Employees Like Family Quotes

...my father, [was] a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room ... I'm sure he told himself: 'I never hit her'. I'm sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun.

I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now.' These messages and orders brought to you by my father, a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee.

Does it occur to you that if he set his mind to it, Steve could be a truly excellent supervillain?” Clint said into the comm unit, not bothering with any sort of segue. He knew very well who it was. “We have a contingency plan in place for that,” Coulson said without missing a beat. In the background, Steve said, “Wait, what?” “Oh, c'mon.” Stark sounded seriously insulted. “If anyone here is going to go the black leather and weather control ray route, it's gonna be me, let's not even kid ourselves.” “Every active SHIELD employee has a wallet card instructing them what to do in the event you go supervillain, Stark. It's standard equipment.” A beat of silence. “What?” Tony asked. “I got one,” Bruce said. “Want to see it?” “If you show it to him, it'll defeat the purpose of having a plan,” Natasha said. “And I like this plan, it's a good plan, I do not want to go through them trying to come up with something else.” “Yes, I want to see it,” Tony said. “Thor, did you get a card?” “Verily. Their plan is most sound. I believe we will be able to subdue you with great swiftness, before you have much chance to hurt yourself or others. The damage to property will, of course, be massive, but such things are to be expected.” “What the hell? You will not be able to subdue me quickly. Screw you, I am wily and brilliant.” “I didn't get one,” Steve said, and there was a loud sound of no one being surprised. “It's not a good idea to warn the bait that-” Clint started...

In a patriarchal society, one of the most important functions of the institution of the family is to make feel like a somebody whenever he is in his own yard a man who is a nobody whenever he is in his employer’s yard.

All he wanted was to quietly close this case: It’ll ruin this company’s reputation if word gets around in the field. The accused male employees have families and parents to protect, too. Do you really want to destroy people’s lives like this? Do you want people to find out that your pictures are out there? These obviously self-serving words of absurdity flew out of the mouth of the director, who was considered to be progressive and sensible compared to his peers.

I've never understood America,"said the king. "Neither do we, sir. You might say we have two governments, kind of overlapping. First we have the elected government. It's Democratic or Republican, doesn't make much difference, and then there's corporation government." "They get along together, these governments?" "Sometimes," said Tod. "I don't understand it myself. You see, the elected government pretends to be democratic, and actually it is autocratic. The corporation governments pretend to be autocratic and they're all the time accusing the others of socialism. They hate socialism." "So I have heard," said Pippin. "Well, here's the funny thing, sir. You take a big corporation in America, say like General Motors or Du Pont or U.S. Steel. The thing they're most afraid of is socialism, and at the same time they themselves are socialist states." The king sat bolt upright. "Please?" he said. "Well, just look at it, sir. They've got medical care for employees and their families and accident insurance and retirement pensions, paid vacations -- even vacation places -- and they're beginning to get guaranteed pay over the year. The employees have representation in pretty nearly everything, even the color they paint the factories. As a matter of fact, they've got socialism that makes the USSR look silly. Our corporations make the U.S. Government seem like an absolute monarchy. Why, if the U.S. government tried to do one-tenth of what General Motors does, General Motors would go into armed revolt. It's what you might call a paradox sir.

Those on the far right I came to know felt two things. First, they felt the deep story was true. Second, they felt that liberals were saying it was not true, and that they themselves were not feeling the right feelings. Blacks and women who were beneficiaries of affirmative action, immigrants, refugees, and public employees were not really stealing their place in line, liberals said. So don't feel resentful. Obama's help to these groups was not really a betrayal, liberals said. The success of those who cut ahead was not really at the expense of white men and their wives. In other words, the far right felt that the deep story was their real story and that there was a false PC cover-up of that story. They felt scorned. "People think we're not good people if we don't fee sorry for blacks and immigrants and Syrian refugees," one man told me. "But I am a good person and I don't feel sorry for them." With the cover-up, as my new friends explained to me, came the need to manage the appearance of their real feelings and even, to some extent, the feelings themselves. They didn't have to do this with friends, neighbors, and family. But they realized that the rest of America did not agree. ("I know liberals want us to feel sorry for blacks. I know they think they are so idealistic and we aren't," one woman told me.) My friends on the right felt obliged to try to modify their feelings, and they didn't like having to do that; they felt under the watchful eye of the "PC police." In the realm of emotions, the right felt like they were being treated as the criminals, and the liberals had the guns.

To be yourself is in many ways, is to be inconvenient to others. Only placaters and appeasers get along with other people all the time and that's not really getting along with anyone. That's just self erasure. To be alive, to be in a relationship is to constantly court inconvenience to others and out of that inconvenience can come enormous growth. I simply work as an imperasist. Empiricism comes first. So, I speak things that are inconvenient to others but, true for me. I observe their response. It's incredibly easy to find out the truth in your relationships. All you do is speak the truth. You speak the truth about what's on your mind to those around you and their true natures will be revealed in about 5 seconds. You have honesty in your relationships. You speak the truth about your experience, thought's, and feelings in your relationships and then you do not control how other people respond. Your as honest as can be and you simply observe how they respond. It's like that spray you use to see the lasers in the room. Honesty reveals everything. OK So, if these people constantly sacrifice my happiness, security, and mental health for the sake of their petty emotional selfish needs then I could choose to stay in those relationships if I want. I mean, I could choose to continue to hire an employee who steals from me everyday. I just have to be aware that he's stealing from me everyday.

The sex-based segregation of labour is the key, to maintaining not only the family, but also the economy, because the economy would collapse like a house of cards if this unpaid domestic labour had to be paid for by somebody, either by the husband or the employer. Consider this: the employer pays the employee for his or her labour in the workplace. But the fact that he or she can come back to the workplace, the next day, depends on somebody else (or herself) doing a whole lot of work the employer does not pay for—cooking, cleaning, running the home. When you have an entire structure of unpaid labour buttressing the economy, then the sexual division of labour cannot be considered to be domestic and private; it is what keeps the economy going. If tomorrow, every woman demanded to be paid for this work that she does, either the husband would have to pay her, or the employer would have to pay the husband. The economy would fall apart. This entire system functions on the assumption that women do housework for love. *

Campbell’s slideshow lists grim domestic violence statistic after statistic: second leading cause of death for African American women, third leading cause of death for native women, seventh leading cause of death for Caucasian women. Campbell says twelve hundred abused women are killed every year in the United States.1 That figure does not count children. And it does not count the abusers who kill themselves after killing their partners, murder-suicides we see daily in the newspaper. And it does not count same-sex relationships where one or the other partner might not be “out.” And it does not count other family members, like sisters, aunts, grandmothers, who are often killed alongside the primary victim. And it does not count innocent bystanders: the twenty-six churchgoers in Texas, say, after a son-in-law has gone to a service to target his mother-in-law, or the two spa employees in Wisconsin killed alongside their client by her ex. The list is endless. And it does not count the jurisdictions who do not report their homicides, since homicide reporting is voluntary through the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reporting Data. So how many people are killed as a result of domestic violence each year? The bystanders, the other family members, the perpetrators’ suicides? The victims who just can’t take it anymore and kill themselves? The accidents that turn out not to be accidents at all, victims pushed out of cars and from cliffs or driven into trees. Tragedies forever uncategorized.

The next biggest reason folks buy fiction is that it has been personally recommended to them by a friend, family member or bookstore employee. That process is called word of mouth. Savvy publishers understand its power and try to facilitate its effect with advance reading copies (ARCs), samplers, first chapters circulated by e-mail, Web sites and the like.

