For all the years I have been with my bank, the one thing I have always liked about it is that there was always a live customer service representative to talk to and, whenever I called, I was either connected immediately or put on hold for two minutes, rarely longer. This superior customer service has kept me from going elsewhere all these years. A couple of years ago, I was in for an unwelcome surprise. When I called, the outgoing …
I’ve been reading so much about companies hiring people 50 and older because they represent stability, experience, knowledge, and practical experience. They say that older workers have skills and essential knowledge of the business and they are retiring at the rate of 10,000 a day and that in five years, 70 million people will have left the workforce, taking with them the knowledge and experience that keep a company operational. That’s what the news stories say. On the other hand, …
About twenty-five years ago, one of my friends told me he wanted to quit his job because he didn’t trust his boss. He was in the kind of job where he had complete autonomy and didn’t really have too many occasions where he had to interact with his boss. I kept probing, trying to understand what trust had to do with what he was hired to do. In my estimation, he was at the top of his grade, top salary, …
I don’t usually laugh at anyone’s misfortune; in fact, I’m usually compassionate to a fault. But today’s news had me laughing and started my day with a huge smile on my face and I will probably be chuckling all day, just thinking about it. It seems no one is immune to Boston’s Mayor Martin Walsh’s edict that anyone who leaves snow on their sidewalks in front of their homes and businesses will be fined $50 and Secretary of State, John …
I’m a little bit confused. By this time of year, with only two weeks to go until Christmas, no one is acting like it’s Christmas. In previous years, supermarket employees were walking around with reindeer hats or red hats with bells on it, driving everyone crazy with the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of numerous bells going off as employees walked by. And supermarket employees would be complaining about their Santa hats giving them headaches. This year, nothing. No reindeer hats. No …
I once asked a young man if he would rather be smart or nice. I wasn’t asking him if he would rather be seen as smart or nice; I was asking him if he would rather be smart or nice. It was interesting to see him wrestle with this question. I specifically asked him because of his niceness factor and because of his intelligence. Perhaps one of the reasons I was so interested in his response is because I have …
Women have always known that they can get what they want by making men think it was their idea. So, why don’t they remember that in the workplace? If we look at it differently, studies also show that when we talk to someone, we remember 65% of what we said and only 35% of what the other person said. Many is the time when someone is recounting a story to me and at the end of it, I’ll ask, “And …
If’s a nice feeling to be able to help a coworker. In no time at all, you become the go-to person and everyone comes to you for help. You give them mini-trainings in procedure or software problems. or just about anything. And everyone flourishes but you. You are so busy helping everyone else that your own work doesn’t get done in a timely manner. While it can make you feel important and give you a nice feeling to be the …
There have been numerous studies showing how beautiful people “earn more than their average-looking peers, are more likely to be given loans by banks, and are less likely to be convicted by a jury. Voters prefer better-looking candidates; students prefer better-looking professors, while teachers prefer better-looking students. Mothers, those icons of blind love, have been shown to favor their more attractive children.” Now there is even a study showing that we should choose ugly people in business because “unattractive people …
I have often wondered why parents spend more time training their children to follow orders rather than training them to think for themselves. In a culture where the common belief is that the masses are asses, it would make more sense to teach our children how to lead, rather than how to follow. The military takes to heart the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, “Theirs not to make reply,/ Theirs not …