a-Digital-Future /shoop3D Graphics

Click the Above Image to see my Store at zazzle. If you ever need any custom graphics just post a comment and I will get back to you. Thanks for the visit. ~shoop

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries

Life is just a bowl of cherries. Prov. Everything is going well.; Life is carefree. (Often used ironically, as in the second example.) The real estate salesman tried to convince us that life in the suburbs is just a bowl of cherries. Jill: Hi, Jane. How are you? Jane: Oh, my alarm clock didn’t go off this morning, and then my car wouldn’t start, and I missed the bus and got to work late, and I just found out my rent’s going up fifty dollars a month. Life is just a bowl of cherries. 

What Is RSS? RSS Explained

If You Click the Above Image you can see my RSS Feed from my Twitter page. ~shoop

What is RSS?
RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
Why RSS? Benefits and Reasons for using RSS
RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News.
What do I need to do to read an RSS Feed? RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators
Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows – integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.

Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many sites display a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available.

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3D Art ~Southern Lights by Artur Rosa

Click the Above Image to Visit Artur’s site at Renderosity. This guy does amazing 3D work. Thanks for the visit please leave your opinion. ~shoop
Artur writes:
This is inspired by some recent holidays in Algarve (the most southern province of Portugal). An attempt to capture the warmth of the bright light typical from that region, in contrast with the relax provided by the shade.

I didn’t want to just make a house and a patio so I added some details which provide some insight about who may live in this house, I hope you enjoy discovering them.

I modelled the house in SketchUp inspired by a house I saw in a painting. Textured in Vue.
As usual in my outdoor scenes, there’s only one light source, the sun.

3D Art ~ Garden Bench ~ by shoop3D

Click the Above Image for the Larger Picture. This one took some time to do. A lot of tiny details. Hope you will enjoy. Thanks for the visit. Feel free to leave your opinion. ~shoop

Go Daddy #1 Choice for Domains

The Go Daddy Girl

The Go Daddy Girl! You Go Daddy!!

Go Daddy is an Internet domain registrar and web hosting company that also sells e-business related software and services. In 2009, it reached more than 36 million domain names under management. Go Daddy is currently the largest ICANN-accredited registrar in the world, and is three times the size of its closest competitor. GoDaddy’s domain reseller division is Wild West Domains (wildwestdomains.com), and Wild West uses the secureserver.net domain for many of their webhosting servers.

Go Daddy has great prices and if you are looking to brand yourself and or your service or product, getting a domain name should be first on your list of things to do. Click the Image and it will take you to the next page where you can Click directly to Go Daddy and find your Domain. Thanks for the visit. ~shoop

3D Art by GeoGraphics

Click the Above Image to See GeoGraphics Art Gallery @ Renderosity.com. GeoGraphics does amazing realistic work. It is hard to believe this image was made digitally and not a photo. Very well done. Thanks for the visit, feel free to leave an opinion. ~shoop

Blake Shelton Country Artist ~Home

Click above image to visit Blakes website. Thanks for the visit. ~shoop
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From www.blakeshelton.com
With the success of his 2008 chart-topper “Home,” Blake Shelton took a long career step forward. With the release of Startin’ Fires, he leaps to a whole new level.

“Home” took Shelton into new musical territory, stretching him vocally and stylistically, helping him expand his audience to include those who might have missed the more traditional approach he’d taken to that point. Startin’ Fires, his fifth album, completes that journey, establishing him in the process as one of country music’s most talented and versatile song stylists.

“This is something I’ve been wanting to do,” he says, “exploring richer melodies and challenging myself as a singer.”

Perhaps nowhere is his success more evident than in the project’s first single.

“‘She Wouldn’t Be Gone’ is definitely not the typical cut you’d hear on one of my albums,” he says. “It’s got a lot of minor chords and a unique melody for country music. Vocally, it’s one of the tougher songs I’ll ever sing and I love that. You have to have the right song and the right timing to do that, and ‘Home’ kind of opened the door for me.”

Long-time fans will find that Shelton honors his roots as well. Long known for the way he wraps his rich baritone around both emotion-laden ballads like “Austin” and “The Baby” and light-hearted party anthems like “Some Beach” and “The More I Drink,” he tackles songs about country life and attitudes with more joyful assurance than ever, bringing his personality to bear on the record as never before.

