Dwight Design offers these 11 website design mistakes that you shouldn’t be making. If your website commits any of these sins, it’s time to have a word with your webmaster (unless you insisted on them over their objections, in which case it’s time you sat down in front of a mirror and repeated “I am NOT a web designer” until you really, truly get it.)
You think your job sucks. I swear, I keep looking for an Onion byline on this story. The more I read, the more whiskey-tango-foxtrot it gets:
PROVO, Utah — No one really disputes that Chad Hudgens was waterboarded outside a Provo office park last May 29, right before lunch, by his boss.
There is also general agreement that Hudgens volunteered for the “team-building exercise,” that he lay on his back with his head downhill, and that co-workers knelt on either side of him, pinning the young sales rep down while their supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over his nose and mouth.
And it’s widely acknowledged that the supervisor, Joshua Christopherson, then told the assembled sales team, whose numbers had been lagging: “You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales.”
Yes, you read that right. In an attempt to spur the sales team into making more sales, this company waterboarded one of their own guys as a motivational exercise!
What makes this even more surreal (I would say funnier, but this is so far past funny and into downright disturbing that if my eyebrows go any higher, I’m going to end up with a permanent Klingon forehead crest) is that the company in question is a coaching company (warning, annoying flash intro) that makes success and leadership products.
And what makes it scarier is the sheer level of cluelessness involved. Because, see, the exercise wasn’t actually based on the waterboarding-as-torture, but was rather a misbegotten re-creation of student abuse perpetrated by Socrates. Now, I’m not even sure what part of holding someone’s head underwater as a motivational exercise made sense to the old Greek pederast himself, even allowing for differing cultural realities. But it’s unfathomable how anyone in this day and age of waterboarding scandal perma-reporting can look at Socrates’ actions and think, “Brilliant! Smithers, fetch me a bucket! It’s time for a little team building.”
Again, this would be frikkin hilarious…if it were a parody. The fact that it really happened is just…hell, I don’t even have the words for what it is. Terrifying. Sick. Twisted. Mind-boggling. Another nail in the coffin of my desire to never, ever work for anyone else, certainly, and yet another reason to avoiding any activity that smacks of team building.
What is funny, though, is reading the company’s About Us statement in light of the above “team-building” activity:
Prosper, Inc. provides executive-level coaching for individuals. Our mission is to provide our students with the education and hands-on experiences they need to achieve their personal and professional goals. We strive to make the road to personal achievement meaningful, rewarding, and enjoyable.
By understanding our business and by becoming sensitive to our world, we position ourselves to help others become leaders in an ever-changing marketplace. Our products and services are based on proven principles that, when applied, produce positive results in the lives of individuals and families.
Kinda like those games where you add “…under the bed” to the end of hymn titles. Heh, hands on experiences - in waterboarding! D’oh!
Seriously, Onion. Did you guys write this? C’mon, fess up. I won’t tell, I promise!
These people are idiots!
Do you know how little I care about that last statement? Allow me to explain…
I’m on an email list that I think is a very valuable resource. And it’s a new list, so I’m a little more forgiving in terms of giving a pass to the inevitable bumps and rough spots. But there’s been a recent issue that I think would make for a good discussion here, so I thought I’d share it with y’all.
If you run an email list of any sort, one rule is paramount: Keep the list professional, and don’t use it as a bully pulpit from which to whinge on about how stupid other people are who don’t agree with you or who don’t “get” you.
Here’s the story:
This list is new and growing. It’s one of those compilation lists that comes out three times a day (sorta like a Yahoo group, but private label). A while back, apparently some folks griped to the list-runner that three emails a day was too many. So he held a survey of the subscribers, and the overwhelming response was that three emails was just fine, thank you very much. So the list-runner has decided (wisely, I feel) to keep it to three emails a day and let those who disagree unsubscribe.
And if that were the end of the story - list owner takes the responsible route vis-a-vis some complaints, checks in with the list and comes out with a majority ruling - we’d have nothing to talk about. But it’s not.
The list-runner has spent the time since that event complaining about the people who think three emails is too many - basically trying to argue them out of their own opinions. In a recent email, he pointed out that a similar service sends over a dozen emails a day, and by that comparison his list is downright shy and retiring, so these people are crazy for thinking three emails is too much. Which is a ridiculous argument to make, because A) how many emails constitute too many is for them to decide, not you, and B) if they’re unsubscribing to a list with three emails, they’re almost certainly NOT subscribing to the other list anyway.
I chalk it up to this being a new list, and have corresponded with the list-runner to share my opinions (and they have responded more or less in agreement). Hopefully, this will die a natural death and all will be well.
The point I’m trying to make here is that if you’re running a list, a newsletter or any other professional public correspondence, keep the tone professional and on-topic. This is not to say you have to be without any personality at all. Said list-runner does include some witty personal banter in the emails which I find very humanizing and funny, and which I think adds to rather than subtracts from the list, although that’s also an opinion others have apparently differed on.
But for God’s sake, don’t use the list to harangue others, revile people who don’t agree with you, ridicule “losers” who leave the list for some reason or basically turn the list into a platform for you to rage against all those people out there who just don’t get you, and how stupid they are because of it.
Doing so only makes you look whiny, intolerant, ungracious and unprofessional. It never makes the others look stupid, no matter how clearly you try to connect those dots, because every single person on your list has held a minority opinion on something at some point and knows good and well that opinions are just that - a matter of personal preference, and as such, always right (for that person, at that time, in that situation). If I hate meatloaf, than I’m right, regardless of how much you feel meatloaf to be the food of the Gods - trying to argue me out of my opinion by pointing out how much other people like meatloaf, how nutritious it is, how cheap it is to make and so on is both pointless and makes you look like a blithering idiot for trying.
I’ve had to unsubscribe to countless lists for just this reason - some of which were hard to give up, given the value I was otherwise receiving. But, as I noted in my correspondence with the list-runner, I’ve got enough drama in my life to be adding someone else’s to the mix.
Do your subscribers a favor. Keep it light and professional, stay on topic and don’t give into the temptation to feed the trolls. This is even easier if you’re running an email list or newsletter, since the trolls can’t even be heard by anyone but you unless you give them a platform in the first place.
Your subscribers are there to get the information you’re sharing and to be a part of the community. And none of them wants to wade through your rants about the philistine, uncultured idiots who are chapping your ass because they don’t get your particular brand of genius in order to do so.