She flagged me down from the side of the road.

It was early morning on a stretch of road that is rarely traveled on foot because there is no sidewalk. Sometimes people don’t have a choice. They walk because their car is in the shop or they simply can’t afford one. There are buses, but the schedules are intermittent.

I pulled over.

She was a teenager who appeared nervous as she looked through my open passenger side window. Before she could speak, an angry driver leaned on his horn and looked to be cursing as he swung his jeep around the fraction of my car that was still in the road.

I looked back at her and shrugged.

She thought that she was lost until I turned and pointed to the development that she was looking for. Sheepishly, she asked if she could make a call with my cell phone that I had placed on the seat.

“Sure.”

As she spoke with her cousin, a van pulled up alongside. The driver asked if we needed any help. I thanked him and said that she was just using my phone. He looked hard at me for a moment, then turned to her and waited for a confirming nod, before driving away.

She returned the phone, thanked me, and began to walk up the hill to meet her cousin who was now on the way.

As I continued my commute, I considered the stark difference between the two men with whom I had had those brief encounters.

The first seemed concerned only with getting to where he was going. The girl on the side of the road and I were nothing more than obstructions to him. He was inconvenienced – if one can classify the effort that it takes to make a quarter turn of the steering wheel an inconvenience – and he was upset about it.

The second driver witnessed an adult male and a young girl in an unusual place and decided to take a moment of his time to do something about it.

Maybe he was simply checking to see if we had car trouble.

Maybe he was suspicious of the scene.

The reason doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he stopped to assess the situation, and presumably, to help if he could.

As the father of daughters I am always worried about them. We cannot be with our children all of the time and we never know if or when they will find themselves in adverse situations.

Some people make an effort to help others.

Some people don’t.

To those that don’t I ask, “Do you know where your children are?”

Ever since Adam told Eve that he had mad skills as a snake charmer, men have been lying to women to get into their pants.

“Baby, I can rock your world.”

Earlier this week, I listened in horror to a Democracy Now podcast as the correspondent spoke of a trial that had just concluded in an Israeli court. A Palestinian man stood accused of lying to a woman.

The charge was rape by deception.

In 2008, a Palestinian man, Sabbar Kashur, met an Israeli woman and led her to believe that he was an Israeli bachelor. They had consensual relations that evening. Later, she learned that he had lied about both being single and being Israeli, so she filed a complaint.

Apparently, being coaxed into bed under false pretense is a very serious crime in Israel – especially if the accused is a Palestinian.

On Monday, he was sentenced to eighteen months in jail.

Those in agreement with the verdict don’t see Kashur’s offense as an indiscretion, rather they view his actions as an unambiguous example of a crime. One such person is Merav Mor, a director of resource development at the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. During an interview on Al Jezeera, she summed it up this way:

“If a woman or a man feels that they were given wrong information, they were raped.”

I don’t buy that.

She was pissed off. I get it. No one wants to be lied to. What I don’t get is how a good idea – protecting women from abuse – can be contorted into this assault on sensibility. Were this to become the prevailing sentiment here in the America, our jails would be “standing room only” with men and women who have embellished, red lined, or completely fabricated their social resumes.

It is possible that this charge and verdict were not based on the respective nationalities of the complainant and defendant, as alleged by Ms. Mor, yet the overly expansive definition of rape that was used in this case strains credulity.

Where does it end?

He claims to be an executive, but he’s really a file clerk.

String ‘em up, it’ll teach him a lesson.

She’s uses Botox or wears a girdle.

String her up, it’ll teach her a lesson.

He tells her that he is the “best”.

Well, we can’t string him up for making that claim because, if we did, men would soon be extinct.

I’m not making light of real abuse. Victims ought to be protected. But this verdict is a clear overreach in that Kashur is now a sex offender, and will forever be viewed no differently than a child molester in the eyes of the law.

That can’t be right.

Some may think me misogynistic for taking this view, but followed to its logical conclusion, rapping would be outlawed and little white lies would morph into felonies.

So Players, beware.

When you step up to the pretty woman sitting at the bar, you may be doing so at your own risk.

——————–

What do you think of this verdict?

