“There are so many unreliable people now that being reliable in and of itself is a valuable rare trait.” – Louis Leung

I have always thought that certain bare minimum requirements for etiquette are particularly important in business. For example: “do what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it.” “Be where you said you were going to be, when you said you were going to be there.”

Now, before any of my millenial readers get their hackles up, let me just preface today’s blog post/rant by stating that this is not all about you. I’m finding the abovementioned bare minimum requirements violated by people of all ages and both male and female alike. Sometimes it’s people I’ve met, other times not.

Are Expectations Reasonable?

I’ve had a couple conversations with friends recently about this aspect of our current decline in civility. I definitely consider not showing up for an appointment, or failing to complete a basic task one agreed to complete, to be part of that decline in civility.

Of course, I’m all too aware that the higher my expectations, the lower my level of serenity. Therefore, the lower my expectations, the higher my level of serenity. That was a big part of my recent conversations with friends.

Which leads to my story of the day. I met someone at a networking event recently, whom I’ll call “this person” in order to keep gender out of it. This person sent me a “nice-meeting-you” email. I responded. This person then suggested we meet for coffee to see how we could help each other in our respective businesses. I recommended a time and place. I then received an automated appointment reminder, which I took as a Yes. Next, I added the appointment to my calendar as an event.

I’m big on keeping my word and making my appointments on time. If I’m not going to be early, I consider myself to be late. But I also realize not everyone is the same way. So I waited at the coffee shop alone. I gave it ten minutes past the appointment time before taking any action.

Then I looked up this person’s phone number in our email chain and called. The response I got: having some sort of car issue and am “stuck” in the next town over.

One Strike and You’re Out

Here’s my external response: “Okay. Why don’t you just shoot me an email when you get a chance?”

And here’s my internal response: “If I ever get an email or call from this person, I’m going to ignore it.” If this person at least had the decency to call me before I drove somewhere for nothing, it would be a different story.

Harsh? Perhaps. But how could I ever recommend this person to anyone I’ve ever met, much less done business with, after what I just experienced today? Bridge burned. Period.

What do you think? Do you have a “one-strike-and-you’re-out” policy like mine? Or do you cut people slack, knowing that you might end up letting them waste your time more than once? Let me know in the comments section below.

So last week I took the Memorial Day holiday off from everything: no blog, no book project…nothing. Just me and my wife enjoying the day off from work. We don’t get that many of those together, so it was nice to just hang out, sleep late, and watch mindless TV shows to decompress.

However, that meant I’d have a big old two-week gap between blog posts, and thus no sense of flow. Last time I blogged, it was more personal; this week, let’s get down to business.

I’ve been seeing a lot of “best of” posts lately from people, and I’d like to do one myself: the best software for managing your social media posts. Problem is, I’m burning through those like nobody’s business. So this post is really more of a “looking-for-recommendations” post than a “here’s-my-advice” post.

I use a few automation tools for different things, but mainly for tweets or shortening links. Here’s what I’m using now.

1. Statusbrew
2. Buffer
3. Tweepsmap

Now, I’ll admit, I don’t even use these all that much. I mainly automate the occasional post via Buffer, typically when I’m not going to be available during the time I’d like to tweet something. The free version of Statusbrew is okay for showing me who my new unfollowers are on Twitter, so I use that a little. And I only use the free version of Tweepsmap for their weekly reports, which provide a snapshot of the total number of followers and unfollowers.

In the past, I used Social Jukebox, but they eliminated their free version. I’ve also gone through a few others, whose names I can no longer even recall.

What about you? Do you have a free, or even paid, software you find valuable? I do a lot of my social media posting myself, but as my business grows, I am finding more and more of a need to at least partially automate. Let me know what you think in the comments section.