Dear...

Dear Fool Who Seems to enjoy emailing my company lambasting what we do:

I sincerely appreciated yet another of your emails to my company telling me what a hateful person I must be for doing what I do and how what I do is truly a sign that the apocolypse is near. We at XYZ company always enjoy reading emails from potential customers and will take your comments into consideration.

However, it would certainly help further your cause if you would consider doing the following:

1. When sending multiple emails from "multiple" people - it would be far more convincing if said "other" people didn't use word choices and a grammatical style that is eerily similar to your own.

2. When sending multiple emails from "multiple" people it would be far more convincing if said "other" people didn't misspell the same words you did. I could understand if they were big words but your vocabulary does not seem to extend beyond a fifth grade level. But then again neither does your spelling ability.

3. I would be much more willing to engage in a discussion with you if you didn't choose to hide behind fake email address and an apparent multiple personality syndrome.

4. I would take you more seriously if it didn't appear as though you get your jollies by anonymously emailing people you don't know and accusing them of horrible deeds. That just makes you creepy.

Lastly, I realize that you like to think of me as the devil incarnate, but I like to think of you as a troll who is 49 and lives in your mother's basement while getting your jollies by randomly emailing individuals. But if emailing me and getting absolutely no response makes you happy then feel free to keep it up because we at XYZ company want nothing more then to make sure our potential customers are happy.

Sincerely,

Top Dog
XYZ Company Founder

Another Craigslist Post

Yesterday I was back on Craigslist but this time I wasn't looking for packing peanuts - I was looking for a new employee. While during vacation I realized that I don't necessarily have the time right now - with the busiest time of the year right around the corner - to train someone new for the skilled position but I could hire a relatively unskilled person to help me with the product packaging.

So I posted an ad on Craigslist for $25 and could be up there for a month. Instead, I took it down after about 24 hours due to the overwhelming number of responses I got. And I realized that I really suck at this hiring thing. How do you choose between so many good and intelligent people for a part-time hourly job that really doesn't require too much in terms of expertise other than an attention-to-detail? There were some people who it was fairly obvious weren't a good fit but there were more then enough people who, at least on paper, look like they'd be a great fit. I'd love to hire them all but that's not possible so I'm now trying to winnow it down to a manageable number to interview.

In truth, also looking at the caliber of people responding to my ad - which again, is a part-time seasonal unskilled position - it is a little frightening that the job market is apparently that bleak that I'm getting those types of resumes (even one from a PHd candidate). It also makes me wonder, on a social level, how the true unskilled workers can compete in this environment. As an employer, if I have a choice between someone who has more experience/education for the same pay scale as someone who doesn't have that same experience/education I'm always going to go with the former. I don't think I'm the only one in that regard so how does the latter compete?

Back To Work

Phew! Have you ever taken a vacation where you didn't realize how badly you needed it until you were away? That's what this past week was like. Though we didn't go very far - just rented a house about three hours away for the week - it still felt like a world away.

Thankfully not too far away though b/c I was actually reasonably busy with work. We had a number of requests for information which are pretty easy to handle but also got four orders in the course of the week which was a bit of a surprise. In fact right before I left a good friend of mine asked if I wanted her to be ready to ship out any orders while I was gone and I laughed it off thinking that I really wouldn't likely get an order while I was away. Especially this time of year since many retailers are holding off buying anything and trying to clear out their shelves before the Fall tradeshow season starts in a few weeks. So I was incredibly surprised to have those four orders come in last week.

During the course of the week the idea of that supposed open space in the neighborhood I love nagged at the back of my head so I finally figured out who owns/manages the space via the public tax records (thanks to my husband for helping me navigate that one) and left a message with them. I'm still thinking that all of this is fairly unlikely it will come to pass given the amount of improvements I would need to do but I figure I ought to follow it through to it's logical end for the timebeing.

Vacation in the Email Age

I'm on vacation and right now four of the six of us are online checking work email. On the one hand it's great to be able to get back in touch with people ASAP but on the other I guess the days of totally disconnecting from work for a few days are over.

Ah well...email done so it's time to put the salmon the BBQ.

Interesting Turn of Events

I'm supposed to be on vacation turning my mind away from work for a while and enjoying a little R&R. However, it turns out that my sister is interested...or should I say, taking the first steps into looking at...buying an established retail business in her neck of the woods. Why this is interesting is that I've been able to look at all the financials (while a very smart girl, my sister wants to have another set of eyeballs on it to make sure things are adding up as they seem). In addition to being able to potentially help her out it's also a great resource for me to have to see what some of the true costs of running a retail business are as this retail business/production space idea continues to float around in my head. I haven't looked at it indepth yet but I'm eager to try and read more into it. So we'll see...

Now, back to my regularly scheduled vacation...

Social Networking

Last night while at dinner at a friend's house I learned an interesting factoid. Said friend had attended a social networking conference for work and while there learned some of the most interesting - and most successful - small business social networking stems from nonbusiness entities. For example, it's well known that it makes sense to get your Linked In/Facebook etc account to highlight your company website and professional achievements. However, said friend found out that it's sites like Dogster/Catster etc - sites that are geared towards the bringing together of common interest groups - that can really drive web traffic for business sites. He learned that for many small businesses the largest driver of web traffic - despite doing an integrated e-marketing campaign - comes from the CEO's dogster profile. (Dogster, for those who don't know, is the social networking sites for dogs. People go in and upload their dog's profile and then make virtual friends).

So while on vacation next week guess who will be updating her dogs' dogster profiles (yes, we actually did have dogster profiles for them already but they are woefully out of date). Since the dogs are my VPs I figure it's the least they can do. Perhaps this unique foray into will help promote the dogs to VP of e-marketing!

Another Reason to Love Craigslist

For some unknown reason I decided to browse the Craigslist Free listings the other night. It's something I do from time to time simply to see what sort of crazy stuff people put up there and then I wonder about the crazy people who go and take said crazy stuff.

Apparently you can now add me to the list as I saw a posting for free packing peanuts and got very excited! Since the business is mainly wholesale it means I do a lot of shipping and as such use a lot of packing peanuts. Have you ever priced packing peanuts? They're not cheap! Last year I utilized all of the packing peanuts that came with our wedding gifts but have since run out (though I am about to ask a local friend who's getting married if I can 'recycle' the packing peanuts that come with his wedding gifts).

Turns out many people have the problem of getting rid of packing peanuts so they turn to Craigslist and apparently there are others like me looking for packing peanuts. It's the perfect mix of supply and demand. Or maybe it's more like a packing peanut blackmarket much to the disguist of the packing peanut industry. Regardless, I'm now the proud owner of three enormous bags of packing peanuts. Makes me as happy as a pig in...well...in packing peanuts.