Being outraged, it seems, is very fashionable.

The Twitterspere was all aghast because Sarah Palin used a word that isn’t really a word – “refudiate”. To witness the instantaneous and sustained outrage over this minor gaffe was amazing to me.

I know what drives this kind of piling on – her detractors simply do not like or respect her. I’m no fan of Mrs. Palin either, but I’d feel extremely petty if I raked her over the coals for this type of thing. There are other, more substantive, reasons for my non-support.

The Mel Gibson saga is another example of an unhinged crowd mentality revving folks up in order to crush a person. Mel Gibson messed up. There’s no doubt about this. But as I tweeted the other day:

How can this be legal? Oksana Grigorieva was not about to lose her cool when she knew that she was recording these exchanges. He, on the other hand, was venting – believing that she was the only one listening. Of course he’s going to come off looking like a boob. And maybe he is one, but that’s beside the point.

If you’re reading this and you can say that you have never lost your temper and said something stupid, please raise your hand.

If you raised your hand, I’m going to call you a liar.

People are getting away with bad behavior all over:

• A mistress stores text messages from a married lover and releases them when the tryst is uncovered;
• A woebegone actress is offered $500,000.00 to tell her pre and post jail stories after a 2nd DUI conviction;
• A whistleblower is sentenced to more time in prison than the wealthy tax evaders on whom he blew the whistle;
• A grass roots organization that has helped the poor for years is driven out of business by a doctored video.

These behaviors have led to a distinct list of winners and losers:

There’s plenty of bad behavior going on by almost everyone involved, the accusers as well as the accused, so why are some wrongdoers profitting while others are being bashed?

People are getting away with bad behavior all over…

… and it’s a crying shame.

My Mom was a yeller.

With the births of five sons preceding the delivery of the long hoped for daughter, she had a lot to yell about. It couldn’t have been easy raising five boys, although as a group we were relatively well behaved. But still, we were boys.

With no adult male role model in the home, we relied on Mom to teach us how to be men. It was a daunting task for her to be sure.

These were the days before a rap across the back of the legs with a belt or an ear pull were grounds for a visit from family services. As boys, we all pushed boundaries. Often the lines were boldly redrawn in very loud and unmistakable terms.

She was in charge.

Mom pushed us hard to do well in school because she knew that it was important. She also knew that there were other things that we had to learn. A childhood of living below the poverty line taught me lessons that could not be taught in a classroom setting. The streets of Bed Sty, the Lower East Side, and the South Bronx in the 60’s and 70’s were not places for the weak willed or the ignorant. If we weren’t careful, we knew that life could take a horrific turn in an instant. Tenement fires, idle youth in the streets, drugs, gangs, and crime were just some of the obstacles before us.

Mom stressed the importance of sticking together. She wanted to make sure that anyone who had a mind to mess with one of us was assured that they would have to beat down all five of her sons to get to the one. It worked in that this tact prevented more fights than it allowed.

We were lucky.

She’s mellowed some over the years, but she can still boom her voice over the noisiest clatter in a room to get our attention.

Mom succeeded in seeing us all safely into adulthood. This is a feat that required untold hours of work and a diversity of skills to accomplish, yet there’s really no place for this kind of achievement on a resume.

There’s something wrong with that.

Three days ago, I posted a video on YouTube about my experience with Pennsylvania American Water. At issue was a simple billing error that was exacerbated by the less than helpful response that I received when I placed a call to their customer service. I suppose that I should have been grateful that they answered the phone on a Saturday, but that was as good as it got on that day.

This is a story that just about everyone can tell because we’ve all experienced the frustration of feeling that our concerns were being dismissed. Customer service representatives often have scripts that they follow, which in theory, are supposed to quickly address the most common problems of callers.

But what happens when your problem causes the representative to diverge from the script?

Ah, there’s the rub.

I recorded this video after my problem had been resolved. It was just one of my regular vlog posts, with only 60 views as of this writing, but it seems to have reached the eyes of decision makers at the company.

Take a look.

This morning, I received an anonymous Email, ostensibly from a Pennsylvania American Water employee. Because it was sent to me and not simply commented on my video, I don’t feel comfortable quoting from the text, but I will say that it was a very nice Email that contained some very interesting information.

