Pay For Your Time, Not Your Coffee

Take your pick!

A recent contribution I made to my company's blog about a concept café that has just opened in London... 

In London’s alternative centre, Shoreditch, a new café has just arrived with a new concept in tow. Your coffee and cakes are free, but you must pay 3p for every 60 seconds you spend there.

Ziferblat is a new café to hit the streets of London and has already been praised by Time Out as one of the best cafes to open in 2014. The popular chain hails from Russia where they have opened more than 10 branches in the last 2 years to an incredibly positive response. The café’s name, ‘Zierblat’ means ‘clock face’ in Russian (Zifferblatt in German) and the idea is simple; pick up an alarm clock on your way in and clock out as you leave.

The owner, Ivan Mitin hopes to make a community from the café, with customers having access to the kitchen to prepare their own food and helping themselves to the professional coffee machine as well as a plethora of snacks. The café even provides its coffee-drinkers with a piano, where visitors are encouraged to show off their musical skills. The communal feeling seems to be a success too, with customers lining up to do their washing up and even that of others despite no obligation to do so.

Ziferblat has sparked criticism from some consumers who don’t favour the idea of being guarded by a watchful timer sat on the table in front of them. Although perhaps making your own coffee is a slight disadvantage of the coffee shop, for £1.80 an hour it is arguably fantastic value.

For those who feel guilty about buying just one coffee and nursing it for two hours while they get on with their work, Ziferblat might be the perfect café to be your new local.

☞Ziferblat Facebook

☞Ziferblat Twitter

☞Ziferblat Website

Find the original article on Com by AVM's website here.

'20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get' - A Response

I recently read the most fantastic article by Jason Nazar on Forbes about young people and their attitude to business. The no-nonsense style of the article was a change from the molly-coddled, spoon-fed and watered-down approach of treating young people in the 21^st century, especially by career professionals (Huffington Post recently argued, rather mockingly, that always being told we are special is ultimately making us unhappy). While I wouldn’t personally like to work under Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, Nazar’s example of the most valuable boss, being told off for my future mistakes before I make them could be useful. Business is not about Miss Honey telling us what to do and giving us a big cuddle if we don’t succeed, it’s about pro-activity and initiative. I imagine it’s also about having a thick skin too.

Nazar talks about the emergence of social media in the business world and its longevity, or lack thereof. Although many would be offended at his suggestion that ‘social media is not a career’, his point is clear. Social Media is unreliable and may disappear as quickly as it arrived. Reports suggest that Twitter has already reached the top of its graph and is now on the decline and even Instagram feels the need to introduce advertising to prevent social media mortality being a reality. As Nazar states, Social Media is a tool for marketing that should be adapted to other business, rather than be the business itself. Social Media is simple, it is isolated and above all, it is unreliable. Business may not be reliable either, but it involves interaction with people and the formation of business relationships that can’t be acquired from posting on a Facebook page a few times a day.

Would we ask to go home if this happened?
Image: WeBlogCartoons

His comment, ‘Stop hiding behind your computer. Business gets done on the phone and in person.  It should be your first instinct’ is of particular relevance to my generation. We don’t pick up the phone anymore and many don’t even bother with email. In order to contact the Graduate Recruiters for the Big 4, it seems as though my comrades simply head to the Facebook page and add a comment to the long list of obvious and unnecessary questions before them. The way I see it, hiding behind our computers is making us anonymous, uninteresting and ridding us of all initiative. Asking questions has its time and place, but working something out for yourself is invaluable.

While I don’t agree with everything Nazar says, such as his rejection of tweet reading, the overall essence of his article appears to be a comment on laziness. Lack of networking, hiding behind social media and sending blanket emails; it is all easy. Picking up the phone, meeting business professionals and taking responsibility for our own mistakes may be tough, but it is rewarding. The Co-Founder of Docstoc has certainly persuaded me of one thing, there’s a lot more to business than sitting in front of a computer.

