I'm doing a newspaper feature on management training games, and I find many references to inspiration from the Seattle Fish Market, where the fish-sellers have apparently created a remarkable atmosphere of customer-service by various tactics which include throwing fish around. These fish-sellers have now diversified into becoming management trainers showing other companies how to make mundane jobs fun. (I told you it sounded bizarre!)

Now, I've located their website, but what I'm asking is this - has anyone out there seen this in action, and can anyone give me an eye-witness account?

It's Saturday morning, and I've got to write this over the weekend, so any help appreciated, either by thread or PM.

And now I re-read it, it sounds even stranger...

- Ian B

- Ian B

Spaw

"no self respecting polition (is that an oxymoron?)

No, the technical term for it is "misspelling". ;-)

Dave Oesterreich

If Gates was sending carps to all of the Softies, it would probably be complaining about the lack of sole at Microsoft. He's not known for floundering around, in spite of his inflated sheepshead.

A

I think what confused Bob's spelling of "politician" is that subconsciously he equated it with the word "pollution." Perfectly understandable.

Don Firth

(I have a horrible feeling I'm letting myself in for something...)

- Ian B

Many thanks, folks. Much appreciated.

- Ian B

Check here 1, here 2, and here 3.

Don Firth

- Ian B

http://www.pikeplacefish.com/intro.html

Where I work as an employment training workshop instructor, we show their video Fish! during our Customer Service workshop. The video explains their "fish philosophy" and it's a hoot! So simple, but what an impact it makes. Rose

Thanks - Ian B

Don Firth

I love it....A management and sales philosophy based around a Monty Python sketch.......Worked for John Cleese too, so why not? (I have about 693 reasons....don't ask)

Spaw

That little blurb there also reminded me of a Miss America speech........I mean really........Whatever, I wish them well and continued success!

Spaw

Spaw

Thanking 'catters that this forum exists ...
cyberserf

Spaw

Don Firth

BTW Liland, I'm not making fun of you, but making fun of my own ignorance because most of the time, I don't have a clue what the hell it is you're talking about!

Spaw

As y'all seem to be having a problem in your time conversions, allow me to step in and give you an easy conversion method. Your first problem is that you are operating on the "Grenwich MEAN Time" standard which is often just as mean as it's name indicates. So let's swap to the more user friendly "Icelandic Kinder Gentler Time" standard to do our conversion tables. This also does away with the silly concept of the International Date Line (not the 900 one) which foists upon us the ludicrous idea that, though it is tomorrow there, it is yesterday here...which in point of all evidence is patently untrue, as it is today everywhere. Now we can move along to our formula at a more logical and simpler pace.

Take the current surface area of Iceland and subtract the linear distance between there and Pago Pago. Divide this by the square root of Mudcatter Joe Offer. (I use Joe here as this will help him in his conquests with the opposite sex. Since very few males have a square root, his demand should be on the rise...so to speak. I have no "personal" knowledge of Joe's current situation but I'm inclined to believe he may be in need of a little help as I overheard a recent female companion describe Joe's equipment as a "melting fudgcicle, flanked by two jelly beans.") In any case, take this total and multiply it by the number of clocks in your home, less the number of dead wristwatches in your upper right hand dresser drawer. Add the difference total (in minutes) of the aforementioned clocks and divide by the average versus the time on your current wristwatch. You can now differentiate under the equal sign to calculate the value of X, that being the time where you live. Don't forget to use the value of pi as a constant...and since the value of pie at diners between Toronto and Buffalo is $1.75 (US), use that (1.75) instead of the more traditional 3.14159 figure.

Putting it all together you can now readily see that when it is 10:56 AM, Sunday, December 30, 2001 in Otswego, it's 2:48 P.M.,October 18, 1893 in Waycross, Georgia. Of course it's always that time in Waycross so don't be confused.

The only difference I can see is that the schwa info makes even LESS sense and is even more incomprehensible! Liland, you have my sincerest admiration if you are really into that whole schtick. I will still be making fun of it, just be aware that I do admire a mind that can grasp such things and even more amazed that anyone actually wants to!!!!

Spaw

(and no, I did NOT read it all...but WAY too much!)

. . . (note: "geoduck" is the correct spelling; "gooey duck" is the customary pronunciation, though etymologically it is closer to "gwee" than to "gooey", being from the Lushootseed g^wídeq [the e should be rotated 180°, i.e. a schwa], Lushootseed being the anglicized indigenous name of the language(s) of Puget Sound, from the Skagit down to Squaxin Island).

Thank you for taking the time to add this information to the list. It's good to see that indigenous words and names are used (even if spelling tends to defy colonizers). I poked around in MS Word and in the HTML book and was unable to find a way to reverse that e. The heuristics of this thread are a real treat! Gotta throw something into the conversation, since the piscatorial puns have all been taken. Though with this segue to Ling-uistics* I should be able to come up with something. (*The "cod" is silent).

