I don’t recall pre-ordering a book from Amazon but I did it today for the book, It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News. YES!!!

You can read Chapter 1 here.

I’ve run across a few items lately that are difficult to determine the actual cost. When I’m at Fred Meyer loading my plastic bag full of off season grapefruit at $2.49 pound I’m always shocked when my bag of five costs nearly 10 bucks. But I’m not shocked enough to change my tactics. I don’t remember the last time I used the scales so I really can’t complain much. Does anyone still use the scales? And spending 10 bucks on some fruit isn’t that big of deal really.

But when the item in question is chocolates and the price per pound is $15 to $27 that same method can get pricey. I recently went into a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory to pick out some sugar free chocolates for Kim. Well, for me too but that’s beside the point. Everything looked really good so I started asking for “4 of those, 6 of those, how about 8 of those” as I pointed to the case full of goodies. This is what it must have felt like to find a golden ticket!

How am I supposed to know how many chocolates are in a pound? When I figured I’d asked for about pound I stopped while the kind young women weighed my choices. Total damages? $32! Obviously, I have no sense for how much chocolates weigh as I had picked out just over 2 lbs worth. I wasn’t going to ask her to put them back so I just handed over my Amex and decided to call it Kim’s Valentines day gift.

Every few months I walk through an area of Nordstrom that feels like another world to most guys. Yes, I’m hooked on several products from Clinique which is located on a tranquil island where women wear white lab coats and smile a lot.

See, I don’t mind spending 25 bucks on facial soap when I’m treated as well as I am here. Even though I am clearly out of my element when approaching one of these foreign islands, I’m never treated like an illegal alien and asked to leave because I can’t recite the benefits of a mud mask.

I’ve been using the same kind of soap and scrub for years, but I can never remember the exact name among the dozens that sound pretty much the same. The products may have similar names. They might look the same to the layman. They probably even smell the same. But that doesn’t mean jack squat because it’s critical to match the right product to my type of skin. At least that’s what I learned by watching America’s Next Top Model.

I’m getting off topic here. My point is that the women (there may be men but I’ve never seen any) who work for Clinique understand how to make me feel welcome instead of feeling stupid because I can’t remember if my soap is “Normal Oily”, “Moderate Oily” or “Heavy Oily” formula. They play 20 questions with me until they’re able to deduce what I have at home.

The one other thing they do is leave me with something extra. Whether I spend $15 or $100, they always toss in a few sample products. This always leaves me feeling like I’m special and got more than I paid for. They take this habit to the extreme at Kiehls where it’s possible to leave the the store with twice the volume in sample products as the product you made the trip for.

Say you work for a jewelery store. It’s 8:50 pm and your store closes at 9:00 pm. A women comes into the store to have her watch battery replaced. Do you:

A. Change the battery and stay open an extra 5 minutes or so to accommodate a customer

B. Find a solution such as have the women leave the watch, change the battery next day. Call customer to pickup or send via overnight delivery.

C. Tell her the store closes soon and there’s not enough time to change the battery

Two of the choices probably work equally well and would make a person want to shop at this store next time they were looking for a watch or jewelry.

But the answer Kim received last night will ensure we never do business with this particular jeweler.

Do your employees have the authority to find solution that best serve their customers, even when it may fall outside of normal working hours?

In one of his best posts in a while, Seth Godin discusses “Sheepwalking” which he defines as “the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain dead job and enough fear to keep them in line”.

Have you ever sheepwalked through your job? I can think of a few example where I have:

1. At one job I had to use the correct color of paper when I filled out a request for raise for someone I managed. There were two types of raises and both had their own color! If the paper arrived on the wrong color of paper, it was sent back to me do over. When I asked why the color of the paper mattered I was told the person who opened the mail wanted the raises to stand out from the normal mail.

2. My first job out of college was managing a retail store. I had the authority to set the schedule of 10 to 15 employees I managed but I wasn’t able to set my own work schedule. I was told the exact days and hours I would work every week. The part-time seasonal help I hired had a more flexible work schedule than I did.

3. Another company I worked for banned instant messenger programs on the basis that employees would chat too much with friends and spread viruses. This same company would send out random emails to the entire company asking if anyone had seen the missing typewriter or filing cabinet.

4. A company I worked for years ago hired a guy to work on increasing the traffic to our website by building community. But one of his first jobs was to determine how much money our company was spending by providing free soda.

5. I was in charge of increasing sales of computer training on our website. When I mentioned we rework the site to make the purchasing path more consumer friendly I was told to increase the font size of the phone number on the website so that more people would call us. Our sales department closed at 6 pm on weekdays and was closed weekends. If you happened to call in an order during the times we were closed you were sent to voice mail. When I asked who pulled the voice mails (and potential orders!!!) I was told that nobody could remember the password to access it.

One Man’s Blog links to YouTube videos of 10 of the worst drivers caught on video. I really liked #3, especially the Speed Racer theme.

If you’re running the new Windows Vista with User Account Control turned on, you’ll understand this Apple ad all too well. Luckily, it’s easily turned off. Bill Gates can’t stand these ads.

