If you don’t read this you’ll have 13 years of bad luck.

Bob the Sloth picks the winner of the MLS Cup

If you read my last blog you know what’s going on in my personal life, so I’ve given my husband the honour of choosing the subject matter for my last blog. After some ridiculous suggestions while we were watching the news, the story of Bob the Sloth picking TFC to win the MLS Cup came up, and he said why don’t you do that for your blog? I initially said no, but then thought about it. Why do we believe in something so seemingly silly as have a sloth predict the winner for the game? My husband pointed out by the way that this sloth had great success in correctly predicting the winner of the last World Cup. To move beyond Bob why do we not walk under ladders, fear Friday the 13th, believe that horseshoes bring good luck…?

What Superstitions?

We all know that superstitions seem irrational and not founded in any sort of logic, and Pitlane Magazine states, ” superstitions have unpredictability at their roots. Bad luck superstitions typically have an association with major transitions, with death, or with upsetting the balance of life at their core, even if the original reason for the association is long lost. Good luck superstitions are associated with gaining a sense of control in unpredictable situations.” Why People Believe in Superstititons (n.d.) Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2yUwiW2  Some examples of bad luck superstitions are if you spill salt you have to throw some over your shoulder to ward off bad luck, not opening an umbrella in the house, and breaking a mirror bringing bad luck. Some good luck superstitions are finding a penny and picking it up to bring yourself good luck for the whole day, or if you break a wishbone and get the larger bone whatever you wish for will come true. There are loads more that I’m sure my reader can share!

Is Superstition Based on Hope?

To me the common theme in all superstitions, whether good or bad, is hope, hope that bad luck will stay away from you and your life and that you will surround yourself with good luck. If we look at what Pitlane Magazine says, superstitions are meant to give the believer some measure of control in a random world. I have always been superstitious, but especially now when I know that my husband does not have much longer to live, I am so careful to follow all these “rules” to try to keep bad luck away, and have good luck in prolonging my husband’s life. I spilled salt the other day and you would have thought that I set a bomb off from my reaction of immediately jumping up and throwing salt over my shoulder. None of us has any idea what will happen from day to day, so if you can throw a penny in a fountain and supposedly have control over your future, or have a sloth give us hope that Toronto can become the MLS champions why not believe, and have hope in a good future?

Did Hope Reign?

As we now know Bob the Sloth was right, Toronto won the MLS Cup. Now do you believe?

Facebook Post:

 

If a black cat crosses your path, or if you walk under a ladder you’ll have bad luck. If you want to predict the winner of the MLS cup Bob the Sloth will predict it in the same way that a fortune teller can let you know what good luck and bad luck lies ahead. Are superstitions a form of hope, or a waste of time? My thoughts are: http://bit.ly/2iKatzm

 

Tweet:

Are superstitions a #wasteoftime or a #signofhope Hope lives eternal, and here’s why http://bit.ly/2iKatzm

 

 

 

 

A Lesson Learned

What were you doing on November 1st? You probably can’t remember what you were doing as that date means nothing to you. I can tell you what I was doing prior to November 1st – always planning, looking ahead to goals, and not just work goals, but savings goals, where are we going on our next vacation goals, chores that need to be done and by when goals…and on November 1st the universe decided in the worst way possible to teach me to slow down and enjoy the present.

1. The Awakening

November 1st I find out that my husband has been suffering with daily headaches for three months. I immediately force him (you know how stubborn men can be ladies) to accompany me to Emergency at the hospital where after a CT Scan they see a brain tumor. This is not the awakening though folks. On November 15th he has surgery to remove the tumor, and he suffers a stroke on the table that completely paralyzes his entire left side. We’re still not awake folks. He stays in the hospital, gets pneumonia while he’s there, and on November 30th we go to the “official cancer hospital” for assessment. Turns out the tumor that he had removed is the same one that Gord Downie died from, and my husband has a predicted life expectancy even after treatment of 1.5 years, give or take. Ubelacker S. (2017 October 18) Glioblastoma: The brain cancer that took Gord Downie’s life Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2BBo0Si. He will also never have use of the left side of his body again. The kicker – he’s only 48 and we’ve only been married for 5 years. Nudge – this is the awakening.

