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Almost a year ago I wrote a post that was called the 10 minute interview in which I talked about my method of hiring fast food employees and how it can be adapted to other professions.
I realized that these 4 questions don’t only serve as a great interview guide, but they also remind me of some very interesting stories. So, I’d like to take some time and share those stories. We’re going to start with question 1: Tell me about the worst customer you’ve ever had to deal with.
It was Wednesday, and I was working the morning shift (7am to 5pm.) I had just finished collecting the money from the registers and was preparing a bank deposit when there was a knock at the office door. Opening the door I saw my cashier standing there with a crisp new $100 bill.
“Can you make change for the lady at the counter?” she said, handing me the bill.
I said “Sure, no problem” as I grabbed 5 20’s off of my desk and locked the door behind me.
As I got to the counter, I noticed my store was nearly empty. There was a family near the back sitting at a table, and one single lady busy holding down my counter.
I walked up to her and said “were you waiting on some change?” but she simply gave me a blank stare.
All of a sudden, the lady in the back of the restaurant came charging up to the counter saying “that’s my money, why did you assume it was hers?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I was told the lady at the counter, and this was the only lady at the counter. Here’s your change.” as I held out the stack of $20 bills.
She didn’t take it. Instead, her scowl embiggened and she repeated (only louder) “Why did you assume it was her $100 bill?”
Again, I repeated “I’m sorry, I was told to make change for the lady at the counter, and there was only one lady at the counter.”
“No, that’s not what you assumed,” she said. “You assumed that because I was black that I couldn’t have a $100 bill, so you thought it was the white lady’s. You’re just a racist.”
Somehow managing to restrain my laughter I once again said “No Ma’am, I simply thought that somebody waiting for $100 wouldn’t get up and walk away. Here’s your change” and I held it out for her again.
Still, she didn’t take it.
“I don’t need to sit here and be mistreated because of my skin color. You think that black people can’t have any money, that we’re all on welfare don’t you you little prick? I don’t have to take this shit from an ignorant racist like yourself.”
At this point her food was being placed on the tray in front of her and her kids were starting to pick at the food.
“You’re right, Ma’am” I said. “And I don’t have to sit here and be insulted by a customer either.”
“Here’s your $100 bill back,” I announced as I placed it on the counter and proceeded to dump her tray of food into the trash can. “We’re not going to serve you. Have a great day.”
This pissed her off even more. She started calling me every name in the book, at which point I simply told my cashier to help the next customer and went about my job without acknowledging her.
My non-responsiveness wasn’t enough, and she took out her cell phone and dialed 911. I couldn’t restrain my laughter this time as I heard her telling the officer that she was being racially discriminated against.
Shockingly, within the next 20 minutes two policemen actually showed up. When they walked into the door the lady flagged them down. Before heading over to them though, I noticed that the one officer whispered something to the other.
That’s when he went over to the lady and spoke to her. About 20 seconds later they were placing her in handcuffs and exiting the store.
Laughing hysterically I asked one of the officer’s what was going on.
“is she the one that called us?” he said.
“yup, why?”
“well, she’s got felony warrants out for her arrest. We recognized her as soon as we walked in. I can’t believe she actually called us.”
That was the end of that. At least she managed to take her $100 off the counter before going to jail. She probably needed it for bail.
September 17th, 2008
I realized today that when it comes to programming, I’m a bit like a stick in the mud.
I remember when I first made the jump up to HTML4.01 from whatever cock eyed layout we were using back then. Then came learning CSS and I struggled but adapted.
I quickly forgot all the Perl I knew as soon as I found PHP. Then I just stopped.
I’m great when it comes to PHP, MySQL, HTML, and Javascript - it’s the new stuff that I’ve been reluctant to learn.
Give me a web server and the first thing I do is install cPanel and webalizer - even though they’re both very outdated. Even the tools I use are a bit outdated - opting for editplus and wsftp still.
The world is changing, people are using Ruby and postgresql now. Xhtml and Jquery have replaced html and regular old javascript. But I haven’t updated my ways.
To be honest, I just haven’t had the time. I still get to choose the structure of any site I work on, and it’s just way more productive for me to keep going LAMP than to learn something else.
What about you? What made you finally learn and use a new technology? Did you do it on your own or did you do it as part of your job? What are the trade offs of productivity vs learning a new language?
September 16th, 2008
The more I’ve been thinking about the current presidential race, the more I’m realizing that Obama isn’t going to win. Come November, John McCain will win the white house and America will still not learn its lesson.
