This was assignment from another class, but since it was in a similar column style format, I thought I'd add it since it is sort of interesting!
Gentlemen Prefer Taste While Writers Prefer Earth Friendly
Ads-they can be annoying, informative, intriguing, and even entertaining. When it comes to magazine ads each ad has a different look and emits a different message, even when it comes to ads for the same product. I examined ads for American Spirit cigarettes in GQ and Script Magazine to see how a company varies their ads from one magazine to another and found some drastic differences in their approach to market to these two fairly similar audiences.
The American Spirit Tobacco Company is a comparatively ethical company in the realm of big tobacco companies. With additive free tobacco, earth friendly farming techniques, and organic free tobacco American Spirit is, if it’s possible, a breath of fresh air for the tobacco industry. With such an commendable reputation, one would the think the only way they would need to market their product would simply be to inform the consumer of their environmental and additive free tobacco efforts, but that isn’t the case at all.
In GQ, the American Spirit ads boast one thing and one thing only: natural tastes better. The ad itself is a 6” by 8” card inserted between the glossy fashionable pages of the magazine. One side is bright red with two packs at the top, a small blue barn nestled amongst tobacco leaves and sunflower is tucked into the left bottom corner, and in the middle is the message “Natural Tastes Better” with an offer for a $20 gift certificate below it. On the other side is the same message about taste at the top with a small paragraph explaining the company’s philosophy and practices with a line-up of their products in the middle with the same offer at the bottom, along with a surgeon general’s warning and similar company warning. All of which again is on a solid bright red background without any images of nature like on the other side.
The typical GQ reader is urban males, concerned with men’s fashion and style. Being concerned with the environment isn’t exactly fashionable since it is associated with being a hippie, which is quite the opposite of being a metro-sexual man. With this in mind, American spirit only gave hints of nature and focus instead on the good flavor and therefore better quality of their product in attempts to appeal to a culture that has to have the best of everything.
In the Script Magazine American Spirit ad has an opposite message: that their cigarettes are natural and their company promotes wind power, earth friendly and organic growing techniques and reducing their ecological footprint. Both sides of the ad are a blotchy, grass like green. The front has a large picture of a blue barn with tobacco leaves, sunflowers, and a few wind-power generators dispersed over the page with a brown wooden sign saying “Natural Tastes Better”, the other side saying “It’s only Natural”. Both sides have the $20 gift certificate offer and the back has four paragraphs explaining their efforts and mission to provide quality products, with two wind-power generators.
Identifying Script readers is a little more difficult. Since writing is a difficult profession to break in to, those who are writers tend to have a less superficial attitude when it comes to clothes and their consumption since they don’t really have the time or the funds to be fashionable chick magnets. Accompanying the laid back appearance usually allows writers to care more about the product when they do actually have the money to buy it, since money can be sparse if your work doesn’t sell often. This leads to writer to want to purchase products that are less trendy, better for the environment, and try to avoid buying things they don’t need. American Spirit plays up their eco friendly efforts and additive free tobaccos to grab reader’s attention and give them a cigarette they can feel good about smoking while they’re transforming their latest idea into the next great movie of our time.
So why are people so different? In a consumer driven society, the masses are concerned with their enjoyment of products and don’t care where they came from and what the true price of the production of their products. Boasting care for the earth can get a company labeled as a ‘liberal hippie’ type which doesn’t fit with mainstream culture and mass produced products. American Spirit literally had to trick GQ readers into trying their products by changing their ads drastically from a publication with more open minded readers. Hopefully more environmentally conscious companies will take this approach as well to promote a change in our cultures support of more eco-friendly companies for a more natural tomorrow.
MELISSA KILMER
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
The College Life
The College Life
Everyone knows it’s not easy being a student. Students today juggle class, work, plans for their future, internships, relationships, friendships, their parents, roommates, and deal with finding out who they are and what they want out of life.
After watching “A Vision of Students Today” from Kansas State University, it’s not surprising to hear that students pack 26.5 hours of activities into a 24 hour day. With three year of college under my belt, that’s how I spent most of my college life, taking 18+ units each semester, working 20 hours a week, living in cramped dorm conditions with some pretty unpleasant roommates, spending time with friends, and dealing with dating and relationships.
Like most students, my books didn’t get read in classes where the material wasn’t incorporated in class nor had any real relevance to my life. Un-engaging classes meant low attendance. People in class would have games on their computer screams or have intricate drawings on their note papers. Then there were students who were putting themselves through college and seemed to ask a million questions and took pages upon pages of notes on essentially useless info that they will use on the midterms and finals and forget come next semester.