I guess I'm a "single aristocrat" (dokushin kizoku). This is a category of people in their thirties who have a decent income, but are not obligated to spend it all on family. Usually a man in his thirties or forties would have a family, house, and loan. But we single aristocrats don't. So we spend all our money on hobbies. If I get married, I can't continue this life, unless my future wife is an otaku girl. If she's an otaku and a working woman, we can share space and save money, and thus have more money to spend on hobbies. I have no admiration for the regular "salary-man" (white collar corporate employee) life. I don't want to fully support a woman financially. I like independent women. I'm going to continue my hobby-centered lifestyle no matter what. --Yanai Jun

The Atonist nobility knew it was impossible to organize and control a worldwide empire from Britain. The British Isles were geographically too far West for effective management. In order to be closer to the “markets,” the Atonist corporate executives coveted Rome. Additionally, by way of their armed Templar branch and incessant murderous “Crusades,” they succeeded making inroads further east. Their double-headed eagle of control reigned over Eastern and Western hemispheres. The seats of Druidic learning once existed in the majority of lands, and so the Atonist or Christian system spread out in similar fashion. Its agents were sent from Britain and Rome to many a region and for many a dark purpose. To this very day, the nobility of Europe and the east are controlled from London and Rome. Nothing has changed when it comes to the dominion of Aton. As Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe have proven, the Culdean monks, of whom we write, had been hired for generations as tutors to elite families throughout Europe. In their book The Knights Templar Revealed, the authors highlight the role played by Culdean adepts tutoring the super-wealthy and influential Catholic dynasties of Burgundy, Champagne and Lorraine, France. Research into the Templars and their affiliated “Salt Line” dynasties reveals that the seven great Crusades were not instigated and participated in for the reasons mentioned in most official history books. As we show here, the Templars were the military wing of British and European Atonists. It was their job to conquer lands, slaughter rivals and rebuild the so-called “Temple of Solomon” or, more correctly, Akhenaton’s New World Order. After its creation, the story of Jesus was transplanted from Britain, where it was invented, to Galilee and Judea. This was done so Christianity would not appear to be conspicuously Druidic in complexion. To conceive Christianity in Britain was one thing; to birth it there was another. The Atonists knew their warped religion was based on ancient Amenism and Druidism. They knew their Jesus, Iesus or Yeshua, was based on Druidic Iesa or Iusa, and that a good many educated people throughout the world knew it also. Their difficulty concerned how to come up with a believable king of light sufficiently appealing to the world’s many pagan nations. Their employees, such as St. Paul (Josephus Piso), were allowed to plunder the archive of the pagans. They were instructed to draw from the canon of stellar gnosis and ancient solar theologies of Egypt, Chaldea and Ireland. The archetypal elements would, like ingredients, simply be tossed about and rearranged and, most importantly, the territory of the new godman would be resituated to suit the meta plan.

Let me repeat once more that great quote by Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.” So before you start your business, or before you return to it tomorrow, ask yourself the following questions: • What do I wish my life to look like? • How do I wish my life to be on a day-to-day basis? • What would I like to be able to say I truly know in my life, about my life? • How would I like to be with other people in my life—my family, my friends, my business associates, my customers, my employees, my community? • How would I like people to think about me? • What would I like to be doing two years from now? Ten years from now? Twenty years from now? When my life comes to a close? • What specifically would I like to learn during my life—spiritually, physically, financially, technically, intellectually? About relationships? • How much money will I need to do the things I wish to do? By when will I need it? These are just a few of the questions you might ask yourself in the creation of your Primary Aim.

Here’s a theory: Maybe I had not really been broken this whole time. Maybe I had been a human—flawed and still growing but full of light nonetheless. All this time, I had received plenty of love, but I’d given it, too. Unbeknownst to me, I had been scattering goodness all around like fun-sized chocolates accidentally falling out of my purse as I moved through the world. Perhaps the only real thing that was broken was the image I had of myself—punishing and unfair, narrow and hypercritical. Perhaps what was really happening was that, along with all my flaws, I was a fucking wonder. And I continue to be a fucking wonder. A fun, dependable friend who will always call you back, cook for you, and fiercely defend your honor. A devoted sister and daughter who prioritises and appreciates family in ways less-traumatised people can never quite understand. A hardworking, capable employee who brings levity and mischievousness to the offices I inhabit. I am a person who is generous with her love, who is present in texts and calls and affirmations, because I know so intimately how powerful that love can be.

QUOTES AND THOUGHTS FROM SEEMA & FRIENDS _________________________________________________ On work and career (some paraphrasing involved): _________________________________________________ “Bosses are always jerks. It’s a job requirement.” ———- “Don’t do dumb shit.” ———- Never ever lose sight of priorities. Food always comes first. ———- An itch started in her chest. Go away, she crossly ordered her conscience. It had a habit of popping its head out at the most inconvenient times. The itch became a tickle rising to her nose. Nope, not her conscience. She was going to sneeze. ———- It’s your God-given right as an employee to whine about bosses. _______________________________________________ On romance and families (some paraphrasing involved): _______________________________________________ “Smell is very important,” Gayathri agreed, tone grave. “One of the first things I notice about a man.” ———- “Men—no matter how awful they look—always believe they deserve the hottest girl on the planet.” “What are the rest of us supposed to do?” asked Seema, glumly. Gayathri shrugged. “Act like we are the hottest girl on the planet. Confidence goes a long way.” ———- Seema had never been able to tell where friendly conversation ended and the banter of romance started. Did the delight in his gaze when it landed on her mean something more than casual amiability? What about his hand cupping her cheek to check for fever? The arm he’d wrapped around her shoulders? Was she gonna have to wait until he initiated a lip lock to be certain? Could she plant one on him? What if he ran, screaming in horror? ———- “You just have to look the other way on some things,” Gayathri advised. “Pretence is the glue which holds families together.” ———-

Setting boundaries and holding people accountable is a lot more work than shaming and blaming. But it’s also much more effective. Shaming and blaming without accountability is toxic to couples, families, organizations, and communities. First, when we shame and blame, it moves the focus from the original behavior in question to our own behavior. By the time this boss is finished shaming and humiliating his employees in front of their colleagues, the only behavior in question is his. Additionally, if we don’t follow through with appropriate consequences, people learn to dismiss our requests—even if they sound like threats or ultimatums. If we ask our kids to keep their clothes off the floor and they know that the only consequence of not doing it is a few minutes of yelling, it’s fair for them to believe that it’s really not that important to us. It’s hard for us to understand that we can be compassionate and accepting while we hold people accountable for their behaviors. We can, and, in fact, it’s the best way to do it. We can confront someone about their behavior, or fire someone, or fail a student, or discipline a child without berating them or putting them down. The key is to separate people from their behaviors—to address what they’re doing, not who they are.

The unexotic underclass are the poor in Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, who just don’t look foreign enough for our taste. Anyone who’s lived in a major European city can attest to the ubiquity of desperate Roma families, arriving from Bulgaria and Romania, panhandling in the streets and on the subways. This past April, the employees of the Louvre Museum in Paris went on strike because they were tired of being pickpocketed by hungry Roma children. But if you were to go to Bulgaria to volunteer or to start a social enterprise, how would the folks back on Facebook know you were helping ‘the poor?’ if the poor in your pictures kind of looked like you?

Which brings me to one more thing about the Sheridan FCI [prison]. After you make it through the metal detector, you re stamped on the flesh above your right thumb with ink visible only in the black light of the prison checkpoints. Then you wait in a holding area like a farm animal before the next set of computer-locked double doors, and in this space, there are two things: a plaque celebrating the FCI Employee of the Month, and a full-length mirror with the message This is the image you will present today. Redressing, I always wondered whether this prop with its quasi motivational message was intended for us, the visitors of felons, or for would-be employees of the month. Perhaps both.

