You could argue that there are worse problems than receiving unwanted romantic advances, but at the end of the day if the advances really are unwanted, it’s still a problem.

Women in particular don’t have to be told that at the very least, unwanted attention from a man can be a nuisance, and sometimes when that attention comes from a neighbor or “harmless” guy in the neighborhood, the solution is sometimes to grin and bear it. But what if Mr. Harmless is also a little touchy feely?

If you’re a woman or care about one, pass on this story of “Anonymous from New Mexico,” who in her letter to New York Times Social Q’s columnist Philip Galanes, complained about a touchy-feely grocer who had “always been friendly. But lately he’s started patting me on the arm and kissing my fingers as I reach past him.” She goes on to say that she wants to shut the guy down without being rude about it.

Galanes advises that the next time it happens she ought to “step away more decisively when he begins to pet, or yank back your hand as he puckers up. He may pick up on larger cues. And they can still be given with a smile on your face.”

If that proved ineffective, Galanes suggests ratcheting up her objection to a polite verbal response, but our instinct on this one is that if Mr. Harmless is from the touchy-feely old school, he’ll actually respond to the physical cues put forth by Anonymous.  If he gets the message, his feelings might be hurt, but at that point, perhaps, both he and Anonymous can move forward and not have to avoid each other.

Now if Mr. Harmless and Anonymous were coworkers, that would probably be a different, more dramatic dynamic. But, there is something to be said for trying this discreet, more decisive response. At least the first time it happens. After that, Mr. Harmless, as withbeans.com’s parenting correspondent might say, you better hope that’s not my daughter you’re annoying.

Image source: Edward Betts via Wikipedia Commons

Imagine if instead of endlessly circling the block looking for a parking spot, you could somehow search for a space online, find one, and pay five bucks to secure it. That’s the idea behind StreetParkNYC, a Web app that entrepreneur Rufus Davis launched a few weeks ago.

It works like this: A parking spot seeker enters an address for the neighborhood in which he’s seeking a space as well as the time he’d like to find one; the program then returns search results showing fellow motorists who have let Streetparknyc.com know of their intent to vacate their parking spots around the time you hope to get one.  If your search comes back with no hits, the app will ask you if you want to be more flexible about where and when you hope to park.

If the spot seeker does find a match, he agrees to pay $5 for the coordinates of the space; the person who has volunteered to give the space up in turn gets credits posted to his StreetParkNYC account.

In his article about the app, New York Times city critic Ariel Kaminer wonders whether a program like StreetParkNYC could reduce traffic congestion, since it would get circling space seekers off the roads faster. Kaminer asks, “could it make driving more pleasant? Would that, in turn, lead more people into cars? Could reducing congestion then have the effect of . . . increasing congestion? The mind reels.”

As the name of the app implies, it only covers the five boroughs of New York City – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island – but the business model could no doubt be tested in cities with similar parking issues. And as founder Davis joked to Kaminer, the possibilities might involve” merging StreetParkNYC with a dating service: post your photo along with your parking spot and see what develops.”

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

If you’ve ever been in line behind someone who has asked a hotel clerk for an upgrade, you may have noticed a couple things:

1) The person didn’t ask in an effective way

2) The person didn’t get the upgrade

It’s not enough to just flat out ask for an upgrade or even to ask for it nicely – you have to give the desk clerk a good reason to say yes. One of the most overused tricks hotel guests use when booking a room is saying they’d appreciate an upgrade because it’s their honeymoon or anniversary. Unless you show the front desk clerk the “Just Married” cans that were attached to your car or present your marriage certificate, he likely won’t believe you.

A better approach is to scale it back a notch. Walk up to the front desk clerk and say something like, “This is a special trip for us, and we’re not sure when we might be able to take such a trip again, so would you consider upgrading us to a better room if it’s available?”

You’ve done two things here. You’ve given the clerk a reason to say yes to a reason that’s totally plausible (and probably true in almost every case). And you’ve used the words “if it’s available,” which brings us to the second tip. It pays to ask while booking your room if you can be placed on a list for a free space-available upgrade. If you have no luck, ask again when you check in; sometimes, if the hotel is on the cusp of overbooking its cheaper rooms or alternately if business is slow, the front desk may upgrade you on the spot for free. Like most things, it’s all in the approach.

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Tell someone you’re heading for a casino and you’ll often get a piece of cautionary wisdom having to do with not losing your shirt. A specific warning that seems to come up a lot is, “Don’t gamble more than you’re willing to lose in an evening’s entertainment.”

The problem with that advice is that it makes you start thinking that gambling is an evening’s entertainment, and after grimly losing your set limit during ten unfortunate minutes at a blackjack table, it hits you: this is not entertaining, and that advice just didn’t work for me.

Which brings us, in a very unlikely fashion, to office supplies. If you’re a parent or know one, you know how aggravating it is when kids lose interest in costly toys they’ve begged their parents to buy. Part of the problem rests with the tendency of some parents to ignore yet another bit of wisdom: “Those kids like playing with the wrapping paper more than the presents.” This one’s true more often than you’d think.

With beans.com’s parenting correspondent observes that if you buy a kid a new coloring book and crayons for a plane ride – an outlay of about nine bucks, say — your return on investment or ROI will be minimal, as your kid will be too distracted to color. However, give that same kid a $1.89 roll of Scotch tape, and he will mindlessly keep himself busy, making tape sculptures and, of course, taping his nostrils as far back into his head as they’ll go.

