Friday, June 4, 2010

A Race to the Bottom

All right; so why a second blog? I already write a blog here on blogger.com called "Notes on a Business Page," where I share my thoughts on business, management, and current events, along with the occasional musing on life, graduate school, and human nature. So why start a second blog specifically devoted to customer service foul-ups, idiotic business decisions, and management policies so asinine they bear repeating?

Part of it, of course, is just that it might be fun. I write a lot of institutional failure posts for the main blog, partly because that's one of my research interests as a management scholar, and partly because any given day will bring dozens of them in the business pages of any major news aggregation site, but mostly because they're fun to read about and provide me with lots of comedic opportunities to make sarcastic remarks about people who aren't really trying - or, at least, aren't trying hard enough. I'll reprint a bunch of those posts here, too, but this also gives me a place to snark about things that I think are contributing to the decline of our civilization that aren't appropriate to the main blog. So, partly rage against the things that I feel are destroying the world as we know it, partly mean-spirited (but hopefully very funny) humor about people and institutions that should really know better, and partly things that are supposed to be vaguely educational or editorial but aren't necessarily serious. A mixture of Sam Clemens, Frank McConnell, Sam Kinison and Andy Rooney, if you like - all writers and observers whom I deeply admire, and all men whom I hope to be like when I grow up. Assuming, of course, that I ever do grow up...

So let's start things off with an image that I think captures the spirit of the thing perfectly. Some time ago, somebody decided to create a wall hook (like what you would hang your jacket on) in the shape of a roaring hippopotamus head - and, naturally, somebody else decided to create a hook in the shape of the back end of the hippo. Anyone who would consider hanging their hat on the back end of a hippo can't be all bad - and any blog that would feature such an item is in no danger of taking itself too seriously...

So, here we go. Anybody want to come along for the ride? It might be fun...



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