1. You are constantly second-guessing yourself. 2. You ask yourself, “Am I too sensitive?” a dozen times a day. 3. You often feel confused and even crazy at work. 4. You’re always apologizing to your mother, father, boyfriend, boss. 5. You wonder frequently if you are a “good enough” girlfriend/wife/employee/friend/daughter. 6. You can’t understand why, with so many apparently good things in your life, you aren’t happier. 7. You buy clothes for yourself, furnishings for your apartment, or other personal purchases with your partner in mind, thinking about what he would like instead of what would make you feel great. 8. You frequently make excuses for your partner’s behavior to friends and family. 9. You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don’t have to explain or make excuses. 10. You know something is terribly wrong, but you can never quite express what it is, even to yourself. 11. You start lying to avoid the put-downs and reality twists. 12. You have trouble making simple decisions. 13. You think twice before bringing up certain seemingly innocent topics of conversation. 14. Before your partner comes home, you run through a checklist in your head to anticipate anything you might have done wrong that day. 15. You have the sense that you used to be a very different person—more confident, more fun-loving, more relaxed. 16. You start speaking to your husband through his secretary so you don’t have to tell him things you’re afraid might upset him. 17. You feel as though you can’t do anything right. 18. Your kids begin trying to protect you from your partner. 19. You find yourself furious with people you’ve always gotten along with before. 20. You feel hopeless and joyless.

What is a “pyramid?” I grew up in real estate my entire life. My father built one of the largest real estate brokerage companies on the East Coast in the 1970s, before selling it to Merrill Lynch. When my brother and I graduated from college, we both joined him in building a new real estate company. I went into sales and into opening a few offices, while my older brother went into management of the company. In sales, I was able to create a six-figure income. I worked 60+ hours a week in such pursuit. My brother worked hard too, but not in the same fashion. He focused on opening offices and recruiting others to become agents to sell houses for him. My brother never listed and sold a single house in his career, yet he out-earned me 10-to-1. He made millions because he earned a cut of every commission from all the houses his 1,000+ agents sold. He worked smarter, while I worked harder. I guess he was at the top of the “pyramid.” Is this legal? Should he be allowed to earn more than any of the agents who worked so hard selling homes? I imagine everyone will agree that being a real estate broker is totally legal. Those who are smart, willing to take the financial risk of overhead, and up for the challenge of recruiting good agents, are the ones who get to live a life benefitting from leveraged Income. So how is Network Marketing any different? I submit to you that I found it to be a step better. One day, a friend shared with me how he was earning the same income I was, but that he was doing so from home without the overhead, employees, insurance, stress, and being subject to market conditions. He was doing so in a network marketing business. At first I refuted him by denouncements that he was in a pyramid scheme. He asked me to explain why. I shared that he was earning money off the backs of others he recruited into his downline, not from his own efforts. He replied, “Do you mean like your family earns money off the backs of the real estate agents in your company?” I froze, and anyone who knows me knows how quick-witted I normally am. Then he said, “Who is working smarter, you or your dad and brother?” Now I was mad. Not at him, but at myself. That was my light bulb moment. I had been closed-minded and it was costing me. That was the birth of my enlightenment, and I began to enter and study this network marketing profession. Let me explain why I found it to be a step better. My research led me to learn why this business model made so much sense for a company that wanted a cost-effective way to bring a product to market. Instead of spending millions in traditional media ad buys, which has a declining effectiveness, companies are opting to employ the network marketing model. In doing so, the company only incurs marketing cost if and when a sale is made. They get an army of word-of-mouth salespeople using the most effective way of influencing buying decisions, who only get paid for performance. No salaries, only commissions. But what is also employed is a high sense of motivation, wherein these salespeople can be building a business of their own and not just be salespeople. If they choose to recruit others and teach them how to sell the product or service, they can earn override income just like the broker in a real estate company does. So now they see life through a different lens, as a business owner waking up each day excited about the future they are building for themselves. They are not salespeople; they are business owners.

Mosseri’s answer to the important question was perfect by Facebook standards: “Technology isn’t good or bad—it just is,” he wrote. “Social media is a great amplifier. We need to do all we can responsibly to magnify the good and address the bad.” But nothing “just is,” especially Instagram. Instagram isn’t designed to be a neutral technology, like electricity or computer code. It’s an intentionally crafted experience, with an impact on its users that is not inevitable, but is the product of a series of choices by its makers about how to shape behavior. Instagram trained its users on likes and follows, but that wasn’t enough to create the emotional attachment users have to the product today. They also thought about their users as individuals, through the careful curation of an editorial strategy, and partnerships with top accounts. Instagram’s team is expert at amplifying “the good.” When it comes to addressing “the bad,” though, employees are concerned the app is thinking in terms of numbers, not people. Facebook’s top argument against a breakup is that its “family of apps” evolution will be better for users’ safety. “If you want to prevent interference in elections, if you want to reduce[…]

Recently, I was in New York with most of the Robertson family promoting the season-four premiere of Duck Dynasty. We were staying at the Trump International Hotel, which is a really nice place near Central Park. I was already uncomfortable being in the big city. I don’t like traffic or concrete, and there are a lot of both in New York. After we checked in, we gathered downstairs to go to a Broadway musical show. I know it might seem bizarre for me to be going to a musical, but my very attractive wife can be mightily persuasive, especially when I have nothing else to do. As we were waiting or the others in the lobby, I asked a doorman if there was a nearby bathroom. He gave me directions to the nearest restroom, which included a walk through the hotel restaurant. As I entered the restaurant, a well-dressed staffer offered his assistance. I informed him I was only going to the restroom. But he very nicely continued to offer assistance and took the role of my escort, which I thought was quite courteous and professional. At his direction, we took a quick left turn and walked out of the hotel. Befuddled, I asked him, “Where is the bathroom?” He painted down the street or maybe toward Central Park and said, “Good luck to you, sir. Have a nice day.” I circled back around to the main entrance of the hotel, where I found Missy, who had witnessed the entire episode. “I thought you had to go to the bathroom,” she said. I laughed and told her I had been escorted out of the hotel because of the way I looked. It was no big deal to us, and I laughed about the incident later that night with my family over dinner. I shared the story the next day with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on Live! with Kelly and Michael because I thought it was funny. Well, the story went viral and was all over the news and Internet the next few days. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and various media outlets were trying to contact me. I’d jokingly labeled the incident “facial profiling” because in my mind that’s exactly what it was. People were surprised that it didn’t bother me, but my family and I have endured those kinds of things our entire lives. I figured the hotel employee was only trying to protect other hotel guests. The incident culminated with a call from Donald Trump’s office. They offered an apology for any inconvenience. I assured them that no apology was needed, and I asked them not to punish my courteous escort.

The only word these corporations know is more,” wrote Chris Hedges, former correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, and the New York Times. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies. There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave. To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal.

Although anxiety can sometimes seem like a flaw, it’s actually an evolutionary advantage, a hypervigilance system that causes us to pause and scan the environment. Feeling anxious triggers us to start looking out for potential threats. If you detect a potential danger, it’s not supposed to be easy for you to stop thinking about that threat. While that’s great when you’re a caveman worried about protecting your family, it’s not as great when you’re an employee convinced you’re getting fired. For many of us who suffer from anxiety, our anxiety alarms fire too often when there isn’t a good reason to be excessively cautious. Why does this happen? We may have more sensitive anxiety systems. Or we may have been doing things to decrease our anxiety in the short term, such as avoiding things that make us feel anxious, that have actually increased it in the long term. Having some false anxiety alarms—where you see threats that don’t exist or worry about things that don’t eventuate—isn’t a defect in your system. Think of it in caveman terms: In a life-and-death sense, failing to notice a real threat (termed a false negative) is more of a problem than registering a potential danger that doesn’t happen (termed a false positive). Therefore, having some false anxiety alarms is a built-in part of the system, to err on the side of caution.