Let’s scale up the expense a bit – consider a replacement cartridge for a standard ink jet printer. At around $25, we all know it’s ridiculously expensive. And it doesn’t feel any less expensive when a kid decides he needs to print out every last page from all the Web sites he’s visited during the last hour. However, think about the cost– if that kid has used 1/5 of the cartridge or $5 worth of ink, that’s far less than what a parent would spend on any toy, game, or activity if they left the house. So the next time you see a kid using up your pads of pricey post-its, remember: it’s an entertainment expense.

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Imagine walking into a room and on a table is a bucket. Beside it are three very large rocks, about six smaller rocks, about a dozen pebbles, and a pile of sand. Now imagine that you’re asked to place each of those things in the bucket in a specific order, and explain why.

The explanation, according to most business school professors who enjoy this analogy, is simple: each of those items represents the priorities in your life. With that in mind, you place the large rocks in first, as these represent your big goals – healthy family, better job, bigger house, for instance – followed by the medium priorities or smaller rocks. You get the idea. The pebbles, then the sand come next. But guess what? If you don’t have enough room for all the pebbles and sand, you stop filling the bucket.

If this analogy sounds familiar, it’s because it mirrors what 7 Habits of Highly Effective People guru Stephen Covey advocates as his third habit: put first things first. This not only means organizing your priorities in size order, but also knowing when to say no.

“First things are those things you, personally, find of most worth,” Covey says. That’s it. Of course, in Covey’s world, the third habit is in context of the other habits you ought to follow. But in your world, take a moment to think about what you’re currently putting first.

Chances are, you’re dumping smaller rocks and pebbles into that bucket – maybe even some sand – before you’ve even thought about the big rocks. One recommended exercise: try to identify what the pebbles and sand are in your life. Often, these are little things that can wait, or demands others are making on your time that you can perhaps push aside. Think about it.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Even if you’ve never heard an off-duty flight attendant vent — and trust us, it’s a pleasure — it probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that one of a flight attendant’s biggest, perpetual problems is the inability to get passengers to switch off their cellphones before take-off.

If you’ve seen FA’s having to do this on a flight, you can imagine it’s stressful for them, just as it’s stressful for the other fliers watching. One would think it also would have to be stressful for the callers forcing themselves to cram or text in that last bit of business.

Frequent business traveler and Allbusiness.com blogger Ken Walker, recognizing that he had enough stress in his life, decided that at a certain point before he even boarded he was going to stop trying to work and unplug, employing a strategy he calls “board with a book.”

While at the airport waiting to board Walker says ” I use my electronic calendar to set email and phone ‘deadlines’ based on my flight time, and I discipline myself to shut the phone OFF a half hour prior to boarding time. I stow all gadgetry and gear in my carry-on with the single exception of a book I’m reading. I’ll go off to a corner of the waiting area somewhere to read until they call to board.  When it’s my turn, I’ll simply scan my boarding pass, walk on, stow my bag, sit, buckle up, and continue reading.  I don’t dig through my stuff for an iPod or other gadgetry until we’re well on our way.  Walk on, sit down, and read. That’s it.”

Since he began living this strategy Walker has witnessed the all-too-typical confrontations between FA’s and passengers convinced that the phone calls they’re on are too critical to be ended, one time hearing a passenger bark at an FA, “This call is crucial to the survival of my company!” Says Walker, “if there’s anything so important that it cannot wait a few hours, and it demands your immediate attention on a cell phone, you probably should take the next flight anyway.” We couldn’t agree more.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Dig deeply into 4-Hour Workweek guru Tim Ferriss’ trove of advice and you’re bound to come up with some DIY potions, one of which he takes up in his post 4 Anti-Cold Cocktails That Work: From Ancient China to German Alcoholics and Modern Labs.

For our purposes, the cocktail that seems most practical, given its ease of preparation and low-maintenance ingredients, is what Ferriss describes as the Chinese cure.

You’ll need fresh ginger as well as the peel from one orange. Cut and mash the ginger, boil it for 20 minutes, and add the orange peel (cut up into sections) for 10 more minutes of boiling. Strain it and drink up.

Ferriss says a bit of honey may take the edge off the strong taste of the brew, about which he says “for me [it] cuts symptoms like sore throat and sinus pain by at least 50% over 24 hours.”

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During those moments when we’re applying some SPF-laden product on our skin we often recall that we’ve quite literally gotten burned in the past by failing to cover certain spots. The thing is, we often remember what some of them are, but it isn’t until it’s too late that we realize we didn’t catch them all.

Howstuffworks.com staff writer Molly Edmonds reported on the five spots we often miss when we’re putting on sunscreen and they bear repeating because even if you’ve always been somewhat diligent about lathering or spraying your own skin, you may find yourself struggling to be thorough if you happen to be a harried parent, uncle, or camp counselor with the unenviable task of applying and reapplying lotion on kids, especially kids in considerable quantities.

The five spots we often miss:

1) Behind the knees, where a burn can make every step torture.

2) Our feet, particularly the tops, since we as sunbathers often don’t want sand sticking to those areas; Edmonds says that “according to the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons, skin cancer on the foot often goes unnoticed because people don’t check their feet as diligently as they check other body parts.”

3) Our hands – again the tops of our hands and, interestingly, “UV rays can damage the fingernails,” Edmonds says.

4) The ears: Notes Edmonds, “skin cancer cells appear on all parts of the ear, including in the rims and bowls that may seem to be protected from the sun.”

5) The scalp. This is perhaps the hardest sell for coverage, especially if you have hair. Which is why those brazenly overpriced cans of spray sunscreen are worth having – misting your and your loved ones’ scalp is fairly effortless if you have one of those cans in hand.

Image source: Steve and Jem Copley via Wikimedia Commons