Time is of the Essence

One of the major differences I have noticed between my generation and the younger generation of the students that surround me not only at school but in jobs I’ve had in the past is a lack of respect for rules and/or authority. Accompanying this lack of respect is also a lack of personal accountability. There is a tendency among a portion of today’s youth to point fingers and deflect blame. It is similar to today’s athletes. They can’t wait to pound their chests and dance when they do the simplest of things but when they mess up, it’s because of a referee or a blown assignment by a teammate, etc..
I don’t need to continue to rehash my work experience but just to remind you, my previous college degree is in Marketing Management and my work experience lies primarily in various levels of retail, from a mere sales associate up to low level management. It is because of my experiences in retail that I have decided to drop everything and return to school. Because of the night and weekend hours, retail jobs are perfect for a college student needing extra cash flow and over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of them. Some of them have been hardworking and punctual. Most though, were lazy and unreliable.
I bring this topic up because my beloved Working Girls( http://www.work-girl.blogspot.com/ )had a post on their blog last week in which one of their bosses had decided to suddenly start enforcing attendance and punctuality policies and went about it by standing at the elevator with a stopwatch greeting employees. Although I applaud the decision to enforce punctuality, after all, if they can’t trust you to do something as simple as look at a clock and be on time, how can they trust you with difficult tasks, their methods leave a lot to be desired. You can’t be lax on policy day after day, week after week and month after month then suddenly crack the whip overnight. Especially by doing something as childish as waiting by the door with a watch.
Some of the responses that Working Girl received were shocking to me, especially considering that they were coming from adults in the professional world. A few people stated that, as long as you are doing your job, no one should care if you arrive late or leave early. To those people I offer this response, getting to work on time and completing your work day IS part of your job. If you are not doing so, guess what? You are not doing your job. Another responder asked why they should have to be on their boss’ schedule. Why? Because they are THE BOSS! That’s why. You do what they say, not the other way around.
There just seems to be this sense of entitlement with today’s youth. The same people that can’t be on time, leave early or call in sick are the same ones who threaten to quit when they are reviewed and don’t get a raise. I used to work with a kid working his way through college who would do a very minimal amount of work and when he was prodded to do more he would say something to the effect that he only got paid $8 per hour so he only did what he felt was $8 worth of work per hour. If the company wanted more work out of him, they should give him a raise. That was the mentality that many of his peers shared. They were waiting for the company to give them raises rather than earning them. I’m sure you are familiar with the saying, dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Well, that could easily be changed to, work for the wage you want, not the wage you have.
To that same effect, many of the working students that could never be on time or called in sick for every home football game or college night at the club were the same ones asking for more hours during school breaks. It just made me shake my head. A few more of my personal favorites were the people who were already late that would enter the building with breakfast, lunch or dinner, clock in and then proceed to the break room and eat while on the clock. I’m also rather fond of the women who arrive at work late and get to their desks and begin putting on their makeup. Makeup is as much a part of getting dressed as putting on socks and shoes: it should be done at home, on your time, not on our dime.
The biggest frustration was that, for many of these companies, the cost of hiring and training employees is too high to justify the termination of slackers like this. As easy as it is to find another student willing to work for low wages, consistently turning them over and training a new crop isn't cost effective so the companies put up with it and delegate the work to other, more reliable workers which, in a sense, punishes those people for being good workers. That is what drove me way. From the perspective of a sales associate, it was frustrating to have to pick up the slack of these people. I came to work on time and did my job well, why should I have had to do their jobs too? From the view of a manager it was an ongoing battle to try and have a reliable staff yet have to fight tooth and nail with Human Resources to terminate worthless individuals. Surely the negative impact they have on productivity offsets the cost of training replacements.
I don’t know where the blame lies. Whether it’s a parenting thing or because of the fact that everything is an excuse nowadays. There is a disorder and subsequent narcotic for every damn thing in the world today. If a kid daydreams he’s ADD and if he fidgets while he daydreams he’s ADHD and written a scrip for mind numbing drugs and given a free pass the rest of his life. In my day the kid was just a daydreamer who drank too much Kool-Aid and needed to come down from his sugar high.
What scares me the most about this trend is that I always thought that kids grew out of it once they entered the professional world. College kids are supposed to be flaky and uninterested, it’s part of the whole experience. But when I saw the responses over at Working Girl I realized that it may not just be a college thing, its quite possibly an epidemic.

