How to Do Business 101

We're planning some great outings with friends this summer. A weekend camping trip to Rock Point Provincial Park with some World of Warcraft buddies and a week in Mont Tremblant, Quebec with some of my college friends.

Of course, that means somebody else has to take care of our feline "children". It's our first set of trips since we got Mr. Chet, our second cat, so I decided it was time to find a cat sitter instead of boarding both cats.

After searching the Internet and narrowing my choices down to licensed and insured places, I thought I'd found the perfect choice. Unfortunately, we were outside their service area, though they were very nice over the phone. OK, I moved on to the second choice, which seemed fine on paper, but I wanted more information because the "fees" section of their website was mysteriously broken, even at the source code level. So I called the local number given for the company.

"Hello, Company Name X. Garblegarble volumedroppingoff."
"Hi, I wanted to get more information about your cat visits."
"OK, let me get some information about that." ::Medium length pause, then starts reading the text I'd just read on the company website::
"Uh, thanks, could you tell me if I'm in your service area? I'm in North York."
"OK, let me get some information about that." ::Extended pause:: "We have offfices in every city in..."
"Yeah, thanks but I don't think you're able to give me the information I need." ::click::

I don't have a lot of patience with poor business practices. For the love of the commerce gods, people. Put somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about on your main contact line!

I ended up doing a more focused web search and finding a company not far from where I lived. It was a family-owned outfit, and the owner (who answered the phone) was kinda quirky and a bit abrasive. That really doesn't bother me in animal people, though (well, quirky never bothers me at all). They're animal people and not people people for a reason. The important thing is that she knew what she was talking about and asked the right questions. Her sister the "cat expert" is coming over to meet our critters next week.

Business. It's about confidence, competence, and taking for than 5 minutes to train your employees. Man, I should be one of those consultants that gets paid way too much to go to businesses and tell the employees really obvious things. Except then I'd have to use buzzwords, and I fucking hate buzzwords.