From the Archives: service
October 10th, 2008
Last year, I served in the YaoiCon café. It was a lot of fun, but I think our guests deserved better, and I felt compelled to apologize. senshixdoukeshi linked it over on the YaoiCon forums, where some people thought I was being unreasonable, some were supportive, and more than a few mentioned Café Verführen. 
I’d heard about it, of course, but I hadn’t actually attended, and I made a point of going this year. I was lucky enough to secure a reservation for one of their Friday-evening sessions.
To visit, I had to leave the frantic, hurried energy of the con; it takes up an inconspicuous, well-furnished suite tucked away on the third floor of the hotel. There was a small line waiting by the door when I arrived, but Café Verführen seats only twenty-two at capacity, which kept the group small and patient. Everyone was seated in short order, more or less on time. I can’t imagine that the two cafés attract substantially different clientele, so I’m left crediting the room’s accoustics for keeping the background noise to a low murmur. The quiet was a very nice touch; even when the evening ran a little behind schedule, the atmosphere stayed relaxed and graciously unhurried.
Having experienced (and enjoyed) the (non-professional) host-café as both server and guest now, I have a hard time expressing how much I admire what Café Verführen has created. Details like that make the difference between a great event and a mediocre one, and the details are where they sweep the field. They’ve created something full of little refinements, tiny considerations of the nuances of their guest experience. Some of them are as simple as sheets of paper; the menus weren’t printed on plain white bond, and they weren’t stack-cut to quarter-sheet. The drinks are served in glass, not Styrofoam. Those sound small, almost inconsequential, and on one level they are, but on another they’re tactile, hardwired directly to the brain, and I felt the difference even through gloves. Those choices have weight, in a very literal way, and even if they weren’t made consciously, weight has meaning; it feels like a natural manifestation of a commitment to do things right.
I felt a sense of pride coming from the staff - not arrogance, just confident, fannish pride, a friendly sort of Look at this wonderful thing we’ve made to share with you - and I think it’s well-justified.
August 30th, 2008
LiveJournal entertains me, and not only because so many of users throw fits of hysteria at the drop of a hat. For a very long time, it survived entirely on selling subscriptions to about 5% of its users, upgrading their accounts for extra avatars, picture upload space, and a few spiffy (if rarely-used) extra features. Every so often, it sells permanent upgrades, typically for $150.
This five percent is, by definition, LiveJournal’s most profitable five percent of users. Out of these five percent, permanent accounts are, I suspect, the best deal… for LiveJournal’s coffers. $150 buys five years of upgraded service, not counting the interest earned by not paying up-front. I suspect that a Permanent account actually stays profitable more or less forever - on a commercial scale, a gigabyte of bandwidth costs about fifteen cents, a gigabyte of storage about the same - but they get less so if they’re active for more than five years. For comparison, LiveJournal has only existed at all for nine years this March, and as a paid service for eight this September.
Unfortunately, once a user buys a permanent upgrade, that user immediately and forever-after becomes deadweight to the company, an expense that has no hope of bringing in future revenue. Let me repeat that - permanent account holders are not LiveJournal’s customers. LiveJournal has precious little incentive to care what they think. Customers write checks. Once LiveJournal cashes the user’s check, a permament account is a liability, pure and simple.
In 2006, though, they found a way around this problem, which recently became the default for new users: the ad-supported upgrade. I think this was a brilliant decision, in this twirling-moustache, corporate-Machiavelli kind of way. The advertising program means that permament and basic accounts, which ordinarily generate no revenue, are still financially valuable - LiveJournalers (LiveJournalists?) maintain extensive lists of interests and associations in their profiles. This giant database can be mined, and the interests and demographic information mined to target advertising to their friends.
I suspect that people willing to pay $20/year or more for LiveJournal are probably pretty good at keeping their profiles up-to-date, people willing to pay $150 up-front even more so. That’s good, and very important in this business model. Targetting is money in advertising-land.
I have a point in this long and rather unwieldy setup, a reason for this little Gedankenexercise.
May 20th, 2008
A high-school buddy just recently sent me an interesting email. She’s doing a fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, volunteering to be locked up “behind bars” until her friends raise some unspecified amount of money for the cause. Charity is an important part of a complete and responsible membership in society, and even though the MDA spends fifteen cents of every dollar on more fundraising and seven more on administrative overhead (compare to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, who spend nine cents on both put together), I do admire her dedication and willingness to help. My friends can usually count on me for donations to their causes.
That said…
May 9th, 2008
I dropped my watch the other day, breaking the glass, so I looked up a jeweler this morning and wandered in.
This time, Rio found me.
“Are you following me?” he asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all. I turned at the sound of his voice and found him leaning comfortably across the counter. “You know, I could have given you my number and saved you the trouble.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“No, no you don’t, actually.” he said, his eyes glittering as he straightened and looked me up and down. With a faint smile, he brushed a speck of dust from his shirt, running his slender fingertips against the tiny antiqued-gold nametag pinned there. “I’m Rio. How may I help you?” His voice dropped, just slightly, as he tilted his head, looking at me as if he meant something more than jewelry. “What do you need?”
When I think back and wonder when I began to fall for Rio, I come back to this moment, to the way he looked at me, the way I saw myself reflected back in his eyes. It was the almost-lilt in his voice that caught me, the beautiful, casual weight of that question. “What do you need?” A small, happy noise forced itself out, deep in my chest. I handed him my watch without a word.
For a moment he considered it, holding it to his ear to hear it tick. “It’s just a broken crystal,” he said. “Call it… twenty-five, probably.”
I nodded, licking my lips. The seams of his pants were sewn with soft pink thread, highlighting his long legs and the gentle sway of his hips, and my mouth went dry as I watched him walk to the workbench in the back of the store. “Twenty-five. Right. Okay.”
“I think… ow!” he cut his finger on a stray fragment of crystal. “Uff. Yeah, I don’t have this size…” he gave his fingertip a slow, thoughtful suck as he set the watch on his table. “I think I need to grind one to fit… can you come back in an hour or so?”
“Sure. Yeah, I can do that.” His tongue was very pink, bright against his lightly tanned skin. I tried not to think too much about it as I turned to leave. Behind another counter, a very small, beautiful woman, dark and elegant in her inky-blue dress, gave me a wicked, knowing smile.
March 5th, 2008
When I take long road trips, I bring a gas can with me.
Gas is expensive in big cities, but it’s even more expensive out in the middle of nowhere. A reasonably efficient car can take you a very long way on three or five gallons of gas, and it’s nice not to be held hostage to gas stations on the side of the road. So part of this habit is just good economics.
From time to time you find stranded drivers, out of gas on unfamiliar roads. I’ve coasted from station to station, raiding the dregs left in the hoses, and pulled into an all-night gas stations with the needle scraping bottom, so I know how it can feel. It’s a very uncomfortable, helpless kind of feeling. With a gas can, I can pull over and offer a little assistance. Even if I’m low myself, splitting the can will usually take someone to safety (unless he drives an H2 - then it’s his own fault). I never take money for the fuel, just a promise to buy a gas can and make the roads just a little bit safer, just a little bit friendlier.
Pay it forward.