TMI

How much personal information do you share with friends, family or simple acquaintances? I ask because things are often quiet around the house because Tina and I are fairly conscious about information that we share. We have to be. Nothing is sacred to my stepfather and sometimes I suspect that my mother has a hard time keeping things to herself as well.
It is very upsetting to Tina and I to share personal experiences with my parents, whether it be our financial worries, illnesses or issues in the workplace, only to be questioned about it by other, more removed family members or even the neighbors, who we don’t know. It has happened before and would continue to happen if she and I hadn’t just decided to clam up and stop sharing. That makes things awkward around the house though because we just don’t do small talk.
Luckily for my parents, they have my sister, the Queen of the drama queens. She doesn’t mind sharing her and her husband’s personal matters either. As a matter of fact, I think she discusses their personal issues with my parents more than she discusses them with John, her husband. It is great that she has an outlet for her frustrations but I think the reason that she continues to have the same problems is because she discusses them with everyone but the person she needs to.
If it isn’t bad enough that she shares her marital affairs with other people, once my stepfather gets off the phone with my sister, he can’t wait to share whatever she has told him with anyone who will listen. The moment he hangs up the phone with her he either starts telling us about it or picks up the phone and starts calling other family members. Telling family may not be that bad but he doesn’t stop there. I’ve heard him telling the neighbors and just last week he was on the phone with a doctor’s office trying to schedule an appointment for a colonoscopy (I’ll get to that in a minute) and he was telling the receptionist about it. I can’t explain why he does it but it would piss me off to no end if I found out that he was spreading personal information that Tina and I had given him around like that.
We are just naturally suspicious people though. Tina thinks that the people who put those little sports stickers with their kid’s name and number are stupid. There are too many perverts out there to just advertise your kid’s names like that. We shred any and all mail with our names on it whereas my parents just throw it away without even so much a tearing it up.
Now on to the colonoscopy. Right up there on my list of things not to base a conversation on, along with personal information and small talk, is bodily functions. I don’t want to hear about bowel movements and menstrual flow. Keep it to yourself. It might be natural but that doesn’t make it any less gross or inappropriate.
Thursday was the day of the big event so my step dad had to spend Wednesday drinking all kinds of stuff to “clean him out.” I got to hear all about it, too. As I was making my gourmet lunch, a grilled cheese sandwich, he started telling me what the medication was for, as if the boldly printed Bowel Preparation Kit on the box wasn’t descriptive enough. A little while later, after I had retired to my room to escape his “noises” and read, he came to my door to tell me that he thought the medication was starting to work and if I needed him he would be on the pot.
That afternoon, when my mother got home from work, she asked me how many times he had moved his bowels that day. At that point I had had enough and told her that his movements were personal and not appropriate conversational pieces. That was when he yelled, from the comfort of the toilet, for her to come and say hi to him. To which she responded by walking towards the bathroom asking him how much he had shit so far that day. What is wrong with people?
There is a such thing as Too Much Information, you know.

Who's Ahead in the Race?

