During business hours my son Yuri is animator, but at night he turns into an indie musician. I like his music a lot. He recorded and published online a bunch of new songs and created a Flash Web site where you can listen to them for free: http://thisismybootleg.com/.

When he sent me this link, and ten clicks later I felt irritated. I didn ‘t know where should I click to get to this freaking music player. OK, I could ask the Web designer/animator directly, and he showed me where to click, but what about the other people?

I was arguing that such design is against the rules – it should be as intuitive to the end user as possible. Yuri responded, that he uses this rule while designing animation for commercial sites, but this site is for YOUNG people who don ‘t mind doing a little bit of an exploration on Web sites and would find the hot spot sooner or later.

I ‘m not a designer, but I know that people like self explanatory things. Any electronic widget that comes with a thick user manual makes me want to run away. Remember these toys in the Toys ‘R ‘Us with the large button “Click me “? This is it. No thinking required, or else..

After my 5-min lecture Yuri made it just a tiny bit more user friendly (or did he?).

So I ‘d love to hear your opinion – am I just an old fashioned grumpy corporate Web developer who doesn ‘t understand the latest hip trends, or this design is flawed?

BTW, if you will be able to find some secret spot on the screen that would let fan girls or recording labels contact my extremely indie musician, please leave a comment to this blog or send an email directly to Yuri via his main and better designed site: http://yurifain.com/ .

When O “Reilly “s sent us a book cover design for approval, it was a no brainer. Three authors hence three chickens. Anatole immediately said that he recognized Victor and myself, but was not sure if the third birdy looked like him. No biggies.

We “ve approved the cover, but somewhere in the back of my mind I still had unanswered questions:

Who are these animals? Pheasants?

After watching the behavior of my co-authors in various business situations (meetings with perspective clients, training gigs, conference talks) I found that they do look like pheasants once in a while. But what about me? Do I also look like a chicken at times?

Finally, O “Reilly published the description of our book Enterprise Development with Flex , which had a section titled with a new for me word “Colophon rdquo;.

Below, I “ve included the quotes from that colophon (production notes) in italic with my comments in regular font.

The animals on the cover of Enterprise Development with Flex are red-crested wood-quails (Rollulus roulroul), more commonly known today as crested wood partridges or Roul-roul partridges.

Mama, I found my roots! I “m not a pheasant ndash; I “m a red-crested wood quail! And I “m not alone ndash; Anatole and Victor are also quails living in the woods!

The birds live in small flocks in the lowland rainforests of Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo. They forage on the ground for fruit, seeds, and insects, and often follow wild pigs through the forest to feed on any leftovers.

I guess, O “Reilly researchers didn “t know that some of the red-crested wood-quails can live in Eastern Europe ndash; I “m originally from Ukraine. As to the food, I tend to agree with everything but insects, which us, Ukrainian species don “t eat. Yes, we follow pigs – people from Ukraine are well known for eating pork “s fat (a.k.a. salo). When Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, there was deficit of everything. The Communist Party nomenclature had special closed supermarkets with good products, and my PS94 in Kiev was located nearby the food store, which periodically had some products that those big shots didn “t want. We used to call this supermarket “Leftovers rdquo;.

If disturbed, these plump birds can fly for short distances, but, as is common in many quail species, they tend to run instead.

By 1992, I was not only disturbed, but sick and tired of all this deficit and inability to grow as a professional. I “ve flown not for a short but for a very long distance and settled down in the USA.

Male and female red-crested wood-quails have vastly different appearances.

True. My wife doesn “t look like me.

Males sport a white spot at the base of the bristling red-crested head for which the bird is named, as well as iridescent blue-green plumage and a dark blue underbelly.

My hair is getting grey, and at the base of my head too. I “ll consider making my bristling head red-crested to be recognizable more easily. Please let me not disclose the color of my underbelly tattoo.

This bird ‘s call is a plaintive, whistled si-ul, most often heard at dawn.

