space after periods.

as a graphic designer, typography is a big part of my life. it’s easy to sit for hours with a piece of printed material and just look at letterforms, not really reading anything. typography is an underappreciate, and many type scholars would say a lost, and i would say ignored, art-form. i’m sure that never in the history of the general public has anybody stopped to make a remark about the beautiful stroke weight of a letter in garamond. most people just don’t pay that much attention. which is why the job of the typesetter is so important. in a way, you want the results of your handiwork to remain invisible, or at least taken for granted, because you want it to work subtley, subconsciously, to communicate your idea.

with all that in mind, this writing has very little to do with the art of typography, and more to do with my number one pet peave with set type: the extra space after a period at the beginning of a sentence.

it is a holdover from the day of the typewriter. i don’t know if many of you remember typewriters, but despite the mechanical brilliance they were not very smart machines. even i barely remember typewriters. when i was in high school we had electronic word processors for a semester before we moved up to computers for our typing class. i kind of miss the opportunity to actually spend some time working on one of those old beasts where you had to push a key down like six inches to type a letter. i would appreciate my super low-profile mac keyboard a whole lot more, like i appreciate my acoustic guitar so much more after playing my dad’s acoustic because the action on my strings is much lower and a lot more manageable.

but seriously, stop putting an extra space after your periods when you end a sentence! we are no longer using big, clunky, dumb typewriters. the computer spaces things correctly for us. i spend way too much of my life combing through copy for publications removing all those extra spaces. thank goodness for visible hidden characters in indesign!

customer neglect as company culture

i am not a journalist, so i don’t know the legal ramifications of what i am about to write. i am going to keep things relatively vague until i understand the legal aspects more. i intend for this to be the first of several more posts relating to the title of this post; customer neglect as company culture.

my primary job is that of a graphic designer for a major university where i live. my second, less glamorous job is that of a commission salesman for a major local retailer. you can usually find me somewhere near the lawn and garden section if you’re looking for a lawn mower or yard tractor.

most of us that work in retail understand that customer service is the critical function of our job, and we do our best to take care of those customers as well as we can. i have personally sacrificed personal time and profitability to make sure a customer’s needs were met. why sacrifice for a stranger? because i believe that it part of a larger function of participating in society. i’m sure most other retail workers don’t intellectualize it on that level, but the consequences are the same. how you choose take care of your customers effects the type of relationships you build in society. social networking, if you will.

leadership in the retail space plays a critical role in influencing the chain of command, all the way down to those on the lowest link of the chain. the leadership are what truly define company culture.

the store manager is particularly damaging to the company culture as it exists in our store. several weeks ago we had to make some changes to our floor arrangement to make room for a special garage furniture display. while some associates were dismantling a shelving fixture, one of the large panels fell and landed on a customer’s foot. i don’t believe she was hurt very badly, she didn’t seem too distressed, but an accident report must be made for legal reasons. while the report was being taken, the store manager came by and completely ignored the possibly injured customer to ask the cashier how many credit applications she had. although none of us were surprised, we were livid that the store manager could be so callous as to ignore a customer that might have been injured in his store to find out how many new credit cards had been issued.

last night a customer had an issue of some sort and asked for the store manager by name. a perfectly reasonable request, you would think, as there are signs up in the store saying that he’ll be available if requested. the associate helping the gentleman paged the manager over the store PA system. the manager then called the associate at the extension and began to verbally reprimand him for paging him. the associate then informed the manager that the customer asked for him by name, so the manager did come out and take care of whatever the problem was. afterward the manager continued to reprimand the associate, saying that he should have referred the customer to the department manager, who happens to be on vacation for the week. the saddest part of the situation is that the associate has a mental illness over which he has no control, and he has worked for the company for over 18 years.

it is a shame that i cannot fully illustrate the disgusting nature of these situations. nobody deserves to get paid so much money to neglect the very customers and associates that make it possible for them to have a job in the first place. but i believe the problem is one that infects the entire company as a whole.

next time i will write about my recent experience with the company being dishonest with it’s own associates in the hopes that they will sell services to customers that the company really has no way of providing.

Japanese Garden