“I think this album is probably more autobiographical than anything I’ve ever done,” he says. “While Pure BS was a kind of reflection of what I was going through at the time, this album is a reflection of who I am and the things I love and always have–driving back roads, drinking beer, being outdoors. Hell, I finally found a song that has deer in it and that tickled me. People know these things about me, but I’ve never really had that in my music, and I’m finally dumping myself onto my album. It’s about who I am personally, and I hope other people can relate to it.

That autobiographical tone kicks off the album in the rollicking Craig Wiseman/George Teren barnburner “Green.”

“That’s what I do,” he says of the song’s rural images. “I sit with my guitar, plant corn and watch the deer and hawks. When I left the house this morning, there was camouflage hanging on the clothesline–as redneck as it gets. And it’s funny, the lifestyle I’ve lived for years and years has become the new green movement. It’s my favorite song on the album because I can sing that with a big smile on my face, confident that people are getting a hundred percent who I am as a person.”

The album has plenty of all the elements that make Shelton the multidimensional artist he is today–soaring melodies, passionate lyrics, a bit of romance, and songs that celebrate the country life.

“I think this album takes things a step above where they have been,” he says. “It shows me as the artist I’ve always wanted to be, which is somebody with a fresh sound that when you hear it, you think, ‘That’s got Blake Shelton’s stamp on it.’”

To that end, songs like “She Wouldn’t Be Gone” and “I’ll Just Hold On” are twin showcases for the challenging vocal approach Blake is taking, while “100 Miles” has its own riches both vocally and emotionally. Blake is at his romantic best in “Here I Am,” which he co-wrote with Dean Dillon, and “This Is Gonna Take All Night.” The classic sound that has nailed down his country bona fides is evident in “Never Lovin’ You,” and there is his trademark down-home wit and the celebration of the country life in songs like “Home Sweet Home” and “Country Strong.”

“Good At Starting Fires” will be widely seen as an ode to girlfriend Miranda Lambert, but it is on the album’s closer, “Bare Skin Rug,” that the musical riches inherent in that relationship–and the irreverence of which they are capable–get their first full workout following Miranda’s splendid harmonies on “Home.”

“Everyone expected us to come out with a big power ballad and we did just the opposite,” he says. “Obviously, we want to write and record together–we’d be crazy not to. But we certainly wanted to approach it in a way that isn’t cheesy. I can get away with things–people expect about anything from me–but Miranda protects her image fiercely. She’s the tough girl in country music. We ended up writing a song about a couple of hillbillies who meet up in the mountains. They’re young, they’re virgins, and, damn it, they’re tired of waiting. That’s what it is. And we decided, ‘Let’s just do this how we wrote it.’”

The result, recorded live in front of a friendly campfire, is a modern redneck classic.

Taken as a whole, Startin’ Fires is a richly nuanced look at one of this generation’s most engaging singers and certainly one of its most interesting characters. Last year’s star turn on the NBC miniseries Clash of the Choirs and Blake’s appearance as a judge on Nashville Star have helped raise his profile across the board, introducing his irreverently skewed personality to millions of new fans.

It’s a long way from Ada, Oklahoma, where he dreamed early on of a career in music. In fact, he once got a bit of inspiration from the man who produced Startin’ Fires.”

“I remember seeing a story on an Oklahoma City TV station about Scott Hendricks,” he says. “They said he was an Oklahoma guy who had moved to Nashville and made good, making these huge albums on big artists. I used to think, ‘It would be so cool to meet him some day. Maybe he’d give me a shot.’ Then, not long ago, he fell in my lap when he became A&R chief at Warner Bros. We decided we wanted to make this record together, and I’m really glad we did.”

