Where Do You Stand?

Despite all the conveniences afforded by modern technology, it’s hard to work and communicate with co-workers and clients when you cannot use a telephone. I’ve found this out on numerous occasions when I’ve decided to work from home. That’s because I live in St. Charles County and must abide by an antiquated toll-call rule.

If I use my phone (636 area code) to call the office (314 area code), I must pay a long-distance charge. If I call a client, that’s another charge. If I check my voice mail, another one. But that’s just the simple version of what’s going on. It gets more complicated.

To understand just how absurd and confusing the 636 and 314 area code situation is for my home phone, think about this:

• I can use my home phone to call my mother-in-law, whose house is 45 minutes away in Eureka.
• I cannot, however, call my best friend, who lives 12 minutes away in Maryland Heights.
• I can call our dog’s groomer across the Missouri River in Chesterfield using my home phone.
• But I cannot call the office, which is just one ZIP code away from Chesterfield.

So I can call 636 numbers, but I cannot call 314 numbers. OK. I get that. But how come I can use a 314 number and call some 636 numbers? For example, I can use my work phone to call my house. And I can use my work phone to call Chesterfield numbers. I cannot, however, use my work phone to call the 636 number of my colleague Christi, who lives out in wine country. How absurd is that?

Further complicating matters, my cell phone is equipped with just 150 peak minutes - the plan is cheap, what can I say - so that’s not an option other than for calls under 2-3 minutes. (And friends and family, that’s why I often call you at 8:01 p.m. - I’m waiting for the free minutes to kick in.)

It’s easy to understand why there’s such a divide between St. Louis and St. Charles counties. The area codes act as a steel-built wall, keeping communication from flowing freely in between these two neighboring areas. How can a company expect to provide great client service to clients when you can’t even call them? St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Charles County are considered part of the same region, so why not open up the telephone lines?

The absurdity of this area code situation is just too much for me. So the other day, when I was thinking about working from home but realized I had several calls to make, I just drove in and worked at the office. Why complicate matters that are already too complicated to understand.

A story posted to the Columbia Missourian Web site late last night discusses a proposal that would take away Missouri employers’ right to implant a microchip into the arms of their employees. The story cuts right to the issue:

Your bosses can still make you work weekends and give you projects you loathe. But Missouri lawmakers have voted to make it a crime if they order that a microchip be implanted in your arm.

The article states that employers would be fined up to $1,000 for demanding that a worker get an implant. One thing the article doesn’t explain: Whether employers would be forced to remove the microchip after paying that massive fine. I mean, such a steep, steep fine might be punishment enough, but still …

This story really got me thinking. I mean, what kind of world do we live in where an employer can’t take its workers down to a microchip factory and forcibly have a radio-frequency identification device placed under their skin? How are these employers going to track their employees every move?

The most important question that needs to be addressed is what would happen to Florida-based VeriChip Corp., the nation’s only federally approved maker of human microchip implants (according to the Columbia Missourian)? That company may have to look toward employers in other states to forcibly have employees microchipped. I give the Columbia Missourian credit for trying to find out such an answer. However, VeriChip’s spokesman thought it would be best to not return the reporter’s call. That’s a classic PR snafu. At least he could have stood up and said “No comment” like the countless other companies that we do NOT advise.

By the way, for those of you who don’t know me, this post is mostly in jest. I do not condone microchipping humans … and neither do Cathy or Melissa — or at least I hope that’s the case.

I’ve been grading papers this week (a LOT of papers) for the two college courses that I’m teaching. I keep running into a problem: Students citing Wikipedia as a source. It’s not just in my classes that I see Wikipedia being overly legitimatized. A colleague of mine (bless her heart) recently used the Web site to define the term “journalist.”

As I’ve found while working here at Standing Partnership, not everything found on Wikipedia is accurate. We regularly find incorrect information on the pages for our clients. And because it’s frowned upon when the actual company or a PR agency attempts to correct mistakes (an outsider must do that), the process is quite complicated and frustrating.

