Jonathan Schoenberg is in the midst of a very long 15 minutes of fame.
A video clip featuring the creative director at Boulder-based TDA Advertising & Design has spent 11 months on the popular video-sharing site YouTube.com and has been viewed more than 2.8 million times.
It shows a staged confrontation between Schoenberg and a student who takes a cellphone call during class at the University of Colorado at Boulder. When his lecture is interrupted by the phone call, Schoenberg walks over to the student, grabs the phone and slams it onto the floor. Then he calmly continues the lecture.
Schoenberg and a colleague staged the outburst and filmed it for TDA’s website as an example of viral communications. Then someone uploaded it to YouTube.
Since then, the clip has been picked up on ABC, Fox and MSNBC broadcasts to illustrate stories about students who secretly tape angry teachers.
“It has all been really bizarre,” Schoenberg said. “I’ve even gotten marriage proposals from YouTube.”
Bosses: Fools don’t rush in
Today is April Fool’s Day, but if you are planning to pull a prank on a colleague Monday, think again. You may wind up feeling like the Lone Ranger.
Eighty-eight percent of business executives polled by staffing company Accountemps said it is not common for co-workers to play April Fool’s jokes on one another. The national poll included responses from 150 senior executives in human resources, finance and marketing.
Still want to pull an office prank? Consider copying these, considered highly creative by the poll’s respondents:
Put tape underneath a colleague’s computer mouse so it can’t be moved. Fill a colleague’s office with balloons. Frost a cookie with children’s toothpaste and offer it to a co-worker.
Golf benefit for nonprofit
The Golf Club at Bear Dance and Steve & Elizabeth Kris will help interfaith couples and families by underwriting a golf tournament that will benefit Stepping Stones.
The third annual Foster Classic Golf Tournament, which begins at 7:30 a.m. June 27, will raise money for the nonprofit group, which works to “welcome, support and educate interfaith couples, children and their families” and help them make informed decisions about their religious identity.
Party like it’s a root canal
Here’s a celebration you won’t want to miss. The Chicago-based American Association of Endodontists has chosen April 1-7 as Root Canal Awareness Week. The group’s goal is to convince people that the dental procedure can be painless.
“Many people don’t know that root-canal treatment is no more uncomfortable than getting a filling placed,” the association’s president John S. Olmsted says. “It’s a beneficial treatment that eliminates pain and helps people keep their natural teeth.”
The group would also like to stop people from saying things like “I’d rather have a root canal than …” If you’re ready to party, find an endodontist near you at www.rootcanalspecialists.org.
BUSINESS BOOKSHELF
How Brown learned, grew
“Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS” by Greg Niemann, (Jossey-Bass, $24.95)
At the UPS management conference in April 1975, Big Brown’s founder, Jim Casey, heaped praise upon his team for the company’s growth from coast to coast. And then the 88-year-old patriarch hurled a challenge.
“But you know we’re only serving 5 percent of the world’s population!” Casey said.
Retired UPS manager Greg Niemann recounts that story in “Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS” as an example of the visionary thinking that took the company international.
“The long-awaited coast-to-coast UPS service was barely realized – not fully in place – and here was Jim Casey already looking beyond the borders of the United States,” he writes.
Casey died in 1983 at age 95, when UPS was still struggling to adapt the workaholic culture that brought the company so much U.S. success to the culture of Germany, its first European target.
“UPS learned the hard way that you can’t shove everything that works in the United States down the throats of citizens from different cultures. They learned that adaptability was paramount,” Niemann writes.
The book follows UPS as it learned those lessons while spreading throughout most of Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.
UPS now has 58,000 employees in locations outside the United States, and it delivers more than 1.5 million packages and documents a day.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of a small delivery service in Seattle by Casey and a few associates.
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
