Today, some people will refuse to get on a plane, cut a deal, introduce a new product or act on a hot stock tip. They are paraskevidekatriaphobics – people scared of Friday the 13th.
Up to 21 million Americans fear the day so much that they’ll cost the nation roughly $850 million in business, according to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, N.C.
But even among people who don’t fear Friday the 13th, bad luck abounds in business and certainly isn’t limited to so-called “Black Fridays.”
Promoters got attention, for an unfortunate event
Adolph Coors Co. decided to promote its products east of the Mississippi River for the first time March 30, 1981 – the day President Reagan was shot.
“It was a huge day for us that I’ll never forget,” said Coors’ former chief spokesman, Robert L. Keyser III.
“I had a convoy of trucks crossing into Tennessee when we first got word of the assassination attempt. All day, people showed up and said to us, ‘John Hinckley Jr. has lived in Evergreen, Colo. Isn’t that close to Golden? Did you know him?’ Nobody was talking about our beer.”
Airline sings blues
Few industries have worse luck than the airlines, Frontier spokesman Jeff Hodas said.
“Every time we think we’re going to get a break, something comes along,” he said. “A storm, a terrorist threat, rising fuel prices. And then, if you were to ask for bad-luck stories from 100 businesspeople, I’m willing to bet 60 percent of them will tell you some story that has to do with a canceled flight.”
And speaking of canceled flights …
Michael Sheehan, co-founder of Westminster Internet marketing company Booyah Networks, was struggling to keep his company alive when he landed an important meeting with a potential client in Washington, D.C., in 2003.
Sheehan returned to the airport to find his flight home canceled because Denver had been socked by a monster blizzard that dumped 8 feet of snow on some areas.
“It was not a big deal until my wife (who was eight months pregnant at the time) calls and tells me she is having serious contractions,” Sheehan said.
The earliest flight available was three days away, so Sheehan rented a car and drove “27 hours straight to Longmont, where my wife promptly told me she was ‘feeling OK now.”‘
Big deal goes sour, to the tune of $30 million
It was on a Friday the 13th that millionaire Denver real estate developer John Madden said he made the worst decision of his life.
Madden had struck up friendships with Michigan power brokers and politicians and agreed that fateful Friday in 1990 to build an office tower in downtown Detroit. Madden said Michigan’s state pension fund had agreed to buy the building but walked away from the deal. Madden lost the building to foreclosure in 1992.
“We took a hit of $30 million and spent a lot of time paying it back,” he said.
Lessons learned
After more than 20 years in the restaurant business, Jay Solomon, owner of three Denver eateries, including Jay’s Patio Cafe in the 2500 block of 15th Street, said there’s not a screw-up he hasn’t encountered.
He’s endured floods (the lesson: “Never open a restaurant in a basement,” he said.) and power outages. He’s bounced back from refrigerator breakdowns and malfunctioning security systems.
“Bad luck,” he said. “It should be a line item in every business plan.”
Sheepish investors need to put on thinking caps
People tend to make their own luck – and often it’s bad luck – in investing, said Donald Cassidy, executive director of the Retirement Investing Institute in Lakewood.
“We follow gut instincts like fear and greed,” he said. We all need to be more analytical in our thinking.”
How can investors ditch their bad luck?
“Never join the herd,” Cassidy said. “And above all, add money to the pot regularly.”
For the want of a backup …
When starting Xcelente Marketing & Advertising five years ago, Toti Cadavid and her team were about to give a digital presentation to a potential client.
“They had a computer,” Cadavid recalled of the meeting. “All we had to take was the (compact disc). For some reason, it wouldn’t open. Something happened to the CD.”
Cadavid, whose firm is based in Greenwood Village, moved on to give the presentation without any digital aids.
“Of course, we didn’t win the account,” said Cadavid, adding that she learned a valuable lesson about taking backups of electronic presentations.
Investigate the assignment
When his then-employer, Action Research Group, gave Bryan Wagner of Littleton a list of names to investigate in February, he thought nothing of it and did the work.
Turns out, those names are believed to be part of an investigation that computer giant Hewlett-Packard was conducting to find out who on its board was leaking information about the company to journalists.
Wagner pleaded not guilty this week to charges by the California attorney general’s office that he used a form of identity theft to obtain the private phone records of HP board members, employees and reporters.
Presentation was really a riot
Richard von Luhrte, president of premier Denver architecture firm RNL Design, always will remember riot police in Chicago fondly.
Von Luhrte and his team were scheduled to make a public presentation on a controversial project. The auditorium in which they appeared held 500 people – but more than 2,000 Chicagoans showed. Those left outside tried to break down the auditorium’s doors. Many burst inside and trashed von Luhrte’s design exhibits.
Officers took the architect and his team to the auditorium’s attic for safety.
The timing could have been better
The timing of famed New York architect Steven Holl’s departure from the team designing Denver’s $378 million Justice Center is interesting – and maybe even unlucky.
The announcement came just as top art and architectural critics and professionals from around the world were in town last week for the Denver Art Museum’s unveiling of its $90.5 million addition by Daniel Libeskind.
In town next week? More than 6,000 real estate and land-use experts from across the country attending Urban Land Institute’s annual fall meeting, who would have been impressed by Holl’s involvement.
Hasty decisions can buy bad luck
Homebuyers invite bad luck when they don’t choose a mortgage broker wisely, said Lonnie Glessner, a mortgage planner at America’s Mortgage LLC in Littleton.
Glessner says Colorado buyers could be spared many problems if mortgage brokers were regulated.
“A guy has to have a license to cut my hair, but I don’t have to have a license to sell him a house,” Glessner said. “What kind of sense does that make?”
Glessner advises those shopping for mortgages to seek referrals from trusted friends, real estate agents and financial advisers.
Balloon release floats a dispute
Will Aardex Corp.’s good fortune bring bad luck to any Colorado wildlife? Company officials don’t think so.
During a topping-off ceremony Thursday for its $40 million Signature Centre office building in Denver, Aardex released 1,000 balloons into the sky.
“The balloons were biodegradable,” said Steve Grund, chief marketing officer. “We’re not about to build a sophisticated, environmentally sound building such as this and then be foolish enough to release balloons that would kill wildlife.”
But environmentalists around the world say even biodegradable balloons can be dangerous to animals, particularly marine life, because they don’t necessarily disintegrate quickly.
Another deflates a lot of hard work
It takes only one Mylar balloon to blow the power in hundreds of homes.
The summer of 2002, Xcel scrambled to battle a series of outages affecting Denver’s Bonnie Brae neighborhood. Residents were complaining, and company employees were working nearly around the clock to determine the cause, spokesman Mark Stutz said.
“It was kind of a complicated problem, but we were finally able to solve it after a lot of hard work,” he said.
A week after things were finally back to normal, there was a street festival in the neighborhood. A helium-filled balloon floated into power lines and caused another outage.
“The lesson? Some things are just completely out of your control,” Stutz said.
Staff writer Christine Tatum can be reached at 303-954-1503 or ctatum@denverpost.com.
