I see the value of decorators. Figuring out how to use your space more efficiently or to choose colors that will increase the enjoyment of your home isn’t second nature. At least not for me.
I think a decorator would be a fabulous investment if you felt sick of your house and desperate to move, but the market isn’t right or you can’t find something in your price range. A decorator might help you redo your house so you can love it all over again.
Damn - you beat me to it. I was gonna say that one. When I go to those mega-stores, I can’t help but think: Instead of hiring people to do nothing, how about hiring someone to explain to me why you have 16 of the shirt I want in size XXL, and NONE in size Medium. (Maybe they need a consultant in the ordering department).
Agree. For example, if management wants to fire hundreds of people/shut down whole departments, etc., it might be a lot easier, politically, to bring in an outside consultant and make it seem like it was the consultant’s idea.
I am amazed that this thread got this far without someone mentioning this, but I’m glad I get to be the one.
What about Ticket Rippers at the movies? These guys are totally useless and I have a bad habit of making fun of them when I’m with a date. Why do we need this. A quick redesign of the entrance would be able to prevent people from getting in without buying a ticket. Hell, the honor system would probably result in less loss than what they end up paying some kid to stand there all year. I wonder how many repetitive motion injuries those kids claim each year, lol.
Models: I personally find models very helpful. Clothes look much different on the person then they do on the hanger. My main complaint is the fact that they take an already skinny person and put her through a computer program to make her picture appear absolutely flawless. Let’s see the real women, people.
Interior Decorators: I have actually found them quite helpful in the past. A couple years ago, I wanted to re-do my bedroom, and got some help from an interior decorator. Far from designing the room herself, she first asked me to tell her what I wanted. I didn’t have much of an idea, but I told her what type of stuff interested me and what color scheme I was looking for. She found some wall paper swatches that fit what I had told her, and I narrowed it down to my favorites, and then she found others along the same lines. She made sure to let me pick everything every step of the way. If I had done it by myself, I would have spent hour after weary hour flipping through wall paper books; as it is, it took me only a few hours in choosing.
About models-they used to show clothing on hangers, but fashion designer Lady Lucille Duff Gordon (famous for being a Titanic survivor), started using a catwalk and models for her clothing.
Exactly. I’m not a business process consultant or human capital specialist (yes that’s the current termin0logy for organisational/people-based changes) but even then I end up telling people how to do what they should already know. Consultants often dislike their jobs because they’re brought in to take the blame for unpopular decisions or to pass on unsubtle hints that senior management want but don’t have the guts to do themselves. I’ve been hired to tell IT directors that effectively they haven’t got a clue about security (obviously not phrased like that) when I know full well that company could have spent the same cash replacing them if they had the balls to do it themselves.
I find it interesting that people always talk about how they want to see realistically sized women in fashion magazines, yet Cosmo still sells tons of copies and Mode doesn’t sell many at all.
BTW the women in Mode are a million times hotter.
Erek
Another vote for interior decorators. I couldn’t afford to actually hire one, but I have an incredibly talented friend who helped me throughout the process. The result? My apartment feels really comfortable - I wish it were bigger, mind you, but that’s not something he could do anything about :). It’s home in a way I could never have made it by myself.
It also uses every square foot of space efficiently. And that’s important when there are only about 475 of them to begin with!
I don’t know about Wal Mart, but where I work one of the reasons we greet everyone is to cut down on people stealing.
How does this work?
Gym coaches. There are two kinds of kids in school: The athetletic and the non. Those predisposed towards exercise got A’s, because they were physically fit. Us non-ers got bad grades, because we weren’t. Nothing was learned.
They actually graded you in PE? We got As if we showed up and dressed out on something resembling a normal basis. “Dressed out” meant changing into PE uniforms and being there for roll-call. No one much cared after that, unless they were doing that President’s Physical Fitness crap.
Then why do I find 16 of the shirt I want in Medium and NONE in size XXL?? We must go to different stores?
Robin
The hamsters lined their cage with my last attempt to post to this thread, so I’ll give it one more go.
Organizations (businesses, bureaucracies, whatever) are habit-forming creatures. Everyone who’s worked in an office knows about non-sensical policies and rules that no one can remember originating, and no one can justify or explain. Sometimes they get into ruts that management can’t seem to drag them out of; sometimes management is too stuck in the same rut to realize there’s a problem. A consultant can be valuable in those cases just because they bring a fresh perspective.
That said, bringing in a consultant is like going to a psychiatrist: an admission that you have a problem you can’t solve yourself, and possibly an evasion on one’s own responsibility to take care of oneself. Consultants can be as addictive as crack (witness Kmart and Enron), and can actually hide the problems they’re supposed to fix. But frankly, people go to psychiatrists and consultants because they need some extra help, and sometimes that extra help makes all the difference.
One thing I note about all the professions listed: they seem useless because you wouldn’t pay money for them to do that for you. But there are people who will pay (my mother uses interior decorators quite a bit because she likes the back and forth, and they’re a convenient channel for home decorating options), and if they feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth, then they weren’t useless, were they?
I will (crazily enough) have to put in a word defending pet psychiatrists. My dog was sent to a shrink after my parents were divorced…she went with me back and forth to each house, and she developed major wetting problems. So we stopped having her go back and forth, but she still had some problems. A shrink told us that she probably had separation anxiety, so my parents built up leaving…they’d leave her for five minutes, then go inside, then ten, twenty, thirty, an hour, etc. Finally she was able to be left alone without wetting everywhere.
I’ve noticed many more large stores now have “greeters” in front post-9/11/01. I thought it was so they could eyeball every person who walks in the door, gaining some awareness of who’s in the store at any given moment.
Maybe this is very silly, maybe not. I can’t decide.
I don’t know about this one - it’s like saying every human should be happy as long as they have food to eat, a job, and get laid once in awhile - nice in theory, but in reality things are different. I see Sivalensis has provided some proof that pet psychiatrists are needed - and I wouldn’t hesitate to take one of my pets to one if need be. Now the Pet psychics I thing are worthless - along with the human versions of the same.
Y’all missed one (probably because you’ve never experienced them): Gas Station Attendants
In my homestate of New Jersey and in Oregon, it is illegal to pump your own gas. Thus, people are employed to come up to your window and ask you what you need. They pump the gas for you, take your money, make change, and that’s about it.
My problem:
Yeah, it keeps innumerable teenagers gainfully employed, but I just don’t see the point beyond that. I’m sure they can find more worthwhile, productive jobs for better pay.
Tripler
And no Jersey jokes, or else I’ll thump you.
Tripler
And no Jersey jokes, or else I’ll thump you.
Biting my tongue
And other body parts.
I was a Gas station attendent. Fun job. Hot in Summer, cold in Winter. I worked at a full service station. Checked oil, tires, cleaned glass. I do all those things for myself now.
I was talking about the Men’s Department. In the Women’s Department, all bets are off.
[I wonder if it has anything to do with the cultural stereotype that men are “supposed” to be big hunks, and women are “supposed” to be petite?]