Category: Opinion

I love to save money and phone service is typically one of those big bills none of us like to pay each month. A little over a year ago, I was preparing to move in with my then girlfriend, and thought an excellent idea would be to move my number over to a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone. These are basically phones that operate over the internet instead of being connected to Bell’s network.

There are a number of providers, but at the time Vonage was advertising like crazy. They seemed like the market leader (and I had had problems with Primus, my provider at the time). Although they promised to migrate my phone number, I had to keep on them constantly to actually make this happen (and I was nervous as the move was approaching that Primus would cancel my service at my old address and release my number back into the pool). Apparently number allocation still involves Bell, and they do everything they can to make this process difficult (ideally to embarrass their competition is what I was told).

Pretty well from the start, service quality was spotty. I’d be talking to people and occasionally (like once every hour or two) it would cut out for 3 seconds. Not the end of the world, but I got pretty sick of having to ask people “could you please repeat that, my phone cut out”.

The installation and portability of the phone was nice. You just hook it up to any internet connection, and start talking. In theory, you could be in Taiwan, talking on the phone, and to the rest of the world it would seem that you were in Toronto (your number WOULD be a local Toronto number).

The price seemed great at the start, but after I added unlimited minutes in Canada and the US it got up to about $40 / month, which doesn’t seem like a great deal these days. It *was* nice that ALL the bells and whistles are included with the basic line (you get call answer, call display, call waiting, call forwarding, conference calling, etc, etc, etc all included). It also was pretty neat that I could check my voice mail through a web browser (all callers would be displayed and you can play the messages as a sound clip).

The guy I talked to to cancel tried his damndest to keep me, offering to get technicians to help me improve my quality (I had already setup a new phone service through Rogers at this point so I wasn’t interested). When I refused that, he offered me one month free along with the promise of improved quality, and when I held firm, he offered me 2 months free before finally cancelling my account. So if you’re a Vonage customer, an easy way to get 2 months of free service would be to call and say you want to cancel :-).

As part of the cancellation, they hit me with a $50 “termination fee”. This was because I had been a customer less than 2 years. Supposedly this was in my service agreement, but I certainly don’t remember ever being warned of this when I was setting up the account. Please factor into your decision, if you ever decide to get VOIP and Vonage specifically, that they’re the type of company that will kick you in the teeth if you ever want to leave.

A man I was talking to at the University laughed at me and said there are a number of VOIP options that are far cheaper than Vonage. If it wasn’t for the sound quality issues I may have inquired further, but I’m basically off of VOIP at this point.

Have you ever used VOIP?  What was your experience like?  Who do you use as your landline phone service provider?

Katrina Onstad wrote a very interesting article about babies and their parents in a recent issue of Toronto Life. She looked at the phenomenon of parents who are too focussed on trying to project their own tastes and styles through their kids. There were several little “stories” sprinkled throughout the article told by parents on various topics. Two of them inspired this post.

Story #1 – Fine dining with a 3 year old

We went to Tomi-Kro one Friday night, and it was crowded so we sat at the bar. We drank wine, and Max (3 years old) had apple juice. Then Max had a bit of a tantrum – he kept asking for more ice. The bartender and all the staff were cool, but we got a mixed reaction from other people – a lot of really dirty looks in that passive-aggressive Toronto way, like they thought we were bad parents.

Tomi-Kro is our favourite restaurant – it has excellent food and is very expensive which is why we only rarely eat there. When we go there it’s a special occasion so we get a sitter and have a lovely meal. I wouldn’t even consider bringing my kids for dinner because the idea of chasing my son around a restaurant while my expensive meal is getting cold just doesn’t make sense to me. The other reason I wouldn’t bring my kids is consideration for the other patrons. In a nice restaurant, a certain level of behavior is expected and if you can’t meet that level then you shouldn’t be there. It doesn’t matter whether you are a three year old in the middle of a tantrum or an obnoxious 35 year old who has had too much too drink – either way you don’t belong there.

