My Crystal Ball's a Little Cloudy

Thought for the day: Wise old ladies don't plan too far into the future. [me]

Yep. It's that time again.Time for our monthly IWSG posts. As always, thanks to our fearless leader, Alex Cavanaugh, for founding this fine group, and thanks to all the other nurturing guys and gals who've helped turn it into the thriving community it is today. I'm telling ya, this group offers better support and lift than the world's most expensive bra. (No pesky underwires, either!) To join this super supportive group of writers and to see links to other participating blogs, please go HERE

Writing is still taking a back seat right now, but with the end of scheduled chemo and radiation now in sight, if all goes well, maybe I can invite my muse back into my life after the first of the year. We shall see.

In the meantime, I'm gonna vent a little. As I write this, it is Saturday afternoon, and maybe the issue will be resolved prior to the publication of this post on Wednesday, but I'm gonna spit it out anyway.

I firmly believe in writing and posting a review after reading a book, because I KNOW how important that feedback is to writers...  especially the insecure ones. (Which pretty much means ALL of us.) Typically, I post on both Goodreads and Amazon, and to date, I've posted a bazillion of 'em with no problems.

Until now.

For some reason, Amazon has rejected my last four reviews. I tried resolving the problem via email messaging with someone in customer service this past week, but that didn't go well. I ended up getting an email the next day from someone with Amazon in INDIA... saying I needed to have a password-protected account in INDIA... and spend such-and-such amount of money per year on INDIA Amazon before I could post a review.

HUH???

Last time I looked, I've never even BEEN in India. (Musta been some other Susan Swiderski...)

My attempt to respond to that email proved worthless, so I hope to resolve the issue via telephone next week. I mean... what the heck? I'm curious: have any of you encountered the same issue? 'Tis annoying...

At any rate, I'm gonna tell you guys about one of those rejected book reviews, because I think You Beneath Your Skin is well worth promoting. It's the brilliant debut from one of our very own IWSG members, the talented Damyanti Biswas. Not only is her book an eye-opener about the horrors of  acid attacks on women and the dismal living conditions and difficulties for the poverty-stricken children of India, but it's also a thought-provoking story of self-identity and inner strength... and it's beautifully well-written. But wait! That's not all...  All proceeds from book sales are being donated to organizations that help these women and children. We can't all be Mother Teresa, but we can all benefit by becoming aware of the issues that so touched her heart. If you treat yourself to a book this Christmas, I humbly suggest this one.

Now, for this month's question:

Let's play a game. Imagine. Role-play. How would you describe your future writer self, your life and what it looks and feels like if you were living the dream? Or if you are already there, what does it look and feel like? Tell the rest of us. What would you change or improve?

I think Snoopy's got the right idea.

To tell the truth, I don't look too far into the future, especially since Smarticus got diagnosed. I'm taking each day as it comes and making the best of it. Besides, I'm getting old enough that I have to seriously consider whether or not it's a waste of money to buy green bananas from the grocery store... (HA! Just kidding on that one. It's perfectly safe to buy green bananas, no matter how old you are. More likely than not, they'll be overripe by the time you get them home, anyway...)

Seriously, if I'm gonna imagine the future me living the writer's dream... it'd be great if a kind-hearted publisher read my books and knocked on my door like The Millionaire used to do on the old TV show. He can keep his money, though. I just want him to fall so in love with my books that he wants to publish and promote the second two books in my trilogy. Heck, if you're gonna dream, might as well dream big, eh? (If he wants to toss some moolah into the deal, I guess that'd be okeydoke, too...)

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

All Aboard!!!

Thought for the day:  I didn't get a toy train like the other kids. I got a toy subway instead. You couldn't see anything, but every now and then you'd hear this rumbling noise go by.  [Stephen Wright]

Do you like trains? I've always had kind of a thing for them, whether it be the real thing, the authentic to-scale workable steam engines a friend of ours builds, or the fantasy world of model trains.

Not far from my grandmother's house was an old-fashioned train crossing, the kind with a little bitty building sheltering an honest-to-goodness man, who'd emerge with his little red flag to stop traffic (all one of us) whenever a train was coming. He always waved and smiled at us, and sometimes there'd be another smiling, waving man standing out back of the  little red caboose, too, with a lantern in his hand.

Romanticized memories of lying in bed listening to the haunting sound of train whistles through my grandmother's open windows at night caused me to later suffer a severe case of temporary insanity, during which I thought it would be a swell idea to rent an apartment right next to some train tracks. Suffice it to say the BANG! CRASH! BOOM! steel-laden freight trains from Bethlehem Steel passing by around the clock, causing  mini-earthquakes in our apartment wasn't particularly romantic.

Anyway, not long ago, my husband asked me if I'd like to go to a train show. Not the box cars like we both used to climb on and jump (shhhh!) when we were kids, but model trains. All kinds of model trains.

          Well, heck yeah.

In addition to various gauge models, there were also a bunch of lanterns, the kind I remember those men holding on the cabooses so long ago. And there were sets of dishes from some of the old passenger trains. Lots of neat stuff to look at, especially all the model trains winding through their miniature pretend worlds.

Here's an overview of one of the set-ups.

A horse race! Isn't this the cutest thing?

OOOH! A farm!

A shooting gallery, part of a carnival 

Bumper cars, anyone?

The guy loading the coal car was having entirely too much fun.

The show included all kinds of neat displays (like a BUNCH of carnival rides) with movable parts, flashing lights, sounds, and some buildings so detailed, they looked like someone had zapped the real thing with a sci-fi shrink ray. Check out the details in this general store:

There were tiny gas stations with cars up on a lift, car shows, factories, water towers, a produce stand, diners and even a McDonald's. Lots of intricate details and bits of whimsy. If you've never been to a model train show and have the opportunity to attend, I highly recommend it. Take the kids and/or grandkids, too. (Children get in for FREE!)

Did you have (or do you still have) model trains? When I was a kid, a number of the fire departments in and around Baltimore set up an enormous Christmas Garden in one of their bays every year. Did the firehouses in your area do that, too? The Dundalk Fire Department, where I used to be mesmerized, stopped doing their Garden in 1978, but another fire department in the area took it over. This is a shot of the new garden. Looks just as magical.

I even found some cool videos taken at the new garden. Here's one of them. Hope you enjoy it:

Time for a quick railroad story about customer service:

 In 1895, after suffering a bunch of bedbug bites while trying to sleep in a Pullman Palace Car, an irate customer wrote a letter of complaint. Soon after, he received a very nice letter of apology from George Pullman's corresponding secretary, in which she thanked him profusely for alerting them to the problem, and explained how extremely rare bedbug bites were. She assured him the car had been properly fumigated and returned to service. The customer might have been mollified, had it not been for one mistake. The secretary inadvertently included Pullman's handwritten note, which read, Sarah, send this S.O.B. the bedbug letter. 

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

Always make sure the light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train.

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.