As much as I hate the idea of politicizing my blog, I do want my blog to be relevant and to have more readers. In order to do that, it is necessary for me do discuss issues that are current and topical and what is more topical right now than politics? I’ve already discussed where I stand on the issues, mostly in the center to be honest, so I won’t rehash that. What I will do though is walk right up to the biggest white elephant in the room, the one that some are talking about but few with any level of controversial honesty, and punch it square in the face. Obviously I am talking about race. Good old black versus white, good versus evil, Apollo Creed versus Rocky Balboa, Rocky Marciano versus Joe Louis, Tiger Woods versus Fuzzy Zoeller, Obama versus McCain.
Anyone out there saying that race isn’t playing much of a factor in this year’s election is a fool. As sad as it is, there will be white voters who haven’t been to the polls in decades crawling out from under their rocks nationwide to vote this year. Will they be voting in favor of McCain’s healthcare package or Obama’s promise to improve America’s educational system? No! They will be voting because they don’t want a black man in the White House. If you went up to any of them and ask them to discuss the issues they wouldn’t have a clue, which is sad. Unfortunately you wouldn’t be able to identify them because they would never have the courage to say aloud that they are voting strictly on race.
Although they will be outnumbered at the polls by the white racist voters, only because they are in the minority of the population, there are going to be record setting numbers of black voters at the polls this year, too. Just like their white counterparts, they will be voting solely based on skin color. Only they will be voting for Obama.
The funny thing about the white voters not voting for the black guy is that most of those people will come from the lower middle class and below, the classes most likely to be helped by Barack Obama. Voting for Obama would be more beneficial to them but who cares about small things like public programs or economic and foreign policy? But would voting for Obama make more sense for them? The middle and lower class are the ones at risk of losing jobs to the immigrants that the Democratic Party will continue to allow into the country. Once again, who cares about issues, right? As long as we keep the black guy, or the white guy, depending on which side you’re on, out of the White House.
What is at risk for the country is increased and widespread racial tension. Right now the polls have Barack Obama way ahead. But what if those polls are influenced by white guilt? How many white people are telling pollsters that they are voting for Obama because they fear being labeled a racist? Seems silly but tell me that, if you are a white reader, you haven’t been guilty of seeing a black person on TV saying that they are voting for Obama and thinking that they’re only voting for him because he is black. I’ll admit it, I’m guilty. It’s the nature of the beast. Because of that I would be hesitant to tell someone that I intend to vote for John McCain (I still haven’t made up my mind, btw).
Imagine CNN declaring McCain the winner after polls had Obama ahead by more than 10 points. Chaos would ensue. The reaction within parts of the white community would be similar. Just yesterday the ATF arrested two skinheads who were plotting to shoot up a black school and then target Barack Obama if he were elected. These criminal masterminds were going to drive towards Obama shooting at him out the window. Good luck with that plan, jackasses. But if any of these mentally challenged white supremacy groups, ones that are a bit more organized, were successful in assassinating Obama? Yes, chaos. If the GOP is holding some ace up their sleeve and reveals, post Obama election, that they have proof that he is not an American citizen and move to impeach, you guessed it, chaos. I think that whole citizenship issue is just the GOP grasping at straws in order to save a very poorly run campaign.
Personally, I hope that the majority of the voters this year are making an informed decision based on careful research and a close examination of the candidates’ respective platforms. Regardless of who wins or loses there is going to be a lot of unhappy people on November 5th. Let’s just help that cooler heads prevail and we move forward as a nation united, not divided.

Where's My New House?

I was watching Extreme Home Makeover last night like I normally do on Sunday evening. My wife, being an interior designer, loves to see what they do to the homes. We’ve even gotten my mother into watching it, much to my stepfather’s dismay. Once you get past the cheesiness of Ty Pennington and his crew, the show isn’t half bad. I am quite sure that none of them spend as much time on the construction site as the network would like us to believe though. Most likely scenario is that they shoot their little construction scenes and then go hang out in the air conditioned trailers while the grunts do the actual work.
Some of the rooms they do for the kids on the show are really cool even if they are a bit non-functional. Last night they built a kid a room that looked like the deck of a pirate ship. Pretty cool but if the kid is anything like I was as a kid he’ll grow out of his pirate phase in a few months and be stuck with a room that everyone but him thinks is cool. But hey, at least he’ll have a new flat screen TV to watch in his pirate room. Every room they make gets a new flat screen.
The stories are always touching, too. Last night the focus was on a little boy named Job who had leukemia as a child which led to numerous other health issues. Because of the focus on the child, the family home became a bit run down and dilapidated and was deemed uninhabitable. The house was overrun with mold, making it impossible for Job to stay there due to the double lung transplant he had received. The community stepped up and were paying for the family to live in a rental property.
Speaking of the community, the EHM crew went to the local hospital where Job went through his treatments and surgeries. They shot a little video in which the other children with other vicious medical afflictions said a little bit. They even had Job’s older sister’s favorite Christian singer sing a song live from the hospital All of this was shown via webcam to the family who had been sent away on vacation while the work on their house was completed.
This is about the point where the heartless republican in me came to life. As I was watching all the other kids with life-threatening illnesses tell their stories and reminisce about Job’s time in the hospital with them, I couldn’t help wonder how they felt about all of this. How do you tell a kid going through a horrible illness that another kid with a horrible illness is more deserving of the world’s philanthropy? All I could think of while watching it was the kids asking their parents if they were getting a new house, too. Can the parents explain it to the kid? Honestly, why should they even have to?
Maybe ABC should rethink the idea of announcing their plans to the world, especially when it comes to children with life threatening diseases. When they build a house that is in many ways exclusive to a child who is by all means special but in no way alone in his plight, they are sending a message of hope to children who may not have any. It is heartbreaking to think of kids who have yet to experience life but are already dealing with their own mortality. Job’s story was touching but I would be willing to bet that each and every one of the other kids in that hospital or in hospitals around the country have touching stories too.
I think it is commendable when ABC builds a new community center for a family that takes in foster children or kids who have been victims of various kinds of abuse. Those kind of things help many more people while excluding fewer. What ABC should try to avoid doing though is sending the message that one child’s life is more important than another’s, which is what I think they have done on more than one occasion. As much as I hate to say it, if you can’t help everybody, you shouldn’t help anybody.

