Whats the price? – Rant

I have been looking all day for a promotional pen manufacturer that will ship to me for a reasonable price, I find tons of pens, but no pricing.  I have wasted about three hours on this and am just giving up for now. So I thought I would rant a bit about having price tags on stuff.

In my career in sales, I have sold inexpensive items such as $5 portable radios, and $3 headphones,  I have also sold $100,000 Cadillac , and top end home theatre systems sometimes costing more than $60 000,

I have seen all kinds of sleaze and greed in my time, and the worst of it is when you put a high commission salesperson with a product with no price tag.

Often a $70 item suddenly becomes $300, or a $500 suddenly becomes $2000, and believe it or not people don’t know any better and actually buy these things.  Sure they usually know the price of the main item, but not all the little extras they try and sell you after. The guy ripping them off will lower the price until they buy anyhow, or “switch products” to get in their price range,  and judge how much they will sell it for by how much trust they feel they have from the customer.

Anyhow, here I am trying to buy pens online, and there are no prices, whats the secret? Do you expect me to draw you a bank cheque? I’m sorry I cant buy for “secret prices” how do you even put a secret price on the pay slip for me to sign?

If everything has price tags my days and everyone else’s will just be that more efficient, and the guys that rip you off not only wont be able to rip people off anymore, but when they go shopping themselves they wont get ripped off either.

There should be a law that all items without a price tags  are free.

Mercenary for the Man

Although almost two decades have past,  my time employed with a  large North American electronics company, still deeply effects my perspective on corporate  life. I started out as a simple salesman, but over time  moved myself up through the various positions the company offered, and by the age of twenty two I had a hundred and fifty people below me on the corporate ladder, and only two above. I was making myself quite a decent income.

During my last two years with this company, I found that my boss had started to ask me to take over more and more responsibility. I was told that if I did the work now, great wealth would follow, as time went on, I gave more and more of my time and energy to the company, sixty plus hours a week was pretty normal, often with business trips thrown in, where I was basically “at work” 24 hours a day.

After a couple of years,  I began to go beyond asking, and demanded the raise they had promised me, there were various long winded “reasons” why it could not be given to me, but the truth was, that the pay of my non-owner boss above me, would have had to be slashed to pay me for all his work I was doing for him.

The incredible work hours of the last two years, had taken a huge toll on my social life without helping my financial status at all. They had me working my ass off for nothing. I was “chasing carrots” I would never be given.  I cant believe I let them do this for me for almost two years.  I had been given much more responsibility, and many more headaches,  but no reward. My corporate slavery had distanced me from my close friends,  and ended up losing me my girlfriend. My work had become the unhealthy centre of my life.

Disgusted at how the company had strung me along for two years, and heartbroken over my lost love, I quit the job, though they tried tossing money at me to get me back, I had already lost my faith in them, so off I went. I took the money I had  saved from working there for so long, bought myself a backpack, and began to travel around the world.

Sixteen months later, while hanging out on a beach in Thailand I ended up meeting five English teachers on vacation from their work in Korea. We spent a few very fun days together, since I was starting to run out of travel money, but didn’t really want to go home, I began asking them about their work in Korea. They all agreed with one another that they didn’t like the job, and even went on to say they didn’t like the country, the people the boss or anything.

I was a bit taken aback by their unanimous dislike for their job, and asked them “Why on earth do you work there then?”

One guy said something that has stuck with me to this day, and I have often considered just how much I agree with this, he said: “I don’t work for companies, I work for myself, I do it for money, I am a mercenary.”

Obviously he wasn’t a real “mercenary”, he was an English teacher, but I liked his idea. He didn’t do what he did for his company, or his boss, he just did it for the money.

Since that time I have always approached work this way. I don’t care what a jerk my boss is, or if I like the company, and I don’t do things to help my boss or the company for free, because in the end, the company and the boss only care about the money, they don’t care about you. They only want you to do things for free, because it saves them money.

Of course I still do my work as well as I can, you need to do a very good job to be a demanding employee, but if people ask me to take another responsibility, I will ask if there is an immediate raise involved before i agree to do it. My loyalty now has a price.

I also became a mercenary for the man.

Developing Countries and Robots

The Term Developing Countries is thrown around quite a bit in “Developed Countries”, there are actually very few people in “Developed” countries. In common practice, only Japan in Asia, Canada and the United States in northern America, Australia and New Zealand in Oceana  and Western Europe are considered “developed” regions or areas. In international trade statistics they consider, the Southern African Customs Union, and Israel as a developed areas.

If you look on a map, this isn’t really that much of the world, obviously places like Australia and Canada are huge, but they only contain a combined  total of about 55 million people so if you start considering populations, again its just not that many people.  In fact all “developed” nations all trade together and have international stock exchanges. They are sort of all from the same club.

