A New Beginning

Hi, my name is Sally and I’m an internet addict.  Writing has always been my therapy of choice and soxgal.net will be another outlet for all of the ideas jumbled in my head.  I likely will NOT have a singular focus and you may find entries about parenthood, gaming, literature, education, baseball, science-fiction, technology, social media or other varied topics.

Freedom of information and the free exchange of ideas is a wonderful thing.  I promise I won’t hold anything back.  I’m looking for ongoing dialogue, a conversation, even a heated debate.  Join me in exploration of our ever-changing world.

A Terrible Sound

My parenting style is a little loose. I like to give my son the freedom to explore his world and become his own person without much influence from me and his father. This isn’t because we don’t care about him and don’t want to spend time with him. It’s because we’re desperately afraid of being helicopter parents and keeping him in a protective bubble his entire life. We’re of the mindset that the more he learns and discovers through his own devices the more well-rounded he’ll be.

Sometimes my husband thinks I’m a little overprotective and paranoid about Travis’ health and well-being. I tend to check him a few times each night to make sure he’s still breathing. We’re well beyond the age where SIDS is a constant concern but I have an irrational fear that one day we’ll find him in a permanent sleep. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of other parents had similar fears.

The other night Travis stated that he wanted to play in Mommy & Daddy’s room and wandered out of sight. Brandon and I were both home due to a snowstorm and we’d become quite complacent and tired of chasing Travis around the house. Sure enough, Travis took himself upstairs to play in our bedroom. Neither of us followed him because we didn’t want to encourage the use of our bedroom as a playroom. We weren’t terribly worried that Travis would get himself in any trouble because he’d been going up and down the stairs without our assistance for several weeks.

A few minutes later, when Travis realized we weren’t coming upstairs to play with him, he must have decided to come back down to where we were. That’s when it happened. Travis fell down the stairs. It didn’t register at first. Brandon and I heard THUD, THUNK, BUMP, CRASH as Travis lost his footing and gravity assisted him to the bottom of the staircase. The bloodcurdling scream Travis let out was the most awful sound we’ve heard yet as parents. The first time, the ONLY TIME, we didn’t watch him on the stairs was the time he lost his footing and fell. Those first few minutes were chaos as we tried to determine if Travis was screaming in pain, in fear or a bit of both. We felt for broken bones, looked for bruising and tried to calm a very startled 28-month old. Luckily for us, Travis only damaged his confidence. And we can rest easy now because he won’t go near a set of stairs without us.

Risky Business

I’ve been in a bit of “radio silence” lately, greatly ignoring this blog and my participation in other social media outlets. I’ve been incredibly busy, which to me, is always a good thing. I really don’t know what to do when I have lots of free time on my hands. It’s the holiday season, so I’ve been spending my weekends working at my not-quite-local Eddie Bauer store. I do it for fun, because I enjoy spending time with my coworkers, with the customers and with the product. I also do it because it helps me keep my finger on the pulse of the economy and I never lose sight of what’s going on in the lives of our customers.

People I work with often ask me why, since I have a master’s degree, am I working for an hourly wage as a regular sales associate. Why would I “stoop” to the level of stocking shelves, ringing a cash register and handling sometimes unpleasant customers? I do it because I think it’s important not to lose sight of exceptional customer service. I’ve worked in a number of professional positions over the years and I’ve found that in many companies, the further the position is from the front lines of customer interaction the less likely it is that the people in those positions will remember that at the end of the day, THE CUSTOMER PROVIDES THE PAYCHECK. Without customers a business is without purpose and will cease to exist.

I don’t care if you’re sitting in a corner office or penthouse suite. If you’re not talking to your customers and your front-line employees you’re not doing your job. Also, if you sell a product or service directly to a consumer make sure you’ve made a purchase yourself. You should experience the same thing your customer does, from your customer’s viewpoint. This is especially important for those of us in e-commerce. If you’re selling a product online make sure you’re familiar with the online browsing and purchase experience. If you’ve just joined an organization your first task should be to go through the purchase flow.

