Doping To Win Big (Business)

So, would it be cheating in the business world if you could dope and make yourself smarter and perform better in the conference room? If you could take something that would make you reach quicker and better decisions? Would that be condemned by society and corporations, or not?

I think the business world would embrace it; it wouldn't be considered cheating, like it is in the world of sports.

Think about it.

If you could come up with a pill that could make a CEO perform 10% better--he or she would be that much more alert, retain more information, and so forth. Decisions would be more accurate, swifter and more consistent. The business world would be more competitive, and would hence raise the bar, so to speak.

Actually..it would probably be just cocaine.

Ok. Forget about it, I guess it's already been done.

Swimming Is A Sinking Ship

Was speaking yesterday to my dear friend Barry Katz, who happens to be a huge swimming fan. Well, he was, until we both made some startling conclusions. The sport of swimming is a queer one, indeed: At the Olympics there is a such a medley of strokes available to compete in I can't even remember them all--freestyle (front crawl), the backstroke, the breast stroke, the butterfly, elbow stroke, the pinky toemover, the groundhog---am I missing any?

How come the default stroke for all events isn't just the front crawl--it's the fastest and most efficient stroke! What kind of whackjob de-evolved sport is this? Think about this for a comparison: highjump. It's not like there are three different categories for competitors--you don't have the option of the Scissor Kick or Western Roll if you don't feel like using the tried, tested and true Fosbury Flop. Sure, you could use the first two methods against the Fosbury floppers--but you'll lose.

Obviously front crawl is fastest. A stone age man probably figured that out, so who invented these inferior strokes? The real kicker is that it's the same people who do well at the different strokes(remember the American who won seven golds?); I mean if you're going to have special strokes, shouldn't specialists win those events? In track and field, you don't see the same guys winning the 200-metres as well as the 800-metres or the hurdles...

Are we the only ones that see this ridiculous aspect of swimming?

Speaking of swimming, doesn't it just kill you when you watch the 50-metre freestyle, the fastest race--the "splash and dash"--with the fastest Olympic swimmers charging like mad in a supersonic race against the clock--and there's a couple of judges walking a leisurely pace next to the pool, going the same speed as the swimmers?

Support Our Troops--Make Ribbon Companies Rich

Seen those yellow magnetic ribbons that every fourth car has south of the border?
Emblazoned with "Support Our Troops", these ribbons are everywhere. Irrespective of your opinion on "The War" (and certainly people could guess mine) I found these little ribbons to be interesting. They cost just under 4 bucks and can be bought at most gas stations, drugstores and coffee shops. I suppose there's quite a bit of mass consciousness working its way; one wouldn't want to be unpatriotic and not have a ribbon like your neighbour. And that's where the interesting part begins. I did a bit of digging, and here's what I found out:

- Guess where they're made? Taiwan.

- Guess how much money from each ribbon goes to the military, or individual soldiers, familes or anything remotely related? Zilch.

Blind patriotism is good for business, as always...

I want to make my own ribbon to match it. It would say "Support Our Troops--Send Them Home."

A Dummy's Guide To Unionizing Starbucks

Although I'd prefer to say, "Avoid this place as it represents everything perfectly nasty about corporate control," I suppose that by unionizing Starbucks it might set some sort of standard which might slowly provoke some change. So listen up:

Two days after workers at the 36th and Madison Starbucks in New York City turned in their union cards to the NLRB for a certification election, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, sent them a little voice message. In this dispatch from the corporate tower, Schultz--who personally brought in 17 million dollars last year--tried to appeal to the $7.75 per-hour upstarts in words that would impress George Orwell. The multi-millionaire CEO began his message by referring to his poverty-wage employees as "partners", and stressed how Starbucks and its workers "have built great trust in one another." He went on to explain that he viewed "treating everyone with dignity and respect as our highest priority", and stressed the "caring and supportive culture" of the company. He ended with this note of pure authenticity: "I want to conclude by simply thanking you for everything you do each day, and for being the real heart and soul of Starbucks."

Not surprisingly, the workers saw right through this corporate textbook mumbo-jumbo. Their experience had taught them better. Their story and their ongoing struggle for the first unionized Starbucks locale of the more than 4,000 Starbucks in the United States is vitally important and in need of our support.

It started when one worker, a young man in his twenties named Daniel Gross, was getting fed up with the work situation of him and his fellow workers. The cost of living in New York City is extremely high, and Starbucks pays a starting wage of $7.75 (Gross had worked there long enough to get a raise up to $8.09, hardly a significant change.) Furthermore, work hours are inconsistent from week-to-week,
and a forty-hour workweek is not at all guaranteed. The long hours of working behind an understaffed counter, standing up, bending down, and handling extremely hot liquids, was also a pressing concern.

