Dog Sense in Choices

In the Dog's job, I hear how people feel they are overworked, frustrated, stressed, and all sorts of other things, and that troubles me.   A lot of the stresses of our daily work come and go, and are expected.  They come with the job, that's why they call it "work". 

But how often do we ask ourselves if the good outweighs the bad, and do we really enjoy our work, our life?  

What truly troubles me is when I hear someone say, “I've been here ___ years and I hate my job”, “I’m only here for the paycheck”, and I know they mean it.

What truly troubles me is when I read comments from our front line staff saying that work would be great if it wasn’t for the people… or the receptionist who said, “I can’t stand working with the people who come in here”.

WHAT??????????   

My God, how tragic is that for someone’s life?   If you are willing to spend half of your waking hours in a place you don’t like, doing a job you “hate”, with people you can’t stand, something is seriously wrong with you.

And, yes, I know all of the “reasons” people need to keep a job, but I wonder if they’re not really just “excuses” with better dressing?   “I need to pay my rent!”   “I need to feed my family”.   “I need to pay my bills”. 

Well, yeah, but so do all of us.  So, if we are really so unhappy, should those reasons stop us from looking for something better?   

Dog Rule:  Don’t mistake a reason for an excuse. 

And, yes, I know people need to vent and complain, and that’s fine, but all the time and in every conversation?   I’m often reminded of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion commentary, “People here are miserable and they like it that way.   When they wake up in the morning and the sun’s shining and the birds are singing and they’re feeling just dandy… they’re not worried because they know it’ll get worse.”  

To be brutally honest, I think it’s too easy to sit around and complain than to actually take any action to improve things. We all get trapped in the complacency of the status quo. 

Before you write me off as someone who doesn’t know anything about “real life”, let me explain my thought process.   The only relevant point of reference for my work and life load capacity is me, myself, and I.  That’s true for anyone, by the way.  My belief is that I cannot expect more of anyone than I do of myself.

I grew up with parents who both worked for the railroad.  I was a latchkey kid living in an ethnically diverse neighborhood (before we even knew what “ethnically diverse” or “latchkey” meant).  I got my first real job (meaning not McDonald's or a paper route) when I was 15.  I went in the Marines after high school, because college was not even a remote possibility for our income level (or my interest).  I grew up and saw the reality of life and death before I could legally have a beer. 

During my 22nd and 23rd year, I started a newspaper, got married, and bought my first house.  

During my 25th year, I lost my paper and my income.  So I started college and found a job in a hospital (I needed to feed my family, pay my mortgage and my bills…;-).   Four years later I graduated with a degree in Economics, and a large student loan.   During those four years of college, I also held that full-time job and even got promoted.  

Does that make me special?   Not even remotely close, are you kidding?  In fact that story says just the opposite.  It tells me that if I can do it, so could most other people.   If they actually want to. 

I really never thought about being "over worked" or having too much to do.   I never worried about money. I guess, in hindsight, I learned what Michael Todd said, “I’ve been poor, but I’ve never been broke. Being broke is a state of mind.  Being poor is only a temporary condition.”  

Seriously, I never did think about it.  Maybe that was a mistake or my own stupidity?  But the thought never crossed my mind, as I think back.   I just did it.   If I hadn't liked what I was doing, I wouldn't have done it.  I would have found something else.   How dumb was I? 

And, I have had my serious failures and losses too, personally and professionally.   I learned from all of them.   And, I do take it all personally.  If you don't take your life, and your work, personally, you're wasting it.   It is all personal, and at times painful, but it is all part of living, isn't it?   

So, the point of all of that is why would you want to stay in a job you hate?   Is the “money” really worth the time and toil on your life?   Do you actually enjoy being miserable?   Again… seriously… do you?   Ask your family… your friends… to tell you honestly if they think you’re happy. 

Think about all the pains and problems you have in your life and think of the one thing that all of them have in common (hint:  YOU).  But you don’t have to be nasty about it.   Fix it. 

You are where you are, because you choose to be there.  

Yeah, you are. 

