“I Appreciate You”

Recently I was interacting with someone at work on an issue, and as we were finishing up our call the person said: “Thanks–I appreciate you.” As is typically the case when I hear that new approach to expressing gratitude, it kind of embarrassed me.

In my experience, “I appreciate you” began to make inroads on “I appreciate it” several years ago. The first time I heard it, I thought the person saying it had misspoken, but then it became clear that this was one of those linguistic developments that happens every so often. And this phrasing seems to be gaining in popularity–although some people seem to find it awkward or otherwise off-putting. I imagine the people who use that phrase like it because it is more directly focused on the person who is providing the help, whereas “I appreciate it” is a bit more abstract and focused on the help that person is providing.

It is undoubtedly for that same reason that it’s a bit embarrassing when I hear that new formulation, just like it’s somewhat embarrassing to hear any personal compliment. I appreciate the sentiment, however–and maybe that’s the whole point. The change in wording take the expression of appreciation out of the rote sentiment category, and into a realm that is more intentional. If someone has given some specific thought to how to say “thank you,” it makes the whole effort more meaningful, doesn’t it?

Rating Requests

Yesterday I had an appointment. Last night, when I got home, there was the inevitable email with the request for a rating and a review. I groaned inwardly. Sometimes I delete ratings requests, sometimes I fill them out to be a good customer. Last night I hit the delete button. I just wasn’t in the mood.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had it with getting requests for reviews every time you have any kind of appointment or use any kind of service. For example, our computer calling app at the office requests a review after every call. Seriously? I’ve long since stopped doing that, but I’ve found myself wondering: if you really wanted to give a meaningful evaluation of a video phone call on a 10-star scale, what would distinguish a six-star rating, say, from a seven? If the image freezes and you have to wait for 10 seconds for the other participant in the call to unfreeze, how many stars should get deducted? Should you adjust the rating if the frozen picture of the other participant is hilariously unflattering? What should be the impact, objectively, if there is some kind of audio fuzziness or other glitch in the call?

Say what you will about old-fashioned desktop phones–they may have cluttered your desk, and the fact that the cord often had to be unsnarled was annoying, but at least they didn’t beg you for reviews every time you hung up the receiver. Ma Bell evidently had too much pride for that.

The review request overload leads me to two conclusions. First, any time you see some commercial enterprise bragging about their reviews, take it with a hefty grain of salt. It’s going to be the product of responses from only a tiny fraction of actual customers, and those people who did respond probably didn’t really give much thought to the ratings they were assigning. And second, I wonder what would happen if businesses started to advertise that they will never, ever, bug you for a review if you use their services. All things being equal, I’d gladly choose a service provider who agreed in advance to leave my email inbox free of sniveling requests for reviews.

That ’60s Sensation

At The Ohio State University, as at other colleges in Ohio and elsewhere, there have been some significant protests against the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. At many of the colleges, the protests have taken the form of encampments.

At Ohio State, the University recently cleared out an encampment, invoking school space rules. The University also has locked some buildings, to prevent occupations in connection with the protests. In all, more than 40 people have been arrested on the Ohio State campus in connection with the protests, which means the current activities have produced the most arrests of protesters at Ohio State in more than 50 years.

The reference to the most arrests in more than 50 years takes us back to the ’60s and early ’70s, viewed by many as the “golden age” of American protests. In reality, protesting has a very long history in the United States, where the country itself was the product of protests, like the Boston Tea Party, that led to the Revolutionary War and the formation of a new nation. And in virtually every era since then, people in America have been protesting about some issue or another–whether the issue is taxes, or tariffs, or slavery, or the ability to unionize, or women’s suffrage, or Prohibition, or civil rights, or foreign wars. The issues may change, but the fact that our country is founded on principles of free speech means that people have the ability to protest and advocate for a cause–and therefore the push and pull between protesting and maintaining public safety and order will always be with us.

