Get off my lawn!!!

I spent a short bit of time working in the USA, and one of the larger telecom companies there is Verizon. Verizon did a series of adverts which featured a character who was supposed to be a technician, walking around various locations, and repeating into the phone "can you hear me now?".

The idea was simple, but fairly clever, that as the character illustrated going to various locations where the typical American would not expect any cellphone coverage, Verizon would still be the most likely to provide reception. Verizon's main selling point was that they offered the best coverage across the USA, and just checking on opensignal.com, it seems they still do, more than 7 years on since I saw the ads.

The downside of the adverts is that they kind of got annoying quickly because the ad script was primarily that same person saying "can you hear me now?" over and over. Just search for that phrase on YouTube and you'll see for yourself.

And that brings me to what's eating me right now, and its the open plan office that I work in. Open plan is a concept that works with the idea that it fosters collaboration and a sense of equality across all staff. There is also the hope that people would goof off less as they are exposed to a larger number of colleagues who can see what they're doing. That of course doesn't guarantee anything as was seen by a worker at Macquarie Bank: http://www.smh.com.au/national/interest-in-assets-macquarie-worker-caught-ogling-pictures-of-miranda-kerr-live-on-tv-20100203-nbsi.html

In my workplace, I seem to have been more affected by people who either:

1. choose to shout at each other across a few desks rather than walk across
2. decide to talk loudly about the weekend, or recently about Taylor Swift, for 15min
3. have daily loud personal phone calls with family
4. have sinus trouble that results in constant regular sniffing, but never touch the box of tissues that are on their desk

Am I turning into one of those short-tempered grizzly old men who just don't tolerate anyone or anything?

*sigh* I need a nap.

Boom boom

Taylor Swift has a concert on tonight, just 500m from where I work. They're currently doing the preliminary soundchecks, but even though I'm on the far side of the office behind walls and double glazed glass, it sounds as if they are performing on the floor upstairs. I feel sorry for the people who live around the stadium, as they will not be enjoying their tv shows or going to bed early tonight.

Meow meow

Last friday, when talking to some of the guys at work about the weekend and stuff, I mentioned that I'd been teaching myself to juggle.

One of the other guys had taught himself a similar thing a number of years ago when he was still in uni. Apparently he used to moonlight as a bartender for a few years to supplement the costs of tertiary education. Anyway he was explaining the details of "flair bartending", and how he got into juggling with the intent of adding a bit more style and excitement to his work. The idea being that a better show for clients leads to a slight increase in tips, although he did say in the end that being gifted with looking cute trumped any skills a person could learn, hence some of the female bartenders always earned more tips without throwing bottles and glasses around.

In the process of explaining how he taught himself from a book on juggling, he mentioned about learning to juggle with different and odd shaped objects. I had been using a set of hackysacks, but it got me thinking that as I get better, I need to look progressing to beyond the training set of juggling balls.

On the weekend, I tried 3 kittens, and only dropped them a few times. Fortunately the little guys always land on their feet.

Cookie slime

Yesterday, my wife made some really tasty gluten free choc-chip cookies. But the way she shaped them instantly conjured images from a video game I used to play years ago; Dragon Quest.

Cookie

Slime

Maybe you needed to have spent over a hundred hours playing the game before you see it...

Understanding business helps with understanding car yards

When people find out that I worked as car salesperson, howbeit quite briefly, a good proportion will then pepper me with questions arising from their perceived miserable experience(s) in buying a car from a retailer.

Basically, its business. And if you think about it for a moment in a rational and reasoned way, all business is like that, but we get hung up on cars because they cost significantly more than any sofa or television, and depreciate much quicker as well. Any business that sells a product needs to have a portion added on to the wholesale price to provide a profit. And that profit doesn't just go into the salesperson's pocket, or the boss' pocket. There are a huge amount of costs that have to be covered.

This includes administrative staff, utility fees, advertising costs, GST, rental, insurance, government registration costs, franchise costs, stock overhead costs, interest on inventory outlay, costs relating to lost or damaged items, costs relating to theft or vandalism, insurance claim premiums, and finally a certain amount of the profit has to be set aside to be used for future growth and infrastructure investment. Additionally with vehicles, there is stamp duties, registration fees and mechanical servicing that is factored in as well. So this means that the car you are buying is not actually worth the $30,000 sticker price, because that price has all those elements factored into it. The immediate depreciation your vehicle experiences as soon as it leaves the yard, is primarily due to that, and hence that is why you can't bring the car back the next day and ask to sell it back for $30,000.

Now if you want to sell a vehicle to a caryard, you face getting significantly less than what the market appears to be paying for you car. People always struggle with this. "This same car is going for $15,000 in your yard. Why won't you give me $15,000 to buy mine?"

Well the reasons are, as with any product, the business valuing your car is also allowing for all the costs and overheads mentioned above. They are also factoring other elements as well, such as the possibility that the car might sit there for 6 months and it'll be depreciating the entire time. Also when a person walks into a used car lot, they rarely will pay the sticker price on the car, they will always seek to haggle. And that is factored into the price as well.

Now you'll always get more if you sell your vehicle direct to consumers, as you then remove alot of the costs that are eating into the price you can get. Selling it direct means that there is no middle man profit, no other overheads that a person has to allow for, but it is a hassle as it now means that YOU have to find and deal with customers, and that can be a real pain.

