And voila, no more “Happy Birthday” that looks like it was written by a drunken kangaroo.

Maybe it’s a latent expression of OCD, or maybe just another holiday obsession (I watch every version of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” that I can get my hands on … ), but I’m still searching for noteworthy versions of this tune. Msg me, please!

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

But I have a little-known technique that may give you some insight into your future with a potential employer. I call it the Coffee Creamer Workplace Rating System and it works as follows:

Zero Coffee Creamers

The only circumstance in which “no coffee creamers” could be awarded is if the workplace has no coffee. It seems unimaginable that a modern workplace would not offer at least a watery, caffeine-laced, productivity-enhancing beverage to the staff, but I am here to testify that such workplaces do exist. Because I worked in one. Summer job: engineering firm-slash-sweatshop. I was a temporary secretary. The owner was the cheapest person I have ever worked for. If you wanted coffee, you could bring your own — which was allowed. At 5:00 on the dot, every single engineer in the joint dropped his drafting pencil on his (shared) drafting table and ran silently screaming to his car.

Mitigating Factor — Straight shooter. You knew what you were getting with this guy. Nothing.

One Coffee Creamer

This is the case of a workplace that has a couple of glass-and-plastic coffee pots on a warming plate. Maybe a crusty “Mr Coffee” with several foil bags of “Gold Mountain Blend” scattered about. It may not be the best coffee ever, but it’s free and plentiful. In terms of creamer, you get the white powder in the cardboard canister, and –if you’re lucky– some of those red and white plastic sticks with which you can attempt to break up the creamer clumps. Interestingly, the Fortune 100 company for which I once worked only earned a one-coffee-creamer rating.

Mitigating Factor: there was a Starbucks in the lobby.

Two Coffee Creamers

See above, except the coffee creamer is of a slightly higher caliber. Now we’re talking about those little plastic cups containing a spoonful or so of milky liquid. You might know them as “Mini Moo’s”. The label may say ‘half-and-half’, but that is questionable since these things never seem to go bad.

Mitigating factor: even though many two-creamer-rated offices store the little cups in the office frig (vegetable crisper usually), refrigeration is completely unnecessary.

Three Coffee Creamers

Coffee machine that makes decent coffee. Decent coffee could mean providing grounds from on-brand manufacturers like two well-known chains that shall remain unmentioned here. Or it could mean providing the pre-packaged coffee pack, single- or multi-serving, that drops into the basket without any scooping, tearing, pouring or measuring of grounds. And, it goes without saying, decent coffee includes anything from an espresso or latte machine. As far as creamer goes, we are talking freshly purchased cartons of milk or half-and-half. Seriously, if you find yourself in a work coffee situation like this, you have struck gold.

Mitigating factor: Management may make workers feel guilty about the expense and effort it takes to earn a three-creamer-rating.

Four Coffee Creamers

Research reveals that the four-creamer rating can only be found at the highest level of executive privilege, as it involves coffee that is made just for you, by someone else. Not poured for you by an administrative assistant (does that even happen anymore?) out of the communal swill, but actually made fresh for you, by the cup, to your individual liking.  If this is your life, you are probably the owner of a multinational corporation or a small country. Congratulations. You have reached workplace coffee nirvana! Never leave.

Mitigating factor: you are working in a place where no one in charge ever feels guilty.

So the next time you’re out on an interview, think of it as a reconnaissance mission, and check out the coffee room before you make up your mind.

Contrary to what Google and other internet search authorities would have you believe, the answer is not as simple as “Just build good content.” The internet is filled with awesome content that no one reads. And it’s also jammed with worthless garbage that millions of people see. You know what I mean. Search for “Job Interview Tips” and the first two pages of search results are  robot-written “about” pages that  offer brilliant advice like, “Bring a resume that you printed out a peace of paper.” Ugh.  Then somewhere on the twentieth page of search results is a really useful article from a former HR professional with practical advice on how to tell an interviewer about your salary expectations or explain your so-called “weak” points. Now why isn’t that article on page one? Why does it have no guest comments? Why does it say, “You are the 17th visitor to this page”? Unfair interwebs. Unfair, I tell you!

