‘The Cost of Doing Business’

Ted Krever: Writing and other forms of torture Posted on by
(What follows is a heavily rewritten version of an old post, updated to today’s news)

It’s been fascinating – regardless of your politics – to see the turnaround in economic propaganda in the weeks since the election. Suddenly, Bill Kristol (a die-hard and influential conservative for decades) says ‘It won’t kill the country‘ to raise taxes on millionaires. John Boehner announces that ‘Obamacare is the law of the land’ and quickly backtracks. Republican Senators and congressmen are backing off the ‘no-tax’ pledge that has made it so difficult to find a middle ground in Washington for years.

I don’t want to get into the political debate here. What I find fascinating is: Weren’t these questions that those same people were calling  life-and-death issues just three weeks ago? Where the fate of our civilization rested on the voters coming to the right conclusion? And now, since those voters came instead to the opposite conclusion (by a margin of 50.6% to 47.8%), suddenly these same people are shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘Oh, well, I didn’t mean it either.’

My father was a small businessman. There was a phrase I learned from him that applies here: ‘the cost of doing business.’ When you had to pay a bit more for something so that it could be tested and proven safe to eat/wear/ship, etc., when you had to pay a tax on the wholesale value when you bought it, this was a ‘cost of doing business.’ You didn’t like it sometimes but it was inevitable, so you just did it and moved on. The Republicans have decided -after being beaten and seeing a thousand miles of dry road ahead if they stick to the same path – that they have to make adjustments: it’s a ‘cost of doing business.’

Doesn’t that make you wonder if there aren’t other statements – statements we don’t even question and that have incredibly far-reaching effects – that might actually have very little basis in fact?

I’m thinking about the shoppers I saw camping out in front of my local big-box store Thursday night and in particular to the courageous workers who went on strike against Walmart on Friday (with no visible effect, as far as I can tell):

I think one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made as a society is to hitch ourselves to the lowest price. Most of the time, it’s no bargain.

What the lowest price does is make everything a commodity. The message we send to manufacturers is that we don’t care about quality, service (both at time of purchase and thereafter) or where and how a product is made.

Inevitably, we end up with shoddy garbage with a thousand features that falls apart in half the time it should and doesn’t work all that well in the meantime, that’s made by child labor in Guatemala or China while poisoning the land and water.

That same logic kills employment here because businesses obsessed with the lowest price  ‘can’t afford’ American workers (of course, they can always somehow afford giving millions in bonuses to top management).

And when we call customer service – and wait an hour to get through to that nice young man in Mumbai – we get an indifferent laundry list of irrelevant questions and imbecilic non-solutions that only makes clear the company stopped caring the instant they had our money and we’d left the store.

Whose fault is that? Ours. Why should we expect any better? We’ve told these companies all we want is the lowest price.

By way of contrast: Apple. Bose. Tempur-Pedic. Those names have a different ring to them. They aren’t necessarily the most expensive products in their category – but they don’t compete for the bottom rung either. They’re not universally loved by the people who buy or review them. But there is an assumption of quality.

To put it simply, they don’t compete on price – they have their price and they stick to it. And they don’t suffer for it either. The consumer pays the price to get something that’s generally worth the money. And gets decent service and follow-up in the bargain.

It’s a relationship that feels almost respectful of the customer.

The problem with the Walmart model is that it allows the retailer (I’m sure they would prefer me to say ‘forces’ the retailer but I don’t believe that) to treat their own employees like puppets on a string, paying them so little they can barely subsist, scheduling them and moving them around to avoid having to provide benefits.

This is, to use an old-fashioned word, wrong. A company that offers you work more than three days a week has a responsibility to provide a living wage (pro-rated to the number of days or hours you work) and benefits.

Does that statement shock you? Does that seem naive or unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky? A handout from ‘wealth creators’ to ungrateful ‘takers’? Okay, then think about this: Who’s doing the work in these businesses? Who’s dealing with the customers every day, when they’re angry and feeling frustrated or ripped-off? Who has to take the absurd gobble-de-gook of corporate policy (have you ever tried to read the mission statements of corporations?) and translate it into customer reality?