To be honest, it wouldn’t bother me if there was children in a nice restaurant, but if they started acting like kids (imagine that), then it would definitely put a damper on my dinner. I do enough diaper changes at home so that when I go out, I don’t want to have to interrupt my filet mignon to tell another parent changing a messy diaper that they missed a spot.

Story #2 – Riding streetcar with huge stroller

When I was hugely pregnant, few people would give me their seat on the Queen streetcar – like they were practicing selective blindness. These days I have a big, honkin’ all-weather stroller that only just fits onto the streetcar; the driver or another passenger has to help me on and off. So when people have to squeeze by or when Gabriel start screaming, I view it as payback.

I couldn’t believe this story. First of all – just because nobody gave up their seat to you when you were pregnant doesn’t give you the right to block the entire isle in the streetcar. Second of all – I don’t bring our larger stroller on the streetcar mainly because it’s just a lot easier to have a smaller stroller in a crowded public place. I like to call this concept “COMMON SENSE“. I have a big double stroller that I use for jogging, but I am extremely aware that it takes up the entire sidewalk so I go around anyone who is coming the other way. If I’m going anywhere in any kind of vehicle at all (car, bus etc) then I take the umbrella stroller which is very small.

What do you think – are these people the morons I think they are? Does this qualify as a “Mother’s Day post?”

“All agreements must be win-win or we don’t do them!”

Some people like to insist on deals being a win-win. That’s awfully nice of them isn’t it? Both sides have to get something out of it. Kind of like… every deal. Right?

There’s certain language that makes me cringe and put a protective hand over my wallet, and “win-win” is one of them. Its a phrase that sways ignorant socialists who believe every capitalist is out to cheat and pillage. “We’re different” claims the get rich quick scheme du jour. They then cheat and pillage the people they sell their system to and teach them to cheat and pillage other ignorant people (ideally family and friends through some sort of pyramid scheme).

ALL deals are win-win. Otherwise people wouldn’t agree to them. And if you’re forced to agree to them, its still a win-win (since you’re avoiding whatever fate they’re threatening you with if you don’t agree). I’m strongly opposed to forcing people into an agreement, but ultimately there has to be some incentive for people to agree or else they’d just say no. For example, I merged blogs with Mike, in part, because he told me he’d break my kneecaps if I didn’t. I’ve been delighted to continue through my life with unbroken kneecaps (walking rules!). I haven’t regretted the decision to merge for a second!

That being said, every agreement has mutually beneficial elements and zero-sum elements. Take the example of an employment contract. One side gets money (which the employee wants) and the other side gets labour (which the employer wants). The amount of money exchanged for a unit of labour becomes a zero sum game. The employee wants to be paid as much as possible, and the employer want to pay as little as possible. There’s no “win win” in this situation, since every dollar the amount shifts benefits one side to the detriment of the other. Of course, if the deal becomes too one sided, it will probably fall through and both sides will “lose”. The way agreements happen is there’s an overlap between what each side is willing to give in order to get what they want. We like to think of this as a fixed point (“this is the lowest I can go!”), but without fail I think its a range.

One of the few ideas that pretty well all economists agree on is that trade is good.

The troubling part of “win-win” deals is usually the person talking about how much they want to do right by you also wants to dictate how you’ll “win” from the deal. After fooling you into what a good guy they are, they’ll then tell you what an incredibly good deal they’re giving you. Often by setting up complicated legal arrangements that prey on people who are trusting the nice man who says he’s helping them out.

Beware the man who says “trust me”.

I wrote on my old site about positive thinking, and how I believe it actually does effect what happens to us in life. I don’t buy into any of the spirituality or mallarchy that some people surround it with, I just thinking there’s a psychological element that gives us the same result.

I have similar feelings about karma. For those who are out of date with their Indian religions (and who don’t watch “My Name is Earl“), basically karma is the idea that you will “get back” what you put out. If you do good things, good things will happen to you, if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you.

