Job Ad for Lululemon CEO

 Jobs  5 Responses »
Jun 162013
 

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I’m not a Lululemon shareholder, but I was as surprised as any $LLL investor when Christine Day abruptly announced she would be stepping down after 5 years as CEO with the Vancouver based, athletic apparel company. During her last year with Lululemon, Christine was paid about $4,280,000 in compensation. Wow, that’s no small change :)  The company is now frantically looking for a replacement to fill the role of CEO. I just thought I’d let everyone know about the opportunity in case anyone believes they’re qualified and wants to apply. If you’re interest in the job, here’s the page to apply online.

Judging by the job posting on their website, the CEO should have a good sense of humor :) Here is how the company describes the role.
“You report to no one, you are the CEO (duh). You are passionate about doing chief executive officer type stuff like making decisions, having a vision and being the head boss person. ”

Furthermore, here are some other qualities the ad says you should have as the next CEO of Lululemon.
-You are disciplined, focused and can hold headstand for at least 10 minutes
-You break all the rules like getting your OM-on (loudly) whenever the urge arises
-Your go-to party trick is your dead-on impression of the yogi in “Sh*T Yogis Say”
-You use your third eye to channel innovation

I probably don’t have what it takes to run a multi-billion dollar company but I live in Vancouver and I like the idea of yoga wear. So I thought why not give it a shot. I know it’s kind of a stretch :P for me to get this job but some people play the lottery with arguably similar probability of success. So I applied for the position and received a confirmation email saying they will review my experience and qualifications. And now I wait :D

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Random Useless Fact: Leporiphobia means the abnormal fear of rabbitsrabbit_on_toilet

 

No Tipping Policy

 Entertainment, Food  31 Responses »
Jun 132013
 

A midtown Manhattan restaurant called Sushi Yasuda no longer accepts tips. They claim this gives the dining experience a more authentic and relaxed feeling to mimic restaurants in Japan. Customers can enjoy their food and don’t have to do math and calculations at the end of the their meal. Instead of gratuity, the co-owner explains that they have increased the price of the items on their menu by 15%, essentially building the cost into the food which allows them to pay their waitstaff a higher salary than other restaurants do. panda_restaurant_spoof_when_food_bill_comes_expensive_surprised, tips

When patrons receive their final bill, it reads near the bottom “Following the custom in Japan, Sushi Yasuda’s service staff are fully compensated by their salary. Therefore gratuities are not accepted.” The waitstaff gets paid a salary from day one and even receive a generous benefits package including vacation and paid sick days, which is apparently pretty rare in the food services industry :D Reducing the reliance on tips to provide the employees with a living wage is common practice not just in Japan, but in other parts of the world as well. However would restaurants lose business if they add a price premium to their food? The final amount that the customer pays shouldn’t change but maybe it’s a psychological thing. I’ve never worked in a restaurant before so if I were a waiter I’m not sure if I would prefer this compensation method or the traditional North American way of tipping. I’ve heard that in Europe they round up to the nearest Euro. I think every culture is different :)

Here are what some people on the internet had to say about the story:

“Concerning compensation in Japan, serving is considered respectable employment and deserving of fair compensation. The issue is not with the tipping, but with the social attitudes around the service industry in North America.” 

“As a former server I applaud this. If the service sector were uniformly unionized, all servers would have this kind of stability.”

“What if the service sucks? I like having the choice to pay more for attentive waiters and less for a poor service.”

“This is how every restaurant in NZ is…I love it! It frees up waiters to attend to ANY table – not just the ones in their section”

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Random Useless Fact: According to some studies, boys on average are more expensive to raise than girls.

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Poll Results – Occupation

 Entertainment  12 Responses »
Jun 102013
 

Time again to learn about you, the readers :D Earlier this year I put up a poll on freedom 35 blog to find out what you all did for a living. Thanks to everyone who voted (^_^) Here are the results below.