There are exceptions however. It’s clear to tell when you’ve got a good professor. Nearly everyone comes to class every class meeting. When the professor speaks, everyone listens and responds to what they say. Students are encouraged to think and share their opinions and experiences that are relevant to class. As students, we recognize when a professor is passionate about what they teach.
In my brief time as an Environmental Ethics major at Humboldt State I had a Natural Resources Conservation course with a professor that was honored to be teaching us. We were assigned three carefully selected books, I read each one front to back, and we discussed each book in class. Everyday we tackled a new topic and he made it relevant to our lives. At the end of the last class he thanked us for being such a great and almost cried when expressing how grateful he was to be able to help get us thinking about the decisions we make in our lives and our impact on our world, whether it be through person action or through taking public action. That’s exactly what he did, and two years later, I still remember just about everything he taught us.
So why isn’t every professor this passionate? Maybe they’ve lost their enthusiasm over the years. Maybe they’ve assumed students don’t care enough and neither should they. Maybe they’re on a power trip and feel like students should play by their rules or they fail. Years of being told to sit still and be quiet and doing things by the books and fill in the bubbles has made us comatose in the classroom, especially in large classes where you can easily get away with listening to music or fiddling with your computer and know you’ll never be expected to respond to anything the professor is saying.
Students don’t feel pressured to be engaged in these large class settings, and with all the other stresses in their lives, class may be the one time they get to sit down for an hour or so. They have time to check their e-mail and networking sights while their professors lectures about post modern assimilation of the spotted owl frog, which means nothing to them and their life or future. Knowing they have to go to work for 6 hours after class, they relax with some music on their I-pod and work on a doodle of a dinosaur riding a skateboard while their professor rambles about personal stories about how they tried to get a game patented and repeat the same statistics over and over despite being on supposedly different topics although every single day sounds like the same lecture.
In situations like that, some classes start to feel like a waste of time, and a waste of effort and concern. Students have the option of not going, or going just incase they get an assignment or pop quiz so their GPA doesn’t get dragged down.
If this cycle of dispassionate professors and uninterested students continues, college will become useless and we will have an entire generation of young people that are unprepared for their careers and life. Students need to demand more from their professors and drop courses that will be a waste of their time and money to help get their point across. Through sites like ratemyprofessors.com and the spreading of alarming statistics like in the Kansas State YouTube video, technology may be able to save us after all.
-Melissa Kilmer
Everyone knows it’s not easy being a student. Students today juggle class, work, plans for their future, internships, relationships, friendships, their parents, roommates, and deal with finding out who they are and what they want out of life.
After watching “A Vision of Students Today” from Kansas State University, it’s not surprising to hear that students pack 26.5 hours of activities into a 24 hour day. With three year of college under my belt, that’s how I spent most of my college life, taking 18+ units each semester, working 20 hours a week, living in cramped dorm conditions with some pretty unpleasant roommates, spending time with friends, and dealing with dating and relationships.
Like most students, my books didn’t get read in classes where the material wasn’t incorporated in class nor had any real relevance to my life. Un-engaging classes meant low attendance. People in class would have games on their computer screams or have intricate drawings on their note papers. Then there were students who were putting themselves through college and seemed to ask a million questions and took pages upon pages of notes on essentially useless info that they will use on the midterms and finals and forget come next semester.
There are exceptions however. It’s clear to tell when you’ve got a good professor. Nearly everyone comes to class every class meeting. When the professor speaks, everyone listens and responds to what they say. Students are encouraged to think and share their opinions and experiences that are relevant to class. As students, we recognize when a professor is passionate about what they teach.
In my brief time as an Environmental Ethics major at Humboldt State I had a Natural Resources Conservation course with a professor that was honored to be teaching us. We were assigned three carefully selected books, I read each one front to back, and we discussed each book in class. Everyday we tackled a new topic and he made it relevant to our lives. At the end of the last class he thanked us for being such a great and almost cried when expressing how grateful he was to be able to help get us thinking about the decisions we make in our lives and our impact on our world, whether it be through person action or through taking public action. That’s exactly what he did, and two years later, I still remember just about everything he taught us.
So why isn’t every professor this passionate? Maybe they’ve lost their enthusiasm over the years. Maybe they’ve assumed students don’t care enough and neither should they. Maybe they’re on a power trip and feel like students should play by their rules or they fail. Years of being told to sit still and be quiet and doing things by the books and fill in the bubbles has made us comatose in the classroom, especially in large classes where you can easily get away with listening to music or fiddling with your computer and know you’ll never be expected to respond to anything the professor is saying.