The work on this book was a moonlight job for us, and no wonder people could hear us whistle and curse in the wee hours.

In 2004, the red-crested wood-quail was listed as a near threatened species due to heavy logging activity in Southeast Asia.

See guys, we may extinct if you won “t treat us nicely by purchasing our book in bulk quantities. By the way, chapter 4 will show you how to facilitate the heavy Flex/Java logging activity with an open source product Log4Fx.

Thank you, O “Reilly for publishing the book and helping in finding my identity! I ‘m coming out of the closet! I ‘m a red-crested wood-quail!

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 366 2091 Farata 17 4 2567 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:&”Table Normal&”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:&”&”; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:&”Times New Roman&”; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:&”Times New Roman&”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} In the last Stack Overflow podcast Joel Spolsky said again that he “s going to stop blogging. He mentioned two reasons:

1. Even though most of the feedback on his blogs are positive, once in a while someone write a bad comment, which disappoints Joel.

2. Sometimes Joel may write something that might insult someone. Even though the Joel “s blogged opinion was right, it “s still an insult and it “s better not to write at all than write not what you think.

Being a blogger and a partner in an IT company myself, I do understand what Joel is talking about.

About five years ago I wrote a short blog describing one episode from my fishing trip. Please read it: http://yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com/verizon_or_cingular.htm.

Back then, I was working for a large consulting company. After reading that blog my manager said, “You know, Cingular is our company “s client. The chances are slim that they “ll read your blog, but what if they do? rdquo; I pretended that I didn “t get the message hellip;

In addition to this blog, I publish blogs at my company “s site where I behave.

But this one is my personal blog where I frankly write whatever comes to my mind. I know for sure that there are people in my company that would be happy if I “d close this blog. They are afraid that it may hurt our business. But I also know that there are organizations that are looking for savvy and trustworthy people who say what they think and not what “s politically correct.

I want to have a place where I write what I think openly without any censorship. I know that some of my personal blogs have room for improvement, but they are snapshots of my mind at that very moment, and I ain “t gonna change them just to make them prettier or more polished.

Over the years my skin became thick and one rude comment can “t put me in a bad mood. In the past, one of my colleagues told me that so-and-so put a bad label on one of our products by stating “The XYZ product is simply junk rdquo;. Just like that. I just ignore this BS. I realize that there can be bugs in our OPEN SOURCE software, but I also know that our software is not junk, and I simply ignore the comments like that one.

Apparently, Joel takes these bastards way too personally. It “s a pity. I do believe that Joel is #1 IT blogger and would like to continue enjoying his essays for many years to come.The other reason why Joel is planning to stop blogging (it ‘s just my guess) is that he is dealing with VC ‘s now and they don ‘t want him to blog.

On the bright side, I don “t think Joel will stop writing. It just doesn “t depends on him. Bloggers blog. They just do it, and sooner or later Joel will start blogging again. The sooner the better.

I always knew that I “ll buy an iPad in April. What I didn “t know would it be what for. I was trying to find an iPad function that can “t be easily done with a laptop. The problem solved: I “ll sleep with it! No kidding.

No worries, my tried and true wife will share the bed with us too.

As opposed to any laptop, iPad is nicely shaped. It “s rounded. No sharp corners. No keyboard that can hurt you while you are asleep.

Slide under the blanket, put on a pair of earphones with soft ear pieces (not these huge and rigid ones from Apple made for elephant “s ears) and listen to your favorite podcast or a music hellip; Slowly but surely you are falling asleep hellip; Golden slumbers hellip; No need to worry about iPad ndash; it “ll survive even if you “ll be sleeping on it. It can even fall off the bed without damaging itself.

My master bedroom is right above my office, where the wi-fi router is. This means that I can get by with the cheapest (non 3G) iPad model. The 3G model is for old farts who need to be able to read emails in large fonts while on the road (burn in hell Blackberry!)

