Sunday, June 27, 2010

Would you rather buy a lizard pet or an iPhone?

And the winner is: the Iphone! What did you expect?

This is the funniest story I heard in weeks. It happened to John, a ex-colleague from the late nineties to about the millennium turn, whom I briefly met after all these years in Brussels, yesterday. John lives in Atlanta, Georgia, but he was born and raised in Motown. His dad was one of the top execs at Ford Motor Cy, many years ago. As the story goes, it was him that fired Lee Iacocca's ass from Ford, as the boss, Ford Jr didn't have the testicles to do it! Probably the best thing to happen in Lee's career, as he later became iconic inside Chrysler, in the times when CEOs of the traditional Big brick and mortar companies, like Harold Geneen and Jack Welsh, were calling the (management guru) shots! Followed by the Gates and Jobses of our days.

So goes the story... John's youngest daughter turned ten recently and as a house rule, she was entitled to a cell phone. However, the girl has been long planning her birthday present not particularly with any cell-phones or smart-phones occurring in her planning thoughts. Instead she wanted a lizard. She's been all over the Internet to find out stuff about the animals and convince dad and mom that the pets didn't bite and were friendly and clean and quite, low maintenance etc... John wouldn't hear any of it. They already had a couple of dogs and it was a burden every time the family would leave them pets under the care of friendly families in the neigborhood, but who in his sane mind would a put a lizard to care for on this lot of pets? The day before her birthday, John, following his very own cunning plan (Black Adder style), took the girl for a window-shopping walk to the local AT&T store, and let her try the iPhones on display. The lizard image started fading away... for good! Long story short, the lizard's still waitin' at the pet shop. Mind you, John is no Apple geek as I am. Far from. He uses an iPhone but that's all. And he knows tech stuff far better than you and I, that's for sure. A seasoned IT and business professional by all counts. The kind of folks we need supporting our beloved Apple products! Capice?

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