2. You’re awake, now what?

Literally, take the time to stop and smell the roses. I will never again have my husband pick me up in his arms, make me a meal, or so many other things that we both took for granted at the time. And now I look at what my life was before November 1st, a workaholic who had to plan every minutiae and would get mad if someone didn’t plan as well. Now who cares if the chores didn’t get done, they’ll be done eventually. And the 11.5 hours I give my employer daily, in addition to the extra hours I also put in on the weekend, won’t make my husband live any longer. Instead my life revolves around how much time I can spend with my husband before, well, he’s no longer here for me to share time with. He’s bedridden now, but I value so much more now the little jokes he makes, when I catch him staring at me with love from his one good eye, when he reaches over to hold my hand with his one good arm – this is what matters folks, all these little things that happen in the present. I’ve had to immediately find a new place for us to live, because our current home has too many stairs for him to navigate when he is released from hospital. And I guess my history of planning has paid off because in a week I’ve bought a new ground floor condo with a patio that leads out to a park – he can’t wait to see it! And I’ve in the same week been able to apply for EI for him, apply for a new mortgage, start packing up our old home… But I’ll tell you the change – in the past I would have had a scheduled time that I would not deviate from to leave the hospital and come home to pack a pre-planned amount. In the last 3 days I’ve not packed at all (gasp!) as I’ve chosen to spend more time at the hospital with him. The closing’s not till January 11th, it’ll get done… And you – are you taking the time to smell the roses?

 

Facebook Post:

Do you feel that you’re always juggling balls, trying to get everything done without focusing on what’s really important? Welcome to the club! That was me, until a few days ago. Want to see what made me change? Check it out here http://bit.ly/2i6QLO2

 

Tweet:

All those things in the picture don’t matter at the end of the day! Want to see what does? Click here: http://bit.ly/2i6QLO2 #WhatReallyMatters #SlowDown

Blog #2 – Has Social Media made us lazy?

Let me set the background here. I do Social Media Community Management for a national retailer, with over 1500 stores across Canada. Each store may vary in product assortment, pricing of course depending on location, hours of operation, delivery dates, and other factors. I have seen an increase in customers contacting us for information that is on our Corporate websites, or that will clearly differ from store to store, and it is not information that is expected to be at the Community Manager’s fingertips. I will research the answer after much back and forth with the customer to determine what exactly they’re looking for, which store they shop at, etc. but I do wonder what motivates them to have a back and forth conversation with a Community Manager about a store’s hours of operation for example rather than visit the Corporate website for that information. Is it just laziness?

 

1. The Good Ole Days  – when we were self-sufficient

Remember the old days when you wanted to know if your local baker could make a Frozen cake half chocolate half vanilla but replace Elsa’s face with your daughter’s, and by the way if I wanted to feed 150 people that cake what size would I need and what would be the cost, you’d actually pick up the phone (gasp), and call the baker, or even visit the baker to ask these questions? You’d never think of going to Facebook to ask these questions. What about if you wanted to know what time the drugstore closes you’d call them or even visit their website to see their hours? Or did your local grocer get that shipment of fresh peaches in – you’d call the store? Caveman days right? I remember in the not too long ago past we were more self sufficient when we wanted information, we did our own research. For the Community Manager to answer those questions, the Community Manager needs to probe the customer for more information, call the store, ask the same question, then relay the answer back to them. The Community Manager becomes the middleman, many times needing to go back and forth with the social media poster to ask for further clarification before calling the store to get the answer. When did the days of doing your own research disappear, and more importantly why?

 

2. The Current State – you do it for me

Customer: I wonder what time the store closes tonight? Goes on Twitter: @Company what time do you close tonight?

Community Manager: @Customer Happy to look into that for you, which location do you shop at? Or you may visit our website at 123@abc.com to search by your store.

Customer: @Company The one on Yonge Street

Community Manager: @Customer We have a couple on Yonge Street, which one……

This is a typical interaction between myself and a customer. Mind you, if the customer went to our Corporate website and selected the store, the information is right there. So why are they not doing that, and avoiding this back and forth? They clearly have internet as they are on Twitter. So what’s the reason?