she feels lucky to have a job, but she is pretty blunt about what it is like to work at Walmart: she hates it. She’s worked at the local Walmart for nine years now, spending long hours on her feet waiting on customers and wrestling heavy merchandise around the store. But that’s not the part that galls her. Last year, management told the employees that they would get a significant raise. While driving to work or sorting laundry, Gina thought about how she could spend that extra money. Do some repairs around the house. Or set aside a few dollars in case of an emergency. Or help her sons, because “that’s what moms do.” And just before drifting off to sleep, she’d think about how she hadn’t had any new clothes in years. Maybe, just maybe. For weeks, she smiled at the notion. She thought about how Walmart was finally going to show some sign of respect for the work she and her coworkers did. She rolled the phrase over in her mind: “significant raise.” She imagined what that might mean. Maybe $2.00 more an hour? Or $2.50? That could add up to $80 a week, even $100. The thought was delicious. Then the day arrived when she received the letter informing her of the raise: 21 cents an hour. A whopping 21 cents. For a grand total of $1.68 a day, $8.40 a week. Gina described holding the letter and looking at it and feeling like it was “a spit in the face.” As she talked about the minuscule raise, her voice filled with anger. Anger, tinged with fear. Walmart could dump all over her, but she knew she would take it. She still needed this job. They could treat her like dirt, and she would still have to show up. And that’s exactly what they did. In 2015, Walmart made $14.69 billion in profits, and Walmart’s investors pocketed $10.4 billion from dividends and share repurchases—and Gina got 21 cents an hour more. This isn’t a story of shared sacrifice. It’s not a story about a company that is struggling to keep its doors open in tough times. This isn’t a small business that can’t afford generous raises. Just the opposite: this is a fabulously wealthy company making big bucks off the Ginas of the world. There are seven members of the Walton family, Walmart’s major shareholders, on the Forbes list of the country’s four hundred richest people, and together these seven Waltons have as much wealth as about 130 million other Americans. Seven people—not enough to fill the lineup of a softball team—and they have more money than 40 percent of our nation’s population put together. Walmart routinely squeezes its workers, not because it has to, but because it can. The idea that when the company does well, the employees do well, too, clearly doesn’t apply to giants like this one. Walmart is the largest employer in the country. More than a million and a half Americans are working to make this corporation among the most profitable in the world. Meanwhile, Gina points out that at her store, “almost all the young people are on food stamps.” And it’s not just her store. Across the country, Walmart pays such low wages that many of its employees rely on food stamps, rent assistance, Medicaid, and a mix of other government benefits, just to stay out of poverty. The

Disparity, Education and Economy Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity. Citizens of earth could force big tech to pay their employees fair wages tomorrow, if they just stop buying their fancy, overpriced products and go for humbler alternatives unless the companies bring down their disparities in salary. The CEO may enjoy certain benefits of their position, but not until those working at the bottom can afford the fundamentals of life for their family. I'll say it to you plainly. An employee wronged is a company wronged. You see, trying to build a disparity-free economy pursuing revenue is like trying to achieve pregnancy through vasectomy. So long as greed drives the economy, it's not economy, but catastrophe. So long as greed drives the industries, it's not industrialization, it is vandalization. Ambition to climb the ladder of status so that you could be on the affluent side of disparity, is no ambition of a civilized human, it's the ambition of a caveman. So, before you pursue an ambition in life, educate yourself on a civilized definition of ambition. Yet the situation in our world is so pathetic that that's exactly the kind of ambition educational institutes sell. Schools and universities don't teach you to build a civilized society free from disparity, they teach you clever tactics to be on the affluent side of disparity. This is not education, this is castration. Concern for the society should be the bedrock of education - collective welfare should be the bedrock of economy - if not, we might as well start living as hobos on the streets, because with greed as the driving principle of education and economy, sooner or later all of us will end up on the streets.

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined. On the terrace of the Bundesterrasse is a striking view: the river Aare below and the Bernese Alps above. A man stands there just now, absently emptying his pockets and weeping. Without reason, his friends have abandoned him. No one calls any more, no one meets him for supper or beer at the tavern, no one invites him to their home. For twenty years he has been the ideal friend to his friends, generous, interested, soft-spoken, affectionate. What could have happened? A week from this moment on the terrace, the same man begins acting the goat, insulting everyone, wearing smelly clothes, stingy with money, allowing no one to come to his apartment on Laupenstrasse. Which was cause and which effect, which future and which past? In Zürich, strict laws have recently been approved by the Council. Pistols may not be sold to the public. Banks and trading houses must be audited. All visitors, whether entering Zürich by boat on the river Limmat or by rail on the Selnau line, must be searched for contraband. The civil military is doubled. One month after the crackdown, Zürich is ripped by the worst crimes in its history. In daylight, people are murdered in the Weinplatz, paintings are stolen from the Kunsthaus, liquor is drunk in the pews of the Münsterhof. Are these criminal acts not misplaced in time? Or perhaps the new laws were action rather than reaction? A young woman sits near a fountain in the Botanischer Garten. She comes here every Sunday to smell the white double violets, the musk rose, the matted pink gillyflowers. Suddenly, her heart soars, she blushes, she paces anxiously, she becomes happy for no reason. Days later, she meets a young man and is smitten with love. Are the two events not connected? But by what bizarre connection, by what twist in time, by what reversed logic? In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions. Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world? In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective. Most people have learned how to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. Families comfort a dying uncle not because of a likely inheritance, but because he is loved at that moment. Employees are hired not because of their résumés, but because of their good sense in interviews. Clerks trampled by their bosses fight back at each insult, with no fear for their future. It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them. Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them. Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity. In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them. Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.

In the early 1680s, at just about the time that Edmond Halley and his friends Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke were settling down in a London coffee house and embarking on the casual wager that would result eventually in Isaac Newton’s Principia, Hemy Cavendish’s weighing of the Earth, and many of the other inspired and commendable undertakings that have occupied us for much of the past four hundred pages, a rather less desirable milestone was being passed on the island of Mauritius, far out in the Indian Ocean some eight hundred miles off the east coast of Madagascar. There, some forgotten sailor or sailor’s pet was harrying to death the last of the dodos, the famously flightless bird whose dim but trusting nature and lack of leggy zip made it a rather irresistible target for bored young tars on shore leave. Millions of years of peaceful isolation had not prepared it for the erratic and deeply unnerving behavior of human beings. We don’t know precisely the circumstances, or even year, attending the last moments of the last dodo, so we don’t know which arrived first a world that contained a Principia or one that had no dodos, but we do know that they happened at more or less the same time. You would be hard pressed, I would submit to find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate the divine and felonious nature of the human being-a species of organism that is capable of unpicking the deepest secrets of the heavens while at the same time pounding into extinction, for no purpose at all, a creature that never did us any harm and wasn’t even remotely capable of understanding what we were doing to it as we did it. Indeed, dodos were so spectacularly short on insight it is reported, that if you wished to find all the dodos in a vicinity you had only to catch one and set it to squawking, and all the others would waddle along to see what was up. The indignities to the poor dodo didn’t end quite there. In 1755, some seventy years after the last dodo’s death, the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford decided that the institution’s stuffed dodo was becoming unpleasantly musty and ordered it tossed on a bonfire. This was a surprising decision as it was by this time the only dodo in existence, stuffed or otherwise. A passing employee, aghast tried to rescue the bird but could save only its head and part of one limb. As a result of this and other departures from common sense, we are not now entirely sure what a living dodo was like. We possess much less information than most people suppose-a handful of crude descriptions by "unscientific voyagers, three or four oil paintings, and a few scattered osseous fragments," in the somewhat aggrieved words of the nineteenth century naturalist H. E. Strickland. As Strickland wistfully observed, we have more physical evidence of some ancient sea monsters and lumbering saurapods than we do of a bird that lived into modern times and required nothing of us to survive except our absence. So what is known of the dodo is this: it lived on Mauritius, was plump but not tasty, and was the biggest-ever member of the pigeon family, though by quite what margin is unknown as its weight was never accurately recorded. Extrapolations from Strickland’s "osseous fragments" and the Ashmolean’s modest remains show that it was a little over two and a half feet tall and about the same distance from beak tip to backside. Being flightless, it nested on the ground, leaving its eggs and chicks tragically easy prey for pigs, dogs, and monkeys brought to the island by outsiders. It was probably extinct by 1683 and was most certainly gone by 1693. Beyond that we know almost nothing except of course that we will not see its like again. We know nothing of its reproductive habits and diet, where it ranged, what sounds it made in tranquility or alarm. We don’t possess a single dodo egg. From beginning to end our acquaintance with animate dodos lasted just seventy years.

