Archive for July, 2007

Check Please! : Money in Transition


19 Jul

Posted in Marketing Madness | 3 Comments »

Two ‘older’ gentlemen, having just finished their lunch, were talking together as they walked their lunch check to the reception desk at the restaurant’s entrance. They were, perhaps, a little surprised when the girl behind the podium seemed to shrink back in horror as they attempted to hand her the check.

This scenario is in stark contrast to the story of the grandmother I recently wrote about. Here we see these two generations acting, not from a common experiential base, but from a set of understandings based on time fixed custom.

How to Pay in a Restaurant

  • Rule One: In a fast food restaurant you pay for lunch when the person behind the counter hands you your bag or tray.
  • Rule Two: In a diner you bring your check to the counter when you finish your meal and are leaving the restaurant.
  • Rule Three: In most sit down restaurants the server brings the check, takes your cash or card, and comes back with change or a receipt to sign.

    • The elderly gentlemen were observing the second rule. They weren’t in a diner. It would have been very difficult to confuse their current surroundings in the Legal Seafoods Restaurant with a diner. But they were having lunch and this fact may have propelled them into diner mode. The girl at the podium, on the other hand, had probably spent most of her outside dining experiences observing rules one and three. Under the current circumstance she had no idea why these gentlemen would be trying to hand her the check. (more…)

    Once Upon an iPhone


    13 Jul

    Posted in Random Thoughts | 1 Comment »

    1923_03_31_The_Literary_Digest_Norman_Rockwell_cover_Bedtime_400_Digimarc.jpg
    In a ‘Norman Rockwellesque’ vision of America; innocent and replete with small town intimacy and wholesome family values, you might imagine ‘Grandma’ or ‘Grandpa’ sitting in front of the fireplace on a quiet evening, reading a story to a hushed circle of spellbound grandchildren.
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    Take a 50 year leap forward to the present with me and see how technology has spawned a ‘future’ that is surprisingly more Rockwellian than Orwellian. If I had not been so mesmerized by the scene I might have grabbed my camera so you could see this for yourselves and, I suppose I could have asked the participants to pose for a reenactment, but that would have looked contrived.

    Setting the Scene:

    It is the summer of 2007. Grandma has rented a house by the beach and invited the family to join her for a week of sun, fun, and relaxation. The house is equipped with wireless internet access and the dining room table is ‘computer central’ with one Macbook (mine) and one Macbook Pro (grandma’s).

    Players:

    A, definitely non-1950′s, Grandmother, one son (myself), one daughter-in-law (my wife), three grandchildren, and a girlfriend of one of the aforesaid grandchildren. The age range for the grandchildren is 15 to 20. You can extrapolate everyone else’s ages from there.

    Scene:

    It is early evening and everyone is back from the beach and getting ready to go out to dinner. My wife and I are the last to come downstairs and are greeted by this tableau at the dining room table. Grandma is seated in front of her computer screen and is reading out loud. She is surrounded by grandchildren, all of whom are listening with rapt attention while looking over grandma’s shoulder to see the screen from when comes the source of her story.

    Grandma is not reading “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. She is reading, from the New York Times online, David Pogue’s review of Apple’s new iPhone. (more…)

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