This was our year Dems. After the last 8 years of Bush, we democrats were licking our chops at the chance to retake the white house. The mid-term elections came and we re-took control of congress. America had had enough of this administration and they were exercising their voice. Things were looking great.
We’re still going to lose, and there’s really nothing we can do about it. As long as McCain and Palin are allowed to outright lie and change whatever facts they want, the Democrats can’t win.
But we’re winning you say. Recent polls show that Obama has a few point lead on McCain. That’s the problem. How can it only be a few points? I just don’t see it.
Looking at all the newspaper articles, senate voting records, and candidate speeches, how can this race even be close? It doesn’t make sense.
McCain is an echo of George Bush - the current president who has a measly 30% approval rating. That explains 30% of McCain’s votes, but what about the other 20%? What the hell are these people thinking? Do they want 4 more years of this crap?
Palin is a creationist who is against all forms of birth control, yet she’s being hailed as a step forward for women. Are you serious? A woman in the white house is great, but her views serve merely to further repress woman’s rights. The anti-abortionist Palin said it was her daughter’s choice to keep the baby. Bristol gets a choice, but the rest of America shouldn’t? Makes sense to me.
McCain is pro business and pro Bush. Put some tights on him and he’d be the perfect sidekick. One need only look at his voting record (when he managed to actually vote - McCain missed more senate votes than any other senator) to see that he voted with Bush over 90% of the time.
He calls himself a war hero, often touting that he’s more experienced to manage the Iraq war. I don’t see how he can even mention the Iraq war though, having only voted in 4 of the last 14 senate measures concerning it. How well do you think he’ll handle a war that he’s too busy campaigning to even vote on?
I’m also not too sure about the usage of “hero” here. A “hero” is somebody who saves lives. McCain got shot down and captured. It seems to me that all he did was endanger more lives by failing in his mission. Failure doesn’t make you a Hero. It just makes you a veteran like every other soldier. Either way, military service doesn’t really matter to me when it comes to being president.
What matters to me is technology, business, innovation, and the economy - all of which McCain fails to understand. He’s pro patents, pro DRM, anti net neutrality, hates economists, and is in favor of regulating the internet. This is the man who introduced a bill that would require websites to be held criminally responsible for the comments on their sites.
This is a man who voted against the GI bill, against social security, and against raising the minimum wage.
This is a man who completely changed his position on everything as soon as he was upgraded from senator McCain to candidate McCain. While the senator spoke out against drilling in America, the candidate urges that we do it. The Senator voted against the Bush tax cuts, but the Candidate wants to make them permanent. This is the senator who once responded to a letter I sent him with “We’re sorry but Senator McCain doesn’t have the time to address the concerns of those outside of his voting district.” Senator McCain only cared about Senator McCain, what do you think Candidate McCain’s main priority is?
You’ve probably seen the McCain ad where he bashes the bridge to nowhere, bear DNA program, and woodstock museum as “pork barrel spending”. Were you also aware that McCain actually voted in favor of the DNA program, and wasn’t even present for the votes on the bridge or Woodstock museum? Last time I checked, “doing nothing” didn’t count as “taking a stand against wasteful spending.”
Speaking of spending, if I have to hear Palin talk about putting the state plane on eBay one more time I’m going to start pulling out hair. WHy has this been in every one of her speeches? Sure, she put the plane on eBay, great. But guess what? It wasn’t her idea - it was state policy made almost a year before she took office. Furthermore, it didn’t sell on eBay. It sold through a broker after sitting on the auction site for 2 months and costing the state over $60,000 in payments on the plane and listing fees. The would have saved that money had they simply gone through a broker in the first place.
Sure, she fought against the bridge to nowhere project, but that didn’t stop her from requesting $453 million in other earmarks. That’s almost $800 per person living in Alaska.
That’s a lot of lies, but despite all those McCain will still win the election.
It has nothing to do with Obama being black, or Muslim (by the way, he’s actually Christian.)
It has nothing to do with any of that. When Americans go into the polls, they’re going to vote based on the lies they’ve heard on TV - and as long as McCain and Palin are allowed to say whatever they want, people will believe them.
Others will vote along the party line like they’ve been doing since they voted for Eisenhower - having never noticed the changes in the parties since Nixon.
Doing the research is more than most Americans can be bothered with.
After all, I could spend a few hours researching the actual facts about the election, but then I’d miss tonight’s episode of Prison Break on Fox.
