ejhildreth's posterous

Screw You @IdahoHumane: Employee Wronged my Family

^* Please note: The Idaho Humane Society's employee lacked civility and so I see no reason to be civil back to them in this recounting of the tale.

My mother in law recently passed away after a sudden illness and one of the many loose ends that my wife Sarah had to take care of was what to do with the pets (two dogs and a cat). Princess, an eight year old, white, short haired, Free Take One, Wal-mart cardboard box special, ended up coming home with us. Problem is, she has something wrong with her and likes to lash out and attack at random times. Also, she is a little bit incontinent, and was peeing everywhere but the litter box (the counter, in a plant, on some towels) and may have had some sort of eye infection.

After a long mental struggle, Sarah finally decided that the cat wasn't the right fit for our house and figured that Princess was probably too old to actually get placed if we put her up for adoption. Coupled with the incontinence and the lashing out, and the fact that the Idaho Humane Society recently waived fees because they had too many cats, Sarah decided to have the cat euthanized. For those that don't know Sarah, she loves cats and dogs. Anytime she sees an animal that needs help, she will help it. I know for a fact we would have more stray animals in our neighborhood if she didn't take the time to trap the strays and take them to the shelter. Since we have always had good care and have been treated well, we decided that the Idaho Humane Society would be the place we took Princess to.

Once we got there, we were helped by a lady (I'm being nice here) that wore a scarf (presumably to cover up her cottage cheese neck) that I will call The Suck. The Suck asked why we were there, and we told her that it wasn't our cat, my mother in law passed away, the cat is not doing well, and that it would be best if we put her down. The Suck then asked if we tried to place the cat with somebody else and we responded that she doesn't do well with other animals, and she has a tendency to lash out at random times. The Suck responded why don't you put her up for adoption here so she "Has a chance at a better second life."

A better second life? WTF are you talking about, you don't know anything about the first life she had! Are you inferring that A. the cat was worse off when she was with my mother in law and B. that somehow we are bad people because we brought here in? SCREW YOU!

At this point, Sarah said no, after considering all the scenarios, we still think that it would be best to put the cat down. The Suck then went on to say something about how it would be better to put her up for adoption so the vets can inspect her, and if she was deemed unhealthy, or unfit to be placed then the Idaho Humane Society would make the decision to euthanize her.

At this point, my wife started to tear up and said, "Why are you pushing so hard for this? You are making a hard decision even harder." Which The Suck murmured something about how she was taking the cat's best interest in mind. Really? Really?!? You have only been around the cat for all of two minutes. Are you some sort of cat psychic? A cat whisperer? One touch of a cat's fur and you instantly get a mental vision of the entire cat's life to base this remark on?

That's bullshit, The Suck and if you think you do have some sort of special gift, then you are a special kind of stupid. I'm sure you probably see and hear some fucked up things that people do to animals at that shelter, but to take one look at an animal and to assume that you know what's best…

At this point, The Suck gave us the paperwork to fill out, which Sarah did with tears running down her face. I went ahead and payed the fee and if The Suck hadn't caused enough trouble, she started picking at it again right before taking the cat to the back by saying, "I just don't understand why you wouldn't let us try to adopt her out first." I looked at Sarah, and her bottom lip was quivering and I literally started shaking with anger and had to hold myself back with every once of energy to not backhand that stupid Bitch The Suck right then and there. How dare she? Are you that fucking blind The Suck? Do you not see what you are doing to my wife?

In my opinion The Suck, your job has made you cynical about people's true intentions, and you are so blinded by that cynicism that it impacts the way you interact with others. Your tone was wrong, your handling of the situation was wrong, and worst of all you did not listen. Because of your actions, we will no longer donate, volunteer, adopt, or use the vets at the Idaho Humane Society and we will make damn sure that anybody we know hears this story. We may not be able to impact you or your mission, but if we give one person the slightest pause to rethink using the Idaho Humane society, then this post has been worth it.