So people still take their cars to the yard, because they know that if they agree on price, the sale will be done right then and there, without an advert dragging on for weeks or months without a buyer.

I want to know if there is a more concise way to teach people how basic commercial transactions work, so that they can be prepared and not be offended when it comes to buying or selling a vehicle from a dealership. Once they understand it, then it becomes simple. It is just business.

Job perks

I mentioned before that I worked as a car salesman. Only lasted 6 months as I just don't have the qualities that make a person successful in that, but I did love quite a few aspects of the job. I loved being around cars all day, and as it was a used vehicle yard, then there was a fairly diverse array makes and models. You start off thinking that you're never going to remember the inventory and features, but it quickly becomes second nature, like knowing what's in the fridge (well, depending on whether you do your own shopping...).

I won't talk about what ruins the sales job, as that is material for a different post, but I did enjoy meeting people. A good percentage of people, I'd guess maybe a third, just hate you on sight because of the job you have and the reputations of car sales people. But the remainder will open up and talk to you about stuff while you're stuck with them during the course of the sales process.

One of the times that a junior sales person gets stuck with the customer is during trade-in evaluations. The vehicle valuation is done by either the yard manager, a specialised value (if the yard is big enough to have one), or else just by a senior sales person. You'd expect that, because you need a person who knows what to look for, and has an idea intuitively of what the vehicle is actually worth.

Now customers aren't wanted to be present during their vehicle evaluation for the main reason that most customers will either get upset or defensive while their car is being inspected. The customer is re-engaged when it comes to negotiations of vehicle worth during the purchase period, so while the evaluation is happening, the sales person usually has to sit with the customer to talk to them and keep them from getting bored or frustrated.

This is where my post comes in; one day a lady came in to look to see what the trade-in of her Suzuki Sierra would be. She wasn't looking to buy anything, as she already was sourcing a vehicle from somewhere else, or was just looking to offload a vehicle that she wasn't using anymore. That meant that while the evaluation was being done, there was nothing I could distract her with. She wasn't wanting to look at cars in the yard, and it was hot out anyway, so I was left to keep her occupied until the manager came back.

But here she told me a fascinating story that led to her being there. Originally, back in 1999, she lived with her partner up in a small town on the western coast of Australia, and they made a living doing odd jobs and occasional tour guide work. An American pro-basketball player named Brian Williams, who'd just retired from the Pistons, stopped at the town while sailing around the world, and in the course of meeting each other at the local yacht club, Brian Williams invited this lady and her partner to join him on his boat as staff. So for something like 2 years they sailed the world with Brian Williams.

There weren't many people on the boat besides them, the skipper, Brian and his girlfriend. Occasionally other members of Brian's family would join them, particularly Brian's older brother, but over the months that Brian's brother was on board, this lady told me they could see various tensions between the two, so finally early in 2002, she and her partner decided to part ways and thank Brian for adventure when they docked in Hawaii. After that, they flew back to Australia, but a couple of months later they were contacted by the FBI who were investigating Brian's disappearance. Apparently the brother had sailed the boat back in Tahiti alone and there was no sign of Brian, his girlfriend or the skipper. The FBI reported that the suspected murder occurred only a couple of weeks after they had parted company with Brian, and if they had still been onboard, they would have been victims as well.

Talk about a good call in knowing when to take your leave.

In terms of offer that we made on her car, it wasn't a great offer (which is what you'd expect when selling anything to a reseller, as opposed direct to a customer). So she took her leave of that as well.

I'd say this lady had a pretty good sense of intuition, as she's dodged a couple of bad situations there.

"It's all when, and not if"

In countries where scooters and motorbikes aren't the only affordable option for people to get motorised transport, then this disapproving sentiment is something which every motorcycle rider would have heard several times. And it isn't so much a case of that people in cars drive better, but they are just better protected, and there are certain stability benefits that come from having 4 wheels instead of 2.

Take for example the whole burnout thing; if you do that in a rear-wheel drive car, then you'll annoy everyone in earshot and look like a monkey. If you're foolish or inexperienced, then generally your risk is the possibility of hopping a curb and collecting a power pole. But do that on a motorcycle, then your risks multiply due to the mechanical dynamics and your vulnerability. YouTube is awash with videos of motorcyclists engaged in stunts gone bad, but the injury they risk is more than just their pride.

The one above at least has the good news that she healed up pretty well, but there was alot of pain and tears in the process.

One of the debates that springs up here is about the lane splitting that motorcycles can do in heavy traffic. The vitriol from car drivers is driven primarily from envy, but the law looks down on it as it is dangerous due to drivers not expecting to watch for a bike when changing lanes in congested traffic. When I rode a bike, I pretty much avoided lane splitting due to that risk, and ironically my only accident was due to me sitting behind a SUV, when every other rider was splitting lanes. The SUV pulled an emergency stop and I hadn't allowed enough room for a sluggish morning reaction time. Face meet fender.

I haven't been back to motorcycles since, mainly as other people in my life require me to be more conservative with my transport, but I'd go back in a heartbeat if that wasn't the case.

There's something addictive about riding a motorcycle, and maybe it's being that close to the edge during the trip.