And who do you think wrote the script in your head that turned all that into ‘taking’?

Think about this a second time. Business – successful business – is a partnership between workers and management. When a business insists on cutting worker’s compensation while paying bonuses to management, they’re cutting out the person you actually deal with when you need help. If you think that makes sense on any level, think a third time.

So, with the holidays upon us, I urge you to your local stores. I don’t care if they’re big chains or small mom-and-pops so much. What matters is that you buy your clothes or books, games or DVD’s  in places that treat their employees with a bit of respect. Because those are the ones that will treat their customers with respect.

If we insist that cutting employees into the profit party is a necessity or we’ll buy elsewhere, businesses will shrug their shoulders and decide it’s a ‘cost of doing business.’

And we’ll all be better off.

 

 

Free ‘Mindbenders’!

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‘Mindbenders’ is free on Amazon tomorrow and Thursday, 11/14 and 15! If you’ve read it already, tell a friend!

You don’t need a Kindle to read it – FREE Kindle software is available for your computer or smartphone – just click here.  Or buy the lustrous trade paperback here – free beer included!

How good is ‘Mindbenders’? Read this:

4.0 out of 5 stars A GREAT READ!!, November 2, 2012
By Books4Tomorrow (South Africa)

I have never read a book before that got my mind as muddled up trying to keep track of the plot, as this book. One thing perfectly clear right from the start – and which impressed me immensely – is that this author can write! He knows his way around words like few others. But trying to follow the plot proved to be no easy task.

“Mindbenders” is not your average mind-powers book. It’s complicated, and it’s filled with lots of important information necessary for character- and plot development. If you try to rush through this book, you’ll get lost along the way and have no clue why or how certain events are taking place. The plot moves at a snail’s pace, and slowly builds up to its exhilarating conclusion. Everything is tied up nicely at the end, but enough is left to get the reader sufficiently curious to want to read the next book.

Although this is a unique, imaginative, and incredibly interesting read, I don’t think it would be every reader’s cup of tea. Here and there the story dragged a little, and it took me some time to get to know and connect with the characters. I think this book would do great as a movie, as it is packed with action and drama, and the special effects people will have a field day with it. It is definitely a book worth reading, but would be a more suitable fit for readers who are sticklers for details.

All in all though, a fantastic read!

 

(Hopefully) Last Notes on the Hurricane

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In no particular order:

John Moore/Getty Images

A guy I work with lives a block out of Zone A, so they didn’t evacuate. At one point that evening, he and his wife were watching television and they started hearing car alarms go off in the block behind the house. They went to the back window and saw the cars floating down the street. His wife then stepped outside the front of the house and came back saying that their house was on a little bit of a hill and was therefore okay, but the intersections on both sides of them were under four feet of water. They got away with basement flooding and electrical damage but were stranded overnight that first night.

Another friend, a very funny guy who was about ready to retire, didn’t get off so easily. They lived three doors from the water, they’d ridden out Hurricane Irene so they figured they’d ride out this one too. He said when the water in the living room reached his chest, he got nervous about hypothermia and went looking for a way out. He found his mattress – a latex foam rubber version like the one I have – floating in the bedroom. He climbed on without much hope and found it stayed afloat with him on it. He and his wife rode out the storm on their mattress, an arms-reach from the ceiling, for three hours until the water began receding. They’ve lost their house and two cars. Afterward, she’d gotten emotional and he said, “What did we have when we met?” “Nothing,” she replied. “So we’re starting over again,” he answered and she sniffed that now he’ll get that big screen TV. But retirement is out, he told me. Will anyone want to buy that piece of property now, so close to a suddenly-perilous shoreline?

Maybe the answer to climate change to is to make the polluters pay the cost of all the waterfront property that’s now going to be worthless – or soon will be.  It’s just a thought… Of course, the kind of people who pollute will assume there’s always someone stupid enough to buy that waterfront property – and they’re willing to sell if you’re stupid enough to buy.

