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.

Image source: Mattes via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Image source: Metoc via Wikimedia Commons