America didn’t learn its lesson the last 4 years, and we’re not going to learn it the next four either.
September 15th, 2008
Somebody I was friends with in elementary school just passed away recently. I never spoke to him after elementary school, even though we graduated together.
Anyway, it was a wake up call to me. I’m only 27, I’m way too young to be thinking about death - yet I am.
That’s some scary stuff that most people my age just don’t want to deal with right now, but we probably should. Hell, my dad is around 60 and if he’s got any plans, I sure don’t know about them.
Thinking about death just isn’t fun, so I can see why many of us just don’t think about it.
What about you? Have you made any plans for your death?
Update: Apparently Steve was the 3rd member of my graduating class to pass on. We lost one to a motorcycle accident, one to cancer, and one to drugs. It’s sad - we’re too young to die.
September 12th, 2008
Back when all the hype was new, I pre-ordered a copy of Spore from Amazon. Now that I’ve got it, I noticed it has the Rootkit DRM installed on it. Basically, installing Spore installs what can be described as a virus along with it. This virus runs in the background every time you start up your computer, and it doesn’t get removed if you uninstall the game.
As if that’s not restrictive enough, EA also limited the game to 3 installs - each one phoning home to check if you’re allowed to install it. For people like me who still play games that are well over 10 years old (for nostalgic value) that means I eventually won’t be able to play Spore. Who’s to say that in 4 years EA will keep up the verification server? That will render my copy of the game useless.
I’m not buying Spore, like I thought I did. I’m only renting it.
I honestly don’t know if I should install this or not, as the only way to remove the rootkit is to re-format your computer.
What would you do?
By the way, I’m not alone. There’s over 1500 negative reviews on Amazon.
September 9th, 2008
Just a quick note: txt2day.com was having some server problems earlier, but we’ve gotten them taken care of and it’s working again. Thanks to all of those who sent emails to us about them. If it took me a while to respond to them, it’s because I was working on the problem.
Anyway, everything is working good again. Thanks.
September 8th, 2008
I’m in a very cynical and nasty mood today - perhaps related to the DDOS attack that’s happening against one of my websites right now. I think I’ve got it handled though (if you target me at the domain level, i’m just going to re-route all that traffic back to you 
)
anyway… I’ve been looking at the TechCruch50 and it seems that most of the companies fail from the same thing most startups fail from: they don’t solve a problem and they have no path to revenue.
let’s take a few examples:
blah girls sounds like nothing more than a comic or a cartoon. How is this new? This is nothing special.
Tweegee is aimed at “tweens” which tells me 2 things: actual tweens will want nothing to do with it, and they won’t get more than $0.25 CPM for any ads on it. Tweens don’t have money, and as MySpace has proven, they don’t click ads or buy stuff from them. They also don’t want to be tweens, they want to do what the older kids are doing. All this will do is drive more people toward MySpace and Facebook.
Banking for kids? You’re kidding me right? Kids don’t have jobs or money. My middle school tried this once, and it failed miserably - despite them even giving us $5 and a free pencil for opening an account.
hangout should go hang out with Tweegee (and maybe even Shyrk too) so they can all fail miserably together. Of course I haven’t seen it yet, but it looks like a SecondLife ripoff. They’re claiming without privacy fears and what not, but come on can you really tie into social sites and eliminate privacy concerns? That’s a bigger oxymoron than “Microsoft Works” or “Airline Food.”
I’m not really sure what LiveHit does, but they use cool words like “velocity-based tracking and dynamic-predictive modeling.” It’d be nice if they told us what they actually do, but I know how some VCs have a tendency to favor fancy words and powerpoint presentations over actual business models - so hey, take your money now while you can.
Quant the News is another one of those companies that “was formed to develop and deploy advanced textual sentiment analysis applications that leverage its unique, AI-based natural language processing and data mining technology.” Again, some great fancy words that don’t tell me a damn thing about what you do.
Seriously, every time Techcrunch50 and Demo roll around I feel like starting a bunch of companies based around a nonsensical domain name and a few social APIs and seeing how much money I can get. Somebody else’s API + Adsense is NOT a business model. When are we going to see something that actually does something useful.
Here’s the questions I’d like to see them all answer:
1.) What unique unsolved problem are you solving?
2.) What’s your path to revenue (and you can’t say adsense.)
If you’re thinking of investing in some of these companies I have a better offer for you. Give me the money, and in 12 months I’ll give you back 1/2 of what you gave me. I guarantee you’ll get more ROI with my plan.
September 8th, 2008
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