A funny thing occurred today as one of my family member was staying in Canada for a bit and today she was flying back to Hong Kong. Her parents opted to go for one of the cheaper airlines called Oasis Airline and I must say it was kind of interesting at the flight check-in counter.

While checking in her luggage and all, there are these small tags that you attach to them so that the luggage will be handled and directed to the appropriate flight. No one had a pen with them, so she figured that she would borrow one from the person at the counter.

Now this part got interesting as the lady at the counter mentioned how they didn’t have a pen and that they can’t lend any to people anyways. The funny thing was that the lady actually did not have a pen herself but rather a Sharpie, which she still wouldn’t lend. It was just kind of amazing to see the lackluster effort in terms of the customer service. We then joked a bit on how you get what you pay for and that she was told ahead of time by a friend not to expect too much anyways for the price. Maybe that upside down sign at the line up was a foreshadowing on what was going to happen.

In all fairness, maybe it was just that one lady that was having a bad day or something, but I thought that was a good example on how it just takes one person to leave a bad impression for an entire organization and so if you are running a business it is so important to make sure everyone is consistent in terms of the level of service provided. Someone once told me a good example on how if you experienced bad service, you are not going to say “(name of person) gave such bad service” but rather (name of company) provides bad service”. Similarly, while I’m sure the flight itself is okay, I can’t help but to label that airline as the one that doesn’t have pens if someone mentions its name now. I wonder if it is the same when people are on board too. Like most things, if you want true service you have to pay for it I guess.

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Today I bought a USB removable flash memory as I needed a more portable one as opposed to the larger ones that I normally use. Usually these things should be a pretty hassle free purchase and usage as you simply place it into the USB drive on your computer and that’s it. Every so often though, a lot of these kinds of items come in packages that are difficult to open and this product just happened to be one of those types.

I pretty much as usual had to perform surgery-like operations on it as you can easily just cut right through the package, but then you risk nicking the actual product or the instruction manuals that are buried right in the middle of the package.

I wonder how many accidents these types of packaging cause for people as those edges are actually pretty sharp when you begin to cut it and I know most people try to rip it once they cut a little bit.

I actually never fully understood from a business point of view on why manufacturers have opted to go with this type of packaging for products. The only thing I can think of is that it makes it harder for thieves to simply cut the package open and steal the item in a store or maybe it is way cheaper to do so. It sure can be troublesome for the consumer that’s for sure.

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And I thought I was the only one that did this before. During my early teen years I thought to myself that since so many people I knew kept complaining about not having enough money during times when they truly needed it that I would have to think a little different in terms of an approach on how I would spend and save money. For example, at that age people would say spend everything at once or save maybe 20% of what they got. At first I was thinking of a spend half of what you get and save the other half approach, but I thought it would have enticed me to spend money just for the sake of spending it.

What I decided to do was that if there was something that I wanted to buy or spend money on which wasn’t really necessary, whatever the cost of that purchase was I would have to put away the exact same amount in my savings. For example, if something was $50 that means I would need $100 to buy it as I would need to put $50 in the savings as well, which I couldn’t touch afterwards. This obviously made it harder for me to make purchases and at the same time it was motivating as well as I could visually see how much money I was saving up as a result. A quick example was since I got $20 every two weeks, if something was $30 it would literally take me about 6 weeks just to be able to buy that.

It helped in a lot in other ways too as it helped to prevent me from making bad impulse purchases and in a way it truly placed me in a position where when I bought something that means I could truly afford to do so as oppose to having nothing left afterwards. While I don’t do this nowadays since it is more about return of investment and efficiency, I still carry on with the same type of mindset in terms of if you have say $1000 left and that item is exactly $1000, having zero left afterwards in my mind means that I can’t afford it for the most part and will only buy it if I had more funds as I don’t want to just get by.

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Today I was told about an interesting story in regards to a very large real estate company here that needed a new online presence and so they hired a company to do so. The bill was rather hefty as it was well over $40,000. To make matters worse, the end product was not fully functional and in order to fix the problem the company requested for another $10,000+ to do so. Based on the project I read, it shouldn’t have been anywhere near that price in terms of a normal market value. The interesting thing was that the marketing director, or whoever was in charge of hiring the firm, mentioned how they got a great deal anyways for the price that they paid.

Myself along with some other people were just stunned over this. I wanted to find out more on how the company saw that as a great deal and aside from large companies having the budget to spend that kind of money, apparently one of the bigger reasons in believing that it was a great deal is because they can’t do it themselves which in turn makes it more valuable to them. Of course I don’t know the exact situation, but I thought that was very interesting.

Speaking for myself, usually when it comes to determining the value it is more about comparing what’s out there and the type of quality you are getting. So to me it was definitely interesting to hear that someone would base the dollar worth of a service specifically on whether or not they can do it themselves.

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I recently saw an old Simpsons episode where Homer apparently paid off all of his immediate debt, or something like that, and on that first day he decided to quit his long time job in a blunt and daring way as in his mind he didn’t need it anymore. Was an old but funny episode.

This got me thinking because I see this kind of thing in different forms all the time. For example, someone could be having some kind of financial issue and so they decide to take action by doing various things to generate more income. Once they pay off their obligations, they simply stop doing what appeared to be working well for them as they mention that they simply don’t need it at that moment anymore. When they get into another money crunching situation, they then continue doing it again.

For myself, if I see something that is generating a positive return I would be inclined to continue dong it as oppose to stopping right away unless I found another method that was better. I think this is one of the things that has definitely helped me in terms of having no financial debt as you are constantly building up more resources which helps you in future opportunities as well since it is kind of like you are pre-doing a certain task so that it won’t be an issue later.

This is true in business too such as how many times a small business will get enough to satisfy one’s living and they then close their doors until they need it again. Other people though would want to find a way to continue the flow as it doesn’t hurt to build up a good nest and that not needing it is simply a bonus in terms of a stress relief as oppose to a reason to stop or continue. If you have all the energy and the opportunity is there, you may as well do something with it I’d say.

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