Business Humor Blog
From MSNBC.com
TOKYO - A money-losing Japanese train company has found the purr-fect pet mascot to draw crowds and bring back business — tabby Tama.
All the 9-year-old female cat does is sit by the entrance of Kishi Station in western Japan, wearing a black uniform cap and posing for photos for the tourists who are now flocking in droves from across the nation.
Tama has been doing such a good job of raising revenue for the troubled Kishikawa train line that she was recently promoted to “super-station-master.”
‘Patience and charisma’
“She never complains, even though passengers touch her all over the place. She is an amazing cat. She has patience and charisma,” Wakayama Electric Railway Co. spokeswoman Yoshiko Yamaki told The Associated Press Monday. “She is the perfect station master.”
Appointing a cat to turn around fortunes makes cultural sense in Japan, where cats are considered good luck and are believed to bring in business.
People are snatching up novelty goods — postcards, erasers, notebooks and pins — decorated with Tama’s photos. There’s even a special 1,365 yen ($13) book of photos of Tama called, “Diary of Tama, the Station Master.”
Tama had been on the brink of losing her place to live, with the nearby store where she was raised being torn down. Now, the station is home.
Kishi Station started running without any workers in April 2006 as part of cost cuts.
Bonus pay comes in edible form
The Kishikawa line had been losing $4.9 million a year as passenger numbers fell steadily to as low as about 5,000 a day, or some 1.9 million a year.
After Tama’s appointment last year passengers have been gradually returning, recently rising 10 percent to about 2.1 million a year.
In December Tama was rewarded with bonus pay — all in cat food.
This Japanese commercial features non-alcoholic beer for children - complete with foam mustache and pizza. The company also sells wine and champagne for kids. Drink up!
From Reuters.com
TORONTO (Reuters) - An attendant at a Canadian restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth 16 cents, to an agitated toddler was given her job back on Thursday after the case received wide media attention.
Nicole Lilliman, a single mother, said she was dismissed from a London, Ontario, outlet of the Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut chain after video cameras captured the 27-year-old giving a Timbit to a toddler.
“It was just out of my heart, she (the toddler) was pointing and going ‘ah, ah…’ I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy,” Lilliman told the Toronto Star newspaper.
Tim Hortons said on Thursday that the firing was a mistake.
“It was the unfortunate action of one manager who unfortunately made an overzealous decision, and thankfully we were able to rectify the situation,” said company spokeswoman Rachel Douglas.
Douglas said the company, a Canadian icon with stores on virtually every high street across the country, told Lilliman that she could have her job back, and Lilliman had accepted.
A single Timbit sells for 16 Canadian cents (16 U.S. cents), but most shoppers buy boxes of 10, 20 or 40 of the deep-fried goodies, which come in a variety of flavors.
Douglas said Tim Hortons had received a number of complaints. “Thankfully we’re able to go back to them and say we were able to fix the situation,” she said.
(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; editing by Janet Guttsman and Peter Galloway)
This billboard for Hubba Bubba is hung up with the sticky stuff itself. The idea behind this ad was that the product would advertise itself.
The small print on this ad reads “Flowers would have been a better idea.”
These Novartis Otrivin Ads read “Blocked Nose?” and “Very Blocked Nose?”
From Yahoo.com
BERLIN - A trio of packaged pythons has caused a scare at a German post office. Police in Darmstadt say the snakes were stuffed into a parcel that was handed in for mailing to eastern Germany. It contained two tiger pythons and an albino tiger python of more than 3 feet in length.
A post office worker noticed one of the reptiles on Thursday afternoon after it apparently bit through the package. Colleagues caught the snake and put it in an empty box. Police said Friday that officers then recovered two more snakes from the damaged parcel.
Police say they have put the package’s sender under investigation for possible violation of animal protection laws. The animals have been taken to a reptile house.
