Traffic SNAFU

Thought for the day: Some rights are worth dying for, but the right of way isn't one of them.

Unfortunately, road rage is a real thing, and some people aren't satisfied with merely offering a rather familiar and not-so-friendly hand gesture... which I prefer to interpret as You're number one. It takes a lot to get me riled, but I must admit, the lack of courtesy on our roads does kinda get my goat. Not that I resort to using the aforementioned gesture, but I do occasionally mutter some rather unladylike words. Under my breath, of course. (After all, the guy who forces me to hit the brakes because he just cut in front of me... even though there are abso-freaking-lutely no cars whatsoever BEHIND me... might not take too kindly to hearing some old lady's opinion about his driving skills or the legitimacy of his birth.)

I'm gonna ask you guys for your opinions about a particular driving situation, but before we get to that, let's just have a little fun with some road signs, shall we?

Now, I can't say that I've ever seen this sign myself, but if I did, you can be sure I'd have to stop the car and take a picture of it. It reminds me of a joke... Did you hear about the woman who tried to pull a Lorena Bobbitt on her philandering husband? In a blind rage, she ended up stabbing him multiple times in the leg. She was charged with a... ready for it?... a mis-da-weiner. 

I wonder if this sign is posted in a school district...?

I'd actually loooooooove to see signs like the one on the right. The one on the left? To tell the truth, around these parts, that isn't much of an exaggeration.

Now here's a sign some of those angry bird-flipping drivers might understand. It speaks their language.

HUH! Well, that's downright discriminatory! We old broads and geezers have just as much right to be on that road as the younguns.

You've all seen those signs warning drivers about various animal crossings. I say BRAVO to all of those smart animals who know where it's safe for them to cross.

(If the crossing's location is inconvenient for drivers, then the DOT could do what the dumb blonde suggested in a joke: For goodness sake, just move the sign!)

Now, I dunno what the heck this sign is trying to tell us. Has there been a spate of alien abductions in the area? (HMMMPH! I'd say that's a bunch of bull!)

A hand-made PSA posted by a concerned citizen.

This sign just makes me smile.

Okay, so it's time for me to STOP and get off of Procrastination Parkway and get to the gist of this post... getting your opinions about a particular traffic situation.

We've all seen those dreaded signs warning us of construction ahead. Grrrrreat, huh? Usually means delays, snarled traffic, and frayed nerves, not to mention an annoying kick in the seat to one's average rate of speed. (Particularly annoying on a long trip.)

But HERE'S the kind of sign I want to discuss with you. With the amount of roadwork and utility work going on around here, we see similar signs on every road from interstates to small roads within subdivisions. Often, they come with more specific information. Like, RIGHT LANE CLOSES IN ONE HALF MILE, usually followed by multiple distance count-down signs before the lane finally comes to an end.

Now here's the question: When you see a sign telling you that the lane you are in is going to close, when do you move over into the other lane? Smarticus and I have always moved over as soon as possible, and he certainly doesn't take too kindly to the folks who wait until the VERY LAST MOMENT to try to cut over in front of him. (i.e. We did the right thing, and they're inconsiderate a**holes.)

Kinda like the sentiments expressed on this sarcastic gem.

Or this one.


The thing is, I've seen some angry drivers at that actual point of lane-ending. Lots of honking horns and not-so-friendly hand signals.







Reminds me of a weird news story I wrote about in one of my posts in February of 2012:

***  An impatient Porsche driver in San Francisco wasn't happy about being stuck in traffic, so he set out to do something about it. You've seen this sort of driver before; we all have. They're usually behind the wheel of a high-dollar car, and I suppose they figure they're above the mundane laws of the road governing the rest of us peons. Anyway, they generally have no problem making their own lanes. Like the privileged characters they are, they'll whip down the shoulder or emergency lane to get past the traffic jam, and then count on the kindness of strangers to let them back on the road. That's exactly what the Porsche driver tried to do, only the empty lane he claimed was empty for a very good reason. A nice, wet, freshly-poured concrete reason. The guy went from being merely stuck in traffic to really stuck. Workers had to dig the car out, and though the incident may have ruined that Porsche dude's day, I have a feeling the other snickering drivers and pointing passersby considered it a delightful case of poetic justice.

I think the same kind of resentment over entitled drivers may be what's behind the less-than-friendly behavior when a lane closes. Ergo, we move over as soon as possible.

                                                                And that's certainly

                                  to respond to the situation. But as it turns out,  it may be the

According to Marilyn vos Savant, the super duper high IQ gal who writes a column for the Sunday newspaper, the right way to handle those approaching lane closures is to utilize both lanes for as long as possible. She says it's more efficient that way, and keeps traffic moving. Then at the closure point, cars are to take turns: proceed first from one lane, and then the other. I checked it out, and the DOT agrees with her. They even have a name for it; they call it the zipper method. After I read her article, I thought it did, indeed, make sense to do it that way, but Smarticus still says he's gonna move over well before the lane closes. A couple of other friends agreed with him, and they say that in a Utopian world, it'd be a great way to handle the situation, but it ain't a Utopian world, and people are gonna act like jerks at the convergence point. It might be a logical approach... but it isn't practical.
             
                                                         What do YOU think?

                                             I think... I'm gonna have a cuppa tea.