My Biz is on Social Media, Now What? 5 Tips from a Potential Customer

First off, congratulations are in order if your business has taken that giant leap of faith and dove head first into the murky waters that is Social Media (SM).  The pressure to prove the value of taking on such an endeavor can be great, and no, there is not a magic indicator to show an accurate Return on Investment (ROI).  You just have to believe in what you are doing and what you're gut is telling you.  Just like scuba diving, you will need to be patient while you learn to use the equipment and you will bump into a few unseen obstacles along the way.  Since there is no real clear path to SM Rockstar status, people will forgive the occasional slip ups as you find your way.  However,  here are a few newbie SM faux pas avoidance Tips from Your Potential Customer:

1. Be Social. The key to Social Media is just that, social.  Don't use your accounts as a one way street and only post ads about your product/service. Talk with your customer... Listen to the feedback... Respond to their Concerns... Answer their Questions.  You save a customer even 5 seconds of time giving out some info that could be found elsewhere (e.g. your address, phone number), the good will it generates can be counted in the win column every time.
2. Don't Link Bomb.  There is a tendency to want to push all of your site's highlights, upcoming events, sales, promotions, and what not out through your SM stream.  *Don't*  I repeat Don't.  Link bombing is a straight up ROI move with a tremendous downside: it can alienate the people your are trying to get your message out to.  They are already bombarded by messages in every other medium and doing this in SM will just fatigue them even further.  People want to make good connections, have that back and forth to know that the products or services they use care about them as much as they care about it.
3. No Automation.  Sure, programs or scripts that automatically publish your message on the time schedule you want to have them sent out are handy.  However, SM peeps do not want to see it and in fact get annoyed when it happens.  Two primary examples: Don't autorespond to somebody when they start following you.  Don't autopublish several messages in a row with the latest blog posts/content from your site.  People will just ignore it.
   
4. Don't Fake It.  Either you want to have positive interactions with your customers or you don't.  Either way, people can spot a phony.  Once they do, your brand is damaged in that persons mind.  The best policy is to just be yourself, respond how you want others to respond to you, and don't put anything in your SM stream that you do not truly mean or can back up.
   
5. Provide Free WiFi. If you operate a brick and mortar store location (especially restaurants), you really should consider offering your customers this as a free service.  Mobile phones have come a long way to provide connectivity in your pocket, but sometimes it is not enough.  Decent meeting spaces are at a premium and your customer may choose another location based solely on wifi as a criterion. Besides, if they are happy in your place of business, they may end up giving you props on their SM networks thus providing you with good word of mouth.
   

Find Mac Buried Apps in Spotlight and the Application Directory

One of the tools I frequently use on my MacBook Pro work machine is FileMerge (part of XCode) to graphically display the changes between one version of a file to another.  After my recent upgrade to Snow Leopard, I decided to use Spotlight as my application launcher instead of Quicksliver on a trial basis.  However, I ran into a problem:  Not all applications were indexed by Spotlight by default (specifically FileMerge). Apparently, Spotlight was only indexing apps it found in the /Applications folder instead of the whole drive.  Since XCode had several apps in it that I never use, I really didn't want to have that directory (/Developer/Applications/Utilities/) be indexed by Spotlight.  So what was I to do?

Solution: Symoblic links.  It is probably no secret that I loves me some command line! Once I found where the FileMerge Application was located at, it became a simple matter of firing up the command line and creating that link.  Viola!  Now FileMerge is showing up in Spotlight as I wanted it to (incidentally, it shows up in Snow Leopards Application Stack in the Dock as well!).  I'm sure you can do this for most of the applications that are stored in other places as well.

FileMerge Symbolic Link Creation Steps:

• Open Terminal
• cd /Applications
• ln -s /Developer/Utilities/Applications/FileMerge.app FileMerge.app
  

A Public Library in Georgia adds a Teen Trustee

Since the dawn of the Internet Information age, one primary concern for libraries was how they would adapt.  A clear divide could be seen between the Digital Natives and the Digital Immigrants (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native).  This process lead to some speculation on how to make libraries more relavant to the younger generation.  It appears that officials at DeKalb County Public Library in Georgia have realized that they need to have a teen's perspective when making these types of decisions and now have a teen member on their board of trustees.  Way to go Georgia!  http://www.georgialibraries.org/news/articles.php?searchid=75

Be Smart and GTD...

SMART meaning specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-boxed.  I desperately need a system that works for me.  Suggestions?