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The latest sensational “The Internet is going to steal my crap” wave is here in the name of pleaserobme.com and no… I’m not linking there. I think the site is ridiculous as is the concept.
Here’s the idea. It harvests information off twitter from social sites like gowalla.com and foursquare.com that people use to “check in” to places when they go eat, shop, tour, whatever. The two sites use the phone’s GPS to show where you are and you can collect badges by visiting places. What pleaserobme does is gather into one spot when people FROM a certain area, say Austin, TX are checking into somewhere. The idea is if they check into starbucks then they are obviously NOT at home. So… using the gowalla.com and foursquare.com sites is the same as saying to the world, “please rob me.” Or at least that’s what the folks at the site want you to think.
They’re onto something. What they’re onto is that in the US right now, since 9/11, fear sells and business is good. The idea that Bad Guys are sniffing the twitter stream to see when someone goes to McDonalds’s so they can go bust into their house is ridiculous.
- It doesn’t say that NOBODY is home, just the one who is posting that they aren’t home.
- Bad guys have always been able to tell by if your sidewalk is scooped, grass mowed, lights on/off, mail picked up etc. if someone is home or not. This isn’t new or as effective as ANY of the old ways.
- If your twitter profile gives your street address you were an idiot before this site existed, and not because you’d get robbed but because you don’t put your real life address out there on the internet for safety’s sake ever. That’s just stupid. People who “check in” to their own homes… they’re the ones who are saying please rob me, attack me, go stare at my kid’s through their windows. Not the people who say “I’m at McDonald’s”
So, before you call all your relatives and tell them that the social GPS game sites are going to get their house robbed, calm down a little, take some deep breaths, go check in at a Starbucks and tweet them to meet you there. If they’re friends with you on foursquare or gowalla.com they’ll know where you are and can meet you there. If you’re worried about your friends breaking into your house while you’re away maybe you should get a better class of friend.
Commons sense tips for using the GPS enabled social-web.
- Don’t ever GPS identify your house or your friends and families homes.
OK. Any questions?
This post prompted by the usually sane Solo-Technology blog and my guess is sometime this week he’ll not be home because he’ll be at work during the day while his wife is at work and his kids are at school… he lives in the Denver area knock yourselves out!
EDIT: I should clarify: I don’t mean to imply the author of Solo-technology is an old woman. I’ve met him and he’s an old MAN. lololol. His post about the site is what I’m referring to. I don’t believe he’s hysterical or over-reacty. (No, not a word I know.) But the topic he’s blogged about has been over-sensationalized by others out there and I’m not linking to them because I don’t want to give them any link-fu. I won’t link to hacks or nutjobs… that’s why solo-technology got the link.
 I was reading "Say Alaka’i" over at the Honolulu Advertiser site today where Rosa Say ( author of my favorite management book, Managing with Aloha ) writes a weekly column.
The title of the article was "What If Your Business Got Sick?" and she told two mini stories within the article. The first, (brutally summarized, go read her article) was about her being challenged to think of her business as a person and not an inanimate thing. That mental switch being flipped changes the way we relate to our business. Now. I don’t own my own business, but I’ve worked for the same company (Can it be the same company if it’s changed names and owners several times and my position has changed many times? I think that’s akin to Theseus’ Paradox.)
If my job, my career of the past 15 years were a person what would our relationship be? What would the dynamic between me and my job be? Would it be an equitable one? In a healthy relationship both partners give and take and share with each other. When one person cares more in a relationship… when one person doesn’t treat the other with respect… those aren’t healthy relationships. They’re not lasting relationships.
The funny thing is we wouldn’t put up with it in a relationship with a person we call friend. We’d say they weren’t our friend if someone treated us badly, lied to us, disrespected us. We would say something. We wouldn’t just take it or just put up with it. We’d either address it and see if it’s going to change or we’d break it off. We’d break up. Why is it that with work the rules are different? Because they pay us? Because there’s pay involved? So. Just because there’s money involved doesn’t mean we should put up with a bad relationship with our jobs. Unless we’re masochists obviously.
