big decisions are made today by people who have virtually no contact with those whom their diktats will most affect.