The ’60s were a weird time, when it seemed that every news broadcast featured stories on marches, riots, protests, assassinations, and other forms of civic unrest. Viewed with some perspective, what’s going on now seems like a pale imitation of that era. But as chaotic as the ’60s were, the chaos ultimately ended, and the country turned to the leisure suits and disco music and bad cars of the somnolent, self-obsessed ’70s. I expect that what is going on now, too, shall pass. i

A Tribute To Persistence

It’s always gratifying to see a news story in which qualities like persistence get rewarded. In this day and age, those kinds of stories often arise when an individual concludes that some unfairness has occurred and refuses to give up, even in the face of institutional resistance, multiple defeats, and great odds, because of the principles at stake.

The Wall Street Journal recently published one of those stories. The persistent figure is Stuart Harrow, a Department of Defense employee who believes he was wronged in 2013, when budget cuts and resulting furloughs briefly forced him out of work. Since then, he has been pursuing every avenue to recover what he says he is owed–which amounts to about $3,000, plus interest. He met defeat in the Department of Defense, before an administrative law judge, before the Merit Systems Protection Board, and before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He’s lost at every step in the process, but he kept plugging, and in March his case was argued to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Technically, Harrow’s case before the Supreme Court is about whether a missed filing deadline is fatal to his ability to recover–even if the circumstances suggest it wasn’t really Harrow’s fault. In this instance, the circumstances include a five-year delay in the Merit Systems Protection Board hearing Harrow’s case because it didn’t have a quorum, and then its eventual decision being sent to the wrong email address because his agency had changed email servers–which meant Harrow never got the long-delayed ruling. But Harrow kept at it, found two law professors to take his case, and the Supreme Court, which has been trying for years to clarify the rules on court deadlines, accepted his appeal.

That’s how a case about $3,000, plus interest, ended up in the highest court in the land. Behind it all is one man who wouldn’t give up. The Court will decide whether Stuart Harrow will finally recover the $3,000 in pay he thinks was wrongly withheld, but what’s also true is that Harrow has already prevailed in a very real sense. Deep down, I suspect Harrow would agree–although I’m sure he’d also like to get that $3,000. Through his persistence, he’s brought attention to an issue, held enormous bureaucracies to account, and ensured that his concerns have been heard. Win or lose, Stuart Harrow’s persistence has made a difference.

A Shopping Cart Story

We’ll be heading out to the grocery store to do some shopping this weekend. When we get there, we’ll use a device so familiar to Americans that we typically don’t really give it much thought: a grocery cart. We’ll disengage the closest one from the long line, wheel it in, and start heading up and down the aisles.

The humble grocery cart is such an integral part of the whole supermarket experience it’s hard to imagine one without the other. It’s one of those devices that seems so obvious now, viewed in retrospect, that you’d think it wouldn’t even need to be invented.

But it was, of course. The grocery cart was the brainchild of Sylvan N. Goldman, seen above, who was a grocer in Oklahoma. In the 1930s, Goldman bought the Humpty Dumpty grocery store chain and introduced a number of new ideas–including, most notably, the grocery cart. Goldman came up with the idea in 1937, in his carpentry shop, and his groundbreaking invention received a patent in 1939. His first device was a grocery basket that attached to a frame with wheels. The baskets could be removed and stacked and the frame could be collapsed and easily stored. Goldman formed the Folding Basket Carrier Company to manufacture it.

Goldman’s ingenious idea swept the nation and revolutionized the grocery business. Shoppers who formerly were limited to what they could fit into a handheld basket now could buy even more. Throw in the concept of people driving to grocery stores, and you’ve got the two basic elements of the modern American big grocery store run. Goldman’s daintier device quickly morphed into the big, heavy, honker grocery cart that we all know so well. I do, in particular, because my first job, at the Big Bear supermarket, involved going into the parking lot at the end of the day and retrieving every orphan cart that had been left behind by shoppers and returning them to the store.

So when we will be loading up our cart this weekend, we’ll have Sylvan Goldman to thank. Now, if we only knew the back story of the unlucky shopper who got the first “folding basket carrier” with a rogue wheel . . . .

Red Lobster, Gone To Pot

Drive into any sprawling retail shopping area in the United States and there’s a good chance you’ll see a Red Lobster (or maybe an Olive Garden) in one of the outbuildings as you enter the parking lot. That may not be the case for much longer, because Red Lobster is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

What happened to Red Lobster, which was once a successful business? As is usually the case with corporate failures, it’s a complicated story, and it didn’t happen overnight. Often, it is the last bad decision that gets blamed–but in reality that decision is just the final domino to fall in a chain that began to topple long before.