Important: for men, sleeping with iPad 3G is not recommended. While you are asleep, it can (coincidently) slide close to your private parts, and slight radiation will affect your manly abilities sooner or later. Consult with your urologist before making a decision which model to purchase.

Unfortunately, iPad won “t heat up. Just imagine hellip;.your wife is watching TV, and you go to a cold bed were a well rounded, warm, and knowledgeable partner is waiting for you! iPad will never cheat on you (changing a dead battery for $107 only in the Apple store doesn “t count). If you see a decrease in number of marriages (both hetero and homosexuals) within the next couple of years, you “ll know what to blame for, will you?

Last week, I ‘ve presented on Flex modules and libraries at 360flex in San Jose, CA. This talk brought lots of developers to the room. After this 80-minute presentation I ‘ve been answering questions for another 25 minutes.

Such an unexpected interest to this non-flashy and very technical topic is a good indication that lots of enterprise grade Flex applications are being developed in the real world.

Three days in a row the 360Flex attendees were stopping by just to say “Thank you ” for explaining how to approach slicing a Flex application into pieces.

Inspired with such a warm welcome, I ‘ve created a curriculum for a one day hands-on master class where this topic can be covered from the practitioner ‘s point of view and in greater details. I know for sure that most of the people who have developed at least one production grade Flex application had to go through the pain of modularizing the application when it was almost ready for production. The goal of this workshop is to help you in designing your application properly in the early stages of the project rather than deciding what to do with this 3MB monster a month before going in production.

This event is scheduled on May 17 in New York City. It ‘ll take place right after the conference Flash and the City, so consider staying in this great city for yet another day. You won ‘t regret it.

The ROI of attending this workshop can be pretty substantial. This is a small scale bring-your-own-laptop event and the number of seats is limited – consider registering early at the following Web page: http://bit.ly/cjUaCd.

Community Keynote at #360flex is about to start to the sounds of beat sequences. Why hire a DJ if Sean Moore, a remote Flex developer can call in via Skype from Colorado with video camera on and start spinning his disks? Tom is projecting the video on three large screens and the music goes through the speakers.

Great job, @seantheflexguy! If we had more female Flex developers there, all 365 attendees would be dancing. How about introducing discount for girls at the next #360flex?

During the first part of this keynote the audience thanks speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and John “s wife Nicole for making this conference happen.

The second part of the community keynote is like an annual visit to an accountant. The organizers open up the books. Literally. It “s the moment of truth and transparency. The first slide showed the expenses “the money out rdquo;. Then goes the slide with “the money in rdquo;, then the pocket change ndash; the difference between the in and out. I “m not going to publish these slides here to give Tom and John some room to play before they “ll submit the final numbers to IRS.

I sincerely hope that this public bookkeeping will stop soon, which will be a good indication that Tom and John are finally making some real money for all the hard work they put organizing this excellent independent conference for Flex developers.

There “s one more tradition of the community keynote: Tom announces that this was the last time he was organizing this conference, and he quits. I understand his feelings. I have similar state of mind after finishing writing yet another book. Last month it was the 6th time when I said to myself, “Never again! rdquo; But I realize that I “ll write yet another book too.

But let “s observe the protocol and thank Tom for his hard work and say, “@lordbron good luck in your future endeavors! rdquo;

Then the mike goes to @BenStucki who shows a quick demo of the Reflex framework of components that are a lot lighter than their Flex peer: 40Kb SWF vs. 400KB. Ben, as usual, wears his “always on rdquo; baseball cap. @AmyBlankenship posted the following on Twitter: “Wondering if the top of @BenStucki ‘s head exists hellip; rdquo;

Now seriously. Ben has very ambitious task. I “m not sure if Reflex will reach production quality any time soon, but I see at least three possible positive outcomes of this effort:

1. Adobe will learn from Reflex how to create lighter Flex components

2. Ben will create a niche job market for his company ndash; the firms that need fast and light components will be hiring him for development of specialized custom components.

