The Office Curmudgeon

I just got off the phone with a staff member who told me about her experience buying a new laptop. She said that she and her husband were looking at a PC, but everyone has told her that she won’t like Vista -including the sales people she talked to. She said, “Why would I buy something if you’re telling me that I’m not going to like it?” The sales person said, “Well, we have Apple laptops.”

She ended up going with a Mac, of course, and loves it. The store where she bought it offers a 1 hr per week tutoring service for $99 per year, and she’s thinking about doing that to get up to speed with the change from Windows to OS X.

Microsoft is losing.

A couple weekends ago we were driving home after a late dinner with friends, and we drove by a church which had a tell tale, hand-written sign on the edge of the church property, facing the street. (I wish I had a picture, but I was driving at the time.) The sign was a white backboard with large, black, hand written text that read, “Thinking about becoming Catholic? 816-123-4567″

<sigh> I instantly knew this was wrong in many ways, but after actually putting some thought behind it, here is why:

There is NO Audience for this Sign
C’mon. Seriously, who walks around with the thought, “I’d actually like to be <insert denomination here>. I wonder how I can do that?” No one does. This sign better targets squirrels, because squirrels like to sit on signs. Squirrels can’t even read.

The End is Near
More likely, this sign is a visible cry for help. Please be a part of our church, or we’ll die! Help!

You Will Talk to Us
Rather than provide a site urn, which someone could expose themselves too before attempting anything, they provided a number. That means even if I was interested, I’m gonna have to talk to someone and say, “Yeah I saw this sign with this number … so I called it.” Hmm.

That’s Some High Quality
A hand written sign plopped in the front yard? Oh no - you didn’t?! Printing out banners on 8×10 sheets of paper, splicing them together, and and covering the whole thing with clear tape - would be a step up from this. Think about that. How serious is this church about welcoming someone, if they either A. will not pay for a printed sign, B. don’t have the motivation to go through that trouble, or C. do not have the money. If C - then close the doors.

Please, please, if you are someone in a church that has this or other similar sign - take it down! Please don’t advertise like this. Squirrels appreciate it, but you are making rational people laugh, cry, or both.

Some of our good friends , who are committed and passionate about supporting breast cancer research, are participating in a three day walk up in Minnesota. Pania and I have supported them in the past couple of years, and I’ve heard Viminda speak about why she does this. You can hear in her voice the authentic desire to minister to this community who needs support. The team consists of family, and each of them is is highly driven to walk in this event. When is the last time you wanted to walk 60 miles in 3 days for no personal gain? You can read about the project, and how it is helping make progress in this fight.

If you’ve ever thought that you don’t have time or strength to be part of a cause like this, you can be a part of this with them by donating to their team before the end of this month. If you find yourself without their passion, join with them by supporting them financially. If they can’t raise enough money or pay out of their own pocket, they will not be allowed to walk.

As I’ve said, they are good friends of ours and their team consists of mother, daughters, and niece. We have vacationed with them, been on mission trips with them, and been in small group with them. They come recommended. :p

As a follow up to my last post, I thought I’d explain when I use electronic payment options over paper options. This is in answer Laura’s comment, because my comment got too long.

My wife and I regularly attend Living Water Christian Church, where Laura Guy, wife to my boss Clif Guy. We also give regularly, by check, even after the option became available to use PayPal. Honestly, I had told Clif that we’d be one of the first people to sign up for electronic transactions at Living Water. We haven’t yet, because of the reason Laura mentions in her previous comment.

My lifestyle, since I can remember having to pay bills, is to use electronic transfers. I haven’t paid a utility bill by check since about 1998, excluding the one or two months between moving and signing up for electronic transfer once again. The main reason is that I’m horrible at remembering to pay bills! Send me the statement or invoice, and I’ll make sure it is free from mistakes before you hit my account with an EFT, but don’t expect me to remember to send you a check at the right time. I want to pay it on time every time, and I feel horrible when I’m late to pay, but I’ll miss it many times per year.

The other part of my lifestyle, strangely enough, is that I’ll always pick the cheaper option. I refuse to pay $5-15 to electronically submit my income tax, when I can print everything out and mail it in for cost of First Class mail, currently 42-59 cents. (As a side rant, leave it to government to make what should be the less expensive option for them, more expensive for us! How about no? Process my paper!) I have a printer; I have envelopes, and when I go to the post office they sell me postage. I only use electronic submission when it’s roughly equivalent to the cheapest option, because only then does convenience begin edging out price.

So after I got the e-mail from Laura stating that PayPal was available, I thought, “Excellent. Lets do that.” Then it hit me. I paused. The reality that it was my money that was about to be trimmed, three to four percent plus a transaction fee going to PayPal, rather than all of it to the church; I suddenly didn’t want to do it. I had always known that fee was there, but when it was my money I thought about it a great deal more. We’re there every weekend we can be, and we have checkbooks, and when we fill out a check and put it in the basket, it fulfills our contribution.

Just this week, I was surprised to learn that Resurrection is stopping remote deposit because after using it for some time they’ve found that sum of labor, time, and frustration of remote deposit is greater than the ease of letting the paper check do its thing. This is mostly due to the inefficiencies and duplicated efforts of the process we are currently locked into, but it examples how electronic solutions are not inherently easier and cheaper.

Now I will openly admit that this is where Laura may trump my position on this. If the cost of business though PayPal is less than the overhead it takes to manually process our check every month - my bad, I’ll sign up today.

I was excited to have been a part of the trip to Edmond, OK to visit the LifeChurch campus there. See team posts here, here, and here. One of the numerous things that crossed my mind, somewhat unrelated to why we were there, was the challenge of online giving. Using any gateway processor out there will cost you 3-5%, or more. It made me wonder if it were possible to create a non-profit infrastructure that provided payment processing at a much lower cost. If a group of interested Christian businesspersons had enough wealth and desire to solve that problem, could it be solved, or is what we have as good as it gets?

I can’t imagine the amount of money that would saved and returned to churches by lowering the barrier to online giving and eliminating the concern about throwing away that money. I understand the fear of churches allowing someone to give to the church via credit card, and I don’t encourage anyone to use that to their own destruction, but I think a reasonable and sound method of electronic giving would be a blessing to many.