Sometimes, there’s a fine line between staying afloat and truly servicing a “customer is always right” policy. I’ve found many businesses afraid of empowering employees to make decisions necessary for customer satisfaction. There’s a fear that employees and customers will abuse the policies and cut deep into profit margins. My experience, at both Disney and Eddie Bauer have shown me that this rarely happens. Disney gave Cast Members the power to make sure a guest was 110% satisfied and Eddie Bauer has the most generous return policy I’ve seen in retail. Do some people take advantage of this? YES. Do most people? NO.

I often choose my employer based on its commitment to customer service and satisfaction. I’ve left some stable opportunities when I found that upper management didn’t have a connection or concern for the customer experience. I’ve recently joined a start up company that I think is always thinking about how to best serve the customer.

Most of this post has been written with a view for those of us who are in business and serving customers. That’s only one part of the equation. I think it’s just as important for customers to take charge of their experiences with vendors. If something isn’t to your satisfaction, tell someone. Yes, in an ideal world every employee would be bending over backwards to make sure you have the best experience possible with their organization. In practice, we don’t always get a chance to service every customer that comes through our doors. If we ask you if you found everything you needed or if you’d been helped and the experience wasn’t to your standards, please let us know so we can attempt to make it right. If we can’t fix it for you, perhaps we’ll come across some process improvement to make it better for future customers.

If we’ve done something right, tell us. We’re not just looking for a pat on the back. It’s helpful for us to know what’s working. Did you receive exceptional service from an associate? Let us know who it was that delighted you. We’ll want to hire more people like him/her. Is there some company policy that’s just so amazing you want to tell everyone about it? Please do. We may want to extend that policy to other areas of our business. In the end, businesses want to WOW CUSTOMERS so completely that customers come back multiple times. It’s mutually beneficial: the business gets a customer with a high lifetime value and the customer has an experience that is consistent and fulfills a need.

In every interaction you have, make sure you’re asking the question HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Leader of the Band

Once again, Facebook informed me of someone’s death. I don’t really have any words to describe how I’ve been feeling upon learning that George N. Parks passed away yesterday. I performed with the Minuteman Marching Band from 1996-1999, enjoying four seasons of amazing experiences. I’ve performed for President Clinton, marched at Giants Stadium, played halftime at a Montreal Alouettes game, received the Sudler Trophy and cheered the UMass football team to a National Championship. I wouldn’t have done any of it without the enthusiasm, dedication and leadership from Mr. Parks. Through all of this, I’ve had Dan Fogelberg’s “Leader of the Band” stuck in my head today and I leave you with his lyrics (with minor edits in tribute):

I thank you for the music
And your stories of the road
I thank you for the freedom
When it came my time to go
I thank you for the kindness
And the times when you got tough
And, Mr. Parks, I don’t think I
Said ‘thank you’ near enough

The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument
And his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy
To the leader of the band

The Eyes of a Child

We’re going to Disney World next week for the first time as parents. We’re taking our son for his not-quite-2nd birthday. You’ve probably read my previous Disney post. It was a different experience for me then as a Cast Member and now I’m going to see it through the eyes of a child. My child.

We’ve managed to take this trip on a fairly short budget. Travis will fly free since he’s under two years old. I booked my husband’s ticket with an Award Flight from JetBlue. We’re Disney Vacation Club members and will be staying for the first time at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. I’m looking forward to a Pacific Northwest theme and I bet Travis will enjoy the trains running throughout the resort.

We’re not sure how much Travis will remember from this first visit so we may skip the theme parks entirely. It’ll still be the perfect Disney vacation. There’s so much to do at the various resorts and the Downtown Disney area that we won’t have an excuse for saying “I’m bored.” Eating at WDW restaurants is one of my favorite vacation activities and this trip we’ve purchased the Disney Deluxe Dining Plan to make sure we eat well. With a combination of any three table service or quick service meals per day, plus two snacks and a refillable drink mug per person we’ll probably gain a combined 50 lbs. The dining plan isn’t available for children under 3 so we went with the Deluxe plan so we’d have some extra meals to share with Travis.

