60 seconds of complete garbage

This is a cartoon book by 60 second marketer that I had the misfortune to encounter. I normally take books like this apart and work through them section by section but this miserable affair is just 19 pages of two or three sentences per page. There's hardly anything worth reading in this garbage.

Essentially what this is, is a plug for 60 second marketer. It talks about ROI (Return on Investment) but doesn't ever specify what the investment consists of. Logic dictates that the investment would be something along the lines of:

• Office space - provision of the office, the fixtures, the fittings.
• Manpower - having some unwashed, smelly computer geek playing Space Invaders while pretending to work and soaking up company money.
• Computer - providing the smelly computer geek with expensive equipment, electricity and light.

The return on investment had better be pretty damn good for that. Let's work that out over a year.

• Cost of a computer $600
• Cost of electricity for lighting $60
• Cost of electricity for heating/cooling that office $2400 a year
• Wages for smelly, unwashed computer geek $7.25 an hour for 30 hours a week over 52 weeks is $11,310.
• Cleaning costs for cleaning up after unwashed, smelly computer geek $100 a week ($520).

Total expense over a year $14,890 and that's not including the cost of the internet connection nor the liability issues in case said low-wage staff member says something highly inappropriate online.

Gauging return from such a dubious investment is mind-bogglingly hard. This is what the book promises to provide but fails spectacularly to do, instead offering a course in ROI. I'd say give this book a complete miss.

Retail me not!

Every photographer is familiar with retail - where you go in to buy something and are served by a not terribly competent person who really couldn't care less if you bought something or not or whether it was even the right thing. Really and truly that shop assistant probably wishes you would go away so they could continue texting their friends.

Looking at it from the manager's point of view, they know the staff are low quality and unmotivated. They're not allowed to pay them enough to get good quality staff so the service is always going to be sucky. All the managers can do is threaten staff with dismissal if they suck too badly.

From the employees point of view, it's probably about the only company that would take them on amidst a mass of unemployed people. The money they receive does not really pay their living expenses so they have to bunk and sometimes double bunk with others.

A few days ago I wrote an article about telephone etiquette. Yesterday I had a phonecall from somebody that said I'd applied for a job with them and they wanted to interview me today. Needless to say, I turned up and was appalled at what I saw. The place was dirty and a gambling establishment. My role there - should I ever accept such a role - would be to run around for 8 hours a day for possibly the giddy heights of $8 per hour. Given that it's 25 miles from me and would use 2.5 gallons of fuel per day at a cost to me of $10.50 (or an hour and a half's wages) and that my rent is $525 a month, that job would have me paying to work. The hours were 25 to 30 a week and without tax that would represent a maximum of $240 a week out of which I'd lose (since it's a 4 day a week job) $42. That leaves $198 a week out of which $131 would be rent. That leaves $66.75 left for food, medical, clothing etc. Of course since tax would be charged I would be getting a lot less. One of my old paychecks from a store where I earned $279 in one week gave me $238 after tax. If we therefore assume that tax will be 15% then that would leave me with $31 for food, expenses, car insurance, car tax etc each week. That is of course not counting unexpected expenses which do crop up on an almost weekly basis. Nor does it cover vehicle maintenance etc.

I guess the moral here is I must remember to ask questions before agreeing to attend interviews - especially for jobs that I don't believe I applied for.

So, retailers - don't call me. I'll call you if I want to work retail again. Retail is OK as a hobby job or a part-time job for stay-at-home moms. It's not a job anybody can live on for an extended period.

Dumping social media

Ban linkedin, ban foursquare, ban twitter, ban facebook

Today I looked at my Facebook usage. I've had my Facebook page for about 8 weeks. I put it up on April 21st and had regrettably, to set up a Facebook account in order to control the feeds. Needless to say the Facebook account was 100% automated with postings coming automatically from blogs, Twitter and Foursquare. As per normal with what I call the social media garbage accounts (Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook) I don't care at all about them.

In the two months the Facebook page was up, it had a grand total of 17 likes and during that time I began to question what the Facebook page was for. Originally, it was there to publicise my blogs. As it has so few likes (mostly obtained in the first week), there seems singularly little point in continuing with the Facebook page or the Facebook account.

As far as Twitter goes, it might get viewers to my blogs - as long as I link to specific posts. I notice that specific posts seem to work. The rest of it - no way does it work. Clearly I need to work on Twitter scheduling and posting frequency - reducing the frequency and targeting posts to specific blog entries.

As far as Foursquare goes, I just have no idea what need that actually fulfills. Aside from being a massive security loophole where you tell everybody where you are so they know you're not home, I see nothing else that Foursquare does. I certainly don't see anything positive. As far as I'm concerned, it can take a hike. Sure - it's fun watching my tour around North Korea - for blog viewers who view my Twitter account as the feeds come in from Foursquare. That's about it though.

Facebook has a similar geo-location feature that I've turned firmly off. I fact, I wouldn't allow Facebook on my phone because of its geo-tracking features. Twitter has had them turned off too. There is no reason on earth for any of this geo-tracking other than it has been sold heavily to young people as being trendy without mentioning that just about anybody now knows your location.

The way most people use Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare is to publicise every aspect of their lives for anybody that wants to, to see. This is largely why I have dispensed with LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. Nobody needs to know what I am doing, 24 x 7. Nobody needs to know when I am visiting my friends, where I'm having lunch etc.

LinkedIn was dumped a few days ago. I'm not sure quite what happened as the communications didn't make an awful lot of sense. It seems that somebody probably didn't like my disagreeing with a blog article and decided to have a go at me. They chose the weak points - my profile photo was not of a human but then quite a lot on LinkedIn aren't either. Then they claimed my LinkedIn name wasn't my real name and that I'd been spamming. All very interesting and all big stretches of the imagination. Thus LinkedIn suspended my profile and refused to let me copy my recently updated profile until I agreed to change my name (what to, God alone knows). I agreed, went in, copied my information and just told them to delete the account. In my 8 months on LinkedIn, it had generated no interest at all. It was pointless to continue.

A few weeks ago, I chatted with a recruiter. He apparently checked people's linked-in profiles against their submitted resumes and rejected those that didn't match. Honestly, how many people even look at their LinkedIn profiles? It seems employers regularly check up on people online. Yet another reason not to have this online garbage. I'm pleased to say that I don't have very much of a trail and where there is a trail, it's easy to clean up. Twitter is easy to delete - there are no real Twitter archives. Pretty much the same for LinkedIn, Foursquare and Facebook. And a darned good reason to be rid of them.