To the anonymous sender: I thank you for taking the time to send me that Email.

In summary, I was thanked for not lodging a complaint, and I was informed that upper management at the company had taken notice of my video. Also, employees are being coached on using common sense and logic when taking calls as a result. Finally, I was also assured that most employees at the company do actually care and want to help their customers to the best of their abilities.

You know what? I believe him or her.

Most people that I know do take their jobs seriously, and since we all have bad days, I know that people are not always at their best. I was frustrated with my situation at the time, but I didn’t want to cause a big stink or get anyone in trouble when I made this video. However, I am delighted that the video has apparently been well received and that the folks at Pennsylvania American Water are making an effort to improve their customer service, so that the next person in my situation can be spared some needless frustration.

Bravo.

——————–

Have you had a customer service experience that went from wrong to right?  Tell me about it in the comments.

——————–

Pick a day of the work week and someone will have something negative to say about it.

There are a lot of groans heard at job sites everywhere on Mondays, Hump Days gets us half way to the weekend, and Fridays seem to never end.

We often act as if the work week is something that is to be tolerated because the only worthwhile days of the week are Saturday and Sunday. Why do we do this to ourselves?

I’m not immune to lapsing into this type of thinking from time to time, but generally, I have a positive attitude about work and working. I’m fortunate to have an interesting job and I work with good people, so the experience, for me, is often engaging and stimulating.

There are many measures of success and the ways in which we can contribute to those measures are just as varied. Some measures are easy to recognize, while others are much less apparent.  Often, it is how we view our efforts in the workplace that can add texture to routine tasks and give us a sense of the positive effects that we can have on the broader enterprise.

Compiling data, modeling scenarios, management reporting, and interpreting results are all part of contributing to the making of business decisions. Having worked at many levels of accounting, from billing clerk through management during the last three decades, I’ve always found accounting to be interesting work.

Many businesses have seen declines in revenue during the current economic downturn. When these declines are coupled with rising expenses the job becomes more relevant. Accounting is usually considered to be an austere profession that is devoid of emotion, because the numbers tell us what we should do. But in reality, particularly for a small business, it’s difficult to maintain a detached view of the consequences of decisions because of the effects that those decisions have on people.

Even during good times, management decisions have consequences. The annual review of benefit packages, the construction of the appraisal process, the location of the business, the level of investment in technology, and many other decisions determine not only the profitability of the business but also the environment in which its employees spend a good portion of their lives.

When working for large corporations in similar circumstances, but at lower levels of accountability, the decompartmentalized structure of responsibilities made it seem much more like a numbers game. The ability to offer alternatives was limited and the response to those suggestions, when offered, was disappointing at best.

Long hours, constant churning of ideas – even during off hours – and the near maniacal focus on the well being of the business tends to be exhausting, but oddly the experience is also exhilarating.

Striving to find a way to “work it out” so that the business and the people who work there can both continue to thrive can be a bit daunting, but doing this type of work is also very satisfying when the result of one’s efforts can be measured both on and off of the Balance Sheet.

——————–

• How do you view your job?
• What are the aspects of your job that get you energized?
• How do you measure success?

——————–

On this summer Sunday morning, I’m surrounded by green as I sit in my favorite spot in the back yard. Having grown up in apartments in New York, I always resented when someone would suggest that I was missing something by living in the city, but I think that I know what they were talking about. I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily better, but there’s no denying that it is different.

The quiet, the low humidity and the glimpses of wildlife are aspects of living in the Poconos that provide me with a feeling of serenity – especially on a summer Sunday morning.

I spend so much time away from here during the week that it’s easy to forget that this place has become a haven from the often unkind world that we share. There are many problems out there and it’s comforting to have a place that feels distant and detached from the world’s problems, if only for moments at a time.

In addition to my own struggles, I find that the struggles of others fill my mind – especially when my mind is free to wander. Like many, I feel the pain of strangers and wish that I could do more to help. Sure, we can vote, volunteer, or simply commiserate with those who need to be heard, but it just doesn’t feel like these actions are enough.