When these grievances went unheeded by management, Gross turned to organizing his fellow baristas into a union. Though he earned the anger of the management, he won over his workmates. On May 17th, the Starbucks Workers Union, IWW IU/660, filed for a union certification election.

Check out their site: http://www.starbucksunion.org

What can you do?

1. Contact Starbuck's CEO Howard Schultz at hschultz@starbucks.com and call Starbucks at 800-235-2883 to express your support for the Union.

2. Give a piece of your mind to the corporate lawyers of the Akin Gump firm that Starbucks hired to deny the workers their right to form a union as they choose. Contact DANIEL L. NASH, Partner, Robert S. Strauss Building, 1333 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20036, Telephone: 202-887-4067, Fax: 202-955-779, Email: dnash@akingump.com.

And contact GREGORY W. KNOPP, Counsel, Mail -- 590 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022, Telephone: 212-872-1052, Fax: 212-872-1002, Email: gknopp@akingump.com

3. Tell the managers at your local store that you support the right of Baristas to organize. Print out the flyer on the union's website here and pass it out at your local Starbucks. Let the workers know about the union effort.

4. Organize a rally outside of a Starbucks in support of the NYC workers. You can print out a fact sheet here to pass out to customers.

For more on unionizing attempts of Starbucks, and other meaningful causes, visit http://www.mcspotlight.org

An Apposition Of Opposites

Had a mighty strange glimpse of something on the way home from Hogtown to Good Ol' K.C. yesterday. Driving up Bathurst, in traffic so congested even a dumptruck full of Dristan couldn't cure, I saw two men:

The first man was in his car--a BMW 3 Series of some kind--and the second was on the sidewalk. The thing was, these two men were incredibly alike.

The man driving beside me was late-sixties looking, grey hair, some large, horn-rimmed type spectacles, and a sort of scruffy but dapper-looking beard. He wore a tweed jacket with a blue shirt and no tie. He drove cautiously, looked to me and half-smiled and kept looking forward, quite pensively.

The man walking on the sidewalk appeared to be the same as well--almost twin-like, in fact. Tweed jacket, grey hair, scruffy beard, horn-rimmed glasses, scruffy beard. It was eerie. He looked at me as well, ever-so-quickly with a smirk, then continued walking slowly, looking pensively ahead.

Now, I know y'all are saying "Hansen, what is the big fuggin' deal?"

Well here's where it gets trippy. The man in the Beamer looks to the man on the sidewalk. Their eyes meet and there is this really curious prolonged stare between the two as they realize, perhaps, how similar they appear. As if they are seeing a facsimile of each other. The man in the car has to finally take his eyes away from his doppelganger as traffic has resumed to move, ever-so-slightly.

The man walking on the sidewalk stops, quirks his head to the side and sort of exhales softly. The BMW drives ahead, and I slotted in behind him--but not before I took one last look at the man on the sidewalk; wearing his tweed jacket that although was similar, was slightly rattier; his scruffy beard, that although was similar, was slightly dirtier.

And I looked at the man walking on the sidewalk, still disbelieving how remarkably similar he seemed to the man in the BMW--and he continued walking--pushing his shopping cart full of empty beer cans, and a sleeping bag...

Conveniently Inconvenienced

Right beside my work there is a Tim Hortons that I make a point of not going to; I'd prefer to patronize the mom and pop's diner adjacent to it. The diner offers personalized service (they remember my name), friendly smiles (as opposed to pimply-faced brats working their first job), and it leaves me with a slightly better feeling of giving back to the community. But that's not really the point, today.

The rare times I do go to Hortons I often notice something quite peculiar. I'm a bit of a debit card man--not for any reason apart that I pretty much lose everything, cash included--so I tend to buy things that way. There is a sign for customers, saying, "For Tim Hortons' customers' convenience, Interac is not accepted." I guess the idea is that using Debit takes five seconds longer, and seeing as all of us are in a rush to guzzle-guzzle-munch-munch-get-back-to-work, those five seconds are precious.

The paradox is this: what if you don't have any cash? That means conveniently getting in your car, driving a few convenient kilometres down the road, to a convenient bank--most likely not your bank--which means a convenient 2.50 on top of your hasty withdrawal, and then another convenient drive back to the convenient Tim Hortons, where you can conveniently spend 2 dollars on a cuppa joe and a donut.

Thank God for convenience.