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Frequent Flier: A Succession of Items, Lost in Transit

May 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I put military-grade mosquito nets around my bed and refused to leave my room. Two days later, I felt fine. I realized I didn’t have malaria, just an acute case of hypochondria. Since then, I take travel, especially business travel, as it comes.

I like business travel, particularly the longer flights. I actually get to think, or not. My company manages 13 hotels in the United States and two properties in London. We have another eight properties under development overseas. So a lot of my work involves not only overseeing these new projects, but visiting existing properties, and, of course, trying to find new deals.

By the time I get to where I’m going, I’m tired. I’m not one of those lucky people who can sleep on planes.

Since I’m wide-awake, it’s amazing that I can be a bit forgetful when I fly. I’ve probably lost about half of all the books I’ve ever brought on board. Now, I have an iPad. The digital thing hasn’t helped too much.

I was in Tel Aviv, and I was walking out of the airport when I realized my iPad was still on board. I was freaking out. Even though my dad is Israeli, I don’t speak any Hebrew.

Almost everyone at the airport had some English, but I was having a tough time. Thankfully, I had a driver who came to my rescue. I had already tried to get my iPad back but you can imagine the hoops I was jumping through. My driver got me in front of the right person in about five minutes.

I swear he was ex-Mossad. He did practically all the talking. I just kind of stood there. But the next thing I know, I got to go back on the plane for my iPad. I swear, I’ve talked to my wife about inventing some kind of device that I could wrap around myself so I don’t forget to take my stuff with me.

My wife is really understanding when it comes to my travels, and some of my travel issues.

I was flying to Moscow for the first time for meetings regarding our new Delano property, and I guess it was cold in the cabin. When I got up to use the restroom, my wedding ring must have slipped off my finger. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s the only thing I can think of. It’s not like I got on the flight and took off my ring and put it on the tray or something.

Anyway, I realized my ring was not on my finger and I panicked. Really, think of explaining to your spouse how your wedding ring just happened to fall off. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

I figured the ring got wedged between the seats or something. The flight attendants were great, making every attempt to help me find my ring, including fashioning a little tool so I could fish around between the seats. We admitted defeat after about an hour.

After landing, I actually worked with a maintenance guy for about 20 minutes taking the seat apart. No ring.

I waited until I got home to tell my wife. O.K., there was a little tension. Not much.

I do have a new wedding ring. It’s a little tight, and I think that’s really smart on my part.

By Michael Gross, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: joan.raymond@nytimes.com.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/business/a-succession-of-items-lost-in-transit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Frequent Flier: Strangers on a Flight, Just Taking a Fling

February 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I don’t even get upset about delays and cancellations. I’m not that guy who is going to make a fuss. My trip isn’t any more important than someone else’s trip. So I just take it as it comes.

One thing I still don’t understand is frequent flier clubs. There’s such a weird, almost elitist vibe in the clubs, even though some of them really aren’t that much better than what you can find in most main airline terminals. People just ignore each other and don’t seem to be enjoying themselves at all, in my experience.

When I’m flying someplace for business, it’s almost always domestic for our HGTV television shoots. I’m pretty old school and still dress up for flights, and usually wear a vest and dress pants.

I was getting ready to sit down on one flight, and a woman asked me if I could help her with her carry-on. I said no problem. Then she handed me some crumpled bags and a napkin.

I took them, just because I didn’t know what else to do. Then I looked at myself, and realized that my navy blue vest, white shirt and gray pants looked like a uniform. She thought I was a male flight attendant.

When you fly a lot, you know that almost anything can, and probably will, happen. I don’t mind talking to seatmates at all, but I’ll let them take the lead. Seatmates on a recent flight from Los Angeles to New York City took getting to know their fellow passengers to a whole new level.

I was seated in coach in the window seat. My middle seatmate was an attractive young woman probably in her 20s. About five minutes later, a guy in his 30s sat down in the aisle seat. It was a late evening flight, and everyone looked tired. I got myself situated and just looked over and smiled at them, and then stared out the window.

The woman in the middle dozed off, and in the corner of my eye, it appeared that she was leaning her head against the guy in the aisle seat. He was asleep, too. I figured they were a couple traveling together, and I thought, “How sweet.” But I also thought it was kind of strange that they didn’t talk at all before takeoff.

When the flight crew made an announcement, the two were roused awake and began a very quiet conversation. And then they started to kiss, and they kept on kissing. It was kind of ridiculous, and very uncomfortable, but I wasn’t going to say anything. After all, they seemed to be a couple in love. They finally stopped kissing, and started holding hands.

