Pelf, a friend I met in the blogosphere recently contacted me to help promote this new campaign called “Turtle Blogathon”. She’s an environmentalist by the way. To be honest with you, I’m not really into such campaigns or anything that has something to do with promoting other stuff. However, this is different, because it’s about helping the environment and if it’s anything to do with helping the environment, I wouldn’t mind at all.

Anyway, here’s part of the content extracted from the web site.

WHAT IS A TURTLE BLOGATHON?
A Turtle Blogathon is an event where we blog non-stop for 24 hours, about matters relating to marine and freshwater turtles. We will be staying up all night, researching, writing and publishing one blog post every hour, even when you’re asleep. And for staying up all night, we collect donations.

The name “Turtle Blogathon” is adapted from the original Blogathon where bloggers update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight to raise funds for their chosen charity.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
The main objectives of staying awake all night and doing the Turtle Blogathon are:

• to raise funds for the Turtle Conservation Centre (TCC) because we are a new turtle conservation organization and we are starting from zero in terms of funding. What we do have is experience, lots of experience
• to disseminate information about marine and freshwater turtles because we realize that the general public doesn’t know much about the turtles, despite these creatures being on earth since many years ago. Did you know that the earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes?
• to spread awareness about the plight of these turtles, because they are fast becoming extinct. And if we do not do anything today, our future generations will not know what turtles are!

So there you go, some basic information you need to know about this.

And yes, you can play a part in this too. Simply help to spread the words around or go to their web site HERE and have a read..

Hope it helps.

Businesses exist to help customers with their problems, and not giving them more problems than they already have. This may seem like a simple theory which anyone can tell if they bother to use common sense, and yet it is something that most businesses, big and small, failed to do.

For example, a customer needs to claim for a medical fee. It would help if the business concerned can make the entire process of approving the claim as simple as possible. Things like 12 hours or even 24 hours approval certain help. Imagine what would happen if the claim process is 1 month long and the customer is required to provide not only photocopied receipts but also original ones, handed to the company’s office by the customer himself. To make things worse, the company’s offices don’t operate on weekends.

Talk about helpful customer service

Another example, a customer recently lost his wallet to a robber. He called company A to cancel all his cards, and also to ask for an insurance claim (to cover the cost of the card replacement). Company A said yes, it can be done. The customer was relieved and thanked company A for it. Few weeks later, the claim was rejected. Why? Because the customer did not provide the original supporting documents (including the official bank statement which is required to cover the cost of the lost ATM card – worth RM 12). The customer was furious because he still could not get his credit cards back and he, who has been the customer for 5 years, was forced to show so many documents for something worth RM 12. He called the company up, scolded them and cancelled the membership on the spot. The company lost a very loyal customer who used to spread the good words about this company to his friends.

The above 2 examples, I believe, might have been experienced by many of you before. When we’re in trouble, we expect the companies which we’ve paid to help us, to…well…help us. Instead, what we get is processes and unnecessary procedures, which only give us more headaches than help. I must admit that it’s not wrong for these businesses to have processes and procedures, but they need to abstract them from the customers and not troubling them.

Look, if your business is giving me more headache than helping me, then I will just go to another business and you most probably won’t see me AND my friends. End of story.

It's important to network with other people

People always say that it is important to have good contacts during good and bad times. And I believe so. After my recent experience, I’ve realized that having a good list of contacts is a very important asset. A priceless asset.

After the announcement from the bosses, I immediately sent out SMSes and Instant Messenger messages (YM, MSN, etc) to my contacts that I need help and maybe ideas. I’m glad that a lot of them have replied me with kind messages and some offer to keep a lookout for opportunities for me, and some even told me which company is hiring.

And for those who prefer to keep to themselves (some geniuses are like that), maybe it’s time for you to get to know more people and spread your network.

Last but not least, a big thank you to every single one of you who have offered to help out. Whatever the outcome, I’m just glad that most of you have responded to my ‘SOS’ message.

I’ve heard of many cases where the person who is paid to do the work, somehow ends up seeking help from the customers. One example is what happened to my sister. She’s an accountant in a MNC and there was this fresh graduate auditor who kept pestering her and the other accountants……not for information or documents, but for help. The fresh graduate did not know how to do her job! To make things worse, my sister actually gave her some documents to study but she didn’t study. She preferred to be spoon-fed.

Spoon-fed by a customer…? Hmmm.

Actually, this kind of incident happens a lot. These people have no idea that they are dealing with the customers, and they are supposed to be the one providing solution, not the other way round. If you can’t give me solution and expect me to teach you how to do it, then what’s the point of paying you? Isn’t it better to just hire a maid?

If you seriously don’t know how to fix it, then just seek assistance from your seniors or something and don’t let the customers know that you can’t fix it. Always know your role and where you are. It won’t benefit you or your employer if you allow the customers to know that you can’t fix the problem (and pestering to teach you to fix it will certainly make things a lot worse).

As for the guy allocating resources, always know who are your main customers and the skillset of your people. No point sending a lazy rookie to the front line of a warzone. You’ll just lose more people and give the impression that your squad (company) is weak. Try to allocate them under some helpful seniors and put them elsewhere.

Remember that if I’m paying you to fix the problem for me, and you can’t do it…then the least you can do is to spend some time figuring out how to do it (and not asking me for help!). If you still can’t do it, I’ll just find someone else.

Recently, my parents sold our old house in Johor since they hardly stay there anymore. They spend most of their time with my sister and I in our PJ condo. Furthermore, maintaining a 20-30 years old house is not cheap at all especially if there’s nobody taking care of it. Thus, we’ve decided to sell it off even though it’s quite a difficult decision to make.

While moving and packing our things, my sister and I talked about the past….the incidents experienced by us in that house. After all, we’ve been staying there for over 20 years. Surely, there are some feelings left for the house. The quarrels, the pets, the playing sessions (yea, i used to play masak-masak aka cooking game with my sister. I know it’s sissy but well, she has nobody else to play with), etc. We miss all of them. And at one point during those conversations, my sister cried because she was sad that we have to sell the house …and we might not be able to go back ever again.

I’m sad too (i’m not heartless). But I told my sister that we HAVE to sell the house. Due to our hectic work schedule, it’s pretty hard for us to go back to Johor so often and thus, our parents have to help us to go back and clean up the house (and sometimes fixing it since old house tends to be quite problematic). And they’re no longer as young and energetic as they were many years ago. Furthermore, it’s very expensive to maintain that old house and we wouldn’t want to burden our parents in terms of financial too.

Thus, it is necessary for us to sell the house off no matter how much we hate to sell it.

It’s for the sake of our parents – which is good enough a reason to sell the house.

Those reasons actually helped to prevent my sister from crying again (she’s very emotional and sentimental).

That is my story. I’m sure most of you have encountered something similar before – something which causes an extreme emotion. Maybe it’s due to your loved one leaving you for work purposes, or your kids going to another country to further their studies, etc. Whatever it is, I feel that it can be overcome if we managed to find strong reasons to convince ourselves that “it is going to be fine”.

This does apply to other things as well such as when you want to buy that ultra expensive bag. All you need to do is to try and find some good reasons NOT to buy. Just like when we’re selling the house. It’s easy to find reasons not to sell the house but for our case, we want to find reasons why we should sell the house so that we will not feel that sad. Remember that finding a positive reason is always more encouraging than finding a negative one which can be quite damaging.

So the next time you face such a situation, maybe you can spend some time to find some good reasons to overcome such an extreme emotion. Hope it helps.