simplerich

I recently noticed how Evernote had become a part of my workflow while I was on hold. I had a stack of papers in front of me and had the phone on my shoulder and was entering the information into Evernote. I hadn’t had to remind myself to do it. I just took a couple free minutes to do it.

I’ve gotten very used to importing PDFs to their website that my boss sends me. (Everything he scans winds up a PDF and from there it goes to Evernote so it will be searchable later.) Between the two of us we’re really going paperless. It’s becoming very handy for tracking down open loops and is increasing both of our productivity.

I got finished entering in the information into Evernote. I tagged it with a couple tags  and closed it up. The next day the meeting time came round and I opened up Evernote, and all my first meeting’s notes were tagged so they’d all be there in one place and we banged out that meeting, with dates, times, numbers, and all the pertinent bits in no time at all without me having to shuffle papers or look things up. Between the scanned PDFs and the tagging I had all my information at my finger tips with no pausing to look things up.

Second meeting went exactly the same way and the best part for me was the lack of stress in between the meetings. I wasn’t shuffling papers into order, high-lighting, or making sure I could find whatever they might ask for at hand. I KNEW it was at hand because it was in Evernote as either a PDF or as a file I’d generated myself. And in any event I could get to it with a mouse click without waiting on some viewer to open or file to open.

Evernote really has become my one place repository for information.

This application is the first time I’ve wanted an iPhone. It’d allow me to use it all the time instead of just when I had my laptop out. But down that road lies madness! I still use my moleskine cahier for those times, and honestly, it’s probably the fastest, easiest, most streamlined method of capture while on the road and in the field.

My Aunt Annie turned 94 earlier this year and just celebrated 30 years at the same job. She works hard and learned it from her Dad. It wasn’t until this interview for tv that I heard this quote, but it was something that my family taught us kids by example and by letting you know if you were caught slacking off. "If you went on a job, if you couldn’t do a decent days work, go home. Don’t back up to the window to get your paycheck."

I’m linking to two of the videos I could find. One on youtube, and another from WKRG in Mobile. Here’s to my Aunt Annie. *cheers*

Aunt Annie’s the one on the left. Notice in this picture, when compared with the videos how she still looks like her. Her hair’s a little whiter now than it was then. Aunt Annie and Granny came to visit us when we lived in Germany and in this picture they’re standing in front of a huge wine barrel brandishing two flagons of wine that they were quaffing! OK. More likely there’s two little glasses that they moistened their lips with the wine. I don’t remember them getting falling down drunk and chasing young Germans down the road.

Today talking to Mom we were talking about little things that make us happy and I said that I really liked hanging my clothes on the line to dry. I like it because every time I do it I’m saving money. I have a dryer. I could use it, and do if it’s raining out or if I need to for some other reason. But I like that I have the choice to save money and that I actually make that choice. That’s something that makes me happy.

When I got home I saw this on Almost Frugal and it made me laugh.

From Almost Frugal:
There is one frugal thing however, that if I had any real choice in the matter I would stop doing in a heartbeat.
Hanging the laundry. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If I could fit a dryer into my house, I would buy in a heartbeat, extra cost and environmental impact be damned.

I think it’s funny how things that make some people happy, that some people enjoy doing can be on other people’s short list of things they’d rather never do again. Me. I love retail. I like managing in retail. There are others who find, after getting into it that they’d rather starve than deal with the public in any capacity at all. I get that… heck, after a really long day of it sometimes I feel that way too. But it goes away. And maybe if I didn’t GET to dry my clothes on the line, but HAD to… maybe I’d feel the same way about it as Kelly over on Almost Frugal. For now though, I’ll enjoy it.

PS: Crap - just realized I uploaded full sized image and only modified size tags. Apologies to dialupers.

You can now customize your friends list in Google reader, meaning I can decide who sees the things I "share" from google reader. If I decide to share a lot of posts about Tibetan finger rot and don’t want all my Google shares going to my family so they don’t wonder why I’m looking up Tibetan Finger Rot online then I don’t have to.

Now, if only it can be set per post. I know. I don’t ask a lot do I?

Manpower in Central Iowa has a blog and I gotta tell you, if I didn’t have a job already I’d want to work for the person who writes that blog! There’s a load of great information over there on workexposed.com. Recently interviews, staffing, and employee enthusiasm have been at the front of my mind from a conversation I had with a customer. But first, a qutoe from Work Exposed: The Blog:

Hire “engage-able” team members. One HR leader we interviewed underscored this point: “Our number one problem was lack of fit. We needed to hire people who could be successful. Instead of training square pegs to fit the round hole, we now try to hire round pegs.”

I recently went to work at a store where the staff just seemed to lack enthusiasm and zest for… well, anything. I talked to customers about the change in the store’s atmosphere and asked them if they could describe it for me. I was fishing. I did the whole, "I can’t put my finger on it but…" and let them fill in the blanks.

One of the regulars, used to be a regular, now an irregular, said "The old manager hired employees who were a pleasure to visit with and talk to. Even the ones who couldn’t count change were fun to talk to." He admitted every employee wasn’t perfect or even always the most competent but they were always sociable and friendly and that made up for it to an extent. Now bad service was accompanied by boring lackluster employees. There was no reason to come to the place and it was a craps shoot on who’d be behind the counter. Good service but no personality or bad service with no personality.

I recently had a manager tell me they needed more of a form they used for interviews and they didn’t know the questions by heart, they just always answered the questions, filled out the form and that was what their previous supervisor had them do. I was appalled. "Here’s the thing," says I, "the biggest part of an interview for me is to know at the end of the interview if you can stand to talk to the person for another two minutes." If you can’t wait for the interview to end I don’t care how qualified they are do NOT hire them." We’re in sales. We deal with the public every minute we’re open and it has to be something the potential employee is interested in doing.

If an employee being interviewed for a sales position isn’t enthusiastically trying to sell themselves to the interviewer why in the world would anybody believe they’ll try and sell anything in the future? Great sales people are great relationship builders. Even if the relationship lasts 2 minutes for that time they’re making the customer feel great for that two minutes. If they’re not engaged during the interview. If they’re not making the interviewer feel great during the interview, and really selling themselves enthusiastically they’re not going to cut the mustard. A technically great applicant who doesn’t sell it, doesn’t