3. Tiny SWF may be in demand among the twenty minus one vendors of Smart Mobile devices.

Then I spent half an hour listening to Renaun Ericskon “s talk “ActionScript Tips for iPhone Games. rdquo; He “s the guy if you need to optimize your iPhone application written in ActionScript.

When I “ve heard that Adobe open sourced the data visualization code, my na iuml;ve mind took the price of Flex Builder Professional ($699 = $249 + datavisualization) and deducted datavisualization. My formula produced the new price, but I “m afraid that Adobe will apply different logic and the price of Flash Builder won “t go lower than $699.

Hint. If you want to be cool this season, keep saying that you never use the Design mode in Flash Builder. Or even better ndash; use IntelliJIdea.

My final three-hour technical session was “Comparing Flex and Silverlight rdquo; presented by Jun Heider and Eric Fickes. These guys did a very good technical comparison of two products. Start taking Silverlight seriously. I “d be very interested to compare the licensing costs of deployment of an enterprise data driven application utilizing binary protocols in Flex/LCDS/BlazeDS vs Silverlight/IIS. Without these numbers it “s hard to recommend one or the other technology to the enterprise customers.

During this presentation I “ve also enjoyed watching the monkey dance of one of the Microsoft “s billionaires.

On the way home, Jeff Tapper told me that the new version of the Flex 4 Training from the Source book will become available. This time it ‘ll consist of two parts, and the first part will be available in April. In the past, I bought the Flex 2 and Flex 3 editions of this well written training manual, and will definitely buy the Flex 4 version too.

Summary

Here “s a recap of some things I liked about the #360Flex circa San Jose 2010:

1. Lot “s of power outlets and extenders.

2. A vending machine with disabled dollar slot was dispensing the cans for free.

3. 80% of presentations are done by independent Flex developers.

4. As always, this conference was very friendly and informal

When/where is the next 360flex? Anyone knows? I need to book the flight early.

On Tuesday, I “ve attended a couple of panels and 2.5 sessions.

The morning panel was titled “Principles of RIA rdquo; and was about bringing animation and effects to your RIA to make it more engaging. For some reason it didn “t get me excited as I have to deal with more prosaic issues on a daily basis.

The next hour and a half I spent sitting on the floor in the overcrowded room where Deepa was reviewing new features of Flex 4, which were not Spark components.

During the lunch I was invited to speak at a conference in Mexico and discussed specifics of working as a consultant on government projects.

Then, I made a wrong choice because of the misleading title ndash; I was expected to see more advanced stuff, but it was an intro type session. C “mon, stop writing ANT manually ndash; check out our free plugin FX2Ant that generates ANT script from your Flex project in seconds.

My next selection was the session on Test Driven Development (TDD) by Elad Elrom. This was the best session of the day hands down. There are situations when TDD can save project development cycle. Writing tests before the actual application is written forces people to better understand the application being developed. Ten year ago using UML-based code generators would have a similar effect – we had to think before code, but we “d had to test code manually.

In the 21-st Century, the legions of low skilled people rushed into software development and the more coding generated and tested automatically the better.

During Elad “s presentation I “ve learned a new term for something that we all experience in the corporate world: Asshole-Driven Development. Here “s the slide on the subject:

The technical part of the day was closed by another panel. This time it was on the business of software ndash; how to estimate development cost, how to talk to clients, how to run teams etc. This topic drew a lot of interest among the developers, but to me, most of the answers were sugarcoated. The panelists were saying the right things, but to my taste, it was not open enough. There is a lot more BS in this area than it was presented. I liked the comments made by RJ Owen (he was on the panel) ndash; RJ has a good sense of humor.

A couple of takeaways from this session are:

1. Development can be good, fast, and cheap ndash; pick two.

2. When you are developing a project, it “s like working in the construction business. The difference is that instead of wood and bricks you have to use live kittens ndash; they move, play, fight hellip;

The level of the attendees is different. For example, one person told me that he wrote a large Flex application ndash; 8000 lines of code in one file. But he understands that this is not right. In today “s podcast The Flex Show one girl said, “We use a lot of Flex, especially for our front end. rdquo; Nice!