DNAinfo/Nicholas Rizzi

And then there was the customer in the store the other day. I asked him his cross-street for delivery and he answered, “You can’t miss me – I’m the only house still standing.”

I’ve seen help from abroad (when you’re from New York, everywhere else is abroad – to Smitty, everything above 42nd Street is upstate) – in addition to Con Ed, I’ve seen trucks from Green Mountain Power and Light (Vermont), Alcatel (Lucent, which used to be the fabled Bell Labs) and a host of others scurrying around Staten Island in twos and threes and convoys. I know Long Island is still a mess (a friend of mine out there just got power back yesterday) and apparently upstate (not Smitty upstate, real upstate) has some bad sections so I don’t understand how they’re allocating resources but there’s progress being made on Staten Island.

Not that it keeps people from kvetching but that’s our prerogative as New Yorkers.

 

A Photo Credit and the power of FEMA

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Photo Allison Joyce/Getty Images

First off – I used this photo the other day and several people remarked on it. It’s a remarkable image and definitely not my work. I managed to track down the credit: the photographer is Allison Joyce of Getty Images. I don’t know her, have not licensed this photo nor do I claim any rights to it. I just thought it was the best photo of dark Manhattan I could find in a Google search. So thanks, Allison – amazing work.

Secondly – I’m back on Staten Island and I’ve yet to go into any of the areas hard hit by Sandy. But today I took a bus down Hylan Boulevard and it was pretty eye-opening. If you look at a Staten Island map, you’ll see that Hylan between New Dorp Lane and Midland Avenue is not close to the water. But I saw cars thrown around in dealership lots, stores caked in mud from parking lot to ceiling and debris pushed into disorderly piles wherever you looked. I also saw lines of cars stretching more than a mile to buy gas. There was a line in front of the store I worked in today for a gas station that ran out yesterday – people began lining up at 1 am and waited until gas arrived around 430 in the afternoon.

Kena Betancur/Viewpress

I heard from colleagues today about being trapped in their homes just slightly elevated above flooded sidestreets, salt water destroying house wiring, cars totaled by water damage and at least one friend who died (a police officer in the line of duty). I also heard numerous stories of FEMA blanketing the island, taking estimates and writing checks already, covering up to 90% of the damage in many cases. But there is still a huge amount of water and mud damage preventing things from getting better.

Tonight, on the way home, I saw a notice that the buses that usually pass through the Staten Island Mall would not be going there this week, would be using the side streets and I got annoyed at the inconvenience. And then I found out why. As we pulled out of the mall, I saw a literal army of trucks: bulldozers, earth movers, pumps and things I’d never seen and hope never to see again. Two or three deep, lined up across the road from the mall, ready to move out. One entire corner of the mall parking lot was the staging area for Con Edison alone. It was the biggest single operation I’ve ever seen in one place and I’ve covered Presidential visits, so that’s pretty impressive, at least to me.

If you want to be cynical, it’s easy to say that the best time to have a hurricane hit you is just before Election Day – but the reality is, there are a huge number of people here helping people who need it and doing a really effective job under very difficult circumstances. Anyone who doesn’t think government has a role to play should ignore Staten Island and New Jersey for the foreseeable future, because the signs are everywhere.

 

More Notes from the Hurricane

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I wandered uptown yesterday. At several locations along the way, businesses that weren’t really open but had power (or generators) had set up recharging stations – just a couple of power strips usually, where you could fill up your cell phone. They’re our lifelines now.

I found myself charging up (very slowly) next to three kids who’d flown in from the suburbs of London. Yes, England. I said ‘Didn’t somebody tell you you were crazy?’ and they laughed and said they weren’t going to miss seeing New York.

When they left, the kid who took their place turned out to be from Ukraine. He arrived yesterday (!) and because his flight was pushed back because of the hurricane, his lease didn’t go through so he’s staying in Chinatown temporarily in a place with no power. He hiked uptown from Chinatown to 36th Street three times a day to charge up his phone in hopes of hearing from his prospective landlord. He seemed cheerful enough under the circumstances.  If I knew anything about landlord rights, I would have offered to help, but it felt like he might be one of those people who get taught the harsh side of life in New York. I hope not.

