links for 2008-05-07
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It's the little things, isn't it? This makes me just a bit sad
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The man at the desk to my left answered "yes" to 15 of these (and agreed with the punchline)
Fun with focus groups, on the Ai blog.
I'm fascinated by this turn of events (read the post, then come back here). An interviewee took a gift card from our office manager and left without investigating why it was handed to her. A paid job interview! For her, the golden goose has surely arrived.
At the same time, this isn't an impossible scenario to understand, and our interviewee does get some benefit of the doubt. She was handed the card; she didn't swipe it on her way out or anything (unlike the mystery visitor who made off with our Wii controllers last fall). Poor Katie was obviously too busy to explain, so the interviewee took off. She may have figured it was a lovely parting gift, like Rice-a-Roni for a game-show contestant.
Still, who does that?
We spent this morning wondering what, if anything, to do. Do we contact the interviewee about the gift card? Let her keep it? Let her keep it but tell her, so she knows what happened (and present her with an ethical dilemma about returning it)? We don't want to rock the boat too much--we liked the candidate, and we'd be in a tough spot if we hired her and she wasn't in on the joke. Yet it also presents an ethical question: whether we should hire someone who takes a gift card without stopping to clarify why.
The Ai blog is a happy fun place, unlike my soul-searching moral compass of a journal, and we've had a lot of company goodness this week:
~ Ai at the circus—as advertised
~ The new guy—a great essay by our most recent hire
Consolidating the last few del.icio.us link posts:
My business and tech blogging moved to AIAIO, the Alexander Interactive company blog, last month. I'm going to periodically cross-post links and follow-up thoughts on those items in this space. Recent pieces:
Pricing right—a pair of recent articles on price show that consumers are smart... except when they're letting themselves be influenced.
Next-gen ecomm—with the explosion of iPhones and increasing wireless high-bandwidth access, mobile ecommerce is going to be the hot phrase of 2008.
Accessibility design—it's like 2000 all over again! Except now, instead of discussing Netscape vs. Internet Explorer, it's whether or not we accommodate 800x600 user screens.
Enamored though I am with my own dog, I have started spending a lot of time with Mayor Jack Reynolds, the mascot of Ai HQ. Jack is a friendly, funny French bulldog with an attitude and a photogenic mug.
So of course Jack is the star of the Ai holiday card. Check it out. (Viral videos coming to YouTube in January.)