I've seen the fish thrown in the market, and I've seen clams "flying" all up and down Puget Sound at low tide. The seagulls pick them up off the sand and fly over rocks to drop and crack them open. I used to see crows mimic the gulls up at English Camp on San Juan Island--and as smart as they are, their accuracy is not that of the gulls. It was always interesting at low tide on foggy days out at the camp to hear the intermittent crack! of the hits and splat! of the misses on the mud. You couldn't see much, and the fog intensified the sounds. It's the stuff of myth-making.

Maggie

talking to oneself

carrying on a conversation wherein the person with whom one is conversing is oneself

I reciprocate, Catspaw49! I mean, you've got some verbal skills I am lacking in and yet admire. By all means keep ribbing me!

Bill D, thanks for the "Everything you never wanted to know about *Schwas [and e-schwas, r-schwas and s-schwas]" article. It was a treat indeed. Some of it reminded me of a textbook in my Sociology of Deviant Behavior class at Yale (this would have been the '72-'73 school year), which actually had the following entry in its glossary:

talking to oneself

carrying on a conversation wherein the person with whom one is conversing is oneself

As a part of the seafood industry, this is a subject I am torn on. I think that anything a person can do to get people interested in eating more fish is a good thing. However, the fishermen that spent a good deal of time and effort to assure the high quality of their catch are being mocked by these "flying fish" at Pike Place Fish Market. Each time one of these fish gets thrown, it gets bruised, at best. At worst, the spine breaks, seeping blood and bitter fluid into the meat. This damage is not immediately evident, as the fish is whole, skin-on most of the time, but when the customer gets home and skins/fillets the fish, it is noticeable. At the risk of making this into a rant, I ask you this: when, if ever, has the local butcher heaved a beef tenderloin to a customer? When has a greengrocer casually slung a bag of tomatoes to a checkout clerk a good 20 feet distant? G_Smolt /LURK ON

Oh, I wrote the story at 5am today. Thanks, everyone. - Ian B

My father was born and raised on San Juan Island and grew up eating salmon. It was just about his favorite kind of food. He learned how to cook salmon a variety of ways (an art that, I now regret, I never learned), and he could do it to perfection. Not too moist, but not dry either. He said that there was a point in the cooking process about twelve seconds long when it was just right, and you had to take it off the fire then or it would be too dry. Restaurants and sundry other folks tend to cook it until it has the consistency and flavor of a Presto-Log (Ivar's Salmon House on the north side of Lake Union in Seattle does a pretty good job, though).

Fish-tossing at the Pike Place Market is all very humorous and it's apparently become something of a local sport, but anything that compromises the flavor of salmon is not good! There are few things in this world as delicious as a properly cooked piece of salmon.

(I gotta back off a bit. I'm drooling on my keyboard.)

Don Firth

I can occasionally buy a fast-frozen salmon down here in Texas, and I take it home, marinate it in a special brine, and smoke it. On a good batch I can rival the $25 a pound stuff down at Pike Street Market. The clerks at the store here in Fort Worth are used to my request to smell the fish before I buy it.

When I lived on San Juan back in the mid-1980's (you were there!) I used to buy fish in Friday Harbor that was sooooooo fresh. The salmon would render one speechless. The halibut had this opalescent sheen, and was such a wonderful consistency. A friend gave me a recipe that involved baking it in a deep pan. Slice an onion and put a few rings on top, some herbs, several dollops of sour cream, and a nice amount of white wine. I can't eat dairy any more, but if ever anything were to tempt me to fall off of the wagon, it's that fresh fish. The slabs of something they call "halibut" that arrive frozen and desciated down here aren't worth the megabucks they charge for it. I can tell them where to throw that stuff, should they be so inclined!

Maggie

Another thing he used to do was to go down to the waterfront and buy tuna—very fresh, right off the boat. He would bring them home and disassemble them, then he and my mother would spend a weekend canning tuna—putting it up in pint-sized Mason jars. The house would smell pretty ripe for a couple of days, but it was well worth it! Any time during the year (and often) Mom would open a jar of tuna, mix it with a little chopped celery, sweet pickle, and a dab of mayo, and bingo! Tuna sandwiches until they were coming out our ears. Chicken-of-the-Sea was nothing like this!! Lord, I loved those things! I could happily live on seafood. Of all kinds.

I've been eating fish exclusively
Since living living on my claim. . . .

. . . and he's complaining!???

Don Firth

We can get good pickled herring down here. My kids love it.

Maggie

Don Firth

Don Firth

Next time I'm in the Northwest I'll ask a friend who is now in her late 80's, but still a marvelous cook, if she can fix a good batch and we'll all sit down and try it. If anyone can make lutefisk taste right, she can. But maybe that's part of the trick, you have to *know* what it's going to taste like before you try fixing it! It's like trying to learn a new song from a sheet of music without ever having heard it. The instructions are there, but you have nothing to shoot for.

Now, how about another Norwegian tradition--lefse. Have you had a good potato pancake lately?

Maggie

That said, we ate some of the best seafood ever during that visit!