The radio kept saying they were trying to get the power on in Lower Manhattan by tonight and Brooklyn in the morning. But as evening fell, I wandered past the Flatiron Building at 23rd St and 5th Ave and the buildings and street lights were all still black. I asked a cop about the lights and he said “They’re trying but they keep going in and out.” So I didn’t expect much.

I made it as far as 23rd and 2nd and texted Smitty (who was actually working uptown) that it was still dark. Then I heard a shout and looked up and the lights were on all around me. Street lights, lights in apartment building windows, skyscrapers stretching downtown.

The tricky thing about the moment was that it felt so normal – I had to look twice to remind myself it wasn’t like that a moment earlier or for the last several days. People on the streets, in cars and on bicycles (!) started cheering and clapping, waving thumbs-up out the windows. It was exhilarating and a huge relief – life was back to normal, whatever that means. I read this morning there were no murders in NYC during the blackout – but now that’ll change, surely, because we’re back to normal (great).

What’s hitting home now that I have access to the Internet and television again is the situation in New Jersey and Staten Island, my home, where I’m finally heading tonight.

There’s always been a sense in the outer  boroughs, under Giuliani and even more so under Bloomberg, that if New York City is the center of the universe (as any good New Yorker will maintain), Manhattan is the hub and Staten Island the farthest spoke. We have the oldest buses, the sparsest rapid transit, the lowest incomes and the lowest visibility in the consciousness of outsiders.

I’m hearing now from friends who’ve lost their homes, their businesses and in a very few cases, their friends. They are Staten Islanders – they know it’ll be a struggle to get anyone to notice or certainly to do anything about it. But they’re also New Yorkers, so they’ll punch their way through whatever they have to.

Hopefully, this is all I have to say about the hurricane, but somehow I doubt it.

 

Notes from the Hurricane

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We had received email notifications from the city that they were shutting power downtown – but  further downtown than where we were. So Smitty, her friend Joy visiting from San Francisco and I were halfway through ‘American Splendor’ when the apartment went black and we heard a big boom! outside the windows. That turned out to be the transformer at 14th Street and Avenue C exploding.

We’ve been living without power since. It’s been interesting and scary and wondrous in roughly equal proportion. Some highlights:

 

1) Old technology works. Smitty still has a real landline, not cable service, not FIOS VOIP, old style, where the cord carries just enough power to run the service in an outage. Like now. When the power went out, she pulled out a rotary phone with an iron chassis – the handset weighs as much as a small barbell. It’s a godsend, as is her old gas range with no electric pilot.

We’ve been able to make phone calls and to boil water and carry it to the bathtub for sponge baths. Smitty cooked any remaining food in the apartment that was threatening to go bad (unfortunately, without iceman service, the fridge is useless). Any food that might preserve went on the fire escape. It was the first time in my life I hoped for colder weather overnight, even though we had no heat.

There’s water because any building in Manhattan under six stories stands at a lower elevation than the reservoir a hundred or so miles upstate so the water keeps flowing downhill. Buildings above that height need a pump, which is electric and therefore doesn’t work at the moment.

The old ways are more hardy. They are relics of a time when the perils were more obvious, closer to the bone, so they weather troubles like these without a lot of drama.

2) Half Transportation is No Transportation: I tried to get back to Staten Island yesterday because my employer plans to open selectively today. However, although buses on Staten Island are running on a reduced schedule, the express buses from Manhattan to Staten Island aren’t and neither is the ferry. So I can’t get home, a chain being no stronger than its weakest link and all that…

3) Be Careful What You Wish For: And, as I write this, I just came upon an article detailing how hard-hit Staten Island was. Half the death toll in NY City was on SI. Thank goodness my landlord and landlady are safe, the house is okay, trees down but power on. Just as well that I was not home.

Yes, they’re photographs. Out the window last night.