Shaming and blaming without accountability is toxic to couples, families, organizations, and communities. First, when we shame and blame, it moves the focus from the original behavior in question to our own behavior. By the time this boss is finished shaming and humiliating his employees in front of their colleagues, the only behavior in question is his. Additionally, if we don’t follow through with appropriate consequences, people learn to dismiss our requests—even if they sound like threats or ultimatums. If

With a zero risk profile, no one dares to take responsibility. Mistakes are hidden like dust is swept under the carpet and when they come to light, innocent people who had nothing to do with the mistakes are let go, while the responsible people stay in their positions. Company leaders understand the zero risk profile and rule with authority. People not wanting to risk their income, do unpaid overtime. Though this is illegal, the lack of “Western” ethics does neither shock nor surprise any of the employees. People complaining are creatively fired. Most employees keep their mouths shut and know other companies apply the exact same methods. It merely is business as usual. This demotivates the masses and – consequently - service levels become progressively worse. With the strong company hierarchies and the many levels of middle management, information from the lowest levels in the company hardly reaches general management and vice versa. Underutilized resources, like the employees, generate - relatively seen – little added value. Salaries are in line with these values and people just accept it. Regardless of their age or background, they know their friends and family members earn a similar low salary elsewhere. It is what it is, right?

Harry was fascinated by the Hathaways, the mysterious connections between them, as if they shared some collective secret. One could almost see the wordless understanding that passed between them. Although Harry knew a great deal about people, he knew nothing about being part of a family. After Harry’s mother had run off with one of her lovers, his father had tried to get rid of every remaining trace of her existence. And he had done his best to forget that he even had a son, leaving Harry to the hotel staff and a succession of tutors. Harry had few memories of his mother, only that she had been beautiful and had had golden hair. It seemed she had always been going out, away from him, forever elusive. He remembered crying for her once, clutching his hands in her velvet skirts, and she had tried to make him let go, laughing softly at his persistence. In the wake of his parents’ abandonment, Harry had taken his meals in the kitchen with the hotel employees. When he was sick, one or another of the maids had taken care of him. He saw families come and go, and he had learned to view them with the same detachment that the hotel staff did. Deep down Harry harbored a suspicion that the reason his mother had left, the reason his father never had anything to do with him, was because he was unlovable. And therefore he had no desire to be part of a family. Even if or when Poppy bore him children, Harry would never allow anyone close enough to form an attachment. He would never let himself be shackled that way. And yet he sometimes knew a fleeting envy for those who were capable of it, like the Hathaways.

A good company is like a family where it values relationships and compassion, not arrogance and pride over employees,

If an employer pays to train workers, what’s to stop another company from luring them away once they’re skilled? The second firm could offer a signing bonus that costs them less than the training and still make out like bandits. Paying to train a worker is risky, and risk costs money. The more capital new employees already have built in when they enter the labor market, the less risky for their employer, whoever that ends up being. As American capitalism advanced, the training burden fell to the state, and then to families and kids themselves.

About 41 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners and earn the majority of their family’s income. Another 23 percent of mothers are co-breadwinners, contributing at least a quarter of the family’s earnings.30 The number of women supporting families on their own is increasing quickly; between 1973 and 2006, the proportion of families headed by a single mother grew from one in ten to one in five.31 These numbers are dramatically higher in Hispanic and African-American families. Twenty-seven percent of Latino children and 51 percent of African-American children are being raised by a single mother.32 Our country lags considerably behind others in efforts to help parents take care of their children and stay in the workforce. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, the United States is the only one without a paid maternity leave policy.33 As Ellen Bravo, director of the Family Values @ Work consortium, observed, most “women are not thinking about ‘having it all,’ they’re worried about losing it all—their jobs, their children’s health, their families’ financial stability—because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent.”34 For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try to do too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy. Framing the issue as “work-life balance”—as if the two were diametrically opposed—practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life? The good news is that not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so. In 2009, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published Getting to 50/50, a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveal that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving children.35 Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women who participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being.36 Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased life satisfaction.37 It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable. Our culture remains baffled: I don’t know how she does it. Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

In 2015, CEO Bob Chapman and co-author Raj Sisodia published Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, a book whose title concisely declares the company's mission to “measure success by the way we touch the lives of people.” Caring for employees – “team members” in Barry-Wehmiller-speak – using tangible measures of employee well-being has proved to be a sure recipe for establishing a psychologically safe workplace where learning and growth thrive.

Feinstein has been a China-booster from the early 1990s, often backing pro-Beijing legislation in the Senate. Her husband has strong business links in China, which she denies have had any influence on her. In 1997 she compared the Tiananmen Square massacre to the shooting of four students at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970, and called for a joint US–China commission on the two nations’ human rights records.35 Lowe left Feinstein’s office after the FBI warned her about him. China’s intelligence agencies also target Westerners not of Chinese heritage for information-gathering. In 2017 a long-serving State Department employee, Candace Claiborne, was indicted for accepting money and gifts from Chinese agents in exchange for diplomatic and economic information.36 She had been targeted by the MSS’s Shanghai State Security Bureau after she asked a Chinese friend to find a job in China for a family member. Claiborne maintained secret contact with MSS agents for five years, supplying them with information in return for help with her ‘financial woes’. She was sentenced to forty months in prison. In the early 1990s Britain’s MI5 wrote a protection manual for businesspeople visiting China; the advice remains relevant today: ‘Be especially alert for flattery and over-generous hospitality … [Westerners] are more likely to be the subject of long-term, low key cultivation, aimed at making “friends” … The aim of these tactics is to create a debt of obligation on the part of the target, who will eventually find it difficult to refuse inevitable requests for favours in return.

The dog account’s popularity spread beyond her family and friends to a few thousand people. But on a Monday night in December 2012, the account started gaining fans around the world. After Toffey posted three pictures of Tuna on the Instagram blog that night, the dog’s following grew from 8,500 to 15,000 within 30 minutes. Dasher pulled to refresh the page: 16,000. By the next morning, Tuna was at 32,000 followers. Dasher’s phone started ringing with media requests from around the world. Anderson Cooper’s talk show offered to fly her to DC; she appeared via webcast, thinking it wouldn’t be feasible to take a vacation day. But as requests for appearances continued to come in, her friends warned her about what was coming before she realized it: she would have to quit her job at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles and run her dog’s account full-time. It sounded ridiculous, so she took a month off to test the theory. Sure enough, BarkBox, which made a subscription box for pet items, was willing to sponsor Dasher and her friend on an eight-city tour with Tuna. People in various cities came up to her, crying, telling her they were struggling with depression or anxiety and that Tuna was bringing them joy. “That was the first time that I realized how much weight these posts had for people,” Dasher later recalled. “And that’s also when I realized I wanted to do this full-time.” Her life became about managing Tuna’s fame. Berkley, part of Penguin Random House, signed her up to write a book titled Tuna Melts My Heart: The Underdog with the Overbite. That led to more brand deals, plus merchandising to put Tuna’s likeness on stuffed animals and mugs. In her book’s acknowledgments, she thanks Tuna most of all, but also Toffey for sharing the post that changed her life. The tastes of one Instagram employee directly affected her financial success, but also the habits of the two million people who now follow that dog—including Ariana Grande.