Organizers of the conference marked each presentation by a level of complexity: 100, 200, and 300. Mine was marked as 300, but one guy stopped by saying the he loved it even though it was of a level 400. He also said that during the preso I “sold rdquo; a lot of our copies of our upcoming book. I was not presenting to sell books, but hey O “Reilly, have you heard this?

At the end of the day I went for dinner to P.F.Chang “s with Shashank, Tom, Jeff, and John and group of other people. Five Adobe evangelists were eating there already. We “ve asked the waiter to give us a table far from them assuming they might need privacy to discuss some secret things, like the date of Flex 4 release. He-he, if they “d read my yesterday “s blog they “d know that I calculated that date already.

For me, it was the second day in a row at P.F.Chang “s. I was the only one who have been there already. At this restaurant, they bring you the bill and fortune cookies at the same time, I guess, to ease the pain. Shashank “s cookie had something about multi-touch, which is a good sign since he “s presenting on Wed on this subject.

Wednesday is the closing day of the conference.

Another day, another dinner at P.F. Chang “s.

I “ve arrived to San Jose,CA late on Sunday. By coincidence, there were three other speakers on the same plane from New York: Shashank Tiwari, Elad Elrom, and Jeff Tapper. A short taxi ride to Marriott and one of the conference organizers, Tom Ortega, gives us a warm welcome in the lobby, “Hello guys! Please don “t do it again. Don “t get on the same plane next time ndash; I can “t afford to lose four speakers rdquo;.

After a quick check-in to a nice room I spent a couple of hours drinking with a flex crowd in a couple of bars.

The morning after.

The shuttle bus took us to the huge eBay campus. Most of the people on the bus DID NOT have iPhones, can you believe this? Tom was greeting everyone at the door.

Several hundred of people gathered to hear Adobe “s Deepa “s keynote. Her conference badge reads “I “m Deepa rdquo;. Nice! On the next conference I “ll steal this idea from her and will carry the tag “I “m Yakov rdquo;.

I “ve been looking at this crowd and was thinking to myself, “If Tom and John will keep 360Flex running, in two years it “ll become bigger than Adobe MAX for Flex developers. rdquo;

In the morning, I “ve attended a presentation on Web analytics (Google vs. Omniture) and after lunch, my yesterday “s drinking buddy Jesse shared with the grateful audience his use of Flex plus two (!) more frameworks in the same project. Jesse is a good presenter, and I always come to see him regardless of the subject he “s talking about.

At 4PM I delivered a preso titled “Boring Presentation on Libraries and Modules rdquo;. A hundred people gathered in the room (here they are), and I was talking for 80 minutes and then was answering questions for another 25 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised that a non-flashy subject of modularization gets such an interest. People started working on decent size enterprise RIA “s and need to properly cut them into pieces.

This presentation was videotaped and sooner or later will become available online. For now, I can offer you a video of its shorter version that I made last year at Flash Camp Wall Street.

The beer was served right at eBay and the networking part began. These are some things that I “d like to share with you.

1. After certain conversations with certain people and by applying the Sherlock Holmes ” method of deductive reasoning I came out with the release date of Flex 4. To be on the safe side, I “ll give you two dates: March 29 or March 31 of 2010. Let “s wait and see if I got it right or I got it right.

2. I met a guy who runs a tiny company of a couple of Flex developers. He was complaining that it “s very difficult for him to find Flex talent for his projects because he couldn “t afford to hire and keep on billing $100 per hour consultants. He was surprised to learn that our company can easily offer him senior (I mean it) Flex/Java developers working remotely for a lot more modest rates. This is not the first time I hear that people assume that Farata Systems works only for Wall Street giants. We have lots of happy customers and the smallest one has only two employees.

