Are you using a physical credit card terminal? As we fall back into Eastern Standard Time, it is important to check your credit card terminal to make sure the time is correct as some terminals need to be updated manually.
Note: This applies to terminals only. Software and gateways adjust automatically.
For Verifone VX Terminals:
Press the green button – setup – Password is 1 alpha alpha 66831and click enter – Click The left purple button for more options 4 times – Click date and time and enter the correct date: mm/dd/yyyy and time: military time with 00 for seconds
For PAX Terminals (all models) Menu then 5 and press “enter” – enter today’s date MMDDYYYY > type in time in military time (HHMMSS) – “enter” – press “menu” to go back to main screen
Feel free to contact us if you need any help updating the time on your terminal
When emailing people outside of our company, clicking send at midnight is questionable. Common advice is to save the email as a draft, and send it in the morning. Except we are prone to distraction. Even if we plan to send an email the next day, we’ll probably forget.
Imagine this scenario.
It’s 11:47pm and we’re catching up on email. We missed an email from a prospective client earlier, but we feel awkward hitting send at 11:47pm. So we save it as a draft, telling ourselves we’ll send it in the morning.
The next morning as we’re walking into the office, our manager grabs us as at the door. There’s a critical situation. The project we were working on has a major bug. Our biggest client is about to drop. So we hustle to solve the problem, doing everything possible to avoid this catastrophe.
Two days later, the problem is solved. BUT OH!!! WE JUST REMEMBERED WE HAD THAT EMAIL IN DRAFT!!
Except now it’s too late.
Since we saved the late-night email in draft, we lost a prospective client.
We can avoid this mistake entirely by leveraging technology to schedule emails for the next morning. With an email scheduling tool (like Boomerang, Newton Mail, or simply selecting ‘delay delivery’ under your Outlook OPTIONS tab (see image below)), we can write emails at 11:47pm – or whenever we’re most productive – and then schedule them to send at any hour the next morning. All with the click of a button.
This brings up yet another interesting question: What’s the point of sending emails at night, anyway? Aren’t people too busy to check their email at night?
Some people are more likely to read emails at night.
A study by Experian showed the highest email open rates were between 8pm and 11:59pm, at 21.7%. Whereas the second highest open rate was between 12am and 4am, at 17.6%:
This validates that people will open emails late at night, often more frequently than they open emails during the day.
In conclusion, if you’re writing emails in the middle of the night, schedule to send them early morning.
The knee-jerk reaction of too many people in leadership positions when they feel wronged is righteous indignation and the urge for revenge. But one factor that sets truly transformational leaders apart is the ability to forgive – to let feelings of anger, resentment and blame fall away and become something constructive.
Great leaders know the art of reconciliation. They realize the havoc that can be created by an unforgiving attitude… holding grudges is a form of arrested development; it holds people back.
Many businesses today are like gulags. People are anxious, there’s a lot of paranoia. But what should be remembered is that people who don’t make any mistakes don’t do anything. They’re too busy covering their backs. They’re not going to try anything new.
In organizations where you know that if you make a mistake you’re going to be fired, there is a culture of fear which stifles productivity.
Leaders who can tolerate mistakes, who see them as learning opportunities, are those who create a great corporate culture. Forgiveness offers people the chance to take risks, to be creative, to learn and to grow their own leadership capabilities.
A great example would be to take a look at two very different African political leaders.
When you fly over Zimbabwe you see a wasteland, when you fly over South Africa you see something very different: two leaders with very different attitudes towards forgiveness.
At the end of South African apartheid and after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela forgave his oppressors and encouraged many of his party’s members who clamored for revenge to do the same.
In comparison, Robert Mugabe opted for bitterness, vindictiveness and hatred, against white Zimbabweans and the nation’s black citizens who opposed him. By encouraging supporters to forcibly occupy white-owned commercial farms Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of southern Africa, became the poor house. Under his rule, unemployment rose to between 70-80 percent, life expectancy fell. In mid-November 2008, Zimbabwe’s peak month of inflation is estimated at 6.5 sextillion percent—making the national currency basically useless. A “clean-up campaign” targeting the slums where his most hardened opponents resided left 200,000 homeless.
It may seem impossible forgiving someone you believe has slighted or taken deliberate action against you. But the price for bearing a grudge can be high. Numerous studies have shown that bitterness and hatred create stress disorders, negatively affect the immune system and are positively correlated with depression, anxiety, neuroticism and premature death.
In comparison, taking the high road of forgiveness contributes to greater spiritual and psychological well-being, lower anxiety levels, less stress, lower blood pressure and lower risk of alcohol and substance abuse. People who forgive more readily also tend to have fewer coronary health problems.
Be it an employee, potential client, co-worker, or partner – let’s forgive and grow – today!
Tell me if this sounds familiar: You work exceedingly hard. You’ve honed your skills. You know when you’ve done great work and take a quiet pride in it. And yet, the moment someone verbalizes it in the form of a compliment you can’t seem to string two words together. Instead, you revert into one of the following:
The babbling-response.
The self-deprecating response.
The total and complete blackout.
That nonsense has to stop. Here’s how to take a compliment:
Realize that someone is paying you a compliment.
Let them finish.
Seriously, let them finish.
Take a breath.
Smile and say “Thank you. That’s really good to hear.”
Move on in the conversation. Don’t over-explain. Don’t undercut yourself. Just thank them sincerely and move on with a question about how their work is going.
Why is this so hard? Many people associate embarrassment or discomfort with the process of being recognized. Sometimes, this response is caused by the dissonance we feel when someone contradicts our own self-doubt.
One way to turn that discomfort on its head is to realize that the compliment has more to do with the person giving it than with you. When someone is complimenting you, they are sharing how your actions or behaviors impacted them. They are not asking if you agree. So don’t rob them of that moment.