Even if we don’t make it to the theme parks proper, we’ll definitely do at least one character dining experience. My favorite is breakfast at Chef Mickey’s in Disney’s Contemporary Resort. I just hope Travis doesn’t run away screaming when the characters come to visit. During my first Chef Mickey’s character breakfast, nearly 20 years ago, Goofy came over and sat in my lap. For dinner there are two musts on our restaurant list; Cape May Cafe at Disney’s Beach Club and Yachtsman Steakhouse at Disney’s Yacht Club. The first offers an all-you-can-eat surf & turf buffet. I’m not lying when I say I’ll spend a few hours drenching mussels and clams in the hot melted butter from the Cape May Cafe dinner buffet. The Yachtsman Steakhouse offers a more formal environment (I’d suggest business casual dress) and a pricier menu but the food is worth every penny. We had our wedding “reception” dinner there a few years ago and still get comments from guests about how good the food was.

For evenings of adult R&R, we visit Jellyrolls at Disney’s Boardwalk. We’ve been hanging out there for several years now and hope that Scotty is still there doing his Kermit impression. If you’ve seen him perform you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, I’d suggest adding Jellyrolls to your itinerary. NB: when we last visited (2008) smoking was allowed inside. If Jellyrolls isn’t your style, a nice evening stroll around the boardwalk, over to the Yacht & Beach club area and the International Gateway at Epcot is a perfect substitute.

What was your first Disney experience? What makes your perfect Disney vacation?

Home again, home again

It’s very exciting when you leave small town life behind and adapt to the hustle and bustle of city living. After 15 years of being away from my home town I moved back. There are benefits to being “home”: intimate knowledge of traffic patterns; family and friends who never left; lower cost of living; shorter commute to the office. But it’s not the town I left. It’s changed and not for the better. In fact, my hometown, Gardner, has experienced so much negative change that it’s one of two towns featured in WBUR’s “Towns in Trouble” series.

Listening to the WBUR segments has been a slap in the face from reality. In the first segment (link above) the current mayor referenced City Hall Auditorium. Immediately, my mind filled with memories of high school semi-formal dances, Veteran’s Day services and a host of other community functions. Now the building is a glorified storage unit. In the second segment, the focus became the Greenwood Memorial Swimming Pool. Like many of those who commented on the WBUR site, I learned to swim in that pool. I was never on the swim team, but the Gardner High School girls’ swim team won national championships each year I attended Gardner High.

As I drive through town I’m not hit with a sense of nostalgia. I’m overwhelmed with sadness. It’s sad to see that there’s no industry left to give people jobs and give them hope. Everything is run down and grimy. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort to bring Gardner back to its former glory. Gardner itself is allegory for my current living situation. My grandfather is transitioning to the latter part of his life and moved out of his house. My family moved in.

We knew there would be a lot of work to do when we agreed to rent this house. My grandfather will be 88 in November. I’ll be 32 in July. I don’t know exactly when my grandparents bought this house, but it’s where my mother and her siblings were raised for most of their lives. There’s at least 50 years worth of stuff and memories in this house.

It’s only been about a week since we moved in and already our list of home improvements is far longer than we anticipated. The carpets are worn and dingy. The kitchen cabinets are showing signs of wear. The outdoor railings are rusty and loose. The refrigerator leaks. I could go on, but I won’t. Instead we’ll fix one thing at a time, revitalizing this house. We’ll try to bring back the family traditions of Sunday coffee & donuts at Mem & Pep’s. We’ll bring another generation of aunts, uncles and cousins together, sharing our hopes and dreams, successes and let downs.