Students don’t feel pressured to be engaged in these large class settings, and with all the other stresses in their lives, class may be the one time they get to sit down for an hour or so. They have time to check their e-mail and networking sights while their professors lectures about post modern assimilation of the spotted owl frog, which means nothing to them and their life or future. Knowing they have to go to work for 6 hours after class, they relax with some music on their I-pod and work on a doodle of a dinosaur riding a skateboard while their professor rambles about personal stories about how they tried to get a game patented and repeat the same statistics over and over despite being on supposedly different topics although every single day sounds like the same lecture.
In situations like that, some classes start to feel like a waste of time, and a waste of effort and concern. Students have the option of not going, or going just incase they get an assignment or pop quiz so their GPA doesn’t get dragged down.
If this cycle of dispassionate professors and uninterested students continues, college will become useless and we will have an entire generation of young people that are unprepared for their careers and life. Students need to demand more from their professors and drop courses that will be a waste of their time and money to help get their point across. Through sites like ratemyprofessors.com and the spreading of alarming statistics like in the Kansas State YouTube video, technology may be able to save us after all.
-Melissa Kilmer
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Restaurant Review: Kozen
This week I visited one of my favorite Sacramento restaurants: Kozen. Kozen is a traditional sushi restaurant. The owners, a father and son from Japan, designed and decorated the restaurant themselves and designed many of their own dishes which are so creative both visually and taste wise that other local sushi places have reportedly been stealing their ideas.
The restaurant itself, which opened only several months ago, is simple and elegant. You enter and are greeted by trickling water fall wall. On the left is beautiful bar, great for spending time with close friends-but be careful who you bring, the owners don’t want customers coming to their bar to get hammered, but to enjoy the experience and atmosphere of the restaurant they put so much thought into. If you go to the right you walk into the dining room, where you’ll find modern but classic interior with a clean look so you’ll focus on the beauty of the dishes when they arrive.
Each roll is handmade right when you order so while you’re waiting we’ve typically been offered complimentary sake or miso soup, and the pace of the meal definitely allows for a relaxed dining experience and plenty of time to talk with your dining companion and maybe even enjoy a few drinks. When looking over the menu you’ll see they have an extensive variety of hand rolls, sashimi, sushi rolls, and even a few cooked dishes if you’re bringing along a diner that doesn’t enjoy raw seafood.
Each dish is served on an elegant square dish, letting the food shine. They have creative rolls such as the dragon roll and the caterpillar, which look just how they sound and taste divine. Their simple rolls such teka maki-tuna roll- is just as delicious as well because of the high quality and freshness of their seafood. They offer perfectly done baked rolls as well that those who can’t eat raw fish can enjoy as well.
Having recently converted to vegetarianism for mostly ethical and health reasons, seafood in the sushi from Kozen is the only meat I’ll make an exception for on very rare occasions. I had to share how great this restaurant is with everyone instead going to a place I’ve only been to just once and will probably find unsatisfactory. When you how to cook well, going out to a restaurant can be disappointing, but not once have I been disappointed by Kozen or received something and thought, ‘I could do a better job at making this.’
On my last visit I sampled several rolls with my dining companion. We ordered a California roll, which unlike most California rolls, this one was made with a solid piece of crab rather than shredded crab, giving it a more sturdy texture and pronounced crab flavored. Along with that we ordered a simple but delicious roll, the teka maki. A piece of solitary raw tuna rests in the middle of the roll and the flavor of the raw tuna will leave you in amazement in how raw tuna turns into that canned slop your mom used to use to make your sandwiches with in grade school. To top off the meal we ordered a baked salmon roll, which has a shredded crab center, topped with filets of salmon, baked, and topped with a creamy sauce, a red spicy sauce, orange tobiko caviar, and scallions. It looks and smells great when you get it, and although you may want to devour it immediately, it’s best to let it sit for a little bit and let it set up or else your delectable baked salmon roll might fall apart on the way to your mouth.
While the food may be a little pricier than other local sushi places, you’re getting what you pay for in the quality, detail, presentation, and consistently delicious food that will leave your taste buds, waste line, and conscience satisfied. So next time you’re craving amazing sushi and a great atmosphere, stop in at Kozen and sample some of their sushi that tastes the way sushi is meant to.
2310 Fair Oaks Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 641-8880
-Melissa Kilmer
The restaurant itself, which opened only several months ago, is simple and elegant. You enter and are greeted by trickling water fall wall. On the left is beautiful bar, great for spending time with close friends-but be careful who you bring, the owners don’t want customers coming to their bar to get hammered, but to enjoy the experience and atmosphere of the restaurant they put so much thought into. If you go to the right you walk into the dining room, where you’ll find modern but classic interior with a clean look so you’ll focus on the beauty of the dishes when they arrive.