3. I met a guy who has a nice visualization piece that may compliment our ClearBI Flex reporter. For some reason, there “s a surge of interest to ClearBI during the last month or so. We haven “t open sourced it yet, but if you want to play with it, here “s the URL of the demo server. You may find some old screencasts showing how to create a custom report based on the raw grid of data, but try just hitting the buttons on the screen and you should be able to figure out how to add grouping, sorting, computed columns with formulas, and other goodies to create a report to your liking.

The dinner at P.F.Chang with several flexers was closing my first day of this very friendly and high-tech event. Looking forward for today “s learning.

Another day, another framework.

There are two types of Web applications: those that care about their discoverability and those that don “t.

If you are developing a Web application in Flash or Flex for, say, financial advisers (FA) of a brokerage house or salesmen of an insurance company, discoverability is not a concern because FA “s or salesmen of your firm will be told, “Go to so-and-so URL and use so-and-so application rdquo;. We can happily say that both FA “s and salesmen have discover their RIA.

If you are developing a consumer-oriented RIA , you want random people to discover their pizzeria, department store, medical office or a car dealership. Why a doctor needs a Web site? Mainly to be discovered by people from the neighborhood if someone will google for a family physician. You can say that some doctors also use Web site to post some useful articles or medical form for their existing customers. True. But still, the main reason for investing into development of a Web site is to increase visibility.

Recently, I wrote a blog about iPhone and Flash , and half of this blog was about excellent Google indexing of the plain HTML information about services of our company.

Today, I “ve read an article by Armando Roggio titled “Best practices for Search-Optimized Flash Development rdquo; . This article was supposed to give you a feeling that Google really knows how to peek inside your swf file. The author states, “Need proof? Run this search on Google right now, filetype:swf + “comic books. rdquo; rdquo;

Sure enough, if you “ll do it, the search will return several .swf files that have the words “comic books rdquo; hard-coded inside. But most of the RIA bring the content dynamically and rightly so. A well designed RIA arrives to the client with the code that makes the screen pretty. The information about the upcoming sale of your local Ford dealer or recall of millions Toyota cars is not hardcoded into the Web site, but is dynamically downloaded from the server. This creates a nice separation of responsibilities ndash; people who create the content of the site don “t have to modify the Web site every time they want to announce a weekend sale at Ford dealerships.

Will Google index and find dynamically loaded content? I don “t think so.

Mr. Roggio quotes in his article executives of Adobe and Google stating how they collaborate and work hard on improving the situation. I “m sure they do, but so far I don “t see the results.

That article also states the following:

“In fact on June 18, 2009, Google announced that it could load external Flash resources, including text, HTML, XML, additional SWFs, and more. This feature means that you can create a Flash application that draws its content from a structured and external XML document. rdquo; And a little later the author states, “As of this past summer, Google can and does retrieve this external files. rdquo;

I love Google and use it a hundred times a day, but this announcement (if it really was made by Google) is simply not true, and I can easily prove it to you.

Once again, I “ll direct you to the Flash based Web site of our company . Now I “ll reveal some insider “s information. Our Web site is written in ActionScript 3, but the content of every view you see there comes from external XML files.

For example, if I decide to change the information on the Home view, there is no need to recompile the Web site. I can just use Notepad, TextEdit, Vi, or any other available plain text editor to modify the content of the home.xml file that is being downloded as soon as the compiled SWF file arrives to the Web browser.

Let “s an experiment. The Home view of our Web site starts with the following long statement:

“Do you want your RIA application to be done right the first time? We ‘ve built lots of great RIA applications for our clients. Our teams of Flex developers are geographically located in the USA and Eastern Europe. ”

Now, copy/paste this long text fragment (with or without double quotes) to Google “s search field. Hit Search. Do you see Farata Systems anywhere in the vicinities? I don “t.

This Web site was deployed about three years ago, and this poor little text we “ve been using in this experiments hasn “t been changed for a couple of years either waiting for any search engine to notice and index it.