You take some pink plastic molded to look like an oven. You slap a 100 watt bulb to it and call it an oven for kids. Wow, what could go wrong with this scenario? Well, apparently, a lot because a number of kids ages 3-5 were burned as a result of attempting to work this crazy contraption which resulted today in nearly a million Easy-Bake Ovens being recalled.

I’m waiting for Hasbro to release the new Easy Turkey Fryer for the kids.

A few of us took an early lunch and walked around the block to Bakeman’s Restaurant near Pioneer Square. Calling itself a ‘restaurant’ is a misnomer and part of the joke for those who eat here often. Unless someone were to recommend this place, you’d probably walk right by it. You enter through one of two sets of stairs that lead to a single large room. Walls are white. Chairs and tables are white. It about as fancy as a school lunch in the gym but without the milk in a plastic bag.

We arrived to find the line about 25 people deep. Two women were barking out orders to customers who approach the order counter. The menu is as simple as they come: sandwiches, soups, and a half dozen salads. I was surprised at how quickly the line moved mostly due to these two women forcing customers to make quick decisions or risk getting a tongue lashing. Don’t step up to the counter unless you’ve made a decision which shouldn’t be hard since you’ll have a few minutes to do so while in line.

I stepped up to the counter and ordered a turkey sandwich. The lady didn’t even look at me as she grabbed two huge handfuls of turkey just like you’d do yourself the day after Thanksgiving. She put lettuce and mayo on as well and then squished the sandwich together to keep it from falling apart. She then wrapped it fittingly in white paper. They don’t go out of their way to make the prettiest of sandwiches. I continued to the counter to pay where another guy who was yelling at the women in front of me because she grabbed too many napkins from what I could gather. He rang up my sandwich which came to $3.75. You’ve got to be kidding? It’s hard to find anything under ten bucks in this area of town.

So the sandwich was cheap but tasted as good as any I’ve had. And this place was absolutely packed. We were lucky to grab a table for three people. We enjoyed our sandwiches and then headed back to the office. For the next hour or so we talked about this place. The attitude, the price, but mostly about the food which was fabulous. We told everyone back at the office how they should try this place.

This got me thinking about our own products. Is there anything about them that’s so noteworthy that our customers will seek them out? Do they tell their friends about it? What are we doing to make our service and products so unique that people can’t stop talking about them?

Although I don’t have a lot of faith, my coworker said he’s going to post his top 10 songs tonight as well. Here’s hoping he comes through. My list of favorite songs changes all the time but I have a pretty good idea which belong in the Top 10 since they don’t change very often.

1. Mother/Pink Floyd – This has been my favorite song for over 20 years and probably will be in twenty more. Is there such thing as the perfect song? The whole song is awesome but the voice and the guitar starting around 3:24 is just sublime. And the ending, “Mother did it need to be so…..high”. Perfect. See it played here in 1980 concert.

2. Running to Stand Still/U2 – One of the few songs that can give me chills. From the haunting guitar at the beginning to the amazing harmonica near the end. The concert footage from Rattle & Hum is as good as studio version. “Run from the darkness in the night”

3. Here’s Where the Story Ends/The Sundays – When I ran a Hotline server years ago, somebody uploaded this song and mentioned I may like it. It immediately moved to my playlist. Harriet Wheeler has one of my favorite female voices. This song is so upbeat and fun I can’t feel down when this song is played. Watch the video on YouTube. “People I see, weary of me….”

4. I Remember Dying/Sean Kelly – I’m a sucker for guitar. His voice layered over that simple yet cool guitar is awesome. That simple strum at 1:27 I can never tire of. If I could play the guitar I’d want to learn this song first. “I’ll tell you what’s forever”

5. Going to California/Led Zeppelin – Page is simply amazing. It’s hard to not list more Zep on the list but this one is my favorite. Listen closely at :02 and you can hear Plant *sigh*. Just checkout that finger work on this video. “Someone told me there’s a girl out there, with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair”

6. Train in Vain/The Clash – These guys were so influential it’s hard to imagine rock and roll without them. I once heard a music critic on MTV say that the Clash were the group that U2 wishes they had become. Watch the video here. “I see all my dreams come tumbling down”

7. Champagne Supernova/Oasis – I know it’s over the top. But I loved it the first time I heard it on MTV. It’s so big, so arrogant that it embodies everything I liked about Oasis during the mid 90’s. The mellow cords lead to some great rock. “The world’s still spinning around we don’t know why”

8. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking/The Rolling Stones – Seven minutes of hard pounding rock and roll. And when the sax kicks in it’s just brilliant. They don’t make music like this anymore. I can’t listen to this song without cranking it so loud my ears hurt. Video is up on YouTube. “Yeah, you got satin shoes”
[audio:knocking.mp3]

9. The Wind/Cat Stevens – One of my favorite movie scenes is the one in Almost Famous where Penny Lane dances around to this song. Watch him play it in concert here. “I let my music take me where my heart wants to go”

10. I’m Your Captain-Closer to Home/Grand Funk Railroad – I can’t believe this song clocks in at just over ten minutes. It’s just such a great classic rock tune. The drumming is just killer. The last few minutes when the symphony kicks in is breathtaking. Right at 8:32 someone in the background yells what sounds to be like, “Somewhere…somewhere” although I’m not certain that’s what he says. But I love it nonetheless. Watch some old video here. “Can you hear me, can you hear me”