3. Laziness?

My initial reaction is to say that it is a form of laziness where they won’t look up the information themselves, so I started to do some research to prove my theory. In one blog, the author states “social media provides immediate rewards with very little effort, making the brain rewire itself” (2017, January 15) Does Social Media Make People Lazy? Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2A1hEeq . That made me stop in my tracks, as the interaction in The Current State above is more common than an immediate reward with little effort. Indeed, the 30 seconds it takes to visit the Corporate website to get an answer is more immediate than the back and forth to get the necessary information to answer the question. So I felt that my theory could be wrong. Then I came across an article , where they said “Social media has made communicating with other people so easy that you now don’t actually need speak to anyone” Macale, S.(2011, August 15). 11 Ways Tech has Made Us Lazy. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2B3eSo2 and I started to think, is it that customers are looking for some sort of social interaction? Maybe they like the back and forth because of the human interaction.

4. Tech savvy, but lonely

My conclusion then is to believe that in this technology driven world of convenience, no-one wants to call or visit a store to get information, but on the other extreme people are lonely, and the cold way in which information is presented on websites is no longer sufficient, hence the middle ground of using technology to get information, but including that human social interaction as well. What do you think? Lazy? Or lonely?

 

Facebook Post:

Companies invest money to ensure that their Corporate websites have as much information as possible for their customers. So why do customers prefer to go to social media sites to engage with a human to get these answers? Are they too lazy to look the information up themselves? Or are they missing that human touch?

 

Tweet:

 

Has social media made us #Lazy or #Lonely when interacting with companies? What do you think?

How to lose your job by using Social Media 101

1. Get rid of any and all common sense

How many of you have made sexist jokes in front of your boss? And how many of you have looked a client or a coworker in their face and made derogatory comments about their race, or their country of origin? OK, one more question for you, how many of you have gone to competitors with top secret company information? You’re probably all thinking “What’s wrong with her? Who would ever do that?” Well funnily enough, that common sense seems to go out the window once people are on social media. It’s amazing to me how people take the most public of mediums possible to share their innermost thoughts, or raunchiest of pictures, and are surprised when they have to deal with negative consequences of posting this on social media.

 

2. Some examples to get you started

You must have heard about the Apple employee who lost their job because they gave a yet unlaunched Apple phone to their daughter, who promptly displayed it on social media.  Check out her story here https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/28/16565110/apple-engineer-iphone-x-youtube-video. She gave no thought to the fact that competitors would be given a sneak peek of a confidential launch, no thought that her dad might get into trouble, and no thought to the amount of wasted advertising by her showing off that she had the new unlaunched phone. I’d love to tell you that this employee was the only one to get into trouble because of not thinking of the consequences of social media, but I can’t. There are many more stories here http://people.com/celebrity/employees-who-were-fired-because-of-social-media-posts/. Maybe you yourself have heard of a good one that you can contribute to us learners.

 

3. Don’t forget, tell your employer to MYOB as it’s your personal page

If you do want to lose your job, going social without thinking about consequences is a great way to do it. Even if your company has a well thought out and documented social media policy, people seem to think that this affects only “work posts”. I manage our Corporate social media pages, and there have been occasions where employees have made comments on their personal page that have been homophobic, racist, complained about their job or customers, or posted pictures of themselves drunk, or in even less appropriate situations, and we have had customers post screenshots of the employees’ posts on the company page complaining about our staff. Without fail, every single employee who has been disciplined for these actions has said “But this is my personal page, and you can’t tell me what to do on my personal page”. Well when you have your place of employment listed on your profile, your employer absolutely can as you represent their business by identifying yourself as their employee. Or if you are in the public eye (eg retail, restaurant staff, or even the President of a country) absolutely you do need to be careful about what you post on your so-called personal page, because though the page may indeed be personal, they are not private, and as such can offend so many customers, resulting in lost revenue to your employer.

 

4. OK, all jokes aside, what should I keep in mind as an employee when using social media?

I think a good rule of thumb when using social media is if you would not show the CEO of the company, or your boss, or fellow co workers the pictures that you post, or make the comments that you make on a social page to your co-worker’s face, don’t post it on a social media site. Personal and private are not synonyms, and public inappropriate posts will have repercussions to you as an employee. What do you think though, should employees be held accountable by their employers for posts that they make on their personal social media pages?

 

Facebook Post:

We’ve all heard stories of employees being fired because of posts on social media. Do you aspire to be one of those employees who get fired? If so here’s an introductory course on How to Get Fired Using Social Media 101 https://wp.me/p3QRy0-iDl

 

 

Twitter Post:

Want to be fired for for posts on your personal social media pages – learn how to here https://wp.me/p3QRy0-iDl