In future semesters, I plan to tell my students, “Wikipedia is not a legitimate source of information for your assignments. It’s an open-source wiki, and just about anybody can post information on the site with little verification of its factual merits.” I will also tell then that they are welcome to use Wikipedia as a starting point — it’s great for that — but they need to verify the information through a more legitimate source.

I’m somewhat of a cynic, so perhaps I’m overreacting. What do you think?

Though I now make a living in the world of issues and reputation management, I’ll always consider myself an editor. Over the past 10 years, I’ve edited thousands and thousands of newspaper articles, headlines, magazine stories, brochures and other works of brilliance. I’m fallible – don’t get me wrong. I still make mistakes from time to time. And I rarely criticize in a mean way. But I cannot always hide my frustrations when I see a major typo or grammatical error. I heard some deplorable news this week that pushed me to the edge. I’m at the breaking point.

• I keep my mouth shut every time I drive by Rombach Farms in the Chesterfield area and see the “Busses welcome” sign (it’s “buses” – get it right!).
• I have stood by quietly as error after obvious error on the KSDK-TV news crawl tarnishes the most beautiful newscast in the St. Louis area.
• And I have never said a word about the missing apostrophe on the logo on the Scotts LawnService vans (it should be “Scott’s,” since the company is named after founder O.M. Scott; also, would it hurt to make “LawnService” into two words?).

Those are just a few examples. I can live with errors like that, as long as I don’t have to view them frequently. However, there’s a big error on the way for Missouri residents. The new Missouri license places feature a major grammatical error. The hyphen is missing in the state’s nickname, “Show-Me State.” You can read more about it by clicking here and here. You can also view the license plate for yourself by clicking here.

Here’s a passage pulled from one of the stories linked above that shows just how much our state cares about this pending embarrassment that will surely tarnish our state’s reputation:

David Griffith, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Revenue, said they won’t correct the mistake because that’s how it looked when voters chose it in an online contest last year.

“If the people want it that way, that’s what we’re going to deliver for the people,” Griffith told The Associated Press.

Excuse me? The people want it that way? This is ridiculous. How embarrassing for a state that many on the coasts considers “flyover territory.” Now we’re so backwoods that we cannot punctuate our own state motto correctly. This really should be considered a travesty and an injustice.

When I receive my new license plates, I’m going to take a marker and fix the mistake. I hope you do the same thing. Make a stand.

I’m not writing about a communications issue today. No, I’m writing instead about how much I enjoy working for Standing Partnership. Please know that when I talk about Standing being a great place to work, I truly mean it. I’m enthused (overly enthused, perhaps) about Standing right now because I’m less than two weeks away from embarking on a month-long paternity leave. Yes, that’s right: My company offers male employees four weeks of paid time off after the birth of a child. That’s a nearly unheard of offering for a company of our size.

This is an extra special time in my life (as friends, family, co-workers and readers of my blog have heard countless times), and I just can’t thank my company enough for the opportunity to share in our son’s first days at home. My co-workers are all supportive, and they are really stepping up to help out in my absence. They, too, deserve a lot of praise for helping to make this happen. Anyway, I just can’t wait.

I’d love to hear what you think about paternity leave. Does your company offer it? Does your company have any other benefits that would be considered fairly unique?

In fairness to Target, who we picked on in a post earlier this week, I felt it was important to recognize that the company is reconsidering its stance in regards to its long-standing ban of nontraditional media, including both blogs and trade publications. PR Week reports that the retailer has upped its communications staffing and will review its blog policy.

In the article, Target’s senior manager of communications acknowledges, “We recognize that blogs are increasing in number, and that our core guests” are writing and reading blogs. She is later quoted as saying, “We will be reviewing that blog policy going forward. We just don’t want to make any decisions we can’t follow up on.”