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Most of you are in high paying sectors of the economy. That’s great to see :D There are more technical and professional specialists than any other single occupation. 10% of readers are in the same profession as myself (arts and media.) Only one reader voted for the sales/retail category. Overall it appears that the occupations of people reading this blog matches the income that they’re making in the previous poll, about income.

I think readers in the two highest categories (financials and professional/tech) are over represented as visitors to personal finance blogs because they work hard and sacrifice more to earn a better living so money is probably important to them. I also like money :) but I’m not cut out to work in an industry that requires more than 45 hours of work per week :P I’ve tried to be a workaholic before but I just burned out and didn’t like the high stress environment I was in. But everyone’s different. I know a fellow blogger who works at Amazon.com not too far from Vancouver. She’s only in her twenties but makes over $10,000 a month and receives bonuses multiple times a year which not everyone who works at the company gets :D Working hard as an engineer for one of the most competitive software giants in the world seems to fit her lifestyle, but it’s not for me :) She has a higher net worth than I do, but the important thing to realize is that she’s also exceptionally talented at managing her own finances ;) and that’s ultimately how long term wealth can be created and sustained.

I think the take away is if you want to be rich, push yourself to get a computer science degree or excel in one of those other top occupations like health care for example, but if you don’t like to work hard then at least continue reading financial websites out there because if high income earners who care about their money are gravitating towards those kinds of sites for information then perhaps we can all learn something from them :) Knowledge is power (^_^)

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Random Useless Fact: Wise words from Jake.

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Weekend Business and Blog Roundup – June 7

 Blog Roundup  27 Responses »
Jun 072013
 

Expensive Night Out  – Read an article in the paper version of the Globe and Mail where a 16 year old Japanese adolescent went on quite the joy ride after spending $56,000 on his dad’s American Express credit card on a one night club binge. The teenager and a friend visited multiple hostess clubs, where he paid to sit and drink with women working there. At one of the venues, he spent a couple of thousand dollars on a single bottle of wine. The teenager’s dad pleaded with the local court to reduce the tab.

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Hostess clubs in Japan can’t allow minors to enter in the first place (must be 18+), so the clubs were partly responsible. The judge ruled that credit card companies should also flag questionable activities like racking up a large bill in a relatively short amount of time so American Express was also partly responsible. In the end the dad’s bill was reduced down to 800,000 yen ($8,200.) I wonder just how rich this family is (>_<) And I’m surprised credit card limits can even go up that high :)

Job Boom  – According to Statistics Canada, our economy had its best month for job creation in more than a decade last month in May, adding 95,000 new jobs thanks in large part to the construction industry :D It’s the equivalent to the U.S. adding over one million new jobs in a single month. Canada’s unemployment rate fell, but still remains stubbornly above 7%.

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Blog roundup – Personal finance and other interesting articles from around the web
Brian from Outlier Model shares his recent experience of dealing with a collections agency
Mark from My Own Advisor advises some ways to save nearly $100K
Vix Money went way over budget on her dining out bill, but at least she can afford it now with her full time work
Pauline from Reach Financial Independence writes about the importance of customer service
Dividend Mantra shares his dividend income for the month
My Money Design asks if there is still gender inequality in the workplace
Mashed Thoughts reviews a local Oyster Bar in Vancouver
Krant Cents encourages the graduating class of 2013 to take the next step in their careers and be proactive
Canadian Budget Binder updates his net worth. Very inspiring to see him breaking  the half million dollar mark
Modest Money shares his unfortunate home buying experience
Financial Samurai reminds us that profitable ventures are always there for people who look
Jordann from My Alternate Life wonders how she should calculate her debt
For wine experts Tangled Vines highlights a $30 bottle of Cab Sauv. At 14.5% alc/vol it sounds like my kind of wine
NZmuse shares her top 5 favorite round-the-world travel blogs YPN3228RKUZ3

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Random Useless Fact: A zedonk is a crossbreed between a zebra and a donkey :D

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