What are your feelings from Bush to Obama? Besides being responsible for the death of half a million people, I feel like Bush dealt a huge economic and social blow to the USA, one from which we may never fully recover. He directly flushed 3 trillion dollars down the toilet on hopeless, pointlessly destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq …and they’re not even over! For years to come, we’ll be paying costs for all the injured veterans (over 50,000) and destabilizing three countries, because you have to look at the impact that the Afghan war has on Pakistan. Bush expanded the use of torture, and created a whole new layer of government bureaucracy (the “Department of Homeland Security”) to spy on Americans. He created Indefinite Detention (at Guantanamo and other US military bases) and expanded the use of executive-ordered assassinations using the new drone technology. On economic issues, his administration allowed corporations to run things and regulate themselves. The agency that was supposed to regulate oil drilling had lobbyist-paid prostitutes sleeping with employees while oil industry lobbyists basically ran the agency. Energy companies like Enron, and the country’s investment banks were deregulated at the end of the Clinton administration and Bush allowed them to run wild. Above all, he was incompetent and appointed some really stupid people to important positions at every level of government. Certainly, Obama has been involved in many of these same activities. A few he’s increased, such as the use of drone assassinations, but most of them he has at least tried to scale back. At the beginning of his first term, he tried to close the Guantanamo prison and have trials for many of the detainees in the United States but conservatives (including many Democrats) stirred up public resistance and blocked this from happening. He tried to get some kind of universal healthcare because over 50 million Americans don’t have health insurance. This is one of the leading causes of personal bankruptcies and foreclosures because someone gets sick in a family, loses their job, loses their health insurance (because American employers are source of most people’s healthcare) and they can’t pay their health bills or their mortgage. Or they use up all their money caring for a sick family member. So many people in the US wanted health insurance reform or single-payer, universal health care similar to what you have in the UK. Members of Obama’s own party (The Democrats) joined with Republicans to narrowly block “The public option” but they managed to pass a half-assed but not-unsubstantial reform of health insurance that would prevent insurers from denying you coverage when you’re sick or have a “preexisting condition.” The minute it was signed into law, Republicans sued in the courts (all the way to the supreme court) and fought, tooth and nail to block its implementation. Same thing with gun control, even as we’re one of the most violent industrial countries in the world. (Among industrial countries, our murder rate is second only to Russia). Obama has managed to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan over Republican opposition but, literally, everything he tries to do, they blast it in the media and fight it in Congress. So, while I have a lot of criticisms of Obama, he is many orders of magnitude less awful than Bush and many of the positive things he’s tried to do have been blocked. That said, the Democratic and Republican parties agree on more things than they disagree. Both signed off on the Afghan and Iraq wars. Both signed off on deregulation of banks, of derivatives, of mortgage regulations and of the energy and telecom business …and we’ve been living with the consequences ever since. I’m guessing it’s the same thing with Labor and Conservatives in the UK. Labor or Democrats will SAY they stand for certain “progressive” things but they end up supporting the same old crap... (2014 interview with iamhiphop)

When a young employee gasped at his blue language, Simons flashed a grin. “I know—that is an impressive rate!” A few times a week, Marilyn came by to visit, usually with their baby, Nicholas. Other times, Barbara checked in on her ex-husband. Other employees’ spouses and children also wandered around the office. Each afternoon, the team met for tea in the library, where Simons, Baum, and others discussed the latest news and debated the direction of the economy. Simons also hosted staffers on his yacht, The Lord Jim, docked in nearby Port Jefferson. Most days, Simons sat in his office, wearing jeans and a golf shirt, staring at his computer screen, developing new trades—reading the news and predicting where markets were going, like most everyone else. When he was especially engrossed in thought, Simons would hold a cigarette in one hand and chew on his cheek. Baum, in a smaller, nearby office, trading his own account, favored raggedy sweaters, wrinkled trousers, and worn Hush Puppies shoes. To compensate for his worsening eyesight, he hunched close to his computer, trying to ignore the smoke wafting through the office from Simons’s cigarettes. Their traditional trading approach was going so well that, when the boutique next door closed, Simons rented the space and punched through the adjoining wall. The new space was filled with offices for new hires, including an economist and others who provided expert intelligence and made their own trades, helping to boost returns. At the same time, Simons was developing a new passion: backing promising technology companies, including an electronic dictionary company called Franklin Electronic Publishers, which developed the first hand-held computer. In 1982, Simons changed Monemetrics’ name to Renaissance Technologies Corporation, reflecting his developing interest in these upstart companies. Simons came to see himself as a venture capitalist as much as a trader. He spent much of the week working in an office in New York City, where he interacted with his hedge fund’s investors while also dealing with his tech companies. Simons also took time to care for his children, one of whom needed extra attention. Paul, Simons’s second child with Barbara, had been born with a rare hereditary condition called ectodermal dysplasia. Paul’s skin, hair, and sweat glands didn’t develop properly, he was short for his age, and his teeth were few and misshapen. To cope with the resulting insecurities, Paul asked his parents to buy him stylish and popular clothing in the hopes of fitting in with his grade-school peers. Paul’s challenges weighed on Simons, who sometimes drove Paul to Trenton, New Jersey, where a pediatric dentist made cosmetic improvements to Paul’s teeth. Later, a New York dentist fitted Paul with a complete set of implants, improving his self-esteem. Baum was fine with Simons working from the New York office, dealing with his outside investments, and tending to family matters. Baum didn’t need much help. He was making so much money trading various currencies using intuition and instinct that pursuing a systematic, “quantitative” style of trading seemed a waste of

Of all organizations, it was oddly enough Wal-Mart that best recognized the complex nature of the circumstances, according to a case study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Briefed on what was developing, the giant discount retailer’s chief executive officer, Lee Scott, issued a simple edict. “This company will respond to the level of this disaster,” he was remembered to have said in a meeting with his upper management. “A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that’s available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing.” As one of the officers at the meeting later recalled, “That was it.” The edict was passed down to store managers and set the tone for how people were expected to react. On the most immediate level, Wal-Mart had 126 stores closed due to damage and power outages. Twenty thousand employees and their family members were displaced. The initial focus was on helping them. And within forty-eight hours, more than half of the damaged stores were up and running again. But according to one executive on the scene, as word of the disaster’s impact on the city’s population began filtering in from Wal-Mart employees on the ground, the priority shifted from reopening stores to “Oh, my God, what can we do to help these people?” Acting on their own authority, Wal-Mart’s store managers began distributing diapers, water, baby formula, and ice to residents. Where FEMA still hadn’t figured out how to requisition supplies, the managers fashioned crude paper-slip credit systems for first responders, providing them with food, sleeping bags, toiletries, and also, where available, rescue equipment like hatchets, ropes, and boots. The assistant manager of a Wal-Mart store engulfed by a thirty-foot storm surge ran a bulldozer through the store, loaded it with any items she could salvage, and gave them all away in the parking lot. When a local hospital told her it was running short of drugs, she went back in and broke into the store’s pharmacy—and was lauded by upper management for it.

Tech’s love affair with the myth of meritocracy is ironic for an industry so in thrall to the potential of Big Data, because this is a rare case where the data actually exists. But if in Silicon Valley meritocracy is a religion, its God is a white male Harvard dropout. And so are most of his disciples: women make up only a quarter of the tech industry’s employees and 11% of its executives.11 This is despite women earning more than half of all undergraduate degrees in the US, half of all undergraduate degrees in chemistry, and almost half in maths.12 More than 40% of women leave tech companies after ten years compared to 17% of men.13 A report by the Center for Talent Innovation found that women didn’t leave for family reasons or because they didn’t enjoy the work.14 They left because of ‘workplace conditions’, ‘undermining behaviour from managers’, and ‘a sense of feeling stalled in one’s career’. A feature for the Los Angeles Times similarly found that women left because they were repeatedly passed up for promotion and had their projects dismissed.15 Does this sound like a meritocracy? Or does it look more like institutionalised bias?

The great irony of all this is that capitalism actually does better when we work as we were designed—when we have a chance to fulfill our very human obligations. To ask our employees not simply for their hands to do our labor, but to inspire their cooperation, their trust and their loyalty so that they will commit to our cause. To treat people like family and not as mere employees. To sacrifice the numbers to save the people and not sacrifice the people to save the numbers.

Cultures that say their workplace is like a family are almost never to employees’ advantage,” Green told me. “It often means that you’ll be expected to work for unreasonably long hours with an unreasonably high workload for unreasonably low pay, and that if you push back on any of those things, you’ll be told either explicitly or implicitly that you’re not being part of the family.

Some companies, like the British product development agency ustwo, make their desire to foster a family-like culture explicit. “Our focus has always been on building what we refer to as a ‘fampany’—a company that feels like a family,” reads the company’s “cultural manifesto.” Airbnb employees refer to each other as “Airfam.” Salesforce defines its corporate culture using the Hawaiian word “ohana,” which means “chosen family.