Ode to the Candidates

In honor of the fact that I hate election time more and more each passing day, much like the growing animosity I have for poets who just can’t spit out their feelings in comprehendible prose, I have combined the two things over which I am losing both hair and sleep into one blog entry.
For those of you who have absolutely zero reading comprehension and find my poem as difficult as I find Edmund Spenser and Ezra Pound to understand, allow me to summarize: I hate politics and politicians. None of them are trustworthy, no matter what they say. I get tired of the fact that, every four years, none of the candidates can tell you what they are going to do. They only seem to be able to tell you what their opponent can’t do.
Senator McCain, I want to hear your stance on stem cell research, not that Barack Obama once got a speeding ticket or pooped in his diaper when he was six months old. Senator Obama, can you tell me your plan for the economy or are you only going to tell me that Senator McCain is old and that he pooped in his diaper last week?
Address the issues people. For Christ’s sake, address the issues.
Enjoy this poem, it is meant to make you both think and laugh, not get angry.

Ode to the Candidates

Age or experience to me matter not:
Tis the issues that shall earn my vote.
Adultery, race, disability or awards begot;
None of these of which do I take note.

Doest thou believe in a woman’s right to choose?
For I believe the choice is hers to make,
If against her will her dignity she did lose,
Or due to health she thinks for the child’s sake.

Speaking of health, how do you so lean?
Should the government pay at the risk of taxes high?
Or should I lose the benefits of which my boss had to seen,
And sickly, poor and uninsured shall I die?

Evenly will you charge society a tax?
And a flat rate choose to let Congress pass.
Or on the rich or poor will you be lax?
Until there no longer is a middle class.

My love, my life and property will you let me defend?
By maintaining my right to own a gun
Or is my right to bear arms nearing its end?
At which point it is the criminals who have won.

About the economy, how do you plan to proceed?
Please don’t roll the dice and hope for mere blind luck.
For even I know a solid plan is what we need,
Or the repo man might come and take my truck.

The borders? Do you plan to leave them open?
Letting any and all continue to arrive.
Allowing cheap laborers to continuously come in,
And take the jobs for which born Americans may strive.

Terrorists! Terrorists! Terrorists!
Please tell me you have a strategy to eradicate
Those who cheer our demise with tight clenched fists
And kill our innocents out of misguided religious hate.

The War! The War! The War!
Will it end or will it drag on?
It’s time to bring the troops home from afar,
And allow a mother to lay her eyes on an unfamiliar son.

Hussein! Hussein! Hussein!
A moniker that reminds the world of evil
But is a man made a person by his name?
Is every man a pervert that shares the name Bill?

Abuse! Abuse! Abuse!
That is what Sarah Palin did with her elected power.
I hope to be as much or even more so amused
When you break your neck falling off that ivory tower.

When you enter the booth choose carefully who you elect
Vote based on the facts and not on television smears
The wrong vote and this country could end up wrecked
And there is nothing we can do about it for another four long years.

Stop the Insanity!