Blake cut his teeth on the Oklahoma City club circuit while still in high school. He was part of the entertainment for an event in Ada honoring Mae Axton, writer of the Elvis classic “Heartbreak Hotel.” She saw him perform and told Blake she thought he could get a record deal if he moved to Nashville and that she was willing to help. That convinced him to move just two weeks after graduation. He worked with Hoyt Axton, Bobby Braddock and Earl Thomas Conley, among others, en route to his record deal, and his debut single, “Austin,” shot him straight to the top of the charts. It also became his first #1 video, a group that would ultimately include “Heavy Liftin’,” “Goodbye Time,” “Home,” “Nobody But Me,” “Some Beach,” “Don’t Make Me,” “The More I Drink” and the song that still gets as passionate a reaction as any.

“‘Ol’ Red’ was not a huge hit at radio,” he says, “but it’s my signature song. To this day, that’s the one people hold up signs for in concert.”

Thanks to those songs, Blake’s stature as a singer has grown steadily through the years, and his presence everywhere from network television to Youtube has raised his profile even more. Now, with the release of Startin’ Fires, Blake steps into the forefront as both one of the country’s premiere vocalists and one of its true personalities. It’s a position he declares himself grateful to be in.

“I think,” he says with his trademark smile, “that I’ve got the best of both worlds.”

3D Desktop Wallpaper ~Choice~

Click the Above Image for the Larger Picture.

I hope you will enjoy this 3D background as much as I did making it. Choice. We all have them. No ones perfect. But we all try to make the right ones. Thanks for the visit. Feel free to leave your opinion. ~shoop

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Cigar Aficionado Mizuho Desktop Background

Cigar aficionado Mizuho enjoys a fat one after getting involved in some blue paint. Click the Image Above for the larger picture. Thanks for the visit and feel free to leave your opinion. ~shoop

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Eva Mendes Desktop ~Voted Most Desirable Woman

Click the Above Image for the Larger Picture. Thanks for the visit. Feel free to leave your opinion. ~shoop

AskMen released their ninth annual “Most Desirable Women” list, and one of this year’s most overexposed (in every way) women took the top spot. That’s right — more than 10 million voters ranked women who represented their idea of a perfect wife or girlfriend, and the oft-nude Eva Mendes was named Numero Uno.

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Tyra Banks is Unbeweaveable!

Desktop Wallpaper of Tyra Banks by shoop3D.com Click the image below for the larger picture.

An Article by Craig JC of clutchmagonline.com

Tyra Banks is unbeweaveable.
The talk show host has declared Sept. 8, the date of the season premiere of “The Tyra Show” as “National Real Hair Day.”
Comb again?
I mean, what you trying to say, Tyra?
We all understand and appreciate the au naturale movement and all, but isn’t it kind of easy for a prototypical supermodel to strip off the amenities, but what about the rest of the world?

The diva, who has not said if she will lose the weave for just the first episode or forever, had this to say about her new attitude:

“This season on The Tyra Show we’re taking it to the next level and getting more real than ever before by encouraging women everywhere to own and rock what they’ve got and be proud!” – she says in a press release obtained by US Magazine. “For the season 5 premiere, I will be doing just that – no fake hair, I’m rocking my REAL hair.”

Rock on, sister.

But just know that thousands of your sisters will be shaking their heads in disgust and rolling their eyes as you ask them, in a lot of cases, to do away with their do.

I mean, is Tyra saying that just because you rock weave, you ain’t real? (Wooooo, the crowd says). That’s kind of a culturally and ethnically charged issue, isn’t it, Tyra? Shouldn’t you stick to making bean-pole skinny girls take pictures with squids on their heads in sub-zero temperatures or something? (I say that with love.)

But seriously, we applaud Tyra for trying to bring earthiness and naturalness back to beauty, but we don’t know about all that realness stuff.

Why? Because realness is supposed to be inside a person, right? Not outside.

And you can be as natural as the dirt on the ground and still not be real. Inside. And that’s real talk.
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3D Digital Art ~ Bust Out abstract dream

Click the Above Image for the Larger Picture. This is an abstract image I made in a 3D digital program. A depiction of a dream I had one night. Thanks for the visit, feel free to leave your opinion. ~shoop

A YouTube Video Abstract particle test. It’s amazing what you can do in 3D .