I find it funny how one country or group of countries (like a club), can decide who will,  and who will not be considered “developed”. Of course there are some countries that and “more shiny” than others. If you go to countries like The United States, Canada, and Australia, you we astonished at how well they are laid out. The reason for this is they have been developing their cities and towns and roadways etc, with the modern day inventions of telephones, electricity, and automobiles considered in the planning. If you go to the newest places, like most of Australia, and the west coast of the United States and Canada, these cities are so new, all has been logically pre planned before the city was even built. This is in large contrast to older places where people build houses without the consideration of all the things that had yet to be invented. I mean when Varanasi in India was built six thousand years ago, they didn’t consider where the cars would go.

It is true that most modern scientific inventions are accredited to “developed” countries, or at least almost all International Patents are registered by “developed” countries. Basically being a member of the club means you know its systems, and membership does have privileges.

I am faced with issues on the money making side of my life currently where artists over in “developing” nations have drawn some artwork that another company in America is actively copywriting for themselves, cutting this small company, that is not “in the know”, out of the profits, and the ability to sell their own designs. Sad isn’t it?

An average person arriving from a “New” country to any old country tends to judge a book by its cover, traffic congestion, overhead wires, crooked streets, non sequential addresses, and old buildings, just don’t look the same as the new shiny glass buildings, with underground wiring, on strait roadways.

The wild dogs and in the streets in some “developing” nations, are considered dangerous to people from western countries that have never dealt with wild dogs before,  they think the country just doesn’t know how to deal with those issues, when the fact is the religion says to just leave nature to nature and they don’t believe in killing them or “fixing” them. I have been walking around packs and huge groups of wild dogs for about 8 years now and have never been bit. In fact I am glad they are there, because they will bark at strangers, and help keep my little road safe for us people who live here.

Too many people travel from these types of places, judge the book by its cover and make a decision that they should be the teachers, since it is obvious they are superior.

Obviously “developed” countries, do have some things to teach “developing” ones about things like technology, and modern day business, but having the ability to build robots,  does not mean they are superior at everything else.

Some people are so full of themselves they think that they, coming from a developed country,  can somehow teach Indians how to play the guitar, which India  actually invented themselves thousands of years ago. Or cooking, like we all don’t know how to cook. I mean maybe they don’t make a better hamburger or fish and chips in Asia than they do back home, but thank god they have so many other things to cook that taste better and are healthier for us.

Some thick headed idiots actually get mad at people in non-English speaking countries for not speaking English…

When I was twenty two, I went to several doctors in Canada about a nasal infection I had. I was recommended many prescription drugs and when they didn’t work eventually an operation. I decided I wasn’t bothered about it enough to get an operation. When I saw a doctor in India about it, he gave me a little device similar to a chicken baster and told me to squirt water with salt in it up my nose 2 times a day. This cured me in about a week. The same doctor recommended on a different occasion chewing on some raw ginger for my sore thought, it didn’t taste that bad and I only had to do it once a day to get rid of my sore throat for the day. Did you know drinking warm water breaks up phlegm when you have bronchitis, and cold drinks make it worse? Makes sense doesn’t it?

I have an 8 year old son that has been living in “undeveloped” countries with me for the last three years. At home in Canada children that are less than about 10 years old are generally kept inside or supervised by the parent, to keep them safe from sickos and perverts. In Asia you just let them run free and so do all the other kids, and all the neighborhood kids and parents, and anyone else that lives there looks out for them and they are safe.

We run over to these countries so often for work, or holidays, and often don’t bother to listen or ask what they have to teach us. We teach them all we know and leave. In the end they have all their knowledge and all of ours. This isn’t really a good plan for long term competition. You cant speak and listen at the same time. Our big headedness could one day be our downfall.

No one ever asks why some things are better in “developing” countries than the in “developed” countries, I mean we build the best robots, so obviously we have nothing to learn from anyone else, right?

Wrong! Living life has absolutely nothing to do with making robots.

How Your Luggage Can Effect the Cost of your Travel.

Generally if you use a suitcase you are limited to where you will go, your best bet is airplane to taxi to hotel as they are not that easily portable, the problem is this.

The wheel system on the suitcases are generally quite heavy compared to a strait cloth bag, many wheel system bags are also hard, these two factors can make the bag difficult to carry. If you hit some rough terrain or a staircase or boat or buss es etc, the bag is so heavy it is just plain tiresome to do difficult traveling with.

You are therefore limited usually to traveling to destinations with other people that have heavy luggage, and share the same “convenience” priced hotels with all the others of your sort.