In Red Lobster’s case, the bad recent decision was to make “endless shrimp”–which had been a promotion offered only for a limited time–into a permanent menu item. Red Lobster hoped that “endless shrimp” would attract more customers, but instead it just attracted people who consumed enormous quantities of shrimp. If you’ve ever planned a party and included a shrimp bowl, you know this result was entirely predictable. Some people just lose all control at the sight of a shrimp bowl and shamelessly load their plates or camp out at the bowl until every last shrimp is gone, before the ice in the bowl is melted. It’s hard to believe that anyone in the food business would not know this basic truth–but that apparent lack of management experience in the food business has been part of Red Lobster’s problem.

By any measure, the “endless shrimp” option was a disastrous decision–one that Red Lobster itself blamed for the company losing $11 million in the third quarter of 2023, followed by $12.5 million in losses in the fourth quarter. But, as the Business Insider article linked above shows, the shrimp fiasco was just the tip of the iceberg.

The roots of Red Lobster’s current struggles started long before, when a private equity firm bought the company, sold its real estate to create a quick return, then had the company enter into leases for that same property–leases that required rent payments that quickly became a drain on the company’s revenues. Add in the company being shifted around to different investor groups, changing customer tastes, a failure to adapt to new competition, and a tough economic environment, and you’ve got a recipe for a business poised to go into the (lobster) tank. .

The American economy is fast-moving, fueled by the ever-changing tastes and habits of American consumers. Past profitability is no predictor of future success, and a series of bad decisions, often caused by a desire for short-term gain, can lead to eventual doom–endless shrimp or not.

Fast Food Sticker Shock

Back in the ’70s, when I first began working as a “bag boy” at the Big Bear supermarket in Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, I would get off work on a Saturday afternoon, head to the nearest McDonald’s, and get a quarter-pounder with cheese, regular fries, and a Coke for pocket change. The prices were like those shown in the photo above, and the entire meal cost well under $2. That is true no longer–especially in California.

On April 1 California implemented a new minimum wage of $20–but only for fast food workers. That’s a hefty increase from the prior minimum wage for such workers, which was $16. No surprisingly, fast food chains responded by increasing the prices of their offerings. Since April 1, fast food prices have gone up an average of 10 percent–causing patrons of the restaurants to experience what the Wall Street Journal described as “sticker shock.” At Chick-fil-A, for example, the price of a spicy chicken sandwich has increased from $6.29 to $7.09. The price increases further increased the gap in prices between California, which already had among the highest fast food prices in the country, and states like Ohio.

At Chipotle, the increase in the fast food minimum wage represents about a 20 percent increase in its labor costs in the California market. That chain responded by increasing the prices of menu items across the board by 6% to 7% in its 500 California outlets. The new prices apply only in California, incidentally. One Chipotle fan posted that the same double steak bowl they get in Nevada for $17 now costs $39 (!) in California.

My fast food consuming days are behind me, I’d never pay $39 for something from Chipotle, and I don’t live in California, so I don’t expect to be much affected by what California is doing. It seems weird, however, that a minimum-wage hike would apply only to workers in one specific part of the economy. It makes you wonder if, under the guise of providing a “living wage” in what used to be an entry-level job for kids who still lived with their parents, California–which isn’t shy about trying to legislate healthy living and environmentally friendly activities, isn’t actually trying to get people to eat less fast food thanks to the price hikes.

If so, I expect California might be in for a surprise. Some people will shy away from the higher prices for a burger and fries, and some will grit their teeth, pay the higher prices, and complain about it. But don’t expect fast food restaurants to sit idly by while California legislators and regulators mess around with their price points. Expect California to see new experiments in self-serve ordering, robotic workers, and other activities that can restrain escalating labor costs. The workers who are currently getting $20 an hour for flipping burgers may soon find themselves out of a job.

Cicadas On The Cusp

This year will be a big cicada year in the Midwest.

