GeorgeKovats.com

There’s a variety of people I’ll accept asking for money, tips and handouts. Bums are the first order you expect to ask for loose change. I tip based on the creativity of their pitch. Being crazy gets points, but uniquely crazy is where I go for dollar bills. According to my friend Don, there used to be a guy that hung around University of Pittsburgh called “Sombrero Man”. And, you guessed it, he wore a sombrero. If memory serves correct, he’d play a guitar and curse at people. That’s the type of crazy I’m willing to pay to see.

“Baristas” at Starbucks are an example I will not tip. Ever. Their coffee only has a 2000% markup – they’ve got serious rocks to ask for extra money. And not even the cutest of tip-related adages on the tip jar is gonna change my mind on the matter.

Waiters and waitresses are a given; unless they take two hours to refill your drink because they’re playing Risk out back with the kitchen staff, they’re getting something. Wait staff are the front lines of customer service. Every angry, bitter, damaged human being that enters an Applebees unloads on their waiter in some degree, and in return the waiters get a solid $1.50 an hour for their troubles. It’s a raw deal. You gotta show them some decency.

At the absolute bottom of my list of people I’m willing to lend a buck to is my college. It has nothing to do with my college – every college has serious gall to ask their alumni for more money.

Let’s begin with the fact that every college is first and foremost as business. You don’t see Exxon or Motorola asking their customers for extra money after their products are purchased. No, they know to gouge their customers on the price upfront, and leave them on their merry way. Colleges seem to do both: charge top dollar up front, and then ask for donations once you think your transaction is complete. I was at Penn State for about 4 years, and every year it seemed another building was being erected in University Park to be dedicated to every new executive secretary and plumber. I’m pretty sure they weren’t just scraping by during those years.

If you accept that colleges may ask their alumni for donations, then you have question their targeting. If, say, Dick Cheney graduated from your school, I can understand if they come back around and say, “Hey Dick, I think we set you right – you mind throwing a few thousand in our coffers?” But how the hell can they target 25 year olds who’ve just graduated, first job (if they’re lucky), and starting their first of many years in student loan debt? That just seems ballsy – you’re not even done paying off your original transaction before the business starts asking for more money.

So as soon as an employer greets me, marvels at my degree from Penn State and hands me a cushy VP of beer and Xbox position in their executive ranks, I’ll be the first one signing a check back to my Alumni with a big, sloppy red lip stick kiss on the envelope. But until then, if I see a college logo on anything in my mailbox, it goes straight to the trash.

I’m fascinated with project failures, especially with postmortem reports. They’re oddly more interesting than projects that run smooth and successful, because you always learn something when things go wrong – even if it’s only another validation of old wisdom.

I just downloaded Half Life 2 for my laptop (because that’s how I roll with my computer hardware – cheap and 5 years behind), and on a lark I started looking around for Mods to download. In searching, I came across this post:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/age-of-chivalry – see lower on this page, “Reflection on Age of Chivalry“.

This case isn’t an abject failure, but clearly the author is reflecting on a less than successful close to his work. The honesty and lessons interest me in these situations.

This is also why I like Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (thank you BBC America). The yelling Scott barges into a failing restaurant – always a situation of people, practices and resources not striking the right note – dramatizes the low points, and holds a brutal mirror to the staff. Almost always, the people `fess up and acknowledge what they are or aren’t doing. But here’s where the British show trumps the later Americanized series: a lot of times, after a week of coaching, the business still fails.

I don’t know why, but these examples always are more striking to me than the ones that just take a nudge and steer in the right direction, calamity averted. Just like those disastrous military campaigns they feature lazy Sundays on the History Channel. I was watching a 2 hour piece on the Knights Templar, which walks through 200 years of their history, up through their last major battle in the Holy Land. The forces comprised of Christians from all over Europe were starting to dissent into factions, and their captain was a dim, hot tempered idiot. They’re a day away from an larger army, and in the dry desert everyone agrees the right thing to do is dig in and let the enemy come to them.

And that’s when the egotist captain, determined to assert authority over dissenting factions, orders a march through parched dessert with no water. Everyone marches for a day until every man nearly collapses from dehydration and exhaustion, and then the enemy army surrounds them and picks off the lot of them within an hour. Apparently the shmuck captian takes off – a taboo action for Knights of any order, let alone Templars – and lives another year until he loses his head during a later battle.

Fascinating stuff. OK, maybe not fascinating, but it sticks with you.