Red Robin Buys Priceless PR for $11.50 by Giving Free Meal to Pregnant Customer:
It doesn't cost much for a brand to polish its image and generate lots of positive media attention. In fact, $11.50 will get you a ton of it. That's the amount Charles, the manager of a Red Robin restaurant in Apex, N.C., recently comped a very pregnant customer (she was actually overdue) when she stopped in for a meal with her husband and 2-year-old son. Charles deducted that amount and added the note "MOM 2 BEE GOOD LUC" to the bill. The atrocious grammar and spelling just enhance the "Awww" factor. Charles tells Consumerist that the way to make customers happy is to "listen to them, and make sure they leave feeling appreciated and valued. If our guests know we welcome their feedback, I think they'll talk with us and speak up … to say they had a positive and satisfying experience with us, and hopefully also to say they'll be back again soon." All the attention seems a bit overdone, but in these cynical times, when restaurant workers most often generate headlines for defiling salads and sandwiches, Charles's tale resonates, especially since it was a genuinely kind act, not some rah-rah commercial. Maybe the woman will name the kid "Robin." Works for a girl or boy. Bet she'd have a few more free meals coming her way.
You've probably heard a lot of people tell you to "stay positive," but being overly optimistic isn't always the best way to achieve your goals. The Wall Street Journal explains that it can actually cause anxiety. More »
At 25 minutes, this tour of the ISS may seem a bit long, but do take the time to watch it all, you’ll be glad you did. I especially liked the part about sleeping in space. Fascinating stuff.
[NASAtelevision]
Today’s old comic strip is from yesterday. Above is how it should have appeared in newspapers and on the syndicate Web site. This is how it actually appeared. Obviously, the problem is in the third panel. When I became aware of the mistake Sunday morning, I raced to my computer to find someone to blame. Guess who I found? That’s right. Me. I sent it out of my shop that way. There was supposed to be some post-drawing board editing in Photoshop. Originally, the cartoon had been drawn this way. The idea was to reverse the black lettering, making it white on a black background. I got halfway there. I made the lettering white but neglected to reverse the sky around Arlo as young man. What th’ heck. As Julia Child said, Never apologize for your disasters.
Charles Addams Illustrates Mother Goose, 1967: “Come with a hoop, Come with a call, Come with a good will, Or not at all.” I have a documented soft spot for vintage children’s books, especially little-known gems by otherwise famouscreators, coupled with a weakness for the macabre style of mid-century illustrator Edward Gorey. So imagine my delight upon finding out that in 1967, beloved Addams Family creator and New Yorker cartoonist Charles “Chas” Addams — who was born 101 years ago today — put his twist on the classic Mother Goose tales. The Charles Addams Mother Goose (UK; public library) is exactly as darkly delightful as you’d expect it to be, bringing the time-honored characters to wicked new life. In the midst of the Vietnam War, Addams brought equal parts comfort and comic relief with this intersection of the deeply familiar and the refreshingly irreverent.
Why Addams chose to create an adaptation of Mother Goose is subject to speculation only. Tee Addams, the artist’s third and last wife, writes in the foreword to the 2002 deluxe reprint, weeks before her own death:
I think it was possibly due to his longtime desire sparked by famed bibliophile and Saturday Review of Literature cofounder Christopher Morley and his 1942 letter to Random House president Bennett Cerf suggesting he publish an Addams version of the nursery rhymes. Or it could have been due to fellow New Jersey denizen Carolyn Rush and her in-depth studies of Mother Goose, who, when interviewed in 1935 stated, ‘The rimes we grew to love in childhood have even more interest as we grow older and learn they have historic value.’ But more than likely, it was because of Charlie’s steadfast conviction to enjoy life’s lessons through the uncluttered eyes of a child; to ignore convention and have fun with it.
Three blind mice, see how they run!
They all ran after the farmer’s wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a sight in your life
As three blind mice?
Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,
Oh wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?
The king was in his counting house counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose!
Girls and boys,
Come out to play,
The moon does shine
As bright as day.
Come with a hoop,
Come with a call,
Come with a good will,
Or not at all.
Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.
There was an old woman tossed in a basket,
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
But where she was going, no mortal could tell,
For under her arms she carried a broom.
‘Old woman, old woman, old woman,’ said I,
‘Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?’
‘To sweep the cobwebs from the sky,
and I’ll be with you by-and-by.’
And perhaps it was Mother Goose Kurt Vonnegut channeled in writing about his moused apartment:
Pretty John Watts,
We are troubled with rats;
Will you drive them out of the house?
We have mice too in plenty
That feast in the pantry,
But let them stay
And nibble away.
What harm is a little brown mouse?
I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives.
How many are going to St. Ives?
Here am I,
Little Jumping Joan;
When nobody’s with me,
I’m all alone.
In addition to some of Addams’s never-before-published sketchbooks and photographs, the 2002 reprint includes this additional image, which Addams created for the original 1967 edition but it was dropped from the book at the last moment “for reasons unknown”:
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Take your existing products, and add touch. It's a formula we're seeing over and over here at CES, but primarily only with higher-end machines. Toshiba's brought the same formula to its low-end products, with the new Satellite U845t — it's basically the old U845, with a touchscreen added. The 14-inch laptop still comes with a Core i3 or i5 processor, up to 6GB of RAM, USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, and of course Windows 8. The touch-enabled model weighs four pounds, and is 0.8 inches thick — adding touch capabilities tends to increase both the size and weight of a Windows PC. Touch also tends to raise the price, but Toshiba's introducing the touch-capable U845t for the same price — $799.99 — as the non-touch model cost last year. If... Continue reading…
Consumerist that the way to make customers happy is to "listen to them, and make sure they leave feeling appreciated and valued. If our guests know we welcome their feedback, I think they'll talk with us and speak up … to say they had a positive and satisfying experience with us, and hopefully also to say they'll be back again soon." All the attention seems a bit overdone, but in these cynical times, when restaurant workers most often generate headlines for defiling salads and sandwiches, Charles's tale resonates, especially since it was a genuinely kind act, not some rah-rah commercial. Maybe the woman will name the kid "Robin." Works for a girl or boy. Bet she'd have a few more free meals coming her way.