I’m not a masochist.
My work has changed hands a lot, different owners, different CoO’s, different cultures. And in all that time it’s been fairly equitable. I’ve had great relationships with my bosses and subsequently with my job. It hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. Obviously. It’s been a fifteen year relationship and there are going to be rocky times. I’ve been very lucky when things got weird or tense or I felt like it wasn’t an equitable relationship I was able to bring it up. I was able to talk about it with my boss and addresses it.
Lately the job itself, the work culture has been a lot different. I’ve wanted to go back to the way things were… We’ve heard the saying that you can never go back… you can’t cross the same river twice. And I don’t know if I’d like it for real if I got to go back… but I’ve been able to talk about it with my boss and he understands it. He understands my differences with the job as it has become. The job has changed over time just like people do. Are we growing apart? Is there a divorce in the future?
It’s a fifteen year relationship. Just like a relationship requires work and patience and communication so does this relationship. Nobody throws away fifteen years worth of relationship over a month or two of tense times or bad times. But if there’s no communication and no real attempt to fix things, no real attempt to work things out, ON BOTH SIDES then the divorce will be inevitable. If I were to sit and brood about how I don’t like things now but don’t talk about it to someone who can actually do something about it then it’ll be my fault if things don’t work out and we break up. If I talk to people able to change things and they don’t change then I will have done what I could. If I expect that just because I tell them to change they must change then I’m being selfish too. It’s not all about me. It’s a relationship and the relationship should be about us. If it gets too one-sided then it would quit being satisfying and dynamic and meaningful. It would lose value. The value in the relationship is in the give and take. It’s in both parties in the relationship caring about the relationship and treating each other in a way that both of them believe is equitable.
Any conclusions from all this? Not as such. This is still new in my head. I only read her column today and it’s still new in my head but it’s still rolling around in there and it has really made a difference in how I’m thinking about things.
I said to my parents once that if I won the lottery I would quit work and become a professional student and attend University. Talking to Rosa Say over on Talking Story about learning she talked about her love of learning and how that had led to the creation of her community “Joyful Jubilant Learning.” The conversation went on to possibilities of a future book she may be writing or starting… not sure if it’s a follow up to her Managing With Aloha or if it will be something different or along the same vein but for a different audience yet… it’s still too soon to tell.
The excitement is palpable though and the possibilities whip about like leaves in a gale.
Here’s the thing… what am I doing? Why do I not have that level of excitement and possibilities for myself and for what I’m doing? That seems like I’m doing something wrong here. Where’s my passion for what I’m doing? (Other than running and that’s sort of stalled right now because a) I’m ill and b) the treadmill that I have access to is nick-named “shin-killer.”)
So… my goal between now and Valentine’s Day is to find something I’m passionate about and start it. (Other than running… my next race is soon… 2/16/2010 (Fat Tuesday! WOOT!) I’ll keep you posted.
It may be online classes. I’ve thought about that recently and decided it may be a great option for someone who travels as much as I do.
It may be a sports car and a girlfriend half my age… OK. That’s not actually very likely come to think of it.
So… no pressure… what am I going to do with myself that I’m as excited about as I am about what other people are doing? Seems like I’m wasting the only life I have if I’m not excited about my own life as often as possible.
So, I’m an area manager with eleven stores that report to me. I’m responsible for 20% of the stores in the company I work for and how’d I get here? Really?
 Well, I was a manager of a store, not a very big store really. The store was frequently in the bottom 3 of the company when I took over and it worked it’s way up to bottom 4. Yeah. I know… glorious. But in that time I increased sales by quite a bit in the store and decreased turn-over. I was a good manager. I know that. I didn’t steal. I didn’t screw up too terribly ever, and my employees didn’t hate me any more than any other manager’s employees hate them when scheduling overlaps a holiday and it’s unavoidable that someone has to work it.