Each roll is handmade right when you order so while you’re waiting we’ve typically been offered complimentary sake or miso soup, and the pace of the meal definitely allows for a relaxed dining experience and plenty of time to talk with your dining companion and maybe even enjoy a few drinks. When looking over the menu you’ll see they have an extensive variety of hand rolls, sashimi, sushi rolls, and even a few cooked dishes if you’re bringing along a diner that doesn’t enjoy raw seafood.
Each dish is served on an elegant square dish, letting the food shine. They have creative rolls such as the dragon roll and the caterpillar, which look just how they sound and taste divine. Their simple rolls such teka maki-tuna roll- is just as delicious as well because of the high quality and freshness of their seafood. They offer perfectly done baked rolls as well that those who can’t eat raw fish can enjoy as well.
Having recently converted to vegetarianism for mostly ethical and health reasons, seafood in the sushi from Kozen is the only meat I’ll make an exception for on very rare occasions. I had to share how great this restaurant is with everyone instead going to a place I’ve only been to just once and will probably find unsatisfactory. When you how to cook well, going out to a restaurant can be disappointing, but not once have I been disappointed by Kozen or received something and thought, ‘I could do a better job at making this.’
On my last visit I sampled several rolls with my dining companion. We ordered a California roll, which unlike most California rolls, this one was made with a solid piece of crab rather than shredded crab, giving it a more sturdy texture and pronounced crab flavored. Along with that we ordered a simple but delicious roll, the teka maki. A piece of solitary raw tuna rests in the middle of the roll and the flavor of the raw tuna will leave you in amazement in how raw tuna turns into that canned slop your mom used to use to make your sandwiches with in grade school. To top off the meal we ordered a baked salmon roll, which has a shredded crab center, topped with filets of salmon, baked, and topped with a creamy sauce, a red spicy sauce, orange tobiko caviar, and scallions. It looks and smells great when you get it, and although you may want to devour it immediately, it’s best to let it sit for a little bit and let it set up or else your delectable baked salmon roll might fall apart on the way to your mouth.
While the food may be a little pricier than other local sushi places, you’re getting what you pay for in the quality, detail, presentation, and consistently delicious food that will leave your taste buds, waste line, and conscience satisfied. So next time you’re craving amazing sushi and a great atmosphere, stop in at Kozen and sample some of their sushi that tastes the way sushi is meant to.
2310 Fair Oaks Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 641-8880
-Melissa Kilmer
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Don't Forget to Appreciate Thanksgiving This Year
While Thanksgiving may be a reminder of the beginning of the end of the native people of North America, I still really enjoy Thanksgiving. I like to think of it as an example of a time when food brought people together, and has brought people together for a meal annually ever since.
The first Thanksgiving may have been crude, a gathering 53 pilgrims about 90 native peoples according to the Pilgrim Hall Museum. They were celebrating the harvest, as was customer in England, which was made possible by the help of Squanto. Little did they know, people in the future would be eating a substance call tofurkey and slicing gelatinized cranberry to eat it with while gathering with their cousins andtheir great aunt Gurty, stuffing themselves to the gills all the while.
Some Thanksgiving meals may be less than satisfactory depending on the family, but almost ever family has adopted the tradition of thinking about what they’re thankful for. Family, friends, health, life in general, we remember what is important as our mood drops with the mercury. We gather with our loved ones, sometimes knowing that this may be the last time we are all together. This is what I love most about Thanksgiving.
My second favorite thing though, of course, is the cooking! Last year I chose to not make the six hour journey home from college and instead spent Thanksgiving with my old roommate from freshman year who I went to high school with. Ever since I met her parents, I knew they pressured her too much about her weight and made her feel guilty for eating. To me this was insane; she was very tall, but at a perfectly healthy weight with a normal appetite for her size.
We decided to make our own complete thanksgiving dinner, entirely from scratch and from carefully selected recipes. One of those being my absolute favorite recipe from my great grandmother, a former restaurant chef and all around amazing person, her delicious brown sugar pan rolls known as Granny Rolls. We had a full turkey, green beans, granny rolls, fresh cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, brown gravy, a pumpkin pie to top it off, and a bit of rum to keep us warm since one of my roommates had used the oven and left something that had bubbled over in the bottom of the oven, which burned, filling my entire apartment with smoke. We had to leave the windows open the whole time we were cooking, letting in the very chilly Arcata air, and setting off the smoke detector several times.
It was definitely one of the most memorable Thanksgivings I’ve ever had. Aside from the green beans, I was able to make everything by myself, and share my cooking with someone who was truly grateful to be eating it. That year I was grateful to be giving someone the gift of a guilt free thoroughly enjoyed meal, sharing an amazing family recipe with a friend, and the turkey wasn’t even dry either.