The decision by Target to reconsider this policy is something we can all agree upon as being a good move. However, they should act quickly. I mean, what are they waiting for: all the newspaper ink to dry out?

The Ragan Report posted the article “Poll: Fear drives managers to ban social media at work” today. The author cites a recent poll that shows managers, and not IT folks, often block social media sites because they’re afraid productivity would suffer if employees were allowed to visit sites like Facebook and Flickr, read blogs or watch streaming video.

Shel Holtz (not to be confused with author and “Friend of ‘Where Do You Stand’” Shel Israel) is quoted throughout the article. Holtz recently launched the Stop Blocking campaign to end social media blackouts at organizations. My favorite quote:

“The idea of a work/life balance is pretty much dead among knowledge workers in the country — work/life balance being a clear balance between ‘I was at work and now I’m done,’” Holtz explained. “The replacement is the idea of work/life integration, which means that if you’re going to expect me to work while I’m at home then you damn well better be prepared to let me live a little bit of my life while I’m at work.”

It’s nice to work for a company that actively embraces social media as a key communication tool. Do you know of anybody who works for a company that has banned access to social media sites? Has it happened to you? It would be interesting to hear how such a ban has impacted work, either positively or negatively.

It’s “year in review” time at every publication and blog on the planet. Topics range from music to news to social networking.

As 2007 comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to discuss predictions on social media and communications for 2008. What will be the next big thing?

I have heard that Utterz could explode (though it makes my brain explode thinking about it). Perhaps the previously discussed Yahoo! Mash program will take off like Facebook did over the past year. Or will the next big thing be something practical? For example, will people finally realize that walking around and dining with Bluetooth headsets on looks ridiculous?

Who knows what’s in store for 2008? What do you predict?

Terrible media pitches make me laugh, often by their mere stupidity (for examples, see here and here). But when a painfully obvious PR stunt somehow garners international attention, something just isn’t right.

Take the headline-grabbing story about Josephs and Marys being offered a free hotel room on Christmas. The news release is posted on the British hotel chain’s Web site. It’s pretty darn flowery cheesy. I’m sure somebody with extremely religious fortitude might even find it offensive. Here’s a sampling (though I have to admit I cleaned up some of the egregious errors because they made me cringe):

The “gift” of a free night’s stay is to make up for the hotel industry not having any rooms left on Christmas Eve over 2,000 years ago when the original “Mary and Joseph” had to settle for the night in a stable.

Today’s Mary and Joseph will stay in a spacious Travelodge family room, which can also cater for a baby and a manger. A free car parking space will be provided for the donkey, and there are plenty of £29 rooms available for the Shepherds and Wise Men to book. The couple can stay anytime from Christmas Eve to the Twelfth Night.

It’s mid-December, so news outlets are feasting on soft news like this right now. But this is pretty far out there. Nevertheless, the story is making the rounds on all of the major news Web sites. CNN ran a story about it on Saturday, even infusing the story with PR lingo (“Josephs and Marys in search of a room at the inn this Christmas are being made an offer they can’t refuse”). Believe it or not, the story is considered photo-worthy “breaking news” in Trinidad and Tobago.

It’s a clever idea, I guess, but the PR smell is hard to ignore. What do you think of the story? Have you run across any others that scream “PR stunt?”

The Ten Commandments were carved into a stone tablet, and now The New York Times, “Harry Potter” and other modern fare will be available in tablet form. Reading’s one big cycle, I guess. What I’m referring to is Kindle, Amazon’s bold foray into the world of electronic books and magazines. The product was announced on Monday.

According to Amazon, Kindle is a wireless, portable reading device that will provide instant access to more than 90,000 books, blogs, magazines and newspapers. I stare at a computer screen all day and am not sure if I’m ready for this, but the idea of being able to lug more than 200 books around with me (and at just over 10 ounces) is pretty appealing.

What do you think? Are you ready to turn the page (yes, a bad pun) on the traditional reading experience?