I often feel powerless.

Is that how most of us live our lives: hoping for better times for our country, but feeling limited in our ability to bring those better times about? What goes through the minds of those who actually do possess the power to help people during their times of need?

Congress has this kind of power.

But what have they done with it? Do they do what is best for the people that they represent?

Most of us would say, no.

Today, I learned that Congress will not renew emergency healthcare for unemployed workers.

Emergency healthcare works like this: Businesses pay 65% of COBRA premiums for displaced workers, thereby making continued healthcare insurance coverage affordable for the newly unemployed. Businesses are then allowed to deduct these payments as credits against their payroll taxes.

• Businesses are not adversely impacted;
• Unemployed workers and their families remain covered;
• IT’S TEMPORARY!

This is a no-brainer, yet Congress has chosen to swell the ranks of the uninsured at the same time that many of them are taking bows for passing health care reform.

The incongruity of their actions defies comprehension.

The unemployed that we are talking about here had jobs. They are not among the perpetually unemployed. They, in all likelihood, will be employed again. So why force them to have a gap in coverage?

Congress has the power to help, but they won’t.

Now that Congress has decided that the emergency is over for unemployed Americans, I wonder what our representatives are thinking about on this summer Sunday morning.

It’s chart time again!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a chart should be worth at least fifty.

Woe is BP

We begin with the precipitous drop of BPs stock price. This is the graph that has recently been printed in newspapers and magazines, showing the 50% decline in BPs stock since the Deep Water Horizon explosion on April 20TH.

Pretty ugly, huh?

My first reaction was, “Wow, they’re toast!”

Let’s hold off on shedding any tears for this wounded oil giant and look at a longer view of the company’s stock price performance.

This seven-year view illustrates just how well the company’s stock has performed, even as most of the rest of the world’s economies have tanked in recent years. The gambler in me would say that they are now playing with house money.

This next chart isn’t based on any real data, but it should be okay because most of the information that BP has released hasn’t contained many facts either. The chart illustrates my impression of BPs ever-changing spill rate estimates. Have you noticed that the spill rate is never revised downward?

The Federal Government and Immigration

The myth of a limp Federal government response to immigration has been repeated often. The Arizona legislature used this misconception to legalize their policy of exclusion. This is a chart of the number of noncitizens who have been deported from the United States each year from 2004 through 2008.  During those five years, nearly one and a half million people were deported, or as The Department of Homeland Security now refers to the process, “removed”.

There are many issues to be worked out in our immigration policies, but to say that the Federal government is doing nothing is to misrepresent reality. It should be noted that at this pace, if the borders were to be impenetrably sealed tomorrow, it would take 20 years to process the removal of the estimated 30 million undocumented persons currently residing in the United States. Clearly, relying on deportation alone as an immigration policy is an impractical approach.

The Minimum Wage Kills Businesses

Each time raising the Federal minimum wage is discussed in Congress; the primary argument against it is that doing so kills businesses. I’ve always found this to be a specious argument because I’ve worked in many jobs where I’ve analyzed business expenses. Yes, payroll is often the largest operating expense of a business, however, at these wage levels, minor increases toward a living wage would not be as burdensome to businesses as some legislators would have us believe.

This is the slow and unsteady rise of the Federal minimum wage over the last fifty-five years, from 1955 to the present.

Could you shelter and feed your family on these wages?

It’s time to revisit this issue and find a way to increase the minimum wage to a more reasonable level – preferably a level at which Americans could eat.

Walmart can afford it.

——————–

Want more?

You may have missed my first chart post in March: Warning: Graphic Material

——————–

She turned you down, but you won’t take “No” for an answer.

You continue to woo her with compliments, flowers, and sweet talk. It’s just a matter of time before she warms up to you. You’re sure of it.

You encounter more rejection, but are undeterred as you drift into the stalking stage of the relationship – showing up at her job, sitting in you car outside of her apartment building, and trying to sneak a peek at her mail. She grows angry at the unwanted attention, but you figure that she’s just playing hard to get.

You are relentless.

Eventually, if the world is in balance, you’ll wonder what went wrong, as your court-appointed lawyer pleads your case.

