In your business

I’m well aware of the trend toward people parking themselves at coffee shops to work, or look like they’re working, tapping away on their laptops while yapping on their mobile phones. Lord knows, I don’t think there’s a low- to medium-end restaurant in the Bay Area that doesn’t offer free Wi-Fi to encourage this lollygagging clientele.

But you can take this a latte too far.

The other day I was at my local Panera Bread in a booth next to a woman who was giving employee reviews—in-person reviews, right there in the booth—as well as taking conference calls regarding a lawsuit brought by a former employee.

I’m telling you, this woman has a clear, loud voice, & she enunciates very distinctly. The employee being reviewed when I sat down (sales rep for office supplies & equipment) apparently had already acknowledged that she’s been having problems getting motivated, but of course she’s going to do better.

& I’m sure her bonus & salary increase her boss announced will help.

The manager invited her to state some career goals—short-term ones, you know; for August. But the poor woman couldn’t cough up anything immediately, so that’s an action item for her.

Shortly after the hapless employee left, knowing that everyone at the three tables immediately around her had heard everything, the manager got on a con call involving this lawsuit. Apparently the former sales rep is suing for wrongful termination, but this manager had discovered that instead of making actual sales calls, he’d just gone to coffee shops & then falsified his route reports.

Looks like he hasn’t a chance, though, since he couldn’t recall the month he was terminated, & it’s clearly documented that he turned in fraudulent route reports.

Look—I understand that this manager works out of Santa Rosa, & apparently she needs to meet with her sales reps close to where they are (although 100 miles isn’t extreme for California standards). But couldn’t she have chosen some place with a little more privacy? Instead of using one of the back rooms in the restaurant (one of which was completely empty), she planted herself in the second booth in the main room, surrounded by tables.

Maybe it’s an extension of that invisible shield people with mobile phones seem to think surrounds them. You know—the one that enables them to shout into their hands while in restaurants, mass transportation & public restrooms without having to worry that they’ll be overheard.

Watching you

The WSJ reports on efforts by TV advertisers and service providers to collect and use personal information to enable the former to use the latter to target viewers with ads.

Cable/satellite companies are already collecting this data, which is creepy, but I suppose not surprising. Even creepier, though, is the writer’s (unsupported) assertion that the data matching includes personal health information coming from our insurance companies.

Like they haven’t already found enough ways to screw us.

But what I want to know is: if cable companies can beam demographic-specific ads to me, why can’t they let me bundle and pay for only the channels I want to watch? I’d be perfectly happy with 50 channels, as long as none of them involved ESPN.

Happy families

Jimmy Carter had his brother Billy, Bill Clinton had his brother-in-law Hugh Rodham, & Britain’s Royal Family has…the Royal Family.

If you don’t read non-US media, you’ve probably not heard about the latest on Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife. That girl can spend like a bailed-out investment bank. She needs an intensive course in money management, because she just can’t seem to make her income stretch to cover her outgoings.

Last year she got jammed up for offering a tabloid journalist-got-up-as-an-Arab access to Andrew, for a small consideration of £500,000. (Andrew, since he left the Royal Navy, has had a jammy/dodgy job as “economic envoy” for the country, meaning he’s trotted out to any country that makes noises like it might like to invest in Britain.) When she was outed by The News of the World, she had to polish her apologizing skills.

But seems she can no more control her bribe solicitation jones than she can her shopping. This week she had to apologize for getting bailed out of debt by a known pedophile. An American one, at that.

Ferguson isn’t the first royal in-law to bring scandal to the family via TNOTW. Sophie, Countess of Wessex, had barely been married to Prince Edward for two years before the very same reporter punked her into indiscreet remarks about her new family in an attempt to bring in business to her PR firm.

Well, they did know about her PR tendencies when Edward took up with her, so it’s not like everyone didn’t have fair warning.

I hope Wills, who’s getting married next month, is luckier than his father & uncles with respect to choosing a bride who isn’t a loose cannon.

International Women's Day

I’ll bet you didn’t know it’s International Women’s Day—possibly that there even is an International Women’s Day.

Well, there is and it is. And here’s something to think about today. And tomorrow and the day after that.

Which bran-for-brains loudmouth?

Further to my vow not to add to the verbiage on The Sheening One, I took the Guardian’s “Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: Whose line is it anyway?” quiz.

I was able to match only two of the ten statements correctly with the appropriate self-proclaimed godhead. Really—there’s not much to choose from.

But I do have one comment: I don’t even want to know who’s responsible for this one, “These resentments, they are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my sabre.”