On Customer Service

Rules of Customer Service, with bonus clichés:

1. The customer is always right
2. Some customers are just plain bad for business
3. Trying to please everyone will please no-one
4. Radical policy changes to satisfy one customer invariably upsets the rest of your user community
5. Smoke and a Pancake?  No?  Then there is no pleasing you!

Who could forget the parable for the four Bodys?  (No, Mr. Boddy is not included.)  You know, the story about Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought that Anybody would do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.
Nobody told Anybody so Everybody blamed Somebody.

Differences between the old job and the new....

Some general notes on the difference I have experienced between my old, corporate job, and my new "world of academia" job in no particular order:

1. My new desk chair most likely cost more than a month's mortgage.
2. I went from two 17" monitors that I had to cobble together from parts I brought from home on an old, outdated PC, to a 24" LCD for my brand new laptop and a 22" LCD on my Macintosh desktop.
3. Lost: Cafeteria. Gained: Coffee machine that is smarter than I am and which produces a variety of coffees (including cappuccinos, espressos, and mocha drinks), teas, and hot chocolate.
4. One word: InfiniBand.
5. Hot: College campuses. Not: Corporate buildings.
6. It's a tad lonely. The researchers are out of the office the majority of the time and I am often one of two or three people in my part of the building.

That's just my impression after a short first week.