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 Richard Frisbie Author, advertising and publishing consultant, former editor of Chicago and other magazines, former creative director of Campbell-Ewald and other advertising agencies. For more information, click here. Or see Who's Who in America or www.midlandauthors.com, Margery Frisbie Consulting editor, historian, poet and author of several books. For more information, click here or see www.midlandauthors.com. The Uncommentator BLOGS and GLOBS: I have been writing a blog since 1966, only I didn't know it. In those days, it came out in the form of a newsletter on paper. Remember paper? It never got lost in cyberspace, although if it got wet enough blog turned into glob. I called it The Uncommentator, and tried to make it amusing. To read some of my favorites, see contents. Recent Books by the Frisbies. |
FPFUF: ANOTHER REASON THINGS GO WRONG January, 2008–Newtonian physics were superseded by Einstein’s discovery of relativity. Similar progress has occurred in the understanding of human behavior. Murphy’s Law noted that if anything can possibly go wrong it will. The Peter Principle reminded us that people in large organizations who get promoted sooner or later rise above their level of competence and proceed to spread dysfunction like a virus. People are lulled into a sense of security because over time most of us find auto mechanics, appliance repair technicians, dry cleaners and other reliable service providers who do good work. You eat in favorite restaurants without getting food poisoning. The mail gets delivered, most of the time. But horror stories abound. Surgery patients are left with sponges inside. The quick-print store loses the whole job including the only copy of the original. You keep getting dunned for bills you already paid. One explanation is that in addition to the mistakes everyone makes from time to time, there is the carelessness of a cadre of incompetents who exist in every organization. It doesn’t do any good to fire them because they’ll only be replaced by more of the incompetents who infest the general population. Consultation with experienced colleagues has identified the chance of something going amiss when you deal with a large organization at between 10 and 20 percent. So we have taken the average and named this the Fifteen Percent F*** Up Factor (FPFUF). You can use FPFUF in practical ways. I recall an example from several years ago. I was waiting for a red light to change to green when a distracted driver slammed into the rear end of my VW Beetle. That destroyed my engine, so my car was totaled. The other driver’s off-brand insurance company adamantly refused to settle for a fair figure. I suspected they weren’t hiring many valedictorians, so I resubmitted my claim for a more reasonable amount. The second time it sailed past some dull-eyed clerk, and justice triumphed. But when you set out to depend on FPFUF, you have to consider the possible downside. It’s probably not a good idea to try FPFUF with the Internal Revenue Service. Richard Frisbie |
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