We live with cicadas every summer, thanks to the “annual cicada” nymphs that emerge from their underground homes, climb the nearest tree, and molt into their adult form. They then make an unholy racket as part of their mating process. Every so often, one or more of the cicada species in the broods that remain underground for much longer periods–13 or 17 years–also emerge, and the cicada love call noise level increases accordingly. This year, multiple species in both of the longer span cicada broods will emerge, for the first time since 1803, so we’ll probably need earplugs.

It will be prime time not only for enduring the calls of the cicadas, but also for studying these interesting–albeit loud–creatures. One of the things scientists are interested in examining is a fungus called Massospora that infects only cicadas. The fungus replaces their abdomens and genitals with fungal tissue and fills their systems with chemicals, causing them to engage in unusual sexual behavior to spread the fungus even more. Among other things, scientists are interested in seeing whether the fungus can be used for medicinal purposes in humans. (Speaking only for myself, I’d be leery of ingesting any medicine created with a cicada fungus that has the effects described above, but then I’m not very adventurous.)

I’ve lived through a number of these periodic cicada brood emergences, and it’s really no big deal. It’s loud at night when the cicadas are getting busy, but they soon die, making for crunchy walks in the cicada zones and helping to enrich the soil. I’d never travel to see even more cicadas, but if you want to get maximum cicada exposure, scientists say that Illinois will be ground zero.

Road Protests

Recently, protests have increasingly gone on the road . . . literally. On Monday pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the highway leading to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, causing travelers leaving on flights from one of the country’s busiest airports to leave their cars and lug their suitcases to their terminals, as shown in the photo above. Similar demonstrations also blocked busy bridges and highways in other parts of the country.

It’s an old tactic to try to focus attention on a cause. It’s also a dangerous and self-defeating one. It’s dangerous because one of those blocked roads could have prevented the passage of an ambulance carrying a patient to a hospital in an emergency situation, where even a delay of a few minutes could mean the difference between life or death. It’s also dangerous because one of the travelers walking to O’Hare on a road not designed for pedestrians could have been inadvertently struck by a frustrated driver trying to get to a parking area. And it’s self-defeating because you wouldn’t think that the inconvenienced passengers heading to O’Hare, or the commuters delayed for hours by protests that closed other roads and bridges, will be in a mood to look kindly on the Palestinian cause.

The reality is that unpermitted road protests aren’t designed to persuade. Every major city has plenty of public spaces where demonstrators could appear, advocate for their cause, and make it onto the evening news–without ruining someone’s commute or causing a traveler to miss a flight. By choosing to block roads and bridges, demonstrators show that they want to be disruptive, and really don’t care who they inconvenience or what kind of chaos they create. They view their chosen cause as far more important than letting the rest of us go about our days in peace, and figure that wreaking havoc is a small price to pay for drawing even more attention.

It’s a selfish and desperate tactic, frankly, and one that I suspect will boomerang–but I doubt that the protesters who took the action think that far ahead.

Full Service

Yesterday we went to a retail establishment looking to purchase some important items that were outside the norm of our standard purchases. We picked a specialty shop that featured the items and were soon helped by a knowledgeable and attentive salesperson. She went through the different options, carefully explained how the items worked, gave us helpful demonstrations of different features, and patiently answered a bunch of our questions.

We weren’t rushed, and we weren’t pressured to make a purchase. To the contrary, our salesperson conveyed that she understood that we were making a significant decision, respected that fact, and just wanted to be as helpful as she could be. Her explanations helped to clarify the options and ultimately made our decision an easy one.

There aren’t many stores that have salespeople on the floor anymore. Most retail operations that used to employ salespeople–like the shoe stores of days gone by–have long since gone to self-serve models. Self-serve makes sense when you are talking about pumping gas, or buying items at the grocery store, buying new sneakers, or in many other everyday settings. In those places, you probably don’t need–or want–a salesperson dogging you as you make your choices. But when you are making a decision on whether to buy something significant that you are unfamiliar with, it sure helps to have a friendly salesperson to help you in the process.

