shopping

My Little Advice Shop: Men and Holiday Shopping

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Brown Paper Packages Tied up with String
Image by Chiot’s Run via Flickr

We know. You hate holiday shopping. Women expect the world, so you roll Santa Style and try to find it for her on Christmas Eve. These days, there’s a better way, and it makes you look like a rock star under the tree. The key? Keeping an eye on the magazines and websites your honey likes.

  • All sorts of publications do “gift guides” in the December issue of their magazine/paper. Real Simple is a magazine with terrific taste, and detailed gift ideas for the different people in your life. The newspapers do them too, so keep an eye out.
  • Another option is a website like Red Envelope. They offer a curated selection of gifts to choose from as opposed to wandering the Internet, overwhelmed by choices. Their sale section has some great stuff right now.
  • Shop early, as featured items can sell out. Then relax, and wave at Santa as he goes by, instead of trying to keep up.   Shop nice, y’all!
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HYelp! The cry for help with Yelp! issues heard ’round the nation

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The Yelp RV.
Image via Wikipedia

HYelp! HYelp! My Little Flower Shop is the latest in a long line of wedding businesses to find that Yelp! seems to have a really unfair, arbitrary non-algorithm that pulls down positive reviews left by real customers, leaving subjective, often unfair reviews to sink your online reputation.

Do you Yelp?  Yelp (officially with an exclamation point) is a crowd sourcing review website that is often handy.  When you’re in Omaha, how else would you know where locals get the best Thai food? Unfortunately, some vocal (and prolific) customers have taken the tool that’s meant to share information with the community, and begun to wield it as a weapon against businesses that have displeased them in any way whatsoever.  Say, by telling them we are closed on a holiday weekend, and can’t take their flower order.

So the kicker is, the people at Yelp! know that there are also businesses that try to “game” their system by putting up fake positive reviews.  So they check them all, and pull down ones they think looks suspicious – often they are 100% true, from happy customers.  To top it off there are the rumors of the sales calls where people offer to wipe out bad reviews or restore good ones with the purchase of advertising.  It’s gone as far as groups of small businesses suing the company for extortion. Patt Morrison, Southern California KPCC radio journalist, covered it on her call-in show, with this chat with Yelp! spokesman Vince Sollito. (Patt also has her own hot dog on the menu at Pink’s Hot Dogs.  Now that’s an accomplishment).

My Little Flower Shop needs your help on Yelp!  Are you a happy bride? Happy floral customer?  Please leave a geniune review for us.  We’ll hope that some of them stick!

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The Zen of Wedding Registries: Two Toasters and a Backstreet Boy

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Vocal group, Backstreet Boys became one of the...
Image via Wikipedia

Oh no! Aunt Ida and your BFF both brought a toaster to your shower. Panic! Registry Drama!

Wait- don’t get all worked up.  Breathe deeply and contemplate The Zen of Registries.  Personal testimony – the Backstreet Boys completely changed my perspective on the headaches of wedding registries.  Read on.

In the year 2000, at a monastery high on a mountaintop in the Himalayas…ok,ok, a bit much.

In the year 2000, on the 7th floor of a downtown Los Angeles office building,  WeddingChannel.com received a call from a giggling teenage girl asking to go to the Backstreet Boys’ wedding.  We had no idea that Brian (and his fellow Backstreeter Kevin Richardson) were both registered,  and we were unprepared for the deluge of lovesick calls that followed.  Our Macy’s counterparts were  swamped with fake orders.  After a million phone calls to managers and agents, and one conversation with Brian himself, we got it straightened out.

Are you still in the lotus position, and concentrating on your breathing? Imagine trying to untangle that mess.  Think back to your toasters.  Do they merit high anxiety? And the most important question to contemplate: Can you believe I got to talk to an actual Backstreet Boy on the phone?  OMG, you guys!!!!

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