                            Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

The Worst Promotions Ever

Thought for the day:  Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.   Carl Sagan

When I was in the bank the other day, I couldn't help but notice a sign hanging on the wall. It read We have one very powerful business rule. It is concentrated in one word: courtesy. Henry Wells, 1864


Yes, courtesy is important, but as I waited in line, it occurred to me that there are a couple other C words I'd really like to see from today's businesses. How about some competence and decent customer service?

After all, insincere smiles and tepid I'm sorrys only go so far.

I mean, is it too much to ask that the person waiting on you in any business actually knows a little something about the product he wants you to purchase? Is it too much to expect a real person to answer the phone when you call for assistance? A real person who actually knows how to provide that assistance? It'd also be nice if all the people within a company were on the same page, too, so no matter which of them speaks to you, you're going to get the same exact response every time.

Yeah, I know, pipe dreams.

Alas, I realize businesses are essentially in business to make money. As much as they can, with as little effort as possible. Such rarely seen things as competence and customer service must cost too darned much money, I suppose. Silly me.

On the other hand, businesses DO sometimes use promotional campaigns to reach out to their customers. Carl Sagan said imagination can carry us to worlds that never were? Some companies had imagination out the wazoo when they came up with some of their promotional campaigns. And it definitely took them somewhere. Mostly down.

 I gleaned the following information from an article, Biggest Disasters in the History of Marketing, by Evan V. Symon.  (And please forgive me for laughing at the misfortunes of these businesses. I know it isn't very courteous of me.)

As a proud sponsor of the 1984 Olympics, McDonald's ran a special promo, "If the U.S. wins, you win!" Each customer received a scratch-off ticket with an Olympic event printed on it, and if the U.S. won a medal in that event, the customer would win a Big Mac, fries, or Coke, depending on which medal was won. Do you remember the 1984 Olympics? They were held in Los Angeles, and both Russia and East Germany boycotted the games that year. Without the historically tough competitors from those countries participating, the U.S. won a total of 174 medals that year ... including an eye-popping 83 gold medals. Um, that translated to a LOT of  Big Macs. FREE Big Macs. Many, many, MANY more than the company ever anticipated.

In 1986, a discount store named Silo had a glut of stereos on their shelves, so they offered them at a discounted price to get them out the door. Great idea, right? The trouble is, they tried to be hip in their ad. Surely, when they offered those stereos for 299 bananas, everyone would KNOW they meant dollars, right? Right. Maybe they did, and maybe they didn't, but what happened is customers crowded the stores the first (and only) day of the sale with 299 actual bananas in hand. Silo may have gotten a bunch of stereos out the door, but they allegedly lost over $10,000 in that one day. Needless to say, they pulled the ad before they could get buried under another day's mountain of bananas. Kinda made a monkey out of that store, wouldn't you say?

Tesco and Asda are competing supermarkets in Britain, and earlier this year, Tesco launched a promotion wherein if Asda beat their prices, they would pay the customer twice the difference. It appears the company overestimated their bargain prices, and underestimated the willingness of their customers to extend themselves to save a buck. Savvy customers scoured the two stores for price differentials, shared the information via the Internet and many customers raked in mucho moola, and essentially, free products, to boot. But only for so long. The store now has a twenty pound cap on payments.

In the early '90s, Hoover ran a promo that was up, up and away, the worst promotional ever for a business. They offered two free airline tickets to Europe or the U.S. with the purchase of a vacuum cleaner. Someone within the company evidently thought this would be a good way to sell some of the high end models. After all, people would be getting free tickets. Wouldn't they feel justified in splurging on a better vacuum? Ah, in a word, no. People bought the cheapest models. Lots of 'em. The company lost 500 million pounds in this fiasco.

This is your Captain speaking ...

In 1967, San Franciso-based Pacific Airlines was losing money, due in part to extensive media coverage of a recent crash. In a nutshell, customers were extremely nervous about flying with them. So they got desperate. And arguably, stupid. They hired comic Stan Freberg to head up their promotions and to get the company back on the right track, money-wise. He started by taking out a full-page ad. It read Hey there! You with the sweat in your palms. It's about time an airline faced up to something. Most people are scared witless of flying. Deep down inside, every time that big plane lifts off the runway, you wonder if this is it, right? You want to know something, fella? So does the pilot, deep down inside. Oh, that was just gr-r-reat, right? Sure to build up confidence in the nervous. But he wasn't done there. Oh no. In a continuance of his attempt to mock people out of their fear of flying, he had flight attendants hand out survival kits, which included a lucky rabbit's foot, and a security blanket. And at the end of each flight, the flight attendant would go to the intercom and announce, "We made it! How about that!" Not surprising, sales actually went DOWN, Freberg was fired, and the company went down, too. It sold, and later became Air West.

Last November, Walker's Potato Chips, a UK company, came up with a promotional campaign that turned out to be all wet. Once a customer bought one of their bags of chips for 40 pence (~65 cents) he could go online for two (count 'em, TWO!) chances to win ten pounds (~$16) by successfully predicting when and where it would rain. The problem? You may have heard a rumor before ... something about how often it rains in England? Especially in the fall, which is when this ill-fated campaign got under way. Statistics showed a better than one in three chance of rain on any given day, and it didn't take the company long to discover they were shelling out approximately ten pounds in prize money for every three pounds of chips sold. Not exactly stellar numbers. Without warning or fanfare, the site mysteriously went down during a particularly rainy week, when they were set to lose more than a million pounds. And that was the end of THAT promotion.

And THIS is the end of this post.

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.