Thanks cxc for sending this one in!

Japanese men have more variety to choose from than other people it seems. From the “Robotic Reliever” to the “Two Hole Cup”, we have a twinkly face buffet of male butt enjoyment.

Possibly NSFW Link.

Starbucks can be confusing, since in my opinion, the best drinks are not on the menu. My favorite one is a Double Tall Nonfat Black and White Mocha. English translation : Made with skim milk, 2 shots of espresso, half mocha syrup and half white mocha syrup. You should totally try it!

Anyhow, here is a chart that talks about things a bit more.

You may have noticed that Monday’s post posted on Sunday and this past Wednesday, 3 posts rolled out of the queue by mistake. I have no idea if this post will even post right. The image uploader is messed up, so I probably can’t even use that so I’ve created my own ftp workaround. (EDIT: Yep! The damn thing is not working.)

The reason for this wonkiness is the new wordpress version that was a mandatory upgrade. this new wordpress version is absolute shit. It’s full of bugs, which posts things before you want them to. It’s new backend interface is so bad that it now takes me 3x as long to make a post, and it’s post preview function is a pop up window that tricks you into deleting your changes by saving over them. Everything that was here before is broken or made to work with flash and things that crash.

Harknell posted about this before. He was right.

I could go off on a torrent of swearing and metaphor’s involving feces. I could freak out about how making this a mandatory upgrade that surprises you out of left field and allows for no legacy mode is at best, awful. I could go off ape style about how they’ve destroyed my ability to post on this via a mobile device. I could lose it about their infuriating attitude that you should be able to use hard code and fix it however you want is ridiculous.

But I won’t. I’m actually really, truly mad at all of this. You can tell when I’m really mad. When I’m actually mad, I stop swearing.

(NOTE: I didn’t mean to write two articles about LA Ink – I wrote this article before I wrote the one about the alleged anti-semitic Kat von D photo. News happens spontaneously, I guess.)

Introduction

LA Ink is a reality show about a tattoo shop in LA. The shop is owned by Kat von D. She picked her friend, Pixie to be her shop manager. Tattoo artists Hanna, Kim, and Cory are her employees. They all work very closely and most find that they have a “family” attitude regarding their shop.

I saw an episode of LA Ink the other day in which a conflict regarding Pixie not doing her job properly got out of hand quite quickly. It resulted in Pixie becoming very upset and quitting by storming out of the building.

I do not fault anyone here. It is a tough situation when your coworkers happen to also be your friends. As a small business owner, I have been in Kat’s situation and it is not fun. Unless you experience something similar, there is no way you can understand how to respond. They do not teach this kind of thing in school.

This situation could have been handled better. I’m going to tell you how so that if you ever find yourself in this situation, you will know how to respond and how to (hopefully) not end up with coworkers and friends that have hurt feelings.

The first part of this article is going to talk about Kat’s point of view and how she could have reacted differently to diffuse the argument. The second part will be posted later. It is going to talk about Pixie’s point of view and how she could have diffused the argument.

First let’s talk about the start of the situation. The problem was that Pixie was not doing what was expected of her. Kat’s first response was to speak to her about it in friendly terms. Pixie responded with something like “Ok.”, but her behavior never changed. This is where Kat made a mistake. She continued to be informal about the situation perhaps because she did not want to be mean.

Issue: It is good to be friendly with the first response to a problem. A second response has to be different, even if you feel that you might be “mean”, it is not mean. If Kat had been “mean”, she might have avoided the big argument.

Either Pixie did not understand what was expected of her or she didn’t care. A better second response would have been to sit down privately with Pixie and to put the problem in writing. This way, if Pixie simply did not understand what was expected of her, everyone could be sure that this was cleared up.

Kat should have listed the tasks expected of Pixie and said something like, “Hey Pixie – I love how great you were when you talked with our last client so that he was not nervous. They love you! However, the artists have been saying that their workstations aren’t cleaned up properly and the supplies aren’t stocked. I just wanted to make sure you understand that it’s really important that these things are taken care of. If there are any questions, please let me know. I attached a list of your duties just to make sure we’re all on the same page.” You get the basic idea. Always make sure the person feels appreciated so
that they want to work for you. Be clear about the problem so that they know how to change.

After this letter was sent, if her behavior still did not change, then she would be able to tell Pixie that if her behavior didn’t change she would have to get someone else to do her job. It is sad, but this way if she had
to fire her it would have been clearly understandable on all sides and it would have been definitely because Pixie did not care about the job, not because she didn’t understand.

What happened was that Kat was afraid to be mean and so the situation escalated. The tattoo artists became angry that they were expected to tip Pixie when they had to do her job. Kim decided to go to Kat with the
problem and Kat became upset because of the tough emotional situation. Kat went immediately to talk to Pixie without cooling off and spoke from anger and frustration.

Issue: Never deal with a tough situation without cooling off first. It never ends well.

Whenever you speak out of anger and frustration, people respond with anger and frustration. Pixie became upset, claimed she didn’t know things and they started raising their voices. Kim decided to jump into the argument and accuse Pixie of each thing she had not done and even called her names.

Issue: Third parties should never be allowed to jump into an argument. Teaming up on a person is the same as beating them to death. It makes them feel unfairly trapped and clouds the real issue.

Again, Kat was afraid to be “mean” and was probably confused and upset because this is her first time dealing with this. It seems she always takes the nice road that avoids conflict and so her employees did not respond to her telling them to be quiet because they are not used to her taking control. Sometimes “nice” is too nice.

Kat should have gotten Kim to back off and brought Pixie into her office. Kim’s involvement does not help. What happened is that Pixie felt double teamed by two angry people and probably humiliated because it was all done in front of customers.

There is no way this situation could have ended on a positive note after it had been let go for so long in this direction. Once the train runs off the tracks like this, angry words are said, there is no turning back. Pixie
left in tears and it doesn’t look like she will be coming back.

Many people, (especially women) like to avoid conflict. Men can have these thoughts too, but it is how women are primarily raised. Unfortunately this way of thinking makes managing people more difficult.

The hardest thing about managing people is understanding (and making everyone else understand) that business is business, personal is personal. Not everyone is going to agree with your business decisions, but you need to be able to articulate yourself so that you understand each other. It doesn’t mean you still can’t be friends after the office closes.

Even if communicating and being firm makes you feel like you are being mean, it is not mean. It is just looking out for everyone’s well-being. It is tough and I wish Kat good luck as she develops her team.

If quirky Japanese art is what you’re after and you are near the NYC area, Caricature Artist Rick Welch pointed out to me that this lovely exhibit is on display.

Takashi Murakami’s career. Murakami is one of contemporary art’s most prolific and innovative artists His art is influenced by street culture, high art and traditional Japanese painting. His extensive works of art include mass-produced consumer products, including designs for Louis Vuitton, as well as one of a kind sculptures and paintings. The essays in the catalog address his positions on popular cultural trends, anime, otaku culture and the overall consumerism in Japanese culture.

April 5–July 13, 2008
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing and Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, 4th and 5th Floors

Link.