It Could Be Worse

There are few things that bother me more than whiners.  There is a person I work with who gets so crabby and unapproachable whenever they are having a bad day.  This person doesn’t actually whine, but they get very nasty.  It affects the team adversely because this person has a far more technical understanding of everything and one cannot approach them when they get this way to ask any kind of a question.  And this person is in this mood a lot.  Because of that situation I have tried to not be that way as much as possible.  It is a challenge but one that I think is important in dealing with people in general. 

This morning, as is my habit, I went over to the cafeteria to get my morning coffee.  The manager over there was running around like a chicken without a head and I asked him if he was having a bad day.  It appears that one of his chefs shattered their ankle, the cashier is sick and probably out for the rest of the week, and a replacement cook that came from another building did not come prepared to work at this building and therefore would not be able to start on time.  Yes, he was having a bad day but unlike my coworker he was able to smile and joke about the whole thing and take things in stride.

My mother loaned me a book named 90 Minutes in Heaven written by a Pastor who was in a horrible automobile accident and apparently died and came back to life.  His body was shattered and his recovery took several years filled with pain and suffering. I can’t think of anything worse and look at that person's story as helping to put my life in perspective whenever I feel as if I can’t handle my problems.  In a flash of an eye, anyone of us could be in that situation and a lot of who we are depends on how we deal with the situation.  We can take everything in stride understanding that there are others who are far worse than we, or whine about how horrible our life is now and make the lives of those around us miserable as well. Which one will you be?

A Rose by Any Other Name

The former CEO of the company I work for is an amazing man.  Not only is he brilliant in his chosen field, but he can remember your name.   The man is over 80 an every time he sees me he calls me by my name, which blows my mind as there are so many people in the company and I see him so rarely.

They say that one way to help remember people’s names is to use memory pegs – something that reminds you of the person.  However that doesn’t work for me. As an example I still remember my seventh grade teacher as "Mrs. Cauliflowerhead" instead of her real name because her head of tightly coiled white curls looked exactly like that vegetable.  I think the point is to have a memory peg that is similar to the name and not what they look like.  Nevertheless, I have not had much success with that particular technique.

Another method I have heard is to use the person’s name three times in your first conversation with them.  I am not sure what it is about the number three, but it must possess some incredible powers.  It is in the name of many fairy tales, it supposedly has magical powers in witchcraft, and is the basis of Christianity.  That number is used frequently in many things and its use apparently yields some wonderful results.  I think it is inherent in the human brain to remember things in threes.  But I digress…I think the bottom line is that some people have the name recall skill and others do not.  I just have to resign myself to remembering that I fall into the latter category.