This summer I moved back to my hometown, living with my boyfriend. Whether the two of us have Thanksgiving dinner alone at our house, dinner with my family, or his, I know I have a lot to be thankful for and I hope I can share it with everyone.
So this year, when you gather around the table, whether you have a full feast before you or have whatever you can scrape together, just remember to enjoy your time with your family and remember to share the food you love with people that matter to you the most.
-Melissa Kilmer
The first Thanksgiving may have been crude, a gathering 53 pilgrims about 90 native peoples according to the Pilgrim Hall Museum. They were celebrating the harvest, as was customer in England, which was made possible by the help of Squanto. Little did they know, people in the future would be eating a substance call tofurkey and slicing gelatinized cranberry to eat it with while gathering with their cousins andtheir great aunt Gurty, stuffing themselves to the gills all the while.
Some Thanksgiving meals may be less than satisfactory depending on the family, but almost ever family has adopted the tradition of thinking about what they’re thankful for. Family, friends, health, life in general, we remember what is important as our mood drops with the mercury. We gather with our loved ones, sometimes knowing that this may be the last time we are all together. This is what I love most about Thanksgiving.
My second favorite thing though, of course, is the cooking! Last year I chose to not make the six hour journey home from college and instead spent Thanksgiving with my old roommate from freshman year who I went to high school with. Ever since I met her parents, I knew they pressured her too much about her weight and made her feel guilty for eating. To me this was insane; she was very tall, but at a perfectly healthy weight with a normal appetite for her size.
We decided to make our own complete thanksgiving dinner, entirely from scratch and from carefully selected recipes. One of those being my absolute favorite recipe from my great grandmother, a former restaurant chef and all around amazing person, her delicious brown sugar pan rolls known as Granny Rolls. We had a full turkey, green beans, granny rolls, fresh cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, brown gravy, a pumpkin pie to top it off, and a bit of rum to keep us warm since one of my roommates had used the oven and left something that had bubbled over in the bottom of the oven, which burned, filling my entire apartment with smoke. We had to leave the windows open the whole time we were cooking, letting in the very chilly Arcata air, and setting off the smoke detector several times.
It was definitely one of the most memorable Thanksgivings I’ve ever had. Aside from the green beans, I was able to make everything by myself, and share my cooking with someone who was truly grateful to be eating it. That year I was grateful to be giving someone the gift of a guilt free thoroughly enjoyed meal, sharing an amazing family recipe with a friend, and the turkey wasn’t even dry either.
This summer I moved back to my hometown, living with my boyfriend. Whether the two of us have Thanksgiving dinner alone at our house, dinner with my family, or his, I know I have a lot to be thankful for and I hope I can share it with everyone.
So this year, when you gather around the table, whether you have a full feast before you or have whatever you can scrape together, just remember to enjoy your time with your family and remember to share the food you love with people that matter to you the most.
-Melissa Kilmer
Thursday, October 11, 2007
YouTube, It's Better Than T.V.
YouTube, it’s better than T.V.
While I, being technologically uninterested, haven’t really checked out YouTube, many fellow college students such as myself have. Not surprisingly, the love it.
With the quality of television programs decreasing in recent, the price of cable television and associated equipment has become costly, and the rise of internet usage among young people YouTube has become the new T.V. In 2006 teenagers on average spent 26 hours a month on the net according to Pew research.
Those hours were spent watching clips of their favorite shows as a kid, music videos, home videos of people getting hurting, being pranked, etc, artistic videos, like my boyfriend’s favorite YouTube video of a puppet rendition of the Dandy Warhols’ song ‘We Used To Be Friends’ http://youtube.com/watch?v=NgrRRNwj7mU .
Among college students its common to get these tasty little links forwarded to your e-mail box or sent in an instant message because people love the content so much they want to spread it to other people. And that’s where YouTube has T.V. beat. If it’s actually good, watchers advertise it themselves to get viewership. There are no cheesy plots or lame product plugs. You get what you want, and videos produced by independent artists get what they want: an actual audience.
So this brings about a mini revolution. People with actual talent can have their work viewed without getting censored by corporate media. It’s a new frontier, having the viewer decide what gets the most viewing; the people decide what they want to see. The best part, no advertising in the clips you view. No drilling of product names into your head, no ads with stick thin models prancing around, no feeling pressured or inadequate or missing out if you don’t have the latest gadget or product. It’s given people back the control and freedom to connect with the world on their terms.