In my personal life, I am not a great success as a blog traffic generator. So take that as fair warning about any advice I may give. However, in my professional life, where I occasionally blog for others, I have had more success. What is the difference? Besides time and the financial incentive? It may have something to do with personality. If, like me, you’re shy in real life, you may be shy online, too. When I write professionally, I’ve got another persona, and I’m more comfortable putting my stuff out there and doing things that generate blog traffic.

What do many shy people have in common? We over-think things. For example, when you’re at a party, do you find yourself thinking along these lines: “Oh, no one is really interested in what I have to say. They don’t want to be bothered. They’ve got their own thing going on. I’ll just stand here quietly and wait ’til they come over to me?” Then, my friend, you are probably a shy person. The naturally gregarious dude doesn’t operate that way.  He is not thinking about what other people are thinking about him. Or about what an oddball he is. He just walks over to someone and says, “Hey,  here’s words that are shooting out of my mouth. By the way, you seem cool. Want to go over there and get some shrimp?”

Which brings me to my first guildeline for the shy-person blogger:

Make like a gregarious dude and start reading and commenting on other people’s blogs.

In the words of the Beatles, “The love you make is equal to the love you take.” Seek out other  bloggers who are into the same topics you are, read their articles and comment on them.  For traffic generating purposes, it’s best to comment on blogs that allow you to leave a link back  to your own blog in the signature area. (But don’t get married to the link back. It’s ok if it’s not on offer.)  Don’t leave a comment like “Nice post.” That’s what robots do. Say something that indicates you’ve actually read the article.

Which brings me to my next point:

Be kind when commenting.

That doesn’t mean agree with everything all the time. If you do disagree with something a blogger has written, do it respectfully. It won’t take much blog surfing to find examples of commenters who are great at disagreeing without being offensive. Don’t insult the blogger; indicate that your opinion is just that, and be open to further discussion. Lively discussion is one of the essential components of blog popularity, so you have to get comfortable with it.

Which brings me to another topic that makes shy people uncomfortable:

Use your other social networks to publicize your blog .

Use your twitter, facebook, linkedin, pinterest, google+, whatever, accounts to tell your followers that you’ve just written a new article. Yeah, this can be a tough one for the truly shy. But just tell yourself that not that many people are paying attention to your google plus account anyway.

In addition to your personal networks, there are some other effective ways to get your articles out there in the public eye. Services like digg, reddit, technorati, and delicious, will make your blog more easily findable for folks who are searching on your topic. While it probably won’t hurt to use all of them, these services tend to fluctuate in terms of hotness. You may want to research which services the most popular blogs in your field are using. And, like everything else in the “getting readership” game, you’ve got to give a little to get a little. When you’re using these services, it helps to read other people’s articles, promote them, comment on them.  Or you get relegated to  no-link-juice purgatory.

My next point, Be yourself, if you can.

My personal recommendation is for bloggers to blog as themselves. Readers like to know that there’s a real person behind the blog. “About” pages are extremely popular. And people do want to see photos. You don’t have to publish your phone number and address (in fact, don’t.) but a reasonably accurate avatar is a real plus.

If for some reason you don’t want your family or your coworkers to know that you’re really into, say, birdwatching, then it’s fine to blog under an online persona that preserves some anonymity. But base your persona on the real you, and be advised that a truly motivated individual (such as the FBI) will be able to uncover your true identity in no time flat.

Whatever name you blog under, for traffic reasons, your blog will benefit from having a unifying theme and a distinctive voice.  Do you blog mostly about vintage cars, or astrophysics, or water sports, or cute outfits? That’s excellent. Your “About” page should tell your readers how you got interested in that subject  and what qualifies you to write about it. If your blog is a potpourri of subjects, it can still have a unifying theme, like “The Adventures of High-School Sophomore” or “Funny Things that Happen in Cleveland.” For search-engine-related reasons, your blog entries should contain words and phrases that relate to that unifying theme. Most popular blogging platforms like wordpress and blogger include features like “categories” and “tags”. Use them to highlight those key words and phrases.

And lastly:

Don’t over-think it.

Seriously, most people are not that  into your blog. They are not dissecting your every phrase and punctuation mark.  Or questioning your expertise and judging you. Most folks are just interested in themselves when web surfing. We’re all just looking for useful or entertaining content– for our own selfish purposes.  Is this a good restaurant? How do you paint a fence? Wow, that’s a funny hamster! We get our information and we move on.