Strictly speaking, I believe originally the “rewards” of karma were supposed to occur in the next life, but the new age movement has created a “Big Mac” version of the concept that gives you back what you get ASAP (i.e. in this life). The Wiccan faith has an amusing idea of the “rule of three” which is that you get back three times what you put out (I guess they believe in compounding).

How I think it actually occurs in the real world is due to statistics rather than spirituality. If you do good things, eventually you’ll be nice to someone who will randomly be in a position to unexpectedly help you. One time when I interviewed one of the people involved was a horribly unsocial computer nerd. Being a horribly unsocial computer nerd myself, I was happy to chat him up, although I was convinced he wasn’t going to be very involved in the actual hiring decision (I assumed he was just going to be the “nerd translator” for the people who would actually make the decision). When I turned down the job because the salary was too low, I later found out that he marched into the CEO’s office and championed my cause for 10 minutes until a higher offer was made. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to swap a Babylon 5 joke or two over coffee before the “real interview” starts.

The flip side has happened far more often to me in life. Without fail if you behave badly to enough people, eventually you’ll annoy someone who will later be in a position to hurt you (or not help you). I’ll meet someone, they’ll under-estimate me, then they’ll realize there would have been something productive from interacting with me. I’ve met real estate agents who brush me off, and later realize I actually have money then try to suck up to me. In school I’d meet people who’d be rude to me socially, then later want to borrow assignments or get help with a project. At one interview the owner of the company was very rude to me from the start. As his technical guy rapidly warmed up to me (we shared some laughs discussing why vi is the one true editor and reminiscing about the BBS days) the owner clued in that I’d be someone it would actually be worth hiring and started trying to charm me. I’d already realized I wouldn’t want to spend 8 hours a day with the guy – I’d seen his true colours when he didn’t think I was worth impressing.

Yes, Mr. Cheap holds a grudge and karma can be a bitch :-).

Early in life I would get caught doing bad things often enough that I became convinced it was better just not to do them. I’m probably the law abiding person I am today, in part, because my parents convinced me bad things would happen to me soon after I did bad things to other people.

For a while I was trying to launch a consulting / contracting career where I’d go and work on-site doing technical work for companies for a few weeks at a time then move on to the next place. I read everything I could get my hands on about consulting, especially technical consulting. One idea I came across that I thought was great was that of “The Warm Fuzzy Feeling“. He has a bunch of great suggestions on the page I’ve linked to, but I think there’s an overriding idea. Your job, when you’re providing services for money, is to make sure the customer isn’t worried. If you accomplish this, anything else is minor details.

I recently flew out to Edmonton to visit the university there. My flight was before the subway started running in the morning, so I had to book a car to take me to the airport. I called the lowest priced place I could find on Google (hey, I’m Mr. Cheap remember?) and the guy who answered had a thick accent. I explained when my flight was, and where I was going (domestic, not international) and asked him what time he’d recommend a pick up for. He asked me what time I wanted to be picked up. I repeated where I was going, and asked him what he recommended to make sure I arrive on time. He said that they just picked up customers at whatever time the customer wanted.

At this point I’m having visions of panicking on the morning of my flight when no car shows up and I politely got off the phone with him and called the next lowest bidder. The woman who answered spoke clearly, immediately told me a time (and broke down how she got to that time in terms of traffic in the early morning and processing time for domestic flights). She said she goes out to Edmonton all the time, and says she always gets through the security check quickly. She recommended that I check out the casino while I’m out there.

I’m feeling the warm fuzzies. I book a wake up call from them (as a back up in case my three alarms fail) and am quite confident they’re going to get me to my flight. I compliment her (she encouraged me to call her boss and talk to him).

The morning of the flight, no wake up call. Fuzzies are dropping. I call the company and tell them I didn’t get a wake up call. The gentleman on the other end tells me my pick up time. I repeat that I was supposed to get a wake up call and didn’t and I just want to be sure that the car is coming. He tells me that there’s nothing in my file about a wake up call (no fuzzies). The car did come, and the driver was amazing, chatty and engaging the whole trip. Fuzzies were coming back. At the airport, I was planning to give him a pretty nice tip, and when he gives me the bill, its $10 more than quoted (fuzzies gone again). He was a nice guy and he gave me the quoted rate (after I made sure it wouldn’t come out of his pocket – I still gave him the tip I was planning on).