You may ask, “Did you use deep linking available in Flex to provide unique URL “s for different views of the in your Web site helping search engines to index the content? rdquo; No I didn “t. Our Web site was created in ActionScript long time ago to be as light as possible.

But I know a firm with a complex commercial Web site written in Flex that did use deep linking feature, but it didn “t help. They are considering re-developing the Web site in HTML/JavaScript. Unfortunately, this won “t help, unless they will put the entire content of the Web site inside HTML (but this is not possible and stupid). Using AJAX won “t make them happy if they decide to keep the content dynamically loaded.

If you “ve developed a large Web application with deep linking Flex feature and have good results in terms of Web analytics, I “d love to hear from you.

Now the happy end.

I “ll continue recommending Flex and Flash as the platform of choice for developing of the enterprise RIA. Don “t pay attention to those who predict that HTML5 will kill Flash. It won “t happen for another 10 years, and we need to develop and deploy our RIA today. The fact that someone can afford to pay H.264 patent licensing royalties and stream the video has very little to do with a robust and well written platform for enterprise RIA such as Flash.

But if your cousin Vinnie asks you to develop a Web site for his new Italian restaurant, use Flash very carefully – mainly for embedding interactive widgets here and there.

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 424 2420 Farata 20 4 2971 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:&”Table Normal&”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:&”&”; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:&”Times New Roman&”; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Next week we are running a training class in Belgium, and I went to a nearby Staples store here in New Jersey to order printing of multiple copies of handouts for the students. This was supposed to be a quick and routine task.

A 20-year old girl took my flash drive and opened the PowerPoint to be printed. She was hesitant to take this order and asked a more experience worker to help. This lady looked at the slides with our company logo on them and here “s our dialog:

– Do you have a business card to proof you work for this company and are not trying to make illegal copies?

– I don “t have it on me, but two months ago I placed exactly the same printing order right here.

– Well, apparently I made a mistake back then. You must show me the business card.

– It “s raining outside. Can I pay for the order now and bring you the business card when I return to pick it up?

– No you can “t. I need to see your business card first.

– Please go to our company Web site and you “ll see my name there

– We don “t have Internet access here

– I have Internet access in my iPhone and can show it to you?

– We need a printed proof that you work for this company

To be honest with you, I was just bluffing about the iPhone. Our company “s Web site is done in Flash and iPhone won “t support it for another six months or so.

I went outside. It seems I can think faster in the rain. Eureka! I got a business credit card in my wallet, which has my name and the name of our company that matches the logo in the PowerPoint. Back to the store.

– Can you please use my credit card as a proof that I work for this company? Just make a copy of it, and tomorrow I “ll bring you the business card.

– We are not allowed to make copies of credit cards.

– OK, don “t make a copy. I “ll be paying with it anyway and you “ll have a copy of the pay slip.

– We are not allowed to do this. I need your business card.

I went back to the car, drove back home and returned to Staples with my business card. This time the young girl was alone. Without saying a word, I put the business card and the flash drive on the counter. She pick up the phone and made the store announcement, “Vicky, please come to the printing department. rdquo; Apparently, that supervisor “s name was Vicky.

-Why do you need Vicky now? She might not like the design of my business card or something?

– I didn “t say this.

Luckily, Vicky was busy somewhere and she called back and allowed the girl to proceed with my order. The girl made a copy of my driver “s license and a business card and the rest was just a simple routine.

I went home thinking to myself that the last time I had this kind of service was many many years ago when I lived in the Soviet Union. Technically, these Staples workers did everything by the book, but they “ve just lost the customer by not willing to bend a bit. This is not an American way of doing business. Not at all.

Update. Next day, I went to pick up my order. There was a different shift in the Copy/Print department – nice and friendly people. While returning my printed manuals they ‘ve suggested how I could save money and applied the discount right away. It seemed that the Soviet Staples Union has collapsed overnight (once again). I was back in the USA! That ‘s the way to go! I ‘ll continue going to Staples. But I ‘ll be smarter now and will try to avoid that Soviet crew.