I stopped making sports posts for two reasons. One of them being because I don’t really want to limit this blog to stuff that is only relevant to people at FIU. I would prefer to have a broader reader base than that. Mainly I stopped posting about sports though because, like most sports fans, I am superstitious. About the same time I stopped posting sports related blog entries, the football team started winning. They got their same victory about the same time that the men’s soccer team got theirs and the volleyball team got their first conference win. Since that post the volleyball team continues to roll and both the soccer squads have notched a few victories. The football team went to Denton, Texas and put a whooping on UNT.
So I stopped posting about sports, not out of laziness or a lack of desire to post about sports, believe me. Besides the wins we’ve gotten, some of the stuff I’ve been reading on college football message boards has had me chomping at the bit to post. Let me get the basics out of the way first.
Is there anyone still questioning Paul McCall as the starting QB for this team? Paul has looked great now the he is getting more time to set up and check down to his second and third pass options. I would like to see fewer dropped passes from the receivers though.
Next, how fast is T.Y. Hilton? Damn! That guy can fly. I don’t know that “Goodbye” is an adequate nickname for him. Perhaps it should just be T.Y. “Damn that guy is fast” Hilton. He’s got good hands too. Normally it’s the sure handed receivers are the slow ones and the burners are the guys who couldn’t catch a cold.
Finally, the biggest difference I see between this team and the team that lost its first two games is confidence. This team knows that it has talent and can win games. Even when they went down 13-0 in the first quarter to Troy, they didn’t quit. Winning can do that to you. This team may only lose one more game the rest of this season.
Now that I’ve gotten that out, let me address you insane people. Once the Panthers won a couple of games I started reading message board posts with people talking about a conference championship and subsequent bowl game. Hold on a moment people. We beat three bad teams. Yes, I know that we beat Toledo and then Toledo beat Michigan but guess what? Michigan isn’t a good team either. Rich Rodriguez is installing an offensive system without the proper tools right now. UNT is in the same position FIU has been in for the past two seasons, only they aren’t in a talent hotbed like Miami and they don’t have a recruiter like MC there either. MTSU is the best of the three teams that we beat but they have personnel issues right now.
It is great to be winning and hopefully the stands will begin to fill a bit more with each win but don’t make those New Orleans reservations just yet. We still have two of the better teams in the conference remaining in Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette, not to mention FAU, who I still think is better than their 2-5 record indicates. Two losses in any of those three games leaves us at 6-6, providing we win the games we should win against Louisiana-Monroe and Western Kentucky. We don’t want to overlook those teams the way that Toledo obviously overlooked us.
If we win two of those three games and end up at 7-5, a bowl game is still a long shot. Yes, the Sun Belt conference does have more bowl tie-ins than just the New Orleans bowl but those aren’t guaranteed. The other bowls have other teams to choose from before falling back to the Sun Belt teams and FIU and its young tradition and poor attendance record isn’t likely to wow any bowl selection committees. Even if we win out, we need Troy to lose two conference games now that they have beaten us and that isn’t likely to happen. Winning out would put us at 8-4 though, making passing on FIU a difficult proposition for any lower tiered bowl game. I just don’t think that will happen. I think FIU wins three of its last five games, finishing 6-6 and staying home for the holidays. Considering that most in the sports media had FIU as the worst team in the country this year, a 6-6 season should be more than enough for its fans. Even I only had them 4-8.
Now before any of you FIU fans start bashing me or saying that I’m not a true fan, let me say that I will gladly print out these pages and eat my words if FIU ends up winning the conference or playing in a bowl game.

Equality or Hypocrisy?

There will never be equality in this country. Never. Yes, I said it. Most people that clamor for equality don’t even know what it means, in my opinion. We are weeks away from likely having our first black American president. That won’t change things though, even if that is his campaign motto. There are too many small groups in American society that feel slighted each time something doesn’t go their way and scream out loud to anyone who will listen.
Have you read about the proposed high school for gay and lesbian students in Chicago? Gay and lesbian students claim that they are the victims of harassment and violence—which I do not doubt-- and want to go to school in an environment free of such things. I agree that people should have the right an educational experience free of fear for one’s own safety but the bullies are the ones that need to go. They should be subject to disciplinary action up to and including expulsion but using taxpayer monies to build a lifestyle exclusive school is going too far.
Could you imagine the uproar if a parental group suggested an all straight school so their children were not subjected to alternative lifestyles? The gay and lesbian community would go apesh*t! But wouldn’t that, by definition, be equality? Aren’t gays and lesbians one of the many groups that cry for equal rights? The right to marry, adopt, share health benefits, etc. Now, don’t think I am arguing against any of those things. If you read my post last week you know that I am all for those things. Well, not all for, but opposed to their rights as Americans being infringed upon for just not being a member of the majority. That being said, you can’t ask for equality and then expect to be granted exclusivity. Pick up a dictionary my friends. You’re not asking for equality, just hypocrisy.
I figure that this topic is as good as any to bring back the weekly poll. Vote away!