This company could have had a customer for life if they had just got the wake up call and the price right. Sometimes things go wrong (I understand that) and if they’d just immediately apologized for not making the wake up call and promised to look into it (lie to me, that’s ok) I’d have been fine too. They’ve got a service running at 99% of amazing, and then they screw it up. Stop offering wake up calls if you can’t make them reliably. Raise the rates you’re quoting people (I HATE when companies try to change what they’re billing me without warning).

Companies often look at providing the minimum acceptable service, arguing with customers about what is reasonable or not, or they look at changing things only when tons of people complain. I think the article I linked to hits on something of value when it talks about going beyond that. Smooth out the rough edges and get rid of the things that irritate customers (but not enough that they complain). Occasionally get a friend to use your service as an outsider and tell you how you can improve.

To clarify, I’m NOT saying “do whatever the customer wants at whatever price he wants to pay”. I’m saying keep an eye on the customer experience at your company, and continually remove things that irritate or worry them.

It always amazes me how companies market so aggressively (if you go on Google car rides to the Toronto airport seems to be a fairly competitive market), but then they couldn’t care less about your experience as a customer (which will determine whether you use them or a competitor in the future).

A book also along these lines is “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles.

Throughout my undergrad I lived in residence for 4 of my 5 years (I changed majors half way through and extended my program). By a strange twist of fate, the same custodian ended up working in every building where I was living, so we got to know each other pretty well by the end of my studies.

Towards the end of my final year, he was good enough to invite me over to his house for dinner. After a couple beers too many he became quite morose and shared with me how much he hated his job, primarily from how servile it felt to him and how he was treated by his supervisors and the students.

To put this in perspective, he had:

1. A nice house in a good area of town
2. A wife who was VERY attractive (notice that I put this AFTER the real estate)
3. Two healthy, active, engaged children
4. Plenty of food, and a wife who was a good cook (we had an amazing feed)
5. An active social life (life can’t be too bad if you’ve got Mr. Cheap coming over to drink your beer)
6. A good brain in his head (he used the word servile to describe his life, and I like to have intelligent conversation while I’m drinking someone’s beer)
7. Good enough health that he was quite active in a competitive recreational hockey league
8. A great life experience, having moved around and lived all over
9. Two cars
10. An active spiritual life with his whole family involved in the faith

I told him at the time, and believe to this day, that his life would be the envy of 99% of the world. Literally. Seriously.

If you wanted to look back in time, his modern life would be the envy of 100% of the world (he’s living better then any 16th century monarch – we can eat meat EVERY DAY if we want to). We live in a world where a writer can go from being on welfare to being richer than the Queen of England.

I think it’s easy to focus on negatives in our lives, but it’s also important to occasionally sit back and realize how good we have it. This is a GREAT time to be alive. Roger Williams (the author of the incredible The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect – if you start reading it, don’t stop after the first chapter) makes a point in a podcast interview about how a medieval peasant seeing our modern life would probably take the view that people would be happy all the time (think medical advances, consumer goods and improved working conditions). Our worries and fears about the obesity epidemic, a looming recession and the sub-prime meltdown would be bizarre and incomprehensible to him.

Since I got a good response to my last “Mr. Cheap Asks” post, here’s another (it’s nice to have a think-tank ready to weigh in on my challenges in life). For those who don’t like reading comments, the consensus on the last question was that corporations usually can’t borrow money unless they have a guarantor, many assets and low debt or a multi-year history of income and expenses. Mr. Cheap was wrong on this issue.

As I’ve posted before, I’m applying for a PhD. I got my first admission to a school a couple of days ago, and hopefully more will be in the pipeline. Ideally I’ll have the pleasant problem of deciding between two good choices.

At one school, I have a supervisor I know (I’ve had a class with him before) and who seems like he’ll be a great person to work with. I’ve talked to his current students, and they all rave about how much he invests in his grad students.

