Thoughts From The Cake Scraps

As an analyst I can’t help but try and figure out why something is done a certain way if it doesn’t seem immediately logical.  Sometimes these thoughts are fleeting and other times they keep nagging me.  The nagging thoughts tend to be the ones that seem totally illogical; that no thought or reason has been put into the things I am observing.  I always think that I must be missing something.

One that has been nagging me for far too long is the gaps in the bathroom stalls.  I just cannot figure it out.  Google searches leave me with no definitive answer – but there is interesting conversation about it here.  So I turn to you, my readers, to answer this question.  This is an issue that really needs to be solved.  This is our privacy people!  There’s not all that much left of it in the world (I say as I sit here and blog about my thoughts).

In case you have not recently been in a bathroom stall at work, school, or any other place that has public facilities I will break it down for you.  There seems to be some sort of engineering gaff that nobody has noticed.  The door that are supposed to keep out eyes from outside have large gaps around the edges of the door.  In some cases they are as large as an inch!  Now that may not seem like much, but at a distance of just a few feet it is enough to see plenty through the gap.

Now lets be clear, I am not talking about the gaps on the bottoms of the stalls.  This makes for easier cleaning and whatnot.  I get it.  I’m not talking about the gaps between the stalls and the ceiling.  Clearly this is for ventilation so that things can air out.  Or maybe so that those automatic air fresheners have an easier time of perfuming in the stalls.  Whatever the specific reason, it makes sense.

I am not even talking about the gaps between the stall walls and the wall.  Again, I don’t know the specific reason.  I can only guess.  Perhaps it has something to do with caulking it, or cleaning it, or ventilation, or to pass notes when you don’t want to go under the stall.  Really, I don’t care.  There is nothing to see against the back wall.

My issue is with the door.  Doors exist so they can be closed.  Now I don’t expect it to be a perfect fit.  I understand that there is more cost with a tight fitting door.  But these things can be mass produced to a greater extent than a 1 inch gap on each side, right?

Or, if you don’t want to worry about a close fitting door, then put a nice big strip of plastic on the side of that door that opens (e.g. if it opens out when in the stall, have the plastic on the outside).  That way not only with the gap be non-visible, but you will not have to deal with tight doors or anything else.  The cost of a plastic strip in comparison to the cost of the total structure ($250 – $1,000) cannot be all that much.

And to address a final concern – I won’t even complain very loudly if these bathroom gaps existed at truly public places such as restaurants, subways, and parks.  But in corporate offices people?  There are no concerns about what graffiti or activities might happen there.  So really, what’s the deal with the gaps?

Have you ever wondered this?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

Recently I got quite the offer from Fortune Magazine on a 3 year subscription.  I have always thought about getting a subscription but it always seemed just a bit to expensive for me.  If you know me you know I take my money very seriously.  So after much consideration (mostly in the form of having the offer sit on my desk for a few weeks) I decided to go ahead and send in the form.

At this point I would like to admit that I am a credit-card-aholic.  I hate to use cash and never use a check – at least when it can be avoided.  Its not that I rack up the debt, it’s more that I just prefer it as a form of payment.  I like the perks that it offers.  I like the convenience of it.  I like being able to review my transactions BEFORE the money is taken out of my account.  And that’s my beef with debit cards.  I can contest a credit card charge before the money ever leaves my holdings.  I have to get the money back if there is an error and I used a debit card.

With that background in mind, I move on to my issue with Fortune.  On the slip they provided, an option was to be billed later (and probably use my own stamp), send a check, or fill in my credit card info.  I did the credit card info.  It was just the easiest and quickest way to pay.  I slipped it into the provided return envelope (postage paid by them), licked it shut, and was all ready to send it off when I noticed something odd.  I could basically see right through the paper and read my credit card number.

This didn’t take some special light, or even holding it up to the light.  Literally all I had to do was set it on my desk and press down on the envelope and I could see, plain as day, my credit card number.  Hmm….seems a bit odd.  So I didn’t send it and instead put in an inquiry to Fortune Customer Service – to verify that the offer was in fact real – and said the following:

Comments : Hello – I got an offer in the mail for Fortune that advertises a corporate rate of x yrs. for $xx. The listed address is PO BOX 61xxx Tampa FL 33xxx-1xxx I have filled out the form, but before I send it off, I wanted to see if the offer was real. Main reason I question it is that you can see right through the envelope. Odd for an offer that asks for payment info to have a return envelope that is easily seen through.
Thanks,
David

It took them nearly the full 2 business days they quote to get back to me and they said:

Thank you for contacting FORTUNE Customer Service.

Yes, the offer is a legitimate offer from FORTUNE magazine.  Any further questions, please let us know.

We appreciate this opportunity to be of service.

And then they had a bunch of links to useless info at the bottom.  Does this strike anybody as an odd response?

Here I am, a potential customer.  I was suspicious about the offer but I didn’t discard it.  I went through the trouble of making sure it was real.  But more importantly I let them know why I was concerned and they didn’t even address the issue.  And they certainly didn’t thank me for bringing it to their attention.

Keep in mind that this is Fortune magazine.  One would think they would be savvy about the real danger of identity theft.  And yet, they seem to have no problem giving you return envelopes requesting payment information that can easily be seen through.

This is the sort of stuff I just don’t get.  How can they totally ignore the issue in their response?  I know there is just a small chance of anything actually going wrong but in the days where it is not difficult to hear about one story after another about a stolen identity, one would think a magazine of Fortune’s reputation would do what they can to protect the people they are prospecting to.  I don’t want to make a big issue out of nothing, but I can’t help but feel that being able to see my credit card number and expiration date through a business reply envelope is a big deal.

What do you think?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

When you are driving along the highway and suddenly notice that you are almost out of gas you want one thing: gas.  You glance up and see a huge billboard advertising the very thing you are looking for.  It talks about the “Cold Beer”, “Fresh Coffee”, and “Exit Number 32” but most importantly it is a gas station.  If you are lucky it even has the current price.

You quickly look for the small green mileage posts to figure out just how far that is.  After a few moments you see that you are at mile post 30.  Only 2 more miles.  You feel a bit more at ease.  About a minute or so later you see the familiar signs listing Food, Gas, Lodging and the like. A moment later you are upon the exit ramp.  You take it off cruise control and start slowing.

Halfway down the ramp you see the sign with the logo of your favorite gas station and an arrow to the right.  You roll up to the stop sign at the end of the exit ramp and turn right.  No gas station in sight.  You drive along anyway until you finally just turn around and continue on to the next exit.  Now you’re angry.  The gas station was only another mile ahead, but you will never see it.

I have one thing to say to businesses that are on these exit ramp signs: don’t lead people on like this.  I’m not sure what the rules are, or if it varies state by state, but I hate it when locations on the exit sign don’t have a distance on them.  It is such a small thing to do.  It’s not like the distance changes each day.  There is just no reason not to have 1.2 miles or 5.7 miles or whatever underneath the logo on the exit ramp.

Perhaps it is just me, but I like to know the distance to my destination.  It is so easy to add this to the exit signs and yet for some reason no exit around me has that piece of information.  How many displeased customers are created because of this?  More importantly, how many people does that business lose because people can’t see it from the highway and don’t know how far away it is.  If they know it was just a mile away perhaps they would take the exit, instead the just keep driving hoping that the next exit will have a sign visible from the highway.

Small things, like distance to location on the exit sign, are so critical in providing an optimal customer experience.  This blog is built on that very principle, that every little scrap of information has value; if you overlook the scraps (also called “the long tail”) you are going to miss huge opportunities.

Does your area have distance on the exit ramp signs?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.