Although woefully misused here, the ability to relentlessly pursue an objective is a highly prized quality in many other situations. The best entrepreneurs thrive because they are relentless. Their perseverance is admired and emulated by those who wish to achieve similar levels of success.

Lawman Joe Lefors, in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, was so relentless that he forced the outlaw pair to flee the Country and go to Bolivia, where they eventually met their end.

Butch: “Ah, you’re wasting your time. They can’t track us over rock.”

Sundance: “Tell them that.”

Butch: “They’re beginning to get on my nerves. Who are those guys?”

This is the kind of relentlessness that should have been used in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden once we learned that he was responsible for the attacks of 9/11.

Nearly nine years later, his freedom mocks us.

It is not too late for America to focus its considerable resources on finally bringing this evil man to justice.

A high level of relentlessness should also be brought to bear by those who are charged with investigating the causes of three major events that have happened since that terrible day: the financial crisis, the Gulf oil spill, and the war in Iraq. Each of these episodes has cost lives, bankrupted our treasury, and set America on a downward path.

• Wall Street relentlessly pursued profits via the marketing of their contrived, and perhaps immoral, financial instruments;
• The oil industry relentlessly pursued deeper and deeper drilling technologies while ignoring safety considerations;
• The Bush Administration relentless pursued an unnecessary war in Iraq and forever diminished the image of America as a just country.

The key players in all of these cases set their minds on specific goals and did not relent until their objectives had been achieved. In the aftermath of these disastrous events, investigators should be no less relentless in their pursuit of the truth.

The guilty should find no places to hide.

I was once slapped in the face by a Nun.

Well, to be truthful, the Nun didn’t actually use her own hand – she had a stand-in.

When I was in grade school, the idea of instilling discipline with a golden ruler had not yet been squeezed out of existence. It wasn’t like we had all day beat downs in the classrooms, or anything close to that, but a rap across the knuckles was still considered an effective way of getting a daydreaming student’s attention.

One afternoon, my Mom received a complaint from the school. Apparently, I had done something wrong. The complaint prompted my Mom to mete out some home schooling of her own – a slap across my face. An ear pull and a half a block later, I was back at school where I faced my accuser.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Colon, it wasn’t him, it was your other son.”

Lashing out in anger is something that happens all of the time. The problem with lashing out is that we often take aim at the wrong target.

Boycotting BP gas stations is like that.

Lashing out comes in many forms: we can get physical, we can yell, or we can vent by writing an angry letter. When the object of our anger is the government, we protest; and when a corporation crosses us, we boycott.

Oil pulled from wells is sold on a global market. When buying gasoline from BP, it’s not like the oil used to make it was just pumped from one of BP’s rigs. There may be some impact to BP’s bottom line, but not enough to change any behaviors. BP gas stations are usually privately owned small businesses, and it is those small businesses who will be most impacted by a boycott.

Not exactly what angered consumers have in mind, I know. It’s frustrating.

We are all agitated by the spill and fearful of the long-term impact it will have on our environment. We want to do something to punish those who arrogantly drilled in deep water without having an effective plan for dealing with a spewing well when something goes horribly wrong. Whatever the outcome of the coming years of investigation, it is clear that we are experiencing a prolonged period of cluelessness.

No one is suggesting that what they are trying to do a mile deep in the Gulf is easy, but the ineptness of their efforts to this point demonstrate an appalling lack of forethought in dealing with a totally predictable occurrence.

A more effective means of venting may be the pressure that we put on our elected officials to reassess the rules, to step up compliance of the safety regulations that already exist, and to make corporations accountable for their actions.

The current push to increase the maximum liability amount may satisfy our need for retribution, but it does nothing to address the real problem – oil spills.

Once the leak is finally capped and the clean-up that can be done is accomplished, we should come out of this prolonged period of cluelessness with more than just lawsuits, dashed dreams, and a wounded Gulf region.

The only acceptable outcome is one that ensures that the next time something goes wrong, someone will know what to do.

——————–

Are you boycotting BP?

Do you think that a boycott can be effective?

What else can consumers do to make a difference?

——————–