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Elan Carter Desktop Background

Click the Above Image of Elan for the Larger Desktop Background. Thanks for the visit, feel free to leave a comment. ~shoop

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Fabulously Fit Mom Jennifer Nicole Lee

Fabulously Fit Mom
Healthy Living NYC interviews Supermom Jennifer Nicole Lee to find out how she balances life and fitness as a mother of two.

Interview by: Norman Clausen

With the baby weight slow to come off after the birth of her second child, Jennifer Nicole Lee was not happy about how she looked or felt. Her energy levels were low, and her weight had climbed to almost 200 pounds.

To improve her physical and mental health and become more active with her children, JNL began her own regimen of regular exercise and nutrition. The results were amazing, and less than a year later, she had lost over 70 pounds on her way to being crowned Miss Bikini America!

She’s shared her story with millions on Oprah, and now she’s sharing her new DVD program, Fabulously Fit Moms with women all over the world. Jennifer Nicole Lee has set out on a mission to prove that becoming a mom is just the beginning—moms can still be sexy, fun, and fit—and HealthyLivingNYC sat down with her to get the skinny on how.
What first inspired you to become a Fabulously Fit Mom?

Well, I really have been up and down the scale. I’ve been a size 0 through a size 16. I’ve yo-yoed my whole life, so I know the pain associated with not being able to figure it out. But it’s not about a number on a scale. And it really didn’t hit me until after I became a mom, but to live a fabulously fit lifestyle means more than just being a size 2, it’s all encompassing.

Really it was the frustrations of not having stamina, energy, and endurance—having trouble taking care of not only myself, but my kids. It was much, much more than thinking, “Oh, I want to look hot in a bikini.” I wanted to become empowered and enlightened through a healthy lifestyle and healthy living.

And as a mom on the marketplace today, I have a very hard time finding fitness merchandise, books, or even websites that really resonate with my daily experience. So that’s why I created a whole series of resources to help the busy, modern day moms who are in my position.

How have you specifically tailored your workouts to improve the fitness levels of moms?

Well, moms nowadays need to have the energy and the endurance to be able to multi-task with ease and sophistication and grace. And these are all things you can get from training. Moms today really need to train like athletes. Motherhood is a sport. You can either choose to be a benchwarmer, or a performer on the playing field of the game of life.

So, after I became a mom, I really became my own fitness expert. I read, and I researched, and I discovered the universal truths that any mom can employ so that she can be her very best. And again, it’s not about a number on a scale, it’s about living an awesome, fit lifestyle.

My philosophy as a fabulously fit mom became, “Working out smarter, not harder.” Because all my life, I was working out harder. I was like a gerbil on a wheel going nowhere fast. I would do two hours of cardio and kill myself doing everything wrong, but with the right intentions. And I’d get no results. So, I flipped that in my head. I said, “I want to get maximum results in minimum time.”

So I started to incorporate these universal truths, like knowing what to eat, how to eat it, and when to eat it. Nutrition and training really go hand in hand. And you should always exercise in the morning. I know people say, “Well, I work—I can’t do it.” Yes, you can. I get up an hour early to work out, so I can streamline my productivity.

Often times, mothers are extremely busy, and they have trouble shifting their schedules around, but throughout the DVD workouts, you actually incorporate your children. So, who enjoys the workout more—you or your kids?

I call it incorporating your cuddlies, and I definitely think my kids love it more than me. I first thought, “How can I possibly spend quality time with my loved ones and get a wonderful, invigorating workout?” And my mind answered, “I’ll do the workouts with my kids. I’ll even use them as weights.”

Instead of yesteryear’s moms running off to the garage to go workout—“Where’s mom? Oh she’s off in the garage again. Or mom is at the gym again. Where the heck is mom?” I wanted to banish that. Working out can be betterment for both mom and baby, both mom and toddler.

So, I incorporated them into the workouts. I’ll do Kiss the Baby—I do a pushup, I kiss the baby. Or the baby-bridge—you sit your toddler on top of you, and you’re getting a great core workout. So it came out of a need to multitask—to do more, get better results in minimum time, and also incorporate my loved ones into the program.

So, after becoming a mother, you changed your entire lifestyle…

You know, I didn’t change, because change can be bad or good. I improved my lifestyle.

Very true. So, what else did you do to improve your lifestyle, and can you share any tips with us?