When things go well, the reasons to stay at a company are many:   Your career path is wide open because as the company grows lots of interesting jobs naturally open up.   Your friends and family think you are a genius for choosing to work at the “it” company before anyone else knew it was “it.”   Your résumé gets stronger by working at a blue-chip company in its heyday.   Oh, and you are getting rich. When things go poorly, all those reasons become reasons to leave. In fact, the only thing that keeps an employee at a company when things go horribly wrong—other than needing a job—is that she likes her job.

No child can avoid emotional pain while growing up, and likewise emotional toxicity seems to be a normal by-product of organizational life—people are fired, unfair policies come from headquarters, frustrated employees turn in anger on others. The causes are legion: abusive bosses or unpleasant coworkers, frustrating procedures, chaotic change. Reactions range from anguish and rage, to lost confidence or hopelessness. Perhaps luckily, we do not have to depend only on the boss. Colleagues, a work team, friends at work, and even the organization itself can create the sense of having a secure base. Everyone in a given workplace contributes to the emotional stew, the sum total of the moods that emerge as they interact through the workday. No matter what our designated role may be, how we do our work, interact, and make each other feel adds to the overall emotional tone. Whether it’s a supervisor or fellow worker who we can turn to when upset, their mere existence has a tonic benefit. For many working people, coworkers become something like a “family,” a group in which members feel a strong emotional attachment for one another. This makes them especially loyal to each other as a team. The stronger the emotional bonds among workers, the more motivated, productive, and satisfied with their work they are. Our sense of engagement and satisfaction at work results in large part from the hundreds and hundreds of daily interactions we have while there, whether with a supervisor, colleagues, or customers. The accumulation and frequency of positive versus negative moments largely determines our satisfaction and ability to perform; small exchanges—a compliment on work well done, a word of support after a setback—add up to how we feel on the job.28

Cedar Capital Group Tokyo: Construction Site Health & Safety Review Accidents on construction sites are becoming a much more regular occurrence around the globe and can have devastating affects on families, communities and regions. Just recently we witnessed the destruction and heartbreak caused when the crawler crane toppled over onto the Masjid al-Haram, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia on 11 September 2015, which killed 118 people and injured a further 394. The majority of accidents on construction sites can be avoided if health and safety requirements are followed. An experienced health & safety advisor can assist you in identifying loss control techniques which in turn minimizes the risk to members of the public, your property and your employees. One of the most frequently occurring accidents construction sites is fire. Ignoring safety policies and procedures can have a disastrous effect and are a common cause of injury on a construction site. Fire extinguishers should be available and close by and you should appoint an employee to be on fire watch. The weather can be a source of accidents on construction sites. Sites become more susceptible as severe weather patterns continue to grow across the globe. In Asia, typhoons have become more frequent, we have seen buildings collapse during high category storms. These types of accidents can be avoided by appointing someone with the responsibility of monitoring the weather to make sure that the construction site is correctly braced before the typhoon arrives. The lack of site is another key factor that causes accidents. Construction sites are like playgrounds for inquisitive children looking for something to do so it’s imperative that you have secured the site with adequate fencing. Posting visible safety signs around the construction site in order to remind and protect the employees, visitors and members of the genera public. Always post safety signs at the entrance and ensure that all visitors wear the correct personal protective equipmentwhich includes a hard hat and safety boots. Cedar Capital Group are a Singapore based, capital equipment, company that leases construction equipment throughout Asia with core markets in Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan.

You see, team,” Dan said passionately, “our problem is negativity, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. I believe where there is a void, negativity will fill it. And, unfortunately, within every organization you get voids in communication between leaders and their employees and between different teams and team members. It happens everywhere: with sports teams, work teams, family teams. Within these voids, negativity starts to breed and grow and, eventually, like a cancer it will spread if you don’t address it. As an executive team it’s up to us to do everything we can to prevent these voids from occurring and when they do occur, we must quickly fill them with positive communication and positive energy. People don’t just want to be seen and heard. They want to hear and see, and if they don’t feel like they are part of the company then they will assume the worst and act accordingly.

you’ve never experienced a failure like this, it is hard to describe the feeling. It’s as if the world were falling out from under you. You realize you’ve been duped. The stories in the magazines are lies: hard work and perseverance don’t lead to success. Even worse, the many, many, many promises you’ve made to employees, friends, and family are not going to come true. Everyone who thought you were foolish for stepping out on your own will be proven right. It wasn’t supposed to turn

Forced by the Starr investigation, the president was to give testimony on the Paula Jones case any day now. Somehow Matt Drudge and his website received a leak. In response the president had signed a subpoenaed affidavit, legally sworn testimony denying any sexual relations with Paula Jones, the low-level Arkansas state employee who had accused him of sexual harassment, and more so, any relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He said they didn’t have any contact with each other, hadn’t even been alone in the same room together. He swore to it and said others could corroborate. Monica Lewinsky signed another affidavit. Ken Starr had been following the Clintons like a bloodhound. But at each turn of each scandal (Whitewater, Vince Foster’s suicide, Travelgate, Filegate, the affairs, the bribes, Troopergate, and more) it all came down to deny-deny-deny and the Clintons’ word against everyone else’s. Only this time, Clinton arrogantly denied his affair with Monica on a legal affidavit, sworn testimony. The shit was hitting the fan. Ken Starr now needed to prove Clinton was a liar—a perjurer. He needed evidence. Since they subpoenaed our logbook, I knew I was on Starr’s list. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t drive anymore. My partner asked me what was wrong. I can remember the feeling, my heart racing, my mind whirling, racked with pain, doubt, remorse, and regret. Oh my God, Starr, the Clintons, the Service, the FBI, the Justice Department, my friends, my family—no, not my friends and family—but everyone is going to implicate me, my integrity, my professionalism, my ethics, my foundation, my character. What about Genny and my unborn child? I didn’t sign up for this! We never signed up for this! Why did the Clintons have to do this to us? Haven’t I treated them well, done my best? They just couldn’t do the right thing! They couldn’t stop themselves!

Learn about Public Service Loan Forgiveness The PSLF Program (Public Service Loan Forgiveness) encourages people to proceed and continue their participation in public service careers. In this program, eligible individuals are entitled for forgiveness of their remaining balance that is due on their federal student loans. However, they may only qualify if they were able to make 120 payments on these loans, which are under a particular repayment plan. These individuals also have a full-time employment status from public service companies, so they may qualify for the PSLF. Let’s discuss Public Service Loan Forgiveness with The Student Loan Help Center Team. How to Obtain Remaining Balances on Direct Loans If you want to have remaining balances on your direct loans forgiven through the PSLF, you must be able to make 120 monthly payments on direct loans. Furthermore, these payments should be full and made on time. Another important qualification is securing the payment after October 1, 2007. When you make these monthly payments, keep in mind that you should be a full-time employee at any accredited public service company. Important Details about Eligible Loans for Forgiveness As The Student Loan Help Center CEO Bruce Mesnekoff Said Loans that are eligible for the PSLF program are those you have received from a direct loan. On the other hand, Perkins Loans, Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) and other types of student loans are not valid for PSLF. If you have an existing Perkins loan or FFEL, you have the option to consolidate these into direct consolidation loans, so you may avail of the outstanding benefits offered by the PSLF. Make sure, though, that the payments made on the new loan will be counted toward your payment requirement, which will last for 120 months. Facts about Qualifying Repayment Plans You will be able to maximize your benefits from the PSLF by repaying loans on the IBR (Income Based Repayments) or the ICR (Income Contingent Repayments. These plans enable you to qualify for the PSLF program. The 10-year repayment plan also qualifies you for the PSLF, as well as other plans where the monthly payment you make is equivalent or more than what you are required to pay under the standard 10-year repayment scheme. Before you decide on the best repayment scheme for paying off your direct loans, make sure you are aware of the costs and implications of such decision. When you extend the period in securing your payments for PSLF qualifying payments, you can reduce the remaining balance on your loan when you satisfy all the eligibility requirements for the PSLF program. Moreover, you will have zero balance on loans to be forgiven when you are able to make all 120 monthly payments through the 10 year standard repayment scheme. You can expect a great reduction on your monthly payments under the ICR or IBR plans, as compared to other qualifying repayment options for the PSLF program. Moreover, the repayment term is likely to extend. With a longer period in repaying your loans, you can expect additional interest to accumulate on your loan. Keep in mind, though, that your inability to meet the PSLF requirements will entitle you to pay off the entire loan balance, as well as the accrued interest.