Friday's Revolutionary Dog Speech

Revolutions start not when conditions are at their worst, but only after they have begun to improve, changes have been instituted, leadership has developed, and the people have come to have a new vision of what might be. Real revolutions are not begun in the streets or with guns and bombs.  People who have changed the universe have never accomplished it that way.
Think about it… Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandella, a guy called Jesus, and others...they’ve done it by inspiring the people. 
And once that inspiration is there, once people have seen what "can" be, there is no going back.  It is only when peaceful revolution is made impossible, that violent revolution becomes inevitable.  John F. Kennedy said that.   Syria is living it right now. 
Revolutions are begun – and won - in the minds and hearts of people – and they are not always violent. Revolutions are as simple as changing minds and looking at life in new ways.
Revolutionaries realize that they can’t change their world at once – they can only change the way they look at it and deal with it. They can only change the ways they deal with the people around them and the world they live in. They realize that the big change comes that way.  One person at a time…beginning with ourselves. And that, my friends, is the hardest change to make. 
One of Martin Luther King's lesser known quotes is one of my favorites, because speaks to the need for change to come from within, not from outside or above: 
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
Whatever you choose to do with the rest of your life, remember one thing. It is all up to you. You are where you are because you choose to be there. Don’t let someone tell you “you can’t do that”. The biggest thing I have learned in my 60 years of life, is that there is will never be enough money, time, available resources or helpful people to do anything we want to do. Success is in finding ways to do it anyway.
Go be successful peaceful revolutionaries. 

Law Dog Not

The previous ramble alluded to the fact that the Dog, at one time, aspired to be a lawyer.   The back story on that exercise may be interesting, if not too perceived as whining, because it truly isn't. 
As previously noted, I lost my newspaper dream and was continuing on my learning journey to find out what I didn't know.   One of my best friends was a lawyer and had this wild idea that I would be a good one and, perhaps, we could practice together into the great unknown future.  That vision only had one obstacle, I had to get into law school. 
So, after completing my BA in Economics at the University of Colorado, I dutifully took the LSAT and applied to law school.   The only school that I really could attend at the time would have been the University of Denver, since it was the only one in driving distance offering night classes - and I had a full-time job.that couldn't be put on hold.   On a lark, I also applied to Notre Dame. 
I got accepted at Notre Dame.   I got put on a waiting list for Denver.  
While I was commiserating with my friend, the attorney, about this travesty, we were interrrupted when his paralegal came bounding into the office announcing that she just got accepted at Denver.  
Hmm.   Not being able to pass this inquiry opportunity up, and knowing that she wasn't aware that I had also I applied, I innocently asked what it took to get into that school.  
"What was your LSAT score?", I asked.   Her score was lower than mine.  
I followed with, "How about your GPA?".   Her GPA was also lower than mine.  
I asked her if she was famiiar with the Bakke case.   (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)
She was not. 
The final outcome was that she dropped out after two semesters.  
I learned a lot more than law during those years.   Wouldn't trade it for any law degree. 