Of course. You should do both strength training and cardio, but if you have to choose one, you always choose the former. If you workout for 20 minutes, you’ll have longer-lasting results if you do weight training over cardio. And I will say it again and again, because a lot of people get mixed up, and I was one of the victims of being a cardio queen. I was a skinny fat person, where I went to the beach and I was flabby. I might have been a size 2, but I was just a skinny fat person—I had no muscle tone. That sleek and sexy, muscle tone from weight training is just priceless. So, that’s a tidbit that I’d like to empower your readers with.

Also, I make sure to get my rest. Rest is such an underestimated part of any lifestyle program. You’re not making muscle in the gym when you’re banging weights around. You’re making muscle when you’re asleep, when you’re resting.

And make sure that you’re taking in proper amounts of protein—amino acids. I’m not saying eat bacon and cheeseburgers. That’s something that a lot of people still don’t understand. But eat lean sources of protein so that your body can make and manufacture the muscle that you created during your Fabulously Fit Mom workouts.

Obviously, there are a million health benefits to losing weight and improving fitness, but what have you found to be some of the most unexpected ancillary benefits that you have come across?

Self-confidence. And not like, self-confidence—“Oh, look at me, I’m hot.” But self-confidence in a “bring on life” sense of the word. Whatever life can bring you, you’re able to face it with that much more strength, confidence, and know-how, because your body is stronger. The greatest fitness experts and philosophical minds of the Eastern world have spoken on the mind-body connection for centuries. When you get through an invigorating, rewarding workout, you feel so robust and mentally energized. You’re able to take upon all of life’s challenges that much better.

I’ve done many, many, many fitness programs before. I’ve been up and down. I’ve dieted with the best of them, and I didn’t want to diet anymore. It’s like they always say—look at the first three letters. I don’t want to diet; I want to live optimally. So, I created my lifestyle program for you to live optimally in a very modern-day multitasking world. And it’s not rocket science. It’s not all or nothing. It’s just do what you can with small improvements, and you will get great results.

So, I gained self-confidence. I didn’t want to lose anything. I knew I might lose some weight—that’s a byproduct—but I wanted to gain confidence. I wanted to gain stamina. I wanted to gain energy. Because if you lose something, you have to go looking for it. I don’t want anyone to be focused on losing weight, because you always end up finding it back on you. So, strive to gain—gain a whole new aspect to your life through fitness and living healthfully.

You have a couple of new DVDs that just released. How are these going to help mothers live the Fabulously Fit lifestyle?

Well, I wanted to give a little something to the moms out there that can’t afford the expensive gym memberships or the celebrity trainers. They don’t have a lot of time, but they’ve got a DVD player, and a little area in their home or apartment. It’s simple. If baby sleeps, mommy exercises. If baby’s awake, then baby exercises with mommy. It’s a win-win. So, that’s the Fabulously Fit Mom lifestyle.

And this is my gift to the 82.5 million moms out there in the United States, and the four million new moms every year. Now, this sorority of mothers has a DVD system designed especially for them with 6 complete series—everything from a Total Body Workout, to Sleek and Sexy, to Lower Body Burn, to Upper Body Blast. And there’s a New Moms Workout, where you can do it with your cuddly or not—you can do it with a medicine ball too. This exercise series, the Fabulously Fit Moms, is where I’ve taken my all-time favorite trademark moves, piled them into a DVD format program, and now other moms can enjoy them too. I’m now passing them the torch of wisdom, fitness, and fun through fresh new innovative movements, so they can just break through from being fat and flabby. I was fat and frumpy, now I’m fit and fabulous, and other moms can be too.

Well, I don’t anticipate being a mom anytime soon, but that makes me want to start doing it.

I’ve actually had a couple of dads do the workouts, and they’ve emailed me—I love your workouts. So it works for them too.

That’s great, so you have all kinds of people using your program?

Yeah, because the workouts are tried and true—not only for moms. It was done with moms in mind, but if it works for anybody else, I’m not going to shut the door on them.

Are there any other ways that the people out there can get more info about living a healthy lifestyle?

Well, right now I have a downloadable program called Get Fit with JNL. And that’s at GetFitWithJNL.com. That’s also something for the modern-day person who wants quick access to a downloadable program, where they can get great recipes and other great tidbits.

And due to a tremendous demand for more information on the Fabulously Fit Moms program, we’ll be launching a Fabulously Fit Moms book very soon. So you can expect that in the near future, and you can visit my website www.JenniferNicoleLee.com for any additional updates.

And I would love to get emails from your readers. I urge them to email me at jnl@jennifernicolelee.com, and I’ll answer any of their questions.

Do you have any parting thoughts for our readers?

Definitely. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Fitness is not a one-time event. It’s a journey to be enjoyed, so make it fun, get creative, embrace it. And ask yourself this very empowering question—“How can I gain the most out of my fit lifestyle and enjoy the process?”

Before & After. Holy Cow! Got to vote for After. Thanks for the visit. ~shoop

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Christa Nolley VH1 show For the Love of Ray J

Christa “Chardonnay” Nolley, is a 23 year old “Southern Bell”, originally from the Atlanta, GA. Her fun loving, honest, intelligent, and independent personality was well displayed on her nationwide appearance on the hit Vh1 show “For the Love of Ray J’. Thanks for the Visit Feel Free to Leave a Comment. ~shoop

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This Tool Saves Me A Ton Of TIME. I Use it Every Day ~shoop

Eric Johnson Cliffs of Dover Live 1990

One of my all time favorite guitar players, Eric Johnson. Being a guitar player myself, duplicating Erics effort take true discipline and hard work. Just like anything else worth while. Give a view at the YouTube Video and I think you will agree this Guy is one of the Masters. ~shoop
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Live at the Bottomline, NY, 1990. Cliffs of Dover is appeared on EJ’s 1990 “Ah Via Musicom” album. The song takes its name from the white Cliffs of Dover along the British shoreline. It was voted number 17 in Guitar World magazine’s list of 100 Greatest Guitar Solos and won a Grammy award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in1991.
The song is featured in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and this video game appearance prompted a renewed interest in the song and Eric Johnson mostly among younger audience.

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This Tool Saves Me A Ton Of TIME. I Use it Every Day ~shoop

Jessica Alba 1024×768 Desktop Background

Those Eyes… Click the Above Image of Jessica for your 1024×768 Desktop Background. Thanks for the visit. Feel free to leave a comment. ~shoop

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This Tool Saves Me A Ton Of TIME. I Use it Every Day ~shoop

Pamela Anderson 1024×768 Desktop Background

Click above Image of Pamela for your 1024×768 Desktop Background. Thanks for the visit to my Blog, give a look around. ~shoop

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This Tool Saves Me A Ton Of TIME. I Use it Every Day ~shoop

Top 5 reasons Why The Customer Is Always Right Is Wrong!

In the real world I own a Seafood Market. Oregon Seafood Co. Customer service can alway be a challenge. I ran into this article and thought it made a whole lot of sense. Give a read and leave a comment or opinion. Thanks for the visit. ~shoop

Alexander Kjerulf

by Alexander Kjerulf

One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.

Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’”

The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
Convince employees to give customers good service
Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim – ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.
1: It makes employees unhappy
Gordon Bethune is a brash Texan (as is Herb Kelleher, coincidentally) who is best known for turning Continental Airlines around “From Worst to First,” a story told in his book of the same title from 1998. He wanted to make sure that both customers and employees liked the way Continental treated them, so he made it very clear that the maxim “the customer is always right” didn’t hold sway at Continental.

In conflicts between employees and unruly customers he would consistently side with his people. Here’s how he puts it:

When we run into customers that we can’t reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees . . .

We run more than 3 million people through our books every month. One or two of those people are going to be unreasonable, demanding jerks. When it’s a choice between supporting your employees, who work with you every day and make your product what it is, or some irate jerk who demands a free ticket to Paris because you ran out of peanuts, whose side are you going to be on?

You can’t treat your employees like serfs. You have to value them . . . If they think that you won’t support them when a customer is out of line, even the smallest problem can cause resentment.

So Bethune trusts his people over unreasonable customers. What I like about this attitude is that it balances employees and customers, where the “always right” maxim squarely favors the customer – which is not a good idea, because, as Bethune says, it causes resentment among employees.

Of course there are plenty of examples of bad employees giving lousy customer service. But trying to solve this by declaring the customer “always right” is counter-productive.

2: It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage
Using the slogan “The customer is always right” abusive customers can demand just about anything – they’re right by definition, aren’t they? This makes the employees’ job that much harder, when trying to rein them in.

Also, it means that abusive people get better treatment and conditions than nice people. That always seemed wrong to me, and it makes much more sense to be nice to the nice customers to keep them coming back.

3: Some customers are bad for business
Most businesses think that “the more customers the better”. But some customers are quite simply bad for business.

Danish IT service provider ServiceGruppen proudly tell this story:

One of our service technicians arrived at a customer’s site for a maintenance task, and to his great shock was treated very rudely by the customer.

When he’d finished the task and returned to the office, he told management about his experience. They promptly cancelled the customer’s contract.

Just like Kelleher dismissed the irate lady who kept complaining (but somehow also kept flying on Southwest), ServiceGruppen fired a bad customer. Note that it was not even a matter of a financial calculation – not a question of whether either company would make or lose money on that customer in the long run. It was a simple matter of respect and dignity and of treating their employees right.
4: It results in worse customer service
Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency, took it even further. CEO Hal Rosenbluth wrote an excellent book about their approach called Put The Customer Second – Put your people first and watch’em kick butt.

Rosenbluth argues that when you put the employees first, they put the customers first. Put employees first, and they will be happy at work. Employees who are happy at work give better customer service because:

They care more about other people, including customers
They have more energy
They are happy, meaning they are more fun to talk to and interact with
They are more motivated
On the other hand, when the company and management consistently side with customers instead of with employees, it sends a clear message that:

Employees are not valued
That treating employees fairly is not important
That employees have no right to respect from customers
That employees have to put up with everything from customers
When this attitude prevails, employees stop caring about service. At that point, real good service is almost impossible – the best customers can hope for is fake good service. You know the kind I mean: courteous on the surface only.

5: Some customers are just plain wrong
Herb Kelleher agrees, as this passage From Nuts! the excellent book about Southwest Airlines shows:

Herb Kelleher [...] makes it clear that his employees come first — even if it means dismissing customers. But aren’t customers always right? “No, they are not,” Kelleher snaps. “And I think that’s one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people.’”

If you still think that the customer is always right, read this story from Bethune’s book “From Worst to First”:

A Continental flight attendant once was offended by a passenger’s child wearing a hat with Nazi and KKK emblems on it. It was pretty offensive stuff, so the attendant went to the kid’s father and asked him to put away the hat. “No,” the guy said. “My kid can wear what he wants, and I don’t care who likes it.”

The flight attendant went into the cockpit and got the first officer, who explained to the passenger the FAA regulation that makes it a crime to interfere with the duties of a crew member. The hat was causing other passengers and the crew discomfort, and that interfered with the flight attendant’s duties. The guy better put away the hat.

He did, but he didn’t like it. He wrote many nasty letters. We made every effort to explain our policy and the federal air regulations, but he wasn’t hearing it. He even showed up in our executive suite to discuss the matter with me. I let him sit out there. I didn’t want to see him and I didn’t want to listen to him. He bought a ticket on our airplane, and that means we’ll take him where he wants to go. But if he’s going to be rude and offensive, he’s welcome to fly another airline.

The fact is that some customers are just plain wrong, that businesses are better of without them, and that managers siding with unreasonable customers over employees is a very bad idea, that results in worse customer service.

So put your people first. And watch them put the customers first.

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Carl’s jr. Swim Suit Model Audrina Patridge

Click Audrina’s Above Picture to visit her Twitter page.
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Radio Host Lynn Rose

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From Sweden Terese Wallgren

Yet Another Pretty Face on Twitter. All the way from Kungsbacka, Sweden. Terese has an Interesting Blog as well http://tereseerica.blogg.se/ Thanks for giving a look. Have a good day. ~shoop

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The Inn Keeper Rachelle Lucas

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Moon Light – Computer Background

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