October 15, 2019 I DON’T NEED NO DOCTOR What’s that expression, “Doctor, heal thyself”? You ever walk outside of a hospital and see the medical staff standing in clusters surreptitiously smoking cigarettes, and think to yourself, “Are you kidding me?” Of any humans on the planet, these people should see the deleterious health effects of smoking, and yet, here they are, publicly demonstrating their contempt for the known consequences of this behavior. While I smugly think, “I would never engage in a behavior that I knew for a fact was unhealthy,” I’ve come uncomfortably close to the metaphorical meaning of this phrase recently at work. The desire to…
September 22, 2017 IF YOU NEED TO GET SOMETHING DONE… Give it to a busy person! That’s what my mother used to tell me as I was growing up, and again when I worked for her at the printing company she founded in 1977. It was 1982 and I was a freshman at Loyola College in Baltimore (now Loyola University, see, we all grow up sometimes!) and riding my bicycle the 6 miles down Charles Street to Curry Copy Center, serving as part-time bookkeeper several days each week. Junior High and High School-aged Paula used to go to the copy shop on weekends to help collate and staple jobs, and…
September 8, 2017 A SNAKE IN YOUR WOODPILE Trust can be a very delicate construct. Every day we make choices about who we can and cannot trust, and if we can, how much trust we should extend. Hopefully when it comes to family, we have more latitude to rely on one another. However, when it comes to work, it is best to be on one’s guard. That’s not to say one should be completely skeptical of others’ intentions when it comes to one’s best interests. Perhaps consider being observantly wary of others until they either earn more of your trust or, conversely, prove themselves to be untrustworthy. At…