Dog's Unmarked Trail

The Dog started out to become a newspaper reporter and ended up as a human resources person.   That makes me think a whole lot of people never end up where they intended to be, so arguably the best strategy for life is not to have a strategy.  Just take the days as they come, pay attention when opportunities come by, and take a chance every now and then.   Keep learning growing, exploring, and living.   Easy to say, hard to do.
The Marines made me a photo-journalist, for some reason.  The only journalism training I had was a class in high school, where my major accomplishment was setting up a water pistol fight in the classroom and then writing a feature story about it.   If that happened now, I'd be in jail.
Anyway, whatever the case, when my first Marine Corps story came out in print in Stars and Stripes, I was hooked.  
I reached my first dream job in the early '70s when I had a newspaper in Lafayette, Colorado.  I had landed in Colorado after the Marines, and wanted to continue my career in journalism but I couldn't even get an interview with a paper.   So, being the naive, uneducated bloke that I was, I ran an ad in the Colorado Press Assn. newsletter that said, "with 15 minutes training, I can do anything". 
A couple of weeks later the phone rang and, shortly thereafter, a deal was struck for two other guys to put up the money and me to put up the work to start a weekly paper in Lafayette.   I didn't even know where Lafayette was, and we didn't form any committees/task forces or even look at financial projections.  
I went up to Lafayette (20 miles NW of Denver) and wandered around.  I visited stores, restaurants, banks, hardware store, and asked them what they thought about a newspaper in town.  Little did I know that today that would be called "conducting a market study" and I should pay a consultant several thousand dollars to do it.  WTF?
Anyway, the first paper came off the press on Feb. 28, 1974, and has been hanging on my various walls ever since.   The Lafayette Times was the only weekly newspaper to have made a profit in its first year, and continue to increase circulation and advertising revenue, in a community that had access to three large daily papers.   It is my "real-life MBA", and one of life's biggest accomplishments.  Totally unplanned.  How'd that happen?
The dream ended a couple of years later, when after paying back the partners initial investment and starting to pay a monthly return (ROI today), the partnership dissolved and I was summarily dismissed over "philosophy".   Not writing philosophy, but financial philosophy.  I wanted to roll a bigger piece of our bottom line into building the paper and they wanted to roll more into "our" pockets.  Another great learning experience. 
So, there I was, 24 years old and my life's "vision" reached -- and finished.  
Still with no real life plan in hand, unemployed, uneducated, married, and with a new house, I decided to go to college and look at possibly becoming a lawyer (another great story there).  
In order to go to school and help pay our bills, I needed a job.  A friend of mine introduced me to the CEO of St. Anthony Hospital in Denver, and I stumbled into a management training program.   That exercise started in housekeeping and somehow along the way, when the Personnel Director resigned, ended me up there.   No formal training in personnel, and my college degrees in Economics. 
Go figure. 

Road Dog Poop

It's simple really.   We need to reintroduce the word "vulgar" to our language.  

Somewhere along the road we lost the common decency associated with humanity.  We're becoming nasty, and enjoying it less. 

North Korea's Clown With a Crown.   He's vulgar on so many levels, beyond his haircut.   Politics, in general.  Vulgar on so many levels.  You get the drift.   

F-bombs and sexual innuendo are acceptable forms of speech.   We have laws about domestic violence, sexual harassment, and all of those things, but they're always on the news.  

Hmmm.   Maybe there's something there.   Good ol' television is most often cited as the root of all evil in our world, the scapegoat for bad taste, inane behavior, and biased presentations.   But really?    Maybe it is.  

The news (?) shows are ratings driven, not news driven, and thus focus on the outlandish.  Doom 'n gloom.   Slash n' dash.   Rumor trumps fact.  

Beyond the news, I stepped in it when I was stumbled into watching a rerun of "Will and Grace".    That was pretty cutting edge, controversial stuff when it came out.   But now?   It wouldn't even gain a PG rating for most of its episodes.    And that wasn't that long ago. 

I stepped in it when I actually watched Two and a Half Men.   That show (and others) are stupid and vulgar portrayed as funny.  

I step around it by not watching, "The Real ____ of anything".   Those aren't funny, they're stupid and vulgar.   Those two adjectives are anything but funny. 

Vulgar.   You never hear the word anymore.   You just see it... everywhere. 

Signs of the Apocalypse.  

You think I'm kidding?   The physical world may not be warming, but the mental world is well on its way. 

Here's Looking at You, Shep

If you're ever driving from Denver to Boulder on Hwy. 36 (Boulder-Denver Turnpike), you should exit at Broomfield (Wadsworth), take a left, cross the turnpike and get back on aimed toward Denver.   When you're about halfway down the ramp, pull over, put on your flashers and take a moment to remember Shep.  

Shep was a stray puppy who decided to live alongside the turnpike from 1950-64, when there were toll booths there.  Nobody knew where this little shepherd-mix pup came from, but he liked the toll booths and the attendants.  He hung out with them for 14 years, and often slept in the tollbooths on cold nights.  People would look for him when they paid their tolls, and kids would want to play with him.  

When he became deaf, nearly blind, and had trouble moving, the attendants had to put him to sleep.  They and had a funeral and burial there (under a marker donated by a local funeral home). RIP-1964.   People would regularly stop and put flowers, ornaments, flags and other things there until 2009, with they moved his remains and the marker to the Broomfield Historical Museum, because of construction on the interchange.  