And now my last point — it’s good to blog regularly.

If you blog, like I do, twice a year (scrapes toe on floor), that is probably not often enough. Once a day: you are a rock star! Once a week is awesome. Once or twice a month — depending on your topic — passable.  Now hear the advice I am repeating for myself: don’t overthink it. Blog entries do not have to be masterpieces. That’s one of the great things about the interwebs. There’s plenty of room to do it all over again. Shy brothers and sisters, the internet was invented (in part) for us and by us, so let’s enjoy it!

• Be in the task at hand
• Be in one task at a time
• Take notes

But, there is still one calendar function that, for me, hasn’t been replaced by the e-planner. And that is the “Year at a Glance” version. If you work in a field where projects take longer than two weeks, you can find yourself in a conference call where someone says, “Let’s reconvene in six weeks … is everyone available?” and you think, ‘Frak! When is six weeks? Wait, let me open up my calendar … oh, shoot, where’s my phone? Is that April or May?” Maybe you just want to jot down a quick note on the day, and — if necessary — transfer it to all of your online devices. For me, anyway, having the whole year in one view gives me a good sense of the passage of time, and usually how fast it is.

So that’s why I made this “2012 Wall Calendar.” I made it for me, and for anyone else who wants it. The calendar prints out on four sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper. Tack them all up together, and you’ve got the year at a glance. But you can also do one sheet at a time, if space is limited. And if you’ve got no wall at all, fold it into a triangle (or is that pyramid?) and place it just about anywhere.

Upload pdf file here …

The New Girl: Starring the adorable and quirky Zooey Deschanel and three dudes, one of which is a Wayans. Deschanel moves into a charming urban apartment with three young guys she’s never met, after abruptly splitting with her live-in boyfriend. (She catches him cheating on her.) This show instantly fell apart for me because it relies on the premise that any three guys in the world would not immediately fall in love with and/or be attracted to Zooey Deschanel. Plus which, she plays a sweet girl, not a crazy person or a man-eating monster, and she dresses cute, and is post-breakup vulnerable. C’mon now writers, at least throw a credible obstacle our way.
Verdict: Almost worth it for the “Aaah OOOgah” bit Deschanel does with her glasses on seeing a hot guy in bar, but not quite. Although sitcom writing has improved greatly since the seventies, this one is still smells like “Three’s Company.”

Ringers: Sarah Michelle Gellar plays identical twins –one a rich, married Manhattanite and the other a SoCal floozy — who are both on the run from the law, significant others, creditors and (possibly) agents who don’t care about them anymore. Of course they trade identities, a la every other movie and soap opera about twins, and no one notices. Although the plot is meant to be intriguing and sexy, it is just contrived and — in the words of a knowledgable ten-year-old — “stoopit”. Making it even worse in this age of fantabulous CGI effects, the show doesn’t seem to have updated its “both twins in the frame” technology since The Parent Trap. And I mean Haley Mills’ Parent Trap.
Verdict: Except for some drool-worthy Manhattan interiors, this one is a total miss. Sorry Sarah Michelle, you know I love you, but better luck next time.

Revenge: A young woman, whose decent middle-class family has been ruined by a wealthy and despicable  “Kennedy-esque” clan, returns to the scene of the crime — the Hamptons — to single-handedly bring down the east coast dynasty. No super-famous stars in this one, though they are all attractive and some do look familiar. Don’t ask me why this show is better than the Sarah Michelle Geller vehicle, to which it bears some resemblance, but it is. Perhaps because it offers us some really good baddies, and we don’t mind at all when they are set adrift in a rowboat in the Long Island Sound, perhaps someday to come ashore in Jersey (eew).
Verdict: Impossible plot in a beautiful location. This one knows what it is. A guilty pleasure.

Prime Suspect: I saw the star of this series, Maria Bello, promoting it on a morning talk show, and I thought “Oh no, this sounds horrible. How could they?” I’m a huge fan of the Helen Mirren/BBC series of the same name, and my reaction was somewhat akin to hearing that NBC had remade — I don’t know what an appropriate analogy would be here — say, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ with Justin Bieber.  No, no said Maria to the ‘Good Morning Whatever’ host, the new show is quite different;  it’s New York in 2011, not London in the 90′s. And it would have to be different. Because the original series was subtle, it had complex characters that you cared about, very few if any guns and car chases, plus Helen Mirren and her hair that always looked good.