Do you have to wait until 8:00 to watch something that will crack you up after a long day of drudgery? Nope. Do you have to sit through minutes of commercials? Nope. Can you watch YouTube comfortably on our comfy couch? Unless you have a laptop, being comfortable like you would while watching television is out of the question. That’s really the only drawback to YouTube. It is better content wise, but it has the drawback of being viewable only at your computer.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. With short clips and no commercials, you can spend less time watching YouTube clips than the average person would watching television. You’ll get more content, and more of what you actually want in an hour than you would be watching a standard hour long television program. Add the fact that your computer chair isn’t the comfiest seat in the house and you’ll be sure to not lounge around all day watching YouTube clips like you would with T.V.
YouTube isn’t limited to just the younger generation though, adults are catching on too. A few weekends ago I went to visit my parents, who are in their 50’s, and my dad insisted on showing a YouTube clip of a guy doing donuts in his BMW in Europe who almost gets hit by a bus. He got this from a co-worker while at work. Forget the office romance policy, hello no-YouTube-ing policy. In an office setting this could get tricky, but, that’s for bosses to decide, right?
So there you have it, the good, the good, the good, and the mildly uncomfortable of YouTube. As long as the site stays free and the government doesn’t censor content, especially for the sake of political use of YouTube, I think over all it’s a good step in the right direction of producing content that the public actually wants to watch
While I, being technologically uninterested, haven’t really checked out YouTube, many fellow college students such as myself have. Not surprisingly, the love it.
With the quality of television programs decreasing in recent, the price of cable television and associated equipment has become costly, and the rise of internet usage among young people YouTube has become the new T.V. In 2006 teenagers on average spent 26 hours a month on the net according to Pew research.
Those hours were spent watching clips of their favorite shows as a kid, music videos, home videos of people getting hurting, being pranked, etc, artistic videos, like my boyfriend’s favorite YouTube video of a puppet rendition of the Dandy Warhols’ song ‘We Used To Be Friends’ http://youtube.com/watch?v=NgrRRNwj7mU .
Among college students its common to get these tasty little links forwarded to your e-mail box or sent in an instant message because people love the content so much they want to spread it to other people. And that’s where YouTube has T.V. beat. If it’s actually good, watchers advertise it themselves to get viewership. There are no cheesy plots or lame product plugs. You get what you want, and videos produced by independent artists get what they want: an actual audience.
So this brings about a mini revolution. People with actual talent can have their work viewed without getting censored by corporate media. It’s a new frontier, having the viewer decide what gets the most viewing; the people decide what they want to see. The best part, no advertising in the clips you view. No drilling of product names into your head, no ads with stick thin models prancing around, no feeling pressured or inadequate or missing out if you don’t have the latest gadget or product. It’s given people back the control and freedom to connect with the world on their terms.
Do you have to wait until 8:00 to watch something that will crack you up after a long day of drudgery? Nope. Do you have to sit through minutes of commercials? Nope. Can you watch YouTube comfortably on our comfy couch? Unless you have a laptop, being comfortable like you would while watching television is out of the question. That’s really the only drawback to YouTube. It is better content wise, but it has the drawback of being viewable only at your computer.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. With short clips and no commercials, you can spend less time watching YouTube clips than the average person would watching television. You’ll get more content, and more of what you actually want in an hour than you would be watching a standard hour long television program. Add the fact that your computer chair isn’t the comfiest seat in the house and you’ll be sure to not lounge around all day watching YouTube clips like you would with T.V.
YouTube isn’t limited to just the younger generation though, adults are catching on too. A few weekends ago I went to visit my parents, who are in their 50’s, and my dad insisted on showing a YouTube clip of a guy doing donuts in his BMW in Europe who almost gets hit by a bus. He got this from a co-worker while at work. Forget the office romance policy, hello no-YouTube-ing policy. In an office setting this could get tricky, but, that’s for bosses to decide, right?
So there you have it, the good, the good, the good, and the mildly uncomfortable of YouTube. As long as the site stays free and the government doesn’t censor content, especially for the sake of political use of YouTube, I think over all it’s a good step in the right direction of producing content that the public actually wants to watch
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Proposed Measure Could Cost Some Businesses
For shops, liquor stores, markets, restaurants and bars in Sacramento selling and serving alcohol could become quite a little bit pricier. A new measure being created would charge $1,000 for a special liquor license that would fund inspections and a drinking program that would target underage drinking and drunk driving. This may sound like a good program, but these programs are already in place. Restaurants that serve alcohol pay $200, and places like bars serving hard liquor pay up to $800 for their liquor licenses. But the new measure 925 wouldn’t care whether you own a small family owned market or hot a nightclub, everyone would pay the same rate, and that’s another key purpose of the measure.
By having all alcohol vending businesses pay this same rate the measure could weed out smaller businesses that wouldn’t be able to afford the $1,000 license. Mainly the hopes are to get rid of businesses that are an eyesore in communities that frequently sell alcohol to minors, a product of uninformed minimum wage cashiers, like the ones featured in last weeks column. By putting the measure in effect it would make it easier for city investigator to find these supposedly troubled businesses out of business.