Shep was a Road Dog.   Born that way, and lived that way.  I think of him, and his life, every time I drive that highway - and even when I don't.  

Dog Job Interviews

Luckily (and hopefully), at this pont in the Dog's life, job interviews aren't part of the personal scenario.   But, given my "HR" job, as I listen to how our recruiters conduct them in this era of "behavioral interviewing" and assessing "emotional intelligence" while "hiring for fit" and the other rhetorical psycho-babble coming from professional gospels of "how-to HR"; I am reminded of my own interviews.  I'm guessing everyone accumulates them in some fashion over the years.   Mine are all fond (?) memories and some still bring back a smile -- or an outright laugh, at their "ludicrosity"... 
Three-plus-one of the more interesting job interviews I have known...
- Escorted into the CEO's office; a large, well-appointed room, a tad on the dark side, with ornate furnishings.  His greeting was warm and friendly as he moved around his desk, and pointed to a chair by the wall for me to sit.   Two uncomfortable Louis XIV wall chairs, both facing into the office, with a table in between.   We sat side-by-side facing out into the office (seriously... parallel to each other).   I tried to turn toward him, but the chair wouldn't move.   He interviewed me with minimal, to zero, eye contact and mainly looking down or out at the wall.   I was reminded of the old joke about how you can tell an extroverted pathologist.... they look at your shoes instead of their own.   This guy was not extroverted.   I finally accepted it, pretended there was a camera hidden in the opposite wall and had a great conversation with myself.   I left wondering how he got the job, and not about whether I would get one.  
- Brought into the CEO's office and sat down in a chair directly in front of his desk.   As I sat down, I realized that I was sitting about shoulder level with the top of his desk.   When he sat down behind his desk, his eye level was at least two feet above mine.   I had to believe that his chair was raised and the other chairs were lowered.   I almost looked around the desk to see if he was on a platform or what?  This guy had issues, and mine were mainly trying not to giggle or stand up.   I did seriously think about slouching lower just to see what he would do. 
- Dining experiences aren't exempt from the interview process either.   It is almost a given that if you're interviewing for a senior level position, there will be some kind of meal involved.  Most of them are nervous food picking and "informal" conversations geared to assess social skills and gastronomic tendencies.  
And, folks, the first real question is always:  Do I have alcohol?   Good interviewers will make the first move and relieve the tension of choice.   You can bet it's a test, if they let you choose first.   And, whichever way you choose, will always give them another thought.... so don't sweat it. 
My favorite "dining experience"  was at an Olive Garden, in an anonymous Wisconsin city.  Per instructions from the recruiting firm who called me, I had arrived the previous evening and checked into the Holiday Inn Express.  The morning came and I was supposed to be picked up at 8, but at 7:30 the phone rang and I was informed there was a change of plans;  I should stay at the hotel and they would call me when they were coming to get me.   Around 11, the phone rang again and I was told that I should continue waiting.   The only phone number I had was for the recruiter, in Chicago, and I used it a couple of times that day. 
Around 3, the next call came and I was told to meet the CEO at a nearby Olive Garden around 5, and join him for dinner.   At 5:30, he breezed into the restaurant, introduced himself, and we immediately sat down for dinner.   During the meal, he asked me no questions and I was mainly engaged in listening to him expound on his healthcare philosophies and berating of the nearby larger city's health care providers.   I felt like I was eating with that little cartoon mouse standing on the railroad tracks in front of the roaring locomotive, with his middle finger raised.   He made minimal eye contact, and was so self-absorbed that my comments were usually missed or talked over.  The highlight was when we walked out the front door and he headed for his car without a word.   I left wishing I'd ordered scotch. 

Lastly, my favorite all time job interview...  after the usual "gauntlet interview" with various people, I was meeting the CEO.   He came in, we shook hands, and he asked if I knew a certain physician from another system.  I said yes, he was a good guy and we had coffee regularly.  The second question was, "what do you think of _____ ?   I said that ____ was one of the reasons I left that employ.   My interviewer smiled, stood up, extended his hand and said, "Good, he's an asshole, you're hired."
So folks, when you interview for a job, or for anything, do your research, learn everything you can about the people, places, and things you may encounter - and then relax, years from now you will only remember the good stuff.