Then, one day the person over me transferred away. They didn’t promote up, they transferred. Nobody else would say “yes.” So… I wound up promoted. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I was suddenly responsible for stores that did as much in a weekend as I had previously done in a week. I had managers working FOR me that had twice the experience I had and had turned down the job I’d accepted.
I’d like to imply that my bosses saw some secret spark in me that proved to them I’d be great for my job as an area manager but I sincerely believe what they saw was a good manager who would say “yes.” Well, they were right. I was a good store manager. I still think I’m a better store manager than I am an area manager and I want to go back to store manager so bad. I’ve asked for it a lot and been turned down for it.
I see it a lot in companies where we promote people away from where they were great to a place where they’re just good. Being good as a manager of a single location isn’t the same as being great as a manager of many locations at all.
When we area managers look around and wonder where the great store managers have gone we need only look around… we’ve promoted them out of where they were great to where they’re “good.” If we were to value store managers more we’d have an easier job of things as area managers. But we tend to not pay the store managers enough… and we act like store manager is a stepping stone to where the REAL money is… and it’s not the way things should be.
I would love to give a third of my pay to half my good managers because they work harder, longer, and do a better job of things than I do… they don’t need me and I’d be a fool to send them up to an area manager position because they’re so good where they are now… I wish store managers were valued more… not just because I want to be one again either. The part of my job I work hardest at now as an area manager isn’t the paperwork, checklists, or mechanics of the job it’s trying to make sure the managers under me have all the tools they need to more effectively do their job. I see my job now as more of a way to help the people under me be more effective than for me to top-down them into the ground like a hammer driving a nail.
To all you store managers out there reading this. You’re doing a great job! I hope your hard work is recognized by your boss. I’ve had your job and I loved it and miss it. If you do it and love it never leave it… promoting up for more money isn’t the right reason to promote up in my opinion. I did it and I’d trade with you in a minute. I miss the store manager job. I miss the customers. I miss the store.
In the past fifteen years I’ve trained a LOT of employees. One of my biggest pet peeves has always been people who stand there while I’m training them and just shut down, lose their eyes and say “I can’t do this.”
 It makes me want to scream. I will say something a hundred different ways to get someone who is trying to figure it out. But when they stand there and won’t listen or try… when they just stand there with clenched fists screaming “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!”
It makes me want to yell. Seriously. It’s so hard to work around that. I can work through them not having a skill set. I can’t work around more negative talk than positive or trying. You know that whole lead a horse to water but can’t hold his head under it thing? Yeah… it’s like that.
There’s something I need to mention though.
I do it too.
My room mate wanted me to ride motorcycles with him when we lived in Memphis but my first shot at riding motorcycles didn’t exactly go all that great really. I was going to take a class but I was scared I’d either fall and hurt myself, or embarrass myself… even with the class. He would say how fun riding was and I’d flash back to how scared I was of screwing up and lock up.
We were driving to a movie and he asked again when I was going to take the motorcycle riding coarse and I started yelling at him about how everything was easy for him. He’d been riding his whole life and I’d never done it before… “HE JUST DIDN’T UNDERSTAND!!!” He stopped nagging me about the class and a month later got it for me for my birthday. I could go or not but he didn’t talk about it any more. He found where and when and paid for it. He didn’t go watch. I did it and you know what? I love riding now.
I was scared to do something new and I was scared I’d be embarrassed in front of people. It helped that he wasn’t there to watch me learn how. I can totally understand people not wanting to be embarrassed in front of people they know. I try so hard to help encourage people when they’re wearing the shoes I was wearing that day… the day I was the one yelling “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” I’ve been there. I’ve been the irrational one insisting that they didn’t get it.
I don’t know why I do it… I wish I could say “DID” it but I’m told I’m not totally cured of it yet. On the plus side if I start stone-walling now my roommate wails at me, quite dramatically, “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” That tends to help jerk me out of my stone-walling.
If any of you have tips on how to turn can’t into can I’d live to hear them and I promise… I DO UNDERSTAND!
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