4) Information Addiction: You see clearly how addicted we all are to information when it’s taken away. No headlines, no polls (I’ve got Nate Silver mania the last few weeks), no clever YouTube videos, no cell service or WiFi. I’m writing new ‘Mindbenders’ stories by hand in a black-and-white speckled notebook. My handwriting is no longer fit for literature.

And every ten minutes on the radio, the anchor says “For more details on (traffic/restoration of power/subways/buses/you name it), go to our website, xxx.xxx” – which would be great if the radio wasn’t the only lifeline to the world you had.

Five of us from the building had tea yesterday around noon and the talk was of someone who’d hiked up to 34th Street, what they’d seen and heard. ‘Someone said power would be back on Friday’ ‘They’re working on the West Side first’ ‘Not only the 14th Street [Con Ed] substation blew but the one on 6th Street as well’. All hearsay, all absolutely riveting.

When you have the Internet and 500 channels of television, fascination lasts three seconds. There’s always something else, another story, another poll, another crucial issue you need to have an opinion about. Take it all away, you think about and endlessly discuss rumors, hopes and fears for days, the way humans did for centuries. They’re thrilling. They’re maybe even more thrilling because you’ve no idea if they’re true. Because that breathless speculation is all you have.

5) Magic Beats Everything: There are pigeons roosting on some of the windowsills. We hear them cooing clearly because traffic is lighter than usual (at least it was before today).

We spent several nights playing question games by candlelight. ‘Would you rather be a) George Clooney, b) Brad Pitt, c) Liam Neeson?’ ‘Would you rather be someone with immense power and no ethics or someone with great artistic talent in total obscurity?’

Of course, the fact that this last was a hard decision tells you plenty about who we are but that’s another story. We had fun and lots of laughs and we actually learned something more about ourselves and each other than we would have watching TMZ or ‘Big Bang Theory.’ We found ourselves ready to go to sleep around 1030 or 11 pm but not from boredom – without the usual electronic stimulants, we were ready way earlier than usual.

And then there’s the eerie factor. The other night, we went to a friend’s apartment in the upper 30’s on the West Side, where there’s power (I’m writing this from the same place). On the way home, we took the crosstown bus on 34th Street. In front of us, Seventh Avenue, Sixth, all lit up like normal…and then, approaching swiftly at Fifth, a curtain of darkness. Once through, there were a couple of police in shiny vests waving traffic around and headlights from oncoming cars but all the buildings black, the greengray sky glowing overhead and people finding their way hesitantly along pitchblack streets.

We make such a fuss about incremental changes in our lives. Here, in the middle of the city we’ve lived in all our lives, was a truly foreign, unfamiliar landscape. All the little differences had been manageable but suddenly, the magnitude of what had happened was all around us. There were those people right over there, a few blocks back, right where we’d just been, people whose lives were normal. And then, here in the dark for no reason but arbitrary fate, were the rest of us.

Overheard on the downtown bus:

Driver: ’23rd Street next’

Passenger: ‘You skipped 25th?’

Driver: ‘Lady, I’m just trying to see the road!’

 

Two New (sort of) ‘Green’ Reviews!

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I don’t keep track of ‘Green’ as I should – it sells a few copies here and there. I just noticed two reviews that have been around a while, but they’re lovely and so I’m passing them on. It’s a book I’m proud of, so if this convinces you to read it, that would be terrific.

5.0 out of 5 stars
This is probably the 4th book of his that I have read. It was the shining star until I just finished Crafty and Devious Gods. In other words, I’d highly recommend you read both of them. Unlike too many self-published books, Ted has fine control of the english language, all thos pesky little punctuation marks that cue us in to how to read his thoughts, and doesn’t suffer from Flaming Sword of Fire syndrome … Yeah, I stole that from someone else’s review of another book because I loved it so much – we KNOW the sword is flaming.. it’s a sword of fire, for pete’s sake!Read it.

5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic read. January 17, 2012 By B. G. Young
I really cannot add any more than what has be written by the other five and four star reviewers except to say that it would be a sin to miss out on reading this wonderful book.