I’m sure we could have gone to many “superstores’ to shop for the items we were looking for yesterday, sifted through the offerings, and made a decision on our own. But having more information and getting our questions answered by someone who knew what they were talking about certainly made us more comfortable and confident in our ultimate decision, and I think resulted in a better decision than we would have made otherwise. I’m glad there are still full-service stores out there, with capable salespeople ready to help their shoppers.

Our Skyrocketing Debt Burden

In case you haven’t noticed, over the past few years the federal government has been racking up deficits like a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave–and now we’re starting to reap the consequences.

The chart above is from the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve Board. It is based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and shows interest payments by the federal government over time. That big spike at the right side of the chart means that interest payments have soared over the past three years–just about doubling since 2020. The trajectory is, to put it mildly, alarming.

A recent article from CBS News puts the issue into some context. In the last decade, the total amount of outstanding federal debt has almost doubled, from $17 trillion in 2014 to $33 trillion in 2024. We’ve got to pay interest on all of that debt, of course, which is why–along with increased interest rates on the debt–we’re seeing this shocking spike in total interest payments. The CBS News article reports that interest payments this year will exceed the budget for national defense, which may be the first time that has ever happened in our history. And every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that we can’t spend on anything else–including, for example, actually paying down the staggering national debt.

As the CBS News article reflects, some purported experts say we should be concerned about the spiraling debt and interest rate costs, whereas other purported experts say such concerns are overblown. It just shows that you can find public policy “experts” on every side of every issue. But anyone who deals with their own personal finances knows that being in debt really limits your options and increases your risks, especially if some kind of economic shock happens. I think that is as true for our federal government as it is for the average American family. The risk is that, at some point, you just can’t borrow any more–or if you can, you’ve got to pay crippling interest rates to do so.

We are handing future generations a tremendous burden that is going to leave them paying a very big bill and dealing with unhappy consequences. It’s unfair and irresponsible–and it’s maddening that none of our political leaders seem to particularly care about it.

A Person Who Made A Difference

I like reading about people whose lives really made a difference. Recently I ran across an article about one such person: Dr. Norman Borlaug, shown above, who would have turned 110 last week. Dr. Borlaug is one of only six people in history to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he is credibly said to have “saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.”

Dr. Borlaug was an American who was a leader of the “Green Revolution.” He combined extensive agricultural know-how and political savvy to help increase food production in countries that had been struggling with starvation and famine. He focused on developing approaches to food production that could be readily employed in those countries, drawing upon his extensive knowledge of different varieties of seeds, irrigation, plant pathology, genetics and breeding, soil science, fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization. He also developed a high-yielding, short-strawed, disease-resistant form of wheat that was key to the effort, and that helped produce enormous increases in production. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and his Nobel Prize biography noted that his wheat strain and agronomic practices had produced revolutionary advances in Mexico, Pakistan, and India and had been adopted by other countries in Central America, Africa, and the Middle East.

Interestingly, Dr. Borlaug was not an ivory tower theorist, but a tough, practical farmer who worked in the fields and got dirt under his fingernails. He also had a gift for convincing governmental officials to try his methods. It says something about Dr. Borlaug’s continuing impact that the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development publishes pages of Norman Borlaug quotes, one of which states: “the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.”

I’d heard about the Green Revolution but was not aware of the specifics of Dr. Borlaug’s career and accomplishments–which shows, again, how one person can made a profound difference in people’s lives. You wonder how many people like Norman Borlaug are out there in the world right now, working under the radar yet having a huge impact in their communities. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of them.

Spreading The California Wildfire Risk

California seems to have devastating wildfires every year. And lurking underneath the human drama of the residents worrying about their homes and the heroic efforts of the firefighters is a very basic question: if your home is located in one of those fire-prone areas, how do you insure against the risk that your home will be destroyed in a raging inferno?

The answer may soon be: good luck in trying to do that. State Farm, which was California’s largest residential property insurer, announced last year that it would stop issuing new insurance policies on properties in the state, and last week it said it would not renew 72,000 existing policies on houses and apartments in the state. State Farm cited inflation, soaring costs, the risk of extraordinary losses from wildfires, the inability to secure reinsurance, and burdensome, outdated insurance regulations that don’t reflect the reality of the current California market as the basis for its decision.

