If you have not seen the movie “Up” you should. There’s a scene where there are dogs at a dog park and they have collars that enable them to speak English to humans. In some ways it’s very touching – it’s as if they have always wanted to communicate with humans and now they finally can. There’s a video of that part of it on YouTube here. The hitch is that they are still dogs, so while conveying their true feelings to humans, they can still be distracted by things like squirrels.
So I was talking with my friend Michael about how many people at work get distracted by so many things that they should not be focused on, and we agreed that it would be funny, and useful to call those “squirrels” in a work setting. Michael then went so far as to suggest that he should have squirrel stickers to hand to people to let them know that even if they are talking about something with amazing potential (which is often the case), it’s still a distraction from what we really need to accomplish.
So I decided to make those squirrel stickers for Michael, because I think it’s a fun way to make a great point.
I have never had stickers made before, so I did an internet search in my browser (though I really wasn’t browsing – I was actually intent on buying something, but that word choice is the subject of another rethink blog) for stickers. Zazzle came up and I went to their site and to their credit, they have a pretty good user interface and their sticker-maker technology is good. So I uploaded my squirrel image (below) and placed the order and paid extra for overnight delivery – knowing I needed it on August 31.
So on August 30, I went back to the order confirmation e-mail I got to check on the status of my order and to my amazement I learned that my order had been cancelled. After a little back-and-forth with customer support, they claim they sent me an e-mail explaining that the order was cancelled for some policy reason that they didn’t / wouldn’t explain.
Michael (who loves thousands of miles away from me) was to be in town on August 31 and I intended to give him his squirrel stickers and Zazzle completely failed me in my attempt, and worse, they made no effort to remedy the situation, let alone explain it. They need to do some serious rethinking over there or they will be out of business.
I was angry, but I was not about to give up. There’s a Kinkos (which I guess isn’t called Kinkos anym0re – I guess it’s FedEx Office). I went to the Kinkos at the Washington State Convention Center and they took good care of me. I had my stickers in less than three hours and it was less than Zazzle was going to charge me. Hooray for Kinkos!
Squirrel!
-Ric
Good thing you but a squirrel sticker on this blog entry. Nuff said. 🙂
Ric – Too funny. I’m easily distracted by stuff and would get plastered with those stickers quickly.
Embedded in the story is a great example of how an organization was not customer focused.
Thanks for sharing.
-Bob
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