So here we have a measure that looks good in principal, but in reality it is meant to hurt small and struggling business. If the city wants to crack down better on underage drinking, then they can use the program they have in place now paid for by the liquor licenses that are already in effect, and inform business owners on how to spot fake ID’s better and make sure they train all their employees how to spot them as well. As far as preventing drunk driving they can also use the same funding from those same licenses already in affect but find a more effective way to get through to people if their previous attempts have not decreased drunk driving. Also they could put their efforts into supporting designated driver programs to help prevent drunk driving.
Backing the measure in progress are the police. "If it's revenue that helps kids stay out of trouble and helps reduce injuries because of drunken driving or doing something stupid, then it's definitely a good thing," said police spokesman Matt Young. Being the ones who have to deal with these problems first hand, the police naturally would want to reduce underage drinking and drunk driving and support the measure. But again this program is already in place but would have business pay about $1 million more into it than they already are, and that’s just for the city of Sacramento. Similar programs were tried in Oakland, Los Angelos, and other cities with mixed results. Why should we enact a measure that may not even work?
Instead of throwing money at existing ineffective programs and potentially ruining small businesses, the programs that this measure is supposed to help should be rethought and reformed to be more effective. Small businesses shouldn’t be penalized for failing public awareness programs. Mom and pop stores and immigrant run shops could be devastated by this new measure when they could contribute to city inspectors and drinking programs at a more affordable price for them. Business owners have enough expenses and worries and the current liquor should stay in place so that small business owners can stay in their place as well.
By having all alcohol vending businesses pay this same rate the measure could weed out smaller businesses that wouldn’t be able to afford the $1,000 license. Mainly the hopes are to get rid of businesses that are an eyesore in communities that frequently sell alcohol to minors, a product of uninformed minimum wage cashiers, like the ones featured in last weeks column. By putting the measure in effect it would make it easier for city investigator to find these supposedly troubled businesses out of business.
So here we have a measure that looks good in principal, but in reality it is meant to hurt small and struggling business. If the city wants to crack down better on underage drinking, then they can use the program they have in place now paid for by the liquor licenses that are already in effect, and inform business owners on how to spot fake ID’s better and make sure they train all their employees how to spot them as well. As far as preventing drunk driving they can also use the same funding from those same licenses already in affect but find a more effective way to get through to people if their previous attempts have not decreased drunk driving. Also they could put their efforts into supporting designated driver programs to help prevent drunk driving.
Backing the measure in progress are the police. "If it's revenue that helps kids stay out of trouble and helps reduce injuries because of drunken driving or doing something stupid, then it's definitely a good thing," said police spokesman Matt Young. Being the ones who have to deal with these problems first hand, the police naturally would want to reduce underage drinking and drunk driving and support the measure. But again this program is already in place but would have business pay about $1 million more into it than they already are, and that’s just for the city of Sacramento. Similar programs were tried in Oakland, Los Angelos, and other cities with mixed results. Why should we enact a measure that may not even work?
Instead of throwing money at existing ineffective programs and potentially ruining small businesses, the programs that this measure is supposed to help should be rethought and reformed to be more effective. Small businesses shouldn’t be penalized for failing public awareness programs. Mom and pop stores and immigrant run shops could be devastated by this new measure when they could contribute to city inspectors and drinking programs at a more affordable price for them. Business owners have enough expenses and worries and the current liquor should stay in place so that small business owners can stay in their place as well.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Customer service, what do you expect?
Take minimum wage, add lack of respect, subtract dignity, tips and commission, and what do you get? You get a classic recipe for poor customer service. I interviewed a habitual slacker on why he administers poor service to his customers and what employers can do to prevent their employees from slipping into the same mindset.
We find ourselves in a North Coast California movie theater. The hours are long, there are mounds of spilled popcorn and puddles of sticky mystery goo strewn about the theater to be thanklessly cleaned at the end of each movie, there are screaming children in the lobby, a line out the door, and in between the chaos of show time rush there is agonizingly boring waits until the next showing spent with fellow employees who thrive on gossip and forming cliques.
It may be three in the afternoon, and the customer in front of you may not know it but you’ll be there until midnight. You know that when you get off work that you’ll be tired, and hungry. No restaurants beyond fast food are open, the store is closed, and most likely your significant other will be fast asleep and you can only hope they left you with some leftovers in the fridge.
