I don’t know why I always wait until the last minute to buy my wife’s Valentine’s Day present. Most likely, it’s because I’m a guy. The same thing happens every year. About one week before Valentine’s Day, I think that the big day is nowhere on the radar, so I figure I still have pl-lenty […]
It is incumbent upon me to report an alarming, and I believe dangerous, trend growing in our society today. I am convinced that sauntering is once again on the rise. Historical note: As you’ll no doubt remember, sauntering enjoyed its heyday back in the mid-1920s, when gambling, moonshine, and gangstering were all in vogue. Coincidence? […]
Customer Service means never saying “no.” I went into a sweets store at the mall this past weekend to buy a gift basket for a visiting client. As I browsed the store’s shelves, I noticed the goodies in the baskets looked less than appetizing, so I asked Jeff, the customer service representative, if he could […]
If you made a list of your top priorities at work, how far would customer service be from the top? If I called the people who work with you, would they tell me that you are pretty good at customer service, or would they tell me you are great at it? Great customer service isn’t […]
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is in The Matrix. Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) sit facing each other in old leather armchairs. The room they are in mirrors the chairs perfectly. In what appears to have once been upscale decor, old paper peels off the wall and every surface […]
In the past, I have mentioned the subject of discipline when I talked about learning to play the drums. Anyone who has ever learned to play an instrument or paint or play a sport knows that type of discipline—playing a phrase over and over until you get it right, running a play until it is seamless, […]
Failure does not mean defeat Failure can be devastating. It often means the death of a dream and the realization of a nightmare. It’s so painful, some people spend their entire lives trying to avoid it. They see it as the Wicked Witch of the West, Darth Vader, and the Boogeyman all rolled up in […]
“… if you feed and indulge your dark nature, it will one day consume and control you.” A serious man in a dark laboratory contemplates a small vial of liquid briefly before upending the contents into his mouth. Almost immediately after swallowing the concoction, his face contorts in spasms of unthinkable pain. Slowly, his countenance […]
What would Sherlock Holmes deduce in regard to your Power of Choice? I was already in my early thirties before I discovered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s wonderful books about master sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Like everyone else, I had been exposed to the character Homes all my life, but had somehow missed reading any of his adventures […]
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is lead by the Ghost of Christmas Future to a cemetery and forced to look upon his own gravestone. The inscription had only his name, and yet it was a symbol of terror and despair for Scrooge, the physical manifestation of a life misspent. Suppose for a […]