The uncertainty about the ability to obtain coverage from commercial carriers has caused more and more homeowners to turn for the California FAIR Plan for their fire insurance. The FAIR Plan was developed to allow homeowners in areas that present high fire risks to obtain insurance and is supposed to be the insurer of last resort–but the exodus of carriers like State Farm may make it the insurer of only resort. That has raised serious questions about the financial stability of the FAIR Plan and its ability to survive a bad wildfire season that causes a spike in claims and claims payments.

If the FAIR Plan can’t make its claims payments, the balance must be made up by insurance companies operating in the state, who will pass those costs along to other California policyholders–including those whose residences aren’t in high-risk areas–as a surcharge. Some insurance brokers are concerned that if that happens, other insurers will follow State Farm’s lead and simply stop writing policies for properties in the Golden State. State regulators are trying to avoid that scenario by changing regulations to allow insurance companies to charge more for policies in high-risk areas.

It’s hard to imagine that California has gotten to the point where major carriers are leaving its commercial property insurance market–and where homeowners in low-risk areas might have to bear part of the risk of fire loss for homeowners in high-risk areas. If I were a homeowner in one of those low-risk areas, I sure wouldn’t be happy about that.

The President’s New Shoes

Presidents receive unrelenting scrutiny. It’s just part of the job. But even by accepted presidential scrutiny standards, the recent hoo-ha about President Biden’s new shoes seems a bit . . . over the top.

The President has been seen wearing new shoes called Hoka Transports. They have a wide sole and are designed for maximum support and comfort while walking or hiking. Some people have made fun of the shoes, saying the President is wearing them in an effort to avoid falling. Of course, the White House denies that.

The President has taken a few spills during his term in office, and his opponents have made a spectacle of them. In my view, if he’s wearing new shoes to try to avoid future tumbles, more power to him. The President is 81 years old—there’s no secret about that—and falls can have serious health consequences at that age. If the shoes help the President avoid a broken hip, wearing them seems like a wise decision to me.

My grandmother used to say you could judge a man by his shoes—but she meant whether they were shined and otherwise showed they had been properly cared for. Make your decision on who to vote for on the basis of their political views, the judgment, and their capabilities, not their footwear.

The Cinderella Effect

I’ve been really enjoying the NCAA Tournament this year. I didn’t fill out a bracket, but our annual Buck Back pool is in full, trash-talking swing, and the tournament is just great TV to watch, period. It’s got all the elements: compelling story lines, enormous pressure and ultra-high stakes because in every game a loss means one team’s season is ended, joy, fear, devastation, and other emotions being displayed by the players and their fans . . . and irresistible Cinderella stories.

What is it that draws us, every year, to the Cinderella teams–like the Oakland Golden Grizzlies, which on Thursday improbably toppled mighty Kentucky? Is it just that Americans traditionally root for the underdog? I suspect that there is a bit more to it than that. During the regular season, the sports media tends to focus on the big-name teams from the power conferences, ignoring the smaller schools and the more obscure conferences. You hear so much about the power teams you almost get sick of it. But the smaller schools that aren’t featured on ESPN Sportscenter have good players who might have decided to go to a smaller school rather than one of the big boys for many different reasons. When the tournament rolls around, those players finally get a chance to shine on the big stage, and they’ve got nothing to lose–whereas the big boys might be feeling the increasing pressure of a high seed. It’s nice to see those fresh faces that have been hidden from view until now.

There’s another element at play, too. Those smaller schools often are key parts of their communities. Many Americans live in places where these small schools are found. Oakland University, for example, is located in a suburb of Detroit. During the regular season Michiganders will root for That Team Up North and the Michigan State Spartans, but when the tournament arrives I’d guess those fans will also gladly yield a bit of their rooting interests to a school like Oakland in the Big Dance. At least, that’s what I do: I always root for the Ohio teams that have made the field of 64.

Alas, the Golden Grizzlies were knocked out yesterday, losing a heartbreaking overtime game to North Carolina State–which is a bit of a Cinderella story in its own right. But there are still a few of the Cinderella teams left, like Grand Canyon, James Madison, and Yale, each of which is hoping that they will be fitted with the glass slipper. We’ll be watching today and hoping their improbable journeys continue.