This is the face of customer service in most establishments. In restaurants employees make an extra effort at courteousness for the chance of a better tip. Those that are paid on commission have the same motivation, but not our friend at the movie theater. He must clean the theaters, counters, vacuum the lobby, sweep the entry way, refill the butter dispenser, stock candy, do theater checks twice during each movie, sell tickets and refreshments, breakdown cardboard boxes, even remove that dead bird from the awning over the ticket box all without the customer even knowing the hoops he had to jump through to enhance their movie going experience.
Even after all that is done there is still one more matter he must deal with: the other employees. Some of them are trainees who can’t get the hang of anything, some of them are spreading viscous rumors about him, one of the other employees has a crush on him but becomes furious when she finds out he has girlfriend, another employee is a former marine who has just come back from Iraq and is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. This is his work team, his support system.
All of this creates a stressful work environment and wears on his morale and willingness to give 110%. If he works hard, it wears him down and he sees no extra gain. He does the bare minimum and gets paid just the same. Whatever he doesn’t do gets pawned off on his fellow employees who are flat out malicious towards him. He is only working there part time and will be leaving town soon anyways. So what would you do in his shoes? Even if you had a positive, upbeat demeanor, a work environment like this would eventually begin to wear you down and your concern for your customers would soon diminish as well.
What could have prevented this unsavory work environment? In this workers opinion the manager could have allowed more breaks, especially after rushes on opening days, allowed the employees to have more fun at work to promote healthy relationships among employees, especially since they all had to work together long hours several times a week. Instead of constantly finding unnecessary busy work for employees to do let them decide when they should take care of all the miscellaneous tasks they have to do in a day. This would have created a sense of control over the work environment which in turn would have allowed employees to take more pride in their work and enjoy the work day more.
So next time you go somewhere and you get less than stellar service, think about what that person has to go through that day. He or she will be there for several hours more and you are there on your own free will, enjoying your day. You may be purchasing items that cost more than they’ll get paid that entire day. So just remember how it feels to be in the shoes of the minimum wage worker and maybe you won’t be appalled because they didn’t treat you like you were a king among peasants.
-Kilmer
We find ourselves in a North Coast California movie theater. The hours are long, there are mounds of spilled popcorn and puddles of sticky mystery goo strewn about the theater to be thanklessly cleaned at the end of each movie, there are screaming children in the lobby, a line out the door, and in between the chaos of show time rush there is agonizingly boring waits until the next showing spent with fellow employees who thrive on gossip and forming cliques.
It may be three in the afternoon, and the customer in front of you may not know it but you’ll be there until midnight. You know that when you get off work that you’ll be tired, and hungry. No restaurants beyond fast food are open, the store is closed, and most likely your significant other will be fast asleep and you can only hope they left you with some leftovers in the fridge.
This is the face of customer service in most establishments. In restaurants employees make an extra effort at courteousness for the chance of a better tip. Those that are paid on commission have the same motivation, but not our friend at the movie theater. He must clean the theaters, counters, vacuum the lobby, sweep the entry way, refill the butter dispenser, stock candy, do theater checks twice during each movie, sell tickets and refreshments, breakdown cardboard boxes, even remove that dead bird from the awning over the ticket box all without the customer even knowing the hoops he had to jump through to enhance their movie going experience.
Even after all that is done there is still one more matter he must deal with: the other employees. Some of them are trainees who can’t get the hang of anything, some of them are spreading viscous rumors about him, one of the other employees has a crush on him but becomes furious when she finds out he has girlfriend, another employee is a former marine who has just come back from Iraq and is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. This is his work team, his support system.
All of this creates a stressful work environment and wears on his morale and willingness to give 110%. If he works hard, it wears him down and he sees no extra gain. He does the bare minimum and gets paid just the same. Whatever he doesn’t do gets pawned off on his fellow employees who are flat out malicious towards him. He is only working there part time and will be leaving town soon anyways. So what would you do in his shoes? Even if you had a positive, upbeat demeanor, a work environment like this would eventually begin to wear you down and your concern for your customers would soon diminish as well.
What could have prevented this unsavory work environment? In this workers opinion the manager could have allowed more breaks, especially after rushes on opening days, allowed the employees to have more fun at work to promote healthy relationships among employees, especially since they all had to work together long hours several times a week. Instead of constantly finding unnecessary busy work for employees to do let them decide when they should take care of all the miscellaneous tasks they have to do in a day. This would have created a sense of control over the work environment which in turn would have allowed employees to take more pride in their work and enjoy the work day more.
So next time you go somewhere and you get less than stellar service, think about what that person has to go through that day. He or she will be there for several hours more and you are there on your own free will, enjoying your day. You may be purchasing items that cost more than they’ll get paid that entire day. So just remember how it feels to be in the shoes of the minimum wage worker and maybe you won’t be appalled because they didn’t treat you like you were a king among peasants.
-Kilmer
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