Mindbenders Free Pre-Election Monday Giveaway!

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Is all this election craziness making you…er, crazy?

Well, I have the solution – read ‘Mindbenders’! Almost no politics!

Oh sure – you’ve read it already. But you must know somebody out there who hasn’t (there are millions of them, believe me!). For them, Monday’s the day! Download it free on Amazon!

What do you mean, you’re not sure? Read this!!:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good, entertaining read, 30 Sep 2012
By Dee B (UK)
 Well written, good story with convincing characters and an original take on the theme of mind-reading. A thoroughly recommended read from an author that is both accomplished and promising.
***
Dee’s actually ENGLISH!! She speaks the language properly and still thinks I’m a good writer! Think how good this book must be if you’re American!
Phew! Pitchman Mode over for now. Anyway, relief is available Monday – FREE on Amazon!
You can all go back to obsessing over the battleground state polls now…

Me and Dean Koontz! ‘Mindbenders’ review

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If you think I’m skipping the review that compares me to Dean Koontz, you’re crazy!

4.0 out of 5 stars Reminescent of Dean Koontz., October 9, 2012
By Heather L. Alexander “Muzz5” (Waterford, MI, US)

I was given this book in return for an honest review. This book kind of reminds me of Dean Koontz in the way that the author blends science fiction with things that may actually be possible someday.

The Us and Soviet governments have an experiment to harnass the power of the mind, and they succeed, but to what end? Greg, ex military, suffering from what seems to be severe PTSD and physical restrictions, is living with Uncle Dave.(not really his uncle) Greg is having serious problems adapting or even functioning on a semi-normal level. He hears screaming and finds Uncle Dave dead in the tub with an assasination playing on the TV. Just then a man he doesn’t know, Max Dulles, shows up and orders him to pack and get out. Soon after, the house blows up. There begins our adventure.

One of my favorite lines in this book is when Greg says “I’m disabled, not stupid.” and he isn’t stupid. Turns out that the government expiriment produced Mindbenders, they can read minds and manipulate thoughts and Max is a very, very powerful one. He has been storing his extra information in Greg’s head, no wonder Greg is having so many problems with everything.

They must access the information in order to survive and possibly end a massive conspiracy. They are up against, and under attack from, a group of mindbenders that are out for money, power, and glory. They will enlist the help of Kate ad Mark. Can the four of them defeat the massive conspiracy or will they end up casualties of yet another government experiment.

I really liked this book because it does sound like something the government would do, so feels likes it’s based in reality while still being a great work of fiction. Hope there is another one. WaAr

 

Three New ‘Mindbenders’ Reviews!

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4.0 out of 5 stars Bend A Little, October 2, 2012
By Nathan Lowell (Colorado, USA)
Honestly, this stuff is usually too close to “paranormal fantasy” to be my cuppa joe, but Krever does a decent job of packing physics around the paranormal to make this story work.

The set up is straight out of thriller-ville and, if the plot squeaks a little here and there from the twists and turns, the characters more than make up for it.

And I think it’s the characters that make this book. Krever does a remarkable job blending strengths and weaknesses to keep everybody on edge–including this reader. From the evil Russian (pick one) to the ex-GI to the orphaned daughter of a mind bending colleague, the characters have just enough edge to stay with you without being over the top. I found I didn’t really care how the plot turned out. I just wanted to see what the characters would do next.

It’s a little different from my normal fare, from a writer with a couple other titles in his basket. After reading this one, I’m thinking I may have to check out some of them.

I give it a solid four stars.

4.0 out of 5 stars A good, entertaining read, 30 Sep 2012
By Dee B (UK)

Well written, good story with convincing characters and an original take on the theme of mind-reading. A thoroughly recommended read from an author that is both accomplished and promising.

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT!!!, 10 Sep 2012
By Janie
I was given this book by the author in return for an honest opinion.

I found this book gripping from start to finish, The author allows you into the minds et of all the character’s and is action packed from start to finish. Not my usual genre but am glad I got to read it as it was brilliant and DEFINITELY recommend it to all.