Monthly Archives: August 2008

Well, Linked in is down already, can’t access my home page, I suspect because a question posted by John McCain has shorted all its circuits with people responding. Some network. Good thing the electrical grid doesn’t work like that. (Or maybe it’s so many people trying to link with me?)

I’m at the National Speakers Convention in The Big Apple, which is unusually good this year. Marshall Goldsmith and Steve Forbes were two of the keynoters, and they were superb. This morning, Bill Strickland told his story of transforming the lives in inner city youth through art and education, and it’s absolutely life-affirming stuff, pathos short of bathos. You just feel humbled by this guy.

So there’s the good news, and kudos to the convention organizers and staff for high-value learning. I was proud to be a member.

Lest I began to feel the world was becoming too perfect, however, I was moved to attend a concurrent session on how to get a book published. I’ve been published 27 times, with five more coming, so I have some experience in the realm. But I thought I’d pick up some ideas that I hadn’t thought of to help those I coach and mentor in this pursuit. I find it’s easiest to learn something when you’re already pretty good at it.

About 70 of us turned out, a panel of six or seven authorities were crowded together on the stage, and the moderator opened things up. That’s when it took a turn for the worse.

He began by pointing out that he had just come from Venice, having left his family, in order to be with us to moderate this panel. He then milked the applause he had pandered. Now, it seems to me, on the life balance scale of things, that anyone could have moderated that panel, including any of the six guys on his left, but not everyone could have enjoyed some more time in Venice with his own family. So, right away, I’m wondering about his choices. It wasn’t like he was a keynote speaker, or even urgently needed for this gig. And, in any case, why was it important that we know that?

However, the coup de grâce was yet to come. He then told us that he was, and I quote, “a crappy writer, maybe the crappiest writer in the world.” Yet he had published ten books which had sold hundreds of thousands of copies. So if he could do it, guess what, so could we (and presumably, so could my Beagle, who has many virtues but could also be considered a pretty crappy writer.)

I don’t know what his segue was, because I left, having at least had the veteran knowledge and behavioral predispositions which had led me to sit near the exit.

My friends, I believe in the written word and I think Guttenberg was a hero. There are typos in my work at times, an occasional factual error, and opinions, I hope often, which provoke and infuriate people. But my books, columns, articles, and newsletters are written as well as I can manage, and on the verbal calibration scale, that’s not bad. I’ve never been a crappy writer trying to simply create and move a product to make money.

Anyone who writes should be seeking to convey value and to constantly improve his or her craft, which is, at the very least, an ethical obligation. One should not claim to be Shakespeare or Dickens, but neither claim that the words and intent don’t matter and aren’t of matter to the writer and the reader.

And one should never deign to speak publicly with no respect for one’s craft or the audience.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

There’s a book out (which I am not publicizing here) from a restaurant waiter who had been doing an anonymous blog. The “angle” is that he “discloses” what the wait staff does to customers whom they don’t like, such as playing “hockey” with a returned burger before sending it back out.

He has been on the morning talk shows, yada, yada, yada. I find him an effete, supercilious guy who is grabbing his few minutes of glory. He doesn’t have much of a story, but evidently has a truly great press agent.

Among his mundane revelations (wait staff will spit in your food, pretend your credit card is declined, spill things on you) are his self-absorbed suggestions: Never send food back, don’t ask for a better table, tip at least 20% on the total including the tax, never mention that you know the owner, etc. Matt Lauer, on “Today,” never an exciting interviewer to begin with, seemed to hang on these recommendations as though they were the formula for peace in the Middle East.

How about a customer’s bill of rights: Don’t introduce yourself as, “Hi, I’m Harry, and I’ll be your server,” the latter part of which is self-evident and the former irrelevant. I don’t want a friend, I want good service, which, if delivered, might merit a healthy tip. Assume that a self-confident customer is not going to eat substandard food or accept poor seating when better is clearly available. We’re supporting you, we’re not lab rats.

How about you learn to serve and remove from the proper sides, serve meal courses simultaneously to all diners, and remove dishes only when everyone is finished, not individually? What if you got the drink orders correct, and the olives really are on the side and not in the glass? (A waiter at otherwise outstanding Radius in Boston told me he served them the way HE preferred them, and I told the manager I didn’t prefer HIM, which led to two free meals at Radius.)

Don’t ask me, “How are things?” unless you mean it, and not when my mouth is full. Don’t bump me, the chair, or my guests when you’re in the vicinity and certainly not when you’re serving. Keep your fingers out of the food and keep the courses at decent intervals.

Oh, yeah: And don’t write any dumb books about how you’re mistreated, because you can always find other work. Outstanding servers are worth a great deal.

Whiners are useless, unless, of course, they find a really good press agent.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.