But, like any idiot who drives past a car wreck on I-95, I just had to slow down and look. So I watched the pilot. And it was good. Yes, it’s a different show. Maria Bello”s character, Jane Timoney,  carries a gun that would stop Dirty Harry in his tracks. And there are car chases and fights. And Jane’s boyfriend has been upgraded from an endearingly schlumpy construction company owner to a  white-hot, shirtless carpenter.

But there are still quite a few similarities to the original series. While the sexism that dogged Helen Mirren’s every step has abated a bit, it’s still there for Maria Bello’s Jane Timoney.  In fact, both the old and new Janes get a significant career boost from a colleague’s unfortunate medical event. And then there is both old and new Jane’s weird affinity for children (not entirely believable in the original series either), and her ability to get information out of suspects by getting in their heads,  rather than hitting their heads with the phone book.  And Maria Bello’s hair isn’t bad either.

Bottom line: I’m a fan of the new Jane. Giant gun and all. Not the least because she actually DOES something. She’s not a “columnist” or a “decorator” or a “philanthropist” whose work all happens off screen, and apparently at 3 o’clock in the morning.  I like her toughness – even if it’s a bit of fantasy. Somewhere along the line, someone must have told Jane,”If you want to cry, go outside” and somehow, someway,  she’s been able to pull it off. Gonna DVR every episode and hope they’re all as good as the pilot.

Zero hangers
Literally, no hangers at this establishment. If you are the kind of person who has clothes that need to be hung up, you probably shouldn’t be staying here. While there may be a  closet, or a metal rod of some kind, in the room, it is unclear for what purpose the device was intended.

One hanger



In this lodging you will find one or two wire hangers — dry cleaner style. Most likely left behind by previous occupants. But at least the housekeeping staff had the common courtesy to leave them in the room.

Two hangers



Here we have the case of the decapitated hanger. An unremoveable “O” ring is fixed to the closet hanging rod, into which the detachable hanger body is inserted with a small “t” bar. The hanger itself is decent, usually substantial and made of wood, but its overall construction betrays the hotel’s lack of faith in its customers. They are quite sure their customers’ main purpose in life is to steal hangers, and are saying to them, “Good luck using this one back home.” Apart from the unpleasant whiff of suspicion associated with this type of hanger, there is also the immovability factor. You can’t even use this hanger anywhere else in your hotel room. Want to steam out wrinkles in the shower? Not with this little stumpy-necked bastard. Want to leave tomorrow’s outfit over the back of a chair in the sitting area? Sorry, suckers! Better get back in the closet.

Three hangers



Ok, now we’re starting to get somewhere. Here we have a fully functioning wooden hanger, maybe with a double bar for slacks or clips for a skirt. And being a one-piece hanger, it can be taken out of the closet and hung somewhere else. But wait! What have we here? The hook of this hanger only fits over the miniature-diameter rod in the hotel closet. Its tiny hook size will clearly render it useless once you have stolen it and tried to use it in your home closet with its now seemingly gigantic hanging rods. Fail! Mistrust fail! However, mitigating factor if the tiny hook also fits on the hotel’s bathroom shower curtain rod for aforementioned de-wrinkling procedure.

Four hangers



Normal-size wooden hangers, with normal-size hooks, that can be removed and hung about the hotel room at your pleasure. Quantity above eight, especially in hotels that cater to couples and families who tend to stay for more than two nights.

Five hangers



Aaahhh, hanger nirvana. About a dozen standard-size, removable hangers. Now here is what separates the men from the boys, the “just fines” from the “outstandings”: there should be a variety of hangers — some with skirt clips, some with slacks hangers, some just for suit jackets, and some with padding for blouses and ‘delicates’. These five hanger establishments have decided that, given what you are paying for the room, you are aware that — should you ‘accidentally’ walk away with a hanger, or a delightful terrycloth bathrobe — you will be charged for it, and you will not raise a fuss.

It’s the unspoken pact of so-called civilized society.