I urge you to read the original article, ’20 Things20-Year-Olds Don’t Get’ on Forbes.

A Moment from a Movie

This weekend I had a plan. I was to travel back to England for a total of 23 hours in order to celebrate the 21^st birthday of one of my closest friends. Planned far in advance, rather keenly so, I had booked my trains to take me from Bordeaux to Paris and then the Eurostar from Paris to London, acquired so far in advance that the sizeable cost was almost forgotten. She had asked me to do her speech after all.

Of course there was a thunder storm the night before. Of course all the trains to Paris were cancelled due to floods. Of course I didn’t let this stop me.

After deciding that the airport was the way to go (both metaphorically and literally), I jumped in a taxi and exaggeratedly shouted, ‘take me to the airport!’ Dramatic, I hear you say. Well, the fun didn’t stop there. Upon arriving at the airport, I had my movie moment. The moment that allows you to have a story that you know you will always remember and over-tell for a long time to come. That story that your friends will get pretty fed up of hearing but you’ll keep telling them anyway.

Me: ‘Your first flight to London!’

Easyjet Lady: ‘It’s in 40 minutes’

Me: ‘I’ll take it!’

…

Me: ‘Wait, how much?’

An experience and a half, I was whisked through the airport, ushered through security and was sat with my seatbelt on within half an hour. Now that is efficient airporting.

Perhaps it is not the best advice to say arriving at an airport to buy your ticket 40 minutes before a flight is incredibly successful, but stress-related feelings aside, it was rather effective- I didn’t have to wait around for even a minute. Needless to say my friend’s party was incredible and I can only thank her for both the amazing evening, but also for providing me with my very own scene that could have been taken straight from a script.  

How to Survive the London Underground

Picture: Rita's Lectures

I have not made a huge secret of the fact that I am a ‘wannabe Londoner’. Yes, although deemed forever to be a country bumpkin, I am somewhat desperate to adopt my city friends’ lifestyle and attitudes. Well, in order to attempt to create my urban persona, I am going to share with you the absolute DO NOTs of the London Underground. We all know what I’m talking about, those annoying habits people have that you can’t quite ignore. Those little pet hates that eat away at your sanity until you feel the need to change carriage or just get off the train a stop early. I present to you- the trials and tribulations of the tube.

Don’t do your make-up while riding on the underground. Unfortunately, this is one of which the writer is guilty. Apparently men are not accustomed to women putting small, curved brushes and black pencils in their eyes and I seemed to have attracted quite a few funny stares. 

Don’t read 50 Shades of Grey. This one is for the girls: it is just too late, we’ve passed the stage when it was (almost) acceptable and now it just looks like you enjoy the books enough to re-read them. Having said that, I would be fine with a guy reading it on the tube- just keep to the PG stuff or you might get a little embarrassed. 

Don’t catch someone’s eye. You know that awkward moment when you’re looking at someone and then they look back at you, and you realise you’ve been staring just a little bit? No one wants an eye dance.

Don’t sit between a loved-up couple. Does this one need explaining? 

Don’t forget that your headphones were only cheap, and everyone in the entire carriage knows that you’re listening to Justin Bieber.

Don’t expose your post-busy-day-in-the-office armpits to the poor woman who is about shoulder height, crammed into the corner next to you. The train is completely full and she has literally nowhere to go. Now that’s just mean.  

The above rules will certainly help with easing your travel nightmares and ensuring a smooth, stress free tube journey. But, if like me, you want everyone to know that London is your home town (sort of), that you learnt the tube map before you learnt to read and that your oyster card is at least 5 years old (obviously), my top tip for making sure everyone around knows that you are a real Londoner?

Do make annoying, ridiculously over-the-top tutting and sighing noises while tapping your foot impatiently if an innocent tourist hasn’t yet picked up on the ‘stand on the right’ rule on the escalators.Then they'll know who's boss.