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We recommended as outrageous, the California Milk commercials called White Gold.  Sirusblack told us about some really funny, over the top, Old Spice commercials that should drive women crazy and make men cry with laughter: http://www.oldspice.com/videos/?gclid=CNfVpvGxyaICFRE8gwodNAfdwQ Choose the June 30, 2010 for a special treat.

Meridian Club is a sports club at the east end of Fullerton, California.  The location is weird, next to the 57 freeway, south west of Target and has residential condos to the east and south.  The physical building is three stories and side parking structure is impressive.  The inside is cavernous, expansive and secluded.  Tennis court, hand ball courts, roof track, swimming pools, jacuzzi, sauna, and cafe as well as large dressing rooms. As opposed to a 24 Hour Fitness, this place is lay back and not crowded.  The lack of crowding might be more the result of allegedly bad management though.

Negative Features:

• Weight room machines that rely on electronics and motors are not kept working as well as they should.  Most machines are old and should be upgraded with new.  Quite a few treadmills, elliptical and stair step machines only partly work many times and repairs are seldom if ever made unless a machine is completely dead.

• It is our opinion many sports clubs as a business category use business practices that are not transparent, and allegedly close too being deceptive.  There should be a clean up of the industry.  This club allegedly follows some of those practices.

• We can not find any published list of pricing.  It appears to us that pricing is arbitrary, decided upon by the sales person.   Your price is set as to when you joined and under what enticement plan.  We understand that this is approved marketing practice and improves sales but where the club seems to fall far short is keeping its members.  Once you enter their door things allegedly change.  Meridian Club allegedly fails to keep members by raising rates which it can do but over time these price increases get quite large and drives its core constituents into leaving.  We have heard prices range from $40 up to $80 a month for a single member.  Cheaper rates can usually be had by agreeing to pay for a year at a time.  Problem with this is there is a constant fear that the facility will be sold to another company and you will not get your money back because the company will tell you to go to the next nearest facility.  The next nearest faculty from Fullerton would be Pasadena.The Meridian Club seems incapable of looking at the long term prospects and trying to keep its current customers satisfied with reasonable prices and good service.

• We have heard members interaction with the club management has not gone too well.  Every interview came out with the same comment.  The management does not seem to care.

• The corporate management, located quite far away, fail to realize how different the Meridian Club is than their other operations and thus push some pretty stupid programs upon the facility, which misdirects expenditures,  without looking at the average age and interests of its customers.  For example, it put in a boxing ring and offers boxing lessons to a member population that are over 40 years of age.

It is quite remarkable that there is a cafe inside this club and could be a terrific asset.  Our test of this cafe was very disappointing.  The prices were high.  We give this restaurant a test and it resulted in  a very low score because we did not get our side dishes thus an incomplete meal.  The food was nothing special and the service was dreadful.

Plus Features:

• The customers are its best kept secret.  The place is like visiting a small town where most people know one another and that is an important draw.   Most of the customers are affluent and older.  These people would not be caught dead in 24 Hour Fitness because those cheaper places are sardine establishments.  Twenty Four Hour Fitness in Brea is tightly packed and at peak time you must endure long waits to get on a machine or into a class.

• The classes are quite good.  They are easy to get into partly due to the alleged mismanagement is keeping more customers away by their out of line pricing and lack of customer concern.

Conclusion:

This club is sort of an uncut gem.  This club is in real need of another owner to show its many positive facets to the public by using a much better business model.   A fixed fee of $40 for everyone would be a terrific start for basic one person membership, month by month payment, and $30 a month for a year contract.  Another idea is to turn this club into a coop sports club.

We recommend this sports club if you are looking for a club which seems more in line with the needs of being older.  You will pay a lot more for an ambiance that is more spacious, lay back and you don’t need to fight to get on a machine or get into a class.  Finally, the  facility is not that well maintained.

The day after the last California election I looked through my LA Times print edition to find the election results.   Where was the results buried?  It is most frustrating that I can easily  find sports scores but not political scores.

Do you have to be told why newspaper subscriptions are falling?  I will thus tell you.  It is because newspaper management, at times, is not capable of realizing and thus meeting the needs of its customers.  I think this arrogance comes from taking on some POB swagger.  Try to remember that arrogance leads to stupid.

I suddenly got a job as a contract worker.  Previously I had been paid a salary.  I was now my own boss and had to charge the client by the minute.  What a change in mind set for me!  Everything I do takes on a different meaning.  Time is now money for me.  I needed a method of recording my time and generating the bills to the clients.  I found a nice small book at Staples.  It measures 7in tall, 4in wide and has a sewn binding.  It is called “dollar and cent memo book” and is Stapes item #182022.  Each page has room for a page heading at the top.  Then one narrow first or left column, wide second column and two narrow right column going close to the bottom but the bottom has a small white space which I do not use.  Here is the way I set the book up:
Each page is a different day.  The date is written at the top of the page.  One page is for one day only.  Some times I need more than one page if there is a long list of tasks that I perform.  This book stays at home.  I never take it with my to job sites.

• Column far left (hour rate).
• Wide second column: task description.
• Third narrow column is the hours I worked.
• Last and far right column is the minutes I worked.

I do not charge a fixed rate but tier my charges depending upon a number of factors.  Here is my rate card (each amount is by the hour):

Client contact and meetings  $40  (I love it when they jaw bone in meetings and I thus get paid more.)

• Phone calls  $20
• E-mail  $20
• Research  $40
• Design  $80
• Other non billable  $0
• Repair  $80
• Maintenance  $80
• Travel portal to portal second call, same day.  $20
• Generate purchase order  $40
• Documentation, create or modify $20
• Strategic planning  $50  (This category is used for small purchased items and my liaison individual at the business is ok with this).
• Other billable  $30

This rate card listed above is very important when you use a computer billing program and your rate per hour differs by task.

I already had a digital watch and use the stopwatch function for timing my on the job work.  I start charging the client when I step out of my vehicle.  There is a very good reason for this.  Some parking lots are long distances from the work site.   I figure I should not be penalized for this and thus charge the client for the walking time.  If I can not find a parking spot within a reasonable time, I start the watch anyway as I look for a parking location.  If I have to get a parking pass I start charging from the time I step out of the car at the parking office and I do not stop the watch until I get back into my car after the job is completed.  I charge all parking fees to the client including parking tickets.  If I get called back a second time to the work site and I deem this due to poor planning on the clients end, why should I suffer for my time, wear and tear on my vehicle, and gas because some numb scull failed to plan properly.  I charge portal to portal travel rate and I let the client know this before I get into my car.

I am a Mac computer person because I value my time and the Windows computers are dreadful and time wasters.  The software I use to record my time and generate my bills to the client is called Office Time. It is simple to use and has features that simply make my task recording very easy.  I have been using this software for months now and I can not think of any improvement, it is that close to perfection for me.

Some Office Time features:
Each task category allows you to bill at a different rate.
The program includes real time stop watch recording of your time or you can input the task later.  You can pause, stop and restart the stopwatch if your working at your computer.  If you do not use your computer for any reasonable length of time a splash screen pops up asking you if you want to continue the stopwatch timer or take time off.  I have walked away from my computer to get a mug of tea and the computer program knows I had walked away because if failed to detect any mouse and key strokes.
On the top of my Mac screen is a number of program icons.  One icon is for Office Time.  I use Spaces a LOT and do research and phone calls using my laptop. I can be on another screen away from Office Time but its icon on the top of my computer screen can call up the stop watch.
The invoices are created in simple text format.  The program does a pretty good job of itemizing all the tasks by date.  I added a logo for my business into the billing document, quite easy to do.