Another school is the number one school in the country for the area I’m interested in. I’ve never been to the town it’s located in, and I don’t know any of the faculty there (it’s University of Alberta in Edmonton).

My choice seems to be between a great supervisor at an ok school, or an unknown supervisor (maybe good, maybe bad) at a great school.

A comparable situation would be whether you’d rather work for a great boss at an ok company, or an unknown boss at a great company?

Any thoughts? For anyone who remembers going through a comparable situation, what was the end result and did you have any regrets?

Apparently it’s quite rare for actors to get paid in the Toronto theatre scene. Every production basically says “work for us for free, you’ll get exposure, then you’ll be able to get good pay from the next production that hires you”. When the next production starts, they say the same things, and actors go through this until they demand to be paid (at which point another actor steps in and works for free).

I’ve had similar experiences in the tech field. Because technology is constantly changing, it’s very common to come across job postings that require technology you haven’t been exposed to. This used to intimidate me a bit, until I realized that employers are posting their “dream list” of experience and none of the applicants are coming in with the full background they ask for.

I had the experience where employers would say “start working for us cheap, learn the technology, then when you get up to speed we’ll pay you full rate”. This made sense to me, and I actually fell for it a few times, but inevitably what would happen is I would feel like I was up-to-speed and they would still want to keep paying me the original salary at which point I’d leave.

Once I stopped accepting lower paid positions, I was surprised that they’d then offer me the job at a competitive salary. The whole idea of “low pay while you learn” was just a negotiation technique, not anything they actually meant. ONE TIME a guy said to me “well, I’m not going to pay for you to learn on my dime”. His position was still posted 2 months later (and he e-mailed asking if I knew anyone job hunting with the required skills).

A friend of mine will be leaving a position soon where she went WAY beyond what she was hired to do. At the end of the year she asked for her salary to reflect what she was actually doing, instead of the subset of her work she’d been officially hired to do. After dicking her around, the company eventually refused to give her any significant increase in pay. They’re freaking out as she’s wrapping up the position, but they lost her rather than consider a large pay increase.

At many positions I’ve worked at, at some point the idea was thrown out that I’d eventually be moving to a higher ranking position in the company. Again, this was a free carrot for the company, as they didn’t have to deliver on any set timetable, but their hope would be that it’d be enough to keep me around as I thought I’d be working my way up the corporate ladder.

Sadly these days, the only way to get a significant raise or promotion seems to be to move to a new position in a different company. Loyalty in the workplace is dead.

I’m not sure why, but my experience has definitely been that once a company has a person in a set position at a set salary, they don’t want that to change. Even if the person is doing vital work for the company, keeping things the way they are seem to be more important that keeping that person. My only theory is that the companies don’t want to feel that they’re being strong armed by key personnel and would rather let those people leave the organization than give them the power to put the company over a barrel. Amusingly, while they refuse to give significant salary increases, they love to promise them at some indeterminate future time.

Some relatives of mine own a company, and every time business improves they have one key employee who then demands a raise. They’ve gotten quite sick of it (although he is vital, so they always give in) and recently have hired a junior person for the same position. Their plan is to say no the next time he wants more money (and they hope having the junior person will help them weather the storm if the senior guy quits). I definitely understand the issue from their perspective as the employer and how they don’t want to feel dependent on any one employee.

Craigslist is full of wanna-be entrepreneurs who will happily throw equity at anyone who can turn on a computer. They promise executive positions and lavish salaries once they’ve become “the next Google”. Sadly, every one of these people I’ve ever talked to is totally clueless, and doubtfully will even become the next Pets.com.

Future considerations have some value, but unfortunately it’s usually FAR, FAR less then what people want us to value it as. In any business agreement, I’d basically view future considerations as “sweeteners” and not enter the agreement unless it’s worth doing without those considerations.

Have you ever been promised future consideration in the workplace? How often do you receive it? Have you ever managed to come into a workplace in a position then get a dramatic raise or promotion on-the-job? How did you do it?