frustration Friday

Frustration Friday: Black Friday

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So it's Black Friday.  The day of massive buying.  The day that launches the Christmas Shopping season.  The day I really try NOT to go out.

So, let me ask a simple question, but one that does focus on a frustrating issue.

Have some businesses – and indeed perhaps the American Economy – become too dependent on Christmas?

I mean I really don't know – it's been a bit tough digging up information – but judging by the sheer insanity every post-Thanksgiving, by the increasing desperation to sell, I'm figuring Christmas has become way too important to many a business.

Really, is that such a good idea?

First, it makes your sales projections awful hard to manage since there's a giant, honking, candy-cane scented anomoly.

Secondly, it's a case of everyone competing with everyone at one specific time, in a limited  timeframe.  It's got to make things too unpredictable.

Third, how many good ideas get held up for the Christmas Season (making point number two more relevant).

Fourth, really, isn't this all just a case of everyone following everyone else?  This could mean everyone heads over an economic cliff one year.

So, I'm starting to get fed up with the Christmas Selling Season for several reasons.  I miss when people actually talked about Thanksgiving.  I miss less commercialization.  But I'm also wondering if our whole approach to the Christmas season is an economically bad idea as well.

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Go Make Something, Numbskulls

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What you say, another raucous rant on the economipocalypse?  Well of course!  Besides, Frustration Friday is focused on foul-ups, frustrating folks, and other things driving us crazy.

And in this case, I've realized what I'd like to say to the various banisters, fraudclosure fiends, mortgage mayhem masters, and the pilots of the rocket dockets.

"Would it have hurt you folks to do something that actually made something?"

I mean really.  New financial tools that were obviously just meant to funnel money away while giving nothing?  Robo-signing that was going to obviously be found?  Sinking the world economy with a shell game?

Would it have hurt all these geniuses to find a way to make money at something that did something, made something, made a difference?

I'd like to know really did they somehow delude themselves into think they were making the world a better place, that what they did mattered?  Did they at least have the honesty to admit they were con-people, deceivers, and exploiters looking for loopholes in and around the rules?

Sadly I'm feeling that some of these econonincompoops really did think they were some great captains of capitalism, some innovators of investments.  That they honestly thought a bunch of resorted loans and quick slice-and-dice of economic items to turn them into investments were going to work.  I'm worried they really, truly, believed they were doing good and making something.

Newsflash.  They weren't.

So when I look at the people that gave us the economic apocalypse, it's another reminder to me to make sure I do something, that I make something, that I build something.

Because damned if I don't want to be like the people that got us into this mess.

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Emo is a No-No

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Frustration Friday: Behold the Power of Emo

I meet people who are suffering in the job search.  They're worried.  They're tired.  They're angsty.  In short, there are many people who get outright Emo over their job search and career issues.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the term Emo, which knowing the gloriously geeky demographics of this blog is unlikely, it can be roughly summarizes as a kind of angst-ridden, self-pitying attitude).

Here's what I want to ask the Emo Careerists:  what the hell is being angsty doing for your career issues?

Is it helping you on the job search?

Is it helping you network?

Is it helping you in interviews?

The answer of course is almost certainly no, unless you interviews are with people who are very pathological and probably not worth working for.  Emo does nothing more than waste energy and annoy people.  A lot.

Here's what Emo is – it's a cry for pity (often not even alloyed with a cry for help).  That's it.  It's a cry for attention, a cry to be thought of as a sad victim, and of course a cry for validation of one's own sorrow.

Such outcries are just plain annoying because they're manipulative, they're posturing, and they're performances.  It's not a try cry for help – and honest cry- it's a passive-aggressive call not so much for help, but for validation of one's own problems and for attention.

Emo isn't about solutions.

So next time you're depressed over your job prospects, if you suspect you're getting Emo, then it's time for some serious self-evaluation.  If you find you are indeed pulling out the Angst Attack on people, then you're sabotaging your life – and you have enough problems as it is.

– Steven Savage