I look out into the backyard and am greeted by errant trees and un-pruned bushes. I don’t really see them. Instead, I see ghosts of the sandbox and swing set where I’d play with my cousins. I look for the dandelions and buttercups we’d pick and give to our mothers and grandmother. I see hints of the garden patch where Pep planted tomatoes and cukes. Upstairs, when I poke my head in Travis’ room to check in on him it isn’t his crib and toys that I see. I see the shadow of a young girl, excited for a sleepover at Mem & Pep’s. She’s staying up in bed, well past her bed time, a cat curled at her feet, reading Archie comic books and listening to the loud tick of the wind-up alarm clock.

I see the past and the future here. I only hope it turns out well.

Full Circle

Death is part of life but that doesn’t make it easy to accept or understand. Last summer we went through two traumatic deaths in my family. This year, my sister is preparing for the loss of her father-in-law to cancer and we’re watching our grandfather slowly slip into the grasp of old age.

I didn’t think preparing for my grandfather’s passing would bother me this much. He’ll be 88 in November and has lived quite a full life. When his time comes it’ll be a rest he’s earned and long deserved. I watch with excitement as my son discovers new things and learns new words. I watch with sadness as Pep forgets things. I have a feeling he’s starting to forget us.

We’re moving into his house in a few weeks. He’ll be moving out, to stay with his son for awhile, then transition to an assisted living facility. We went to visit this past weekend and he seemed excited that our son, Travis, would have his yard and house to play in. He called us at an ungodly hour later that night and forgot that we were moving to his house. He spoke to my husband and when Brandon told Pep we were packing to move Pep’s response was “oh, where are you moving to?”

My siblings and cousins have all had similar experiences. He calls at strange hours, and often forget who he’s trying to call by the time someone answers the phone. He’s confusing all the generations, and doesn’t always seem to remember if we’re his children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren. We looked at a family photo album during our visit and Pep described my parents and siblings to me LIKE HE DIDN’T REALIZE I WAS IN THE PHOTO WITH THEM OR WAS STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO HIM.

I want to think that he’ll still remember us at the time he passes, but in reality, he probably won’t. There are some memories that we share I hope he’ll take with him, even if he can’t remember my name or which of his daughters I belong to. Old age scares me. I don’t like to be around old people. How awful must it be when all of your friends have died off and the memories you do have begin to blur?

Even if the entire family is in the room when Pep passes I’m afraid that he’s going to die completely alone. That’s the worst feeling of all.

Reset, Refreshed

Taking family time over the holidays was an important step toward resetting my outlook and perspective on life, the universe and everything. I’m still quite cynical about a lot of issues and may even have some extremist views in certain cases (death penalty, euthanasia, end-of-life medical care) but at least I’ve decided that I have a viewpoint and am willing and able to discuss that view with others. I like the spark of debate these views can cause and I like hearing about the issues from someone else’s perspective. I won’t approach a conversation with a closed mind, but sharing your point of view with me doesn’t mean you’ll switch me to your line of thinking.

What’s the most difficult thing for you, when listening to viewpoints differing from your own? In any situation, how do you handle conversations among multiple parties who may all have a passionate stand about an issue that doesn’t align with your personal perspective? Does your behavior change with context? What’s different about how you participate in conversations when the context is personal? Professional? Is there ever any overlap between personal and professional?

Breaking the Silence

It’s been quite some time since I’ve had any thoughts to share. For those of you who follow this blog, thank you for still being with me. We’re coming up on the end of the year and I’ve been doing a lot of reflection. I try very hard not to let personal issues get me down and keep me down but this year has been extremely difficult for my family.

The police report from my mother-in-law’s accident just came out the other day. The Salem News article headline calls out the accident as “overwhelmingly avoidable.” We had a feeling this would be the result of the accident reconstruction and police investigation, but why did it take six months for us to get more news? There’s no closure for the family yet. We’re still tied up in loose ends of police work and court hearings. I’m considering going to the pretrial hearing in February, but I’m not sure if that would help with my healing process or just make the wounds deeper.

This past week, a coworker also had a traumatic family experience. My heart just broke when I heard about the story because it reminded me of the search for my uncle this summer. I’m glad my coworker’s wife was found alive. I’m not sure I’d have been able to handle a different outcome.