If you carry a backpack with the same items in it, you can usually travel a bit further because the weight preferably balanced on the middle of your upper back, the baggage itself is lighter, and you are in balance for walking up difficult terrain if you wish. Eventually the path will get to difficult or you are too tired, so you stop with others of your baggage toting kin. These hotels get less traffic are are usually quieter, and less expensive, often they are less spoiled than the easy to get to beaches.

If you carry a light backpack, you can arrive at the same original destination but travel further by foot. A cloth backpack with a week or more worth of clothing in it is actually quite light on its own.

The further you get from the easy to reach places the cheaper it gets, and generaly more beautiful also.

The Man and his stupid copywrite laws.

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OK, I know we have to protect the logos and hard creative work done by others, but I am faced with a situation currently on both my personal and business side that is making me wonder exactly what the logic is of these silly decisions.

First off the music industry.

I happen to love music, I am a big fan of all kinds of music and have a large CD collection of over 2000 CDs, as well as DVD videos of many of my favorite bands.

I used to be able to see all these bands on MTV and enjoy their videos and music, as well as listen to them in my car as I drove. This is my problem. I can’t hear the music of my favorite bands anymore, not legally anyhow. Radio stations back home have these programming directors that may or not play it. It seems at least in Canada these days we just don’t get the DJs that play whole albums anymore, it’s no longer up to them, I hear the US is the same way these days, not sure about the rest of the world.

The programing directors at the radio stations now decide based on the highest profitability of the radio station which songs will be played, instead of the music loving DJs of old, that just played what they wanted. The same thing has happened to MTV, its all about profit now, which is fine for them I guess, but I may not like what is popular and now I cant hear the music I like.

So what do I do? If I want to hear, or “try out” some music, I do what most people do,  search the Internet for what I want to her. Very recently I searched for some songs from Nickleback. Even though they are one of the biggest rock bands in the world today, and I happen to like them. I search and I search but I cant find the official video. Ones that were put up by fans yesterday are gone today due to copy write laws.

Why on earth do these big bands no longer want their videos to be played. OK I know Nickleback and most other large bands have official stations on YouTube, and on their official website, however they don’t display all the videos, and I cant hear all the songs. Often the Websites are not as easy to use as Google and YouTube . If the songs I want are there somewhere, I cant be bothered to find them, after five minutes I just give up forever.

Basically to make a long story short, I used to listen to the music and then buy it. Now I can no longer listen to the music, so of course I am not going to spend my $20 to see if they have any talent left.

Music Company, Epic Fail.

Second of all Mickey Mouse

OK do we all know who Mickey is? I would say yes but barely, Disney is so famous with their protecting of copy write laws, I swear I am afraid just mentioning them here will end me up in court.

Now I loved Disney as a kid, and loved going to their movies, I made sure I saw every one ever made until about 10 years ago. Then I just kind of forgot about them. Though I sill watch their films with my son from time to time.

Anyhow here I am in Asia, and people tend to ignore copy write laws here, everyone is free to print a mickey mouse shirt, and sell it on a street corner for 5 dollars, people buy them cheap and wear them. On my ninety minute walk today I was met with his cute little face no less that four times. They have little mickey logos on polo shirts, he is on bags and hats etc. People like him, he advertises Disney, and they are doing it for free.

Back home no one wears mickey, its not that he isn’t cute, but the local Disney store from where I lived was about a 45 minute drive, and the shirts are $30 each. Why bother ?

I forget all about Mickey back home, good job copy write lawyers.

Epic Fail Disney (wonder if I will get sued now)

Third of all beer t-shirts.

OK lots of people love beer, and lots of people travel and would love to have a beer shirt from places they have been. But beer companies want to be the only ones selling their shirts. The shirts on most of the official beer company sites are quite expensive, say about $30 plus shipping. So I would assume generally the people don’t buy them.

I used to sell a particular beer shirt on my website and was forced to take it down. I had outranked their official site on the Google Searches and I guess they didn’t like that. By the way I had surfed there official clothing site four times or so and had found it very difficult to find the actual shirts, it was painful to look for them through all the graphics, not to mention I had checked there Internet traffic numbers and they just didn’t get that many people. Basically a really bad site with lots of good graphics.

Why on earth don’t they want people to run around with their beer logos on their chest? I mean they spend millions if not billions on beer ads, billboards and event sponsorship. When did these guys decide that free advertising was a bad thing?

Beer Company, Epic Fail

This is a common pattern in current international big business, they so busy protecting their copy writes they have forgotten all about maximizing profits. They don’t even realize they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Way to go big business, when I go get my beer tonight I will forget to get one from your company, I wont have a new CD to listen to as I drink it, and my son wont be bugging me to watch a Disney film or go to Disneyland tomorrow. I hope you have somehow made enough profit elsewhere to make up for a world that is no longer craving your items, and that you somehow survive  in the future as more and more people forget you exist.

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