The plane began its descent, and the female part of the equation turned to the guy and asked him, “Is this your final destination, or are you connecting?” As the brief conversation continued, it was very clear they weren’t a couple. They didn’t even know each other before the flight.

Once the plane landed, the woman was completely uninterested in this guy. She made a swift exit out of our row, and the guy was just left sitting there looking very disappointed.

I just mumbled, “Excuse me,” as I made out my way out of the row. Saying, “Sorry, buddy,” just seemed like rubbing salt in the wound.

By Brian Balthazar, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: joan.raymond@nytimes.com.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/business/strangers-on-a-flight-just-taking-a-fling-frequent-flier.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

You’re the Boss: The Government’s Calling About a Table. Should I Take the Call?

August 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Staying Alive

The struggles of a business trying to survive.

The end of summer brings a surge in calls from government clients, mostly from the military, looking to spend remaining dollars in their budgets before the fiscal year ends on Oct. 1. This year is no exception. The surge has started and is most likely to peak at the end of August. Just last week we got calls from the State Department, the Army and the Marines. The person on the phone is generally a low-level officer, responding to a request from a superior for pricing on a large and fancy table. Our bid will be presented to the upper ranks as one of a number of ways to spend their remaining money. Consequently, we sell a much lower percentage of these inquiries than those from private clients. But August is usually a slower month for private business, so we take the time to write proposals anyway.

This year, however, the expected slowdown in private business has not happened, even though the number of visitors to our Web site has not changed. I believe that this is because the site is yielding more calls per viewer. Of all the metrics I track with Google Analytics, we’ve seen the biggest change in the bounce rate (number of people who leave after viewing one page) and the time spent on the site. Our bounce rate had hovered between 50 and 60 percent for the last two years, but now it’s down between 40 and 50 percent. Time on site went from three minutes to five minutes. Potential clients are clearly finding it easier to spot the things they are looking for, and we are seeing it in more calls per week. The revamped site has only been active since the last week of June, so I’m not sure whether this is a blip or a permanent change. But the result has been an overload on my sales department (which consists of three of us). We’re deep in the weeds right now. It’s taking us two to three days to get to new proposal requests, when normally we get them done in a day or less.

It’s tempting to ignore the government callers, or at least to cherry-pick the most promising. On the other hand, some of these jobs do come through. In the fall of 2008, an order from the Air Force kept the business from failing. Last year, we got a large order from NASA, and a couple more from the Air Force. Our direct sales to the government were $146,355, out of a total of $1,549,488. That’s a month’s work for the whole shop. If I add in the orders from defense contractors ($36,423), who are undoubtedly also spending government money, we’re looking at 12 percent of our sales.

All of the recent talk of debt ceilings and default has added another note of uncertainty. Government work is done on a strict net 30 basis: do the work and deliver it first, get paid 30 days later. There are some arcane billing procedures to deal with, but my experience has been that as long as I do a good job and jump through all of the hoops, I will get paid. But lately there’s been talk of delaying payments to the military and defense contractors, which could leave me hanging. We finished a job for NASA in the winter, and delivered a month before the near-shutdown in March. I was told by the contracting officer that the funds were already allocated, but that if the government shut down, there would be no one to disburse them to me. Fortunately, we got the payment as promised.

Some people talk about government spending as if it’s fundamentally different from private economic activity. I don’t see it that way: for me, a dollar is a dollar no matter where it comes from. If I get money from, say, an H.M.O. in Ohio, I pass it on to my suppliers, my employees, my landlord. I keep a little bit, and some goes back to the government in payroll taxes. If I get some dough from the Air Force, the same thing happens. Maybe the H.M.O. borrowed the money used to buy my tables, and maybe the Air Force did, too. So what? They decided to buy something from me, and I’m glad they did. So are my employees, suppliers, and landlord. The government dollar isn’t destroyed by being spent — it just goes back into the private economy.

I think I’ll do this: speak to every caller the same, whether government or private. We’ll make a judgment call once we get off the phone as to how likely we are to get the job, factoring in the size of the job as well. Private callers with large potential orders who need quick delivery will get first priority — they are the easiest jobs to sell. We have made more sales to the Air Force than to any other branch, so it takes priority among military clients. Calls from other branches of government will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Calls from California government agencies will, as always, be discarded immediately.

If you do business with government agencies, do their financial difficulties affect how you work with them?

Paul Downs founded Paul Downs Cabinetmakers in 1986. It is based outside of Philadelphia.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bef61645cadfcb04911d187580bc274c

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,