Travis and I are going to Spring Hill, FL next week to visit my parents. After losing Linda and Mark this year, we felt it was important to take Travis to see his other grandparents and get to spend some time with them. As happy and excited as I am to be heading to the airport on Tuesday for a much-needed vacation, I feel guilty to be leaving my husband at home to get through the first Christmas without his mother alone. Neither of us gets tons of vacation time from our employers and we used most of it this year for funerals. Brandon said it’s ok for me to take Travis to visit, but I’m really worried about how he, his father and brother will make it through the holiday.

Once we get through the rest of the holiday season, I’m going to refocus my writing and make sure I’m providing content that isn’t focused on just myself and my family. I hope you understand this necessary detour and I look forward to conversing with you in 2010.

The Riot About Hyatt

I listen to the Boston public radio station, WBUR, everyday during my morning and evening commute. During the past week I’ve continued to hear reports about the Hyatt hotel chain replacing some of its housekeeping staff in three Boston-area hotels with a housekeeping services firm. In response to the layoff, Gov. Deval Patrick threatened a boycott of the Hyatt hotels for state functions and employee travel.
Hyatt has six properties in Massachusetts. From reading the press releases available on the Hyatt web site, it appears that Hyatt has 600 employees remaining in its Massachusetts locations.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that hotels are downsizing their workforces. Actually, in this economy, it shouldn’t be a surprise that any company needs to downsize. The travel industry is hit particularly hard by changes in consumer and corporate spending. Business travel, which used to provide the majority of hotel occupancy, is down. Leisure travel is dropping, with people staying closer to home and taking much shorter vacations, if traveling at all. Last November, USA Today posted an article about declining hotel occupancy rates. It’s almost a year later and a prominent hotel chain decides to make a business decision that involves labor. I just don’t understand the uproar.

Having the right to work doesn’t guarantee you the right to keep your job. Massachusetts is an employment-at-will state. Unless there is a written contract specifying an employment term, an employer or employee can terminate the employment relationship AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON (including no reason whatsoever). Wrongful termination cases are very difficult to prosecute as the onus is on the terminated employee to prove that the termination violated federal employment law (EOE, ADA, etc.)

Would the outcry have been different if Hyatt had chosen to close an entire Boston property instead of replacing a portion of its staff with contractors? Assuming that Hyatt’s remaining Massachusetts employees are evenly distributed among its six locations and that the 100 laid off housekeeping staff were evenly distributed among the three Boston properties, closing one of those locations would have resulted in 133.3 lost jobs. That’s an increase of 35%. Would the public really be in favor of increasing Hyatt’s layoff by 35%? Laying off the housekeepers reduced Hyatt’s Massachusetts workforce by 14%; closing one of the Boston properties would have reduced it by 19%. Business decisions that result in workforce reduction are unpopular, but we’ve got to remember that business is business. While it is wonderful to have employers take care of their employees through generous compensation and benefits plans, at the end of the day, the bottom line needs to make sense.

The cost of doing business in Massachusetts is rising. Our state sales tax increased 25% this year. In Boston, the hotels & meals taxes have just been raised to 14.45% and 7.0%, respectively. We’ve just made it more difficult to encourage hotel occupancy in the state and our own state government wants to boycott local hotels? If this is leadership by example, I don’t want to follow.

Banned Books Week

Censorship and denial of First Amendment rights is nothing to celebrate. September 26-October 3, 2009 is Banned Books Week and is meant to draw attention to books that have been banned or challenged and removed from some schools and libraries across the country. The following is the American Library Association’s list of frequently challenged books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course’s Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

I’ve bolded the titles that are among the challenged. I’ve crossed out books I’ve read. I’ve put an asterisk next to titles I want to read. Take a look at this list and do the same…try to read at least one of these books this week in support of Banned Books Week.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison*
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey*
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut*
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving*
38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce*
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess*
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger*
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie*
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett*
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie