I recently looked at the list of to 20 NEW Worst Foods in America.

What stood out was number 14 - Worst Sit-Down Kids' Meal -
Cheesecake Factory Kids' Pasta with Alfredo Sauce - 1,803 calories, 86 g saturated fat, 876 mg sodium, 70 g carbohydrates.

This dish has more saturated fat than a full-grown adult should eat in 4 days.

The shocking thing is that this dish looks so innocent. You almost feel like (unless you know the real story) that you did really well to your body that you deserve a cheesecake.

Recommendation for a coffee machine

As a follow up to the previous posting – Yoav and Allison introduced us to a great coffee machine - Nespresso CitiZ & Milk.

Great Espresso and Latte and the service was great (at least the one we got at Yoav’s and Allison’s place).

What can a simple espresso teach a project manager?

Not complaining, just an educational story:

Almost every morning I buy a double espresso at the busy Starbuck near the Boston old City Hall (27 School St). The line is a little long, so I usually wait 6-7 minutes for my coffee. Apparently, the store wanted to improve their service (Very nice!!!!), so they went into two weeks of renovation. During this period I had to get my coffee somewhere else and I did some interesting comparison, but this is a different story.
They basically added one more cashier station, one more coffee machine, organized the line, made the place look shinier and added more stuff. And the result – I am now waiting 10-12 minutes to my coffee (almost double the original time!).

Why?

Well – first they spend more time on communication between their stuff. Because there are more employees, the shouting mechanism ("A DOUBLE ESPRESSO" shout going from one side of the counter to the other) is not as efficient. Thus, last week, I waited several minutes for the cashier to come and pick my order after he had to “travel” to the end of the counter to explain to the coffee maker what he was looking for in a previous order.

Second – they spend a lot of time on training.

Third – because of the new hiring - the coffee making time is less predictable. Guess how much time I had to wait when my coffee ended at the new employee queue?

If you survived reading to this point, it means that:

1. The topic interests you.

2. You work for Starbucks PR.

3. Or - you got nothing else to do.

Either way, this story actually demonstrates very nicely a lesson that my experience as a project manager thought me. When you have delivery problems in the middle of a project or when to find it hard to meet expectations with existing resources – the short term solution IS NOT adding more bodies or resources. That might be a longer term solution. The shorter term solution is improving the effectiveness of existing resources. For example – better communication, giving more decision power to subordinate managers, shorter processes etc.

Sunset at Harvard Sq.

Complaint

I know I haven’t posted anything for a long time, and I want to break the silence with a complaint. This is a complaint about AT&T realtionship with their existing and future customers:

First, they try to trick the average user (like me) to believe that he/she is going to pay less for the I-phone relative to it’s predecessor. They tells us that AT&T subsidize the cost and it is $200 cheaper then the previous generation. What they don’t tell us is that you pay $10 more per month relative to the previous generation. Since you are signing for a 2 year contract, that is $240 more!

Second, there is a discrimination of AT&T existing customers. The deal is that you can get the I-phone only for the discounted price. This price works only for new customers from other networks (or eligible customers within AT&T). An existing customer (like me) that wants to get the I-phone for its full retail price –
CAN NOT DO IT!
That basically mean that we are “held hostage” by AT&T until the end of the contract. My guess is that this short term strategy will come back to hunt AT&T. People don’t like to feel “second level customers” only because they signed a two years agreement.

Frog Pond

Last week we got to finally do an activity that for long time was very high on our to do list – Ice Skating in the famous Frog Pond. It seems like you can not call yourself a proud Bostonian if you can not talk about the last time you iced skated over their (along with mentioning where you where when the Red Socks won the world series).

So, last weak it was our first time. We went their with Jim and Melissa that proved to be experienced skiers (and patient till we got our technique right).

My summary – definitely a preferred activity for those non-that-cold winter days.

After that we went to P.F. CHANG'S, a Chinese restaurant nearby. This was actually our second time there. After considering it Thoroughly, my recommendation is: go their in groups of at least four people and share your dishes. The variety is very big in type and taste and together it makes a wonderful combination. Additionally we really liked the banana rolls for desert.

Christmas decorations

People like to decorate their house for Christmas.

But have a look at the pictures below. The rumor says, the owner invested half a million dollar in those decorations. And that is for only few weeks.

We met the owner and he seems very nice. I guess you must be, if you are willing to invest so much to lift the holiday spirit…