Uncomplicated Systems Of giftcity - A Background The sort of present you give can have an enduring impression on the receiver. Gift will make a person feel special so it is important that when selecting a gift, you must always keep the receiver in mind. Gift has the power to keep up it for a long time and to develop relationship that is powerful. Particularly in the corporate world, a a happy customer or a partner that is satisfied can have an enormous impact on the business. Thus, when picking corporate gift, one must be attentive and be diplomatic as well. Firms organises occasions and events to market their services and products. During such occasions, corporate gifts Singapore can play an enormous part in attracting more customers and keep up the old ones. Companies can emboss the presents reach to more individuals and they give away to further their advertisement with company emblems. Inexpensive gift item like pencils mugs bags etc are perfect for such giveaways they not only promote the company but also bring more customers company may also organize Corporate Gifting such as jewellery branded goods electronics and gadgets etc for significant occasions giveaways to high achievers for the company or business associates. Some of the things proposed by Giftcitysingapore are leather goods, branded wristwatches, kitchenwares, gadgets and electronic good etc are perfect for corporate gifts. Such expensive items can be given on particular company's occasion and occasions. Depending on the occasion and recipients corporate gifts can be chosen. One should also keep in your mind not to tarnish the company's persona with affordable presents for special occasions when choosing corporate gifts. Latest gadgets and electronic devices makes wonderful gifts for family members and friends, the exact same thought can be used on corporate gift ideas. Everyone will appreciate being gifted with the most recent gadget in the industry. Present city website has also implied that electronic devices and gadgets are perfect corporate gifts. Gadgets and electronic devices even have practical use consequently most firms regularly give away such expensive gifts to valued employees and clients.

Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

Different Strokes for Different Folks “First things first—differences abound! Race, creed, color, gender, national origin, handicap, age, familial status, socio-economics, education, politics, religion, geography, and job status. Does that list look like a poster ad for the ACLU? Add in our vastly different life experiences and things really start to get interesting.

while Koreans also are relatively group-oriented, they also have a strong individualistic streak like most Westerners. Koreans frequently joke that an individual Korean can beat an individual Japanese, but that a group of Koreans are certain to be beaten by a group of Japanese.”36 The rate of employee turnover, raiding of other companies’ skilled labor, and the like are all higher in Korea than in Japan.37 Anecdotally, there would seem to be a lower level of informal work-oriented socializing in Korea than in Japan, with employees heading home to their families at the end of the day rather than staying on to drink in the evenings with their workmates.38

The waitresses who make the best tips are usually the most friendly and outgoing, the ones who manage to establish a rapport with their tables, even if they are juggling 10 tables at one time and dealing with some pretty dreadful jerks. Being a successful waitress requires an extroverted charm and charisma, which INFPs might have, but likely only show to their closest friends and family. Furthermore, working around so many other people, both employees and patrons, in a fast-paced environment would leave INFPs absolutely drained.

Sexual Immorality provides a very pleasurable ride to the grave. Her vehicles are all luxury, but they cannot seat many passengers. She parks her employees nearly everywhere, and makes you feel incredibly good. The temperatures are elating, and no body part is exempted from her stimulation. If you like to ride along public places, she will drive you, but if you prefer to ride along back streets, she will also take you there. She is very discerning of how to set atmospheres for the married, single, or whatever was your relationship status. I am the songstress so there is always music suitable to her deeds. Riding in her vehicles distracts most of her passengers from every covenant and promise they ever signed their name to. She is persistent, so if you do not ride with her when she first attempted to get you, she will ensure that you ride with her eventually. She welcomes her passengers to be accompanied by their toys, animals, family members, and whoever else will allow them the best thrill along their ride. However, the more the passengers she transports, the more likely to be left at the grave.

In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then, the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice couldn’t stop themselves.1.23 It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

Over the past year, as I have been working with the global tax-accounting firm KPMG to help their tax auditors and managers become happier, I began to realize that many of the employees were suffering from an unfortunate problem. Many of them had to spend 8 to 14 hours a day scanning tax forms for errors, and as they did, their brains were becoming wired to look for mistakes. This made them very good at their jobs, but they were getting so expert at seeing errors and potential pitfalls that this habit started to spill over into other areas of their lives. Like the Tetris players who suddenly saw those blocks everywhere, these accountants experienced each day as a tax audit, always scanning the world for the worst. As you can imagine, this was no picnic, and what’s more, it was undermining their relationships at work and at home. In performance reviews, they noticed only the faults of their team members, never the strengths. When they went home to their families, they noticed only the C’s on their kids’ report cards, never the A’s. When they ate at restaurants, they could only notice that the potatoes were underdone—never that the steak was cooked perfectly. One tax auditor confided that he had been very depressed over the past quarter. As we discussed why, he mentioned in passing that one day during a break at work he had made an Excel spreadsheet listing all the mistakes his wife had made over the past six weeks. Imagine the reaction of his wife (or soon to be ex wife) when he brought that list of faults home in an attempt to make things better. Tax auditors are far from the only ones who get stuck in this

He cared about his employees like they were family.

Do you know how many people out there do jobs they don’t like? Or are bored with their profession? They get up and go do a job they hate with every fiber of their being because they depend on that paycheck to live. They don’t have a supportive family and a beautiful house to fall back on. That’s real life. Being a shitty employee and unreliable at the job you said you’d do because it bores you . . .

The guile, the emotion, the intellect, the ability he had to keep people, everyone, at bay who would try and stop him. As a nation our laws require that employers provide a safe workplace for their employees. As a people we depend on employers to look out for their employees. Just as Scott was a beloved son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, and a fiancé, every worker is someone’s relative and friend. Every single one of them deserves to go to work knowing that they will return safely to their families when their work is done. But Allan did not believe that. To him the workers were an expendable commodity, just like the flue dust.” He pointed out the obvious, that Elias had never shown any remorse and instead called his employees lazy and stupid. He said that in the year

The Path of the 99% Purely, statistically speaking (and nothing personal intended), it is almost certain you won’t make an investment in a franchise either. You will probably complain about the way things are, dream about what could be, take a brief stand for yourself by declaring, “I am tired placing my future in the hands of others. Now it’s my turn!” Then you’ll Google franchise opportunities, visit franchisor homepages, gather stacks of franchisor brochures, research companies, talk to people and professionals you trust, and have conversations with franchisors. You’ll feel proactive. You’ll tell your friends you’re considering buying a business. Chances are they thought about it, too. Some will be happy for you, some will be jealous, some will be afraid for you. Virtually everyone will share their strong opinions with you. You’ll dream about what it would be like to be your own boss. You’ll think about your customers and employees. You’ll make clever little charts such as the T Bar, where you neatly list all the pros on the left side of the page, balanced by the cons on the right side. Then the time will come to make a decision. Fear, doubt, and negative self-chatter (yours, your spouse’s, your kids’, your parents,’ your friends’, and your hired professionals’) will kick into high gear. Eventually, you probably will make a fear-based “no” decision, backed by the logic of your neatly listed cons. “The business has fatal flaws,” you think, “Employee turnover is too high. Competition is too fierce. The business is too risky. Sure, it may work in some areas, but everyone knows our town is different.” And with everything going on in your life, the timing couldn’t be worse. Yes, you are being completely responsible with your resources. You didn’t work this hard and long and sacrifice this much to lose what you’ve earned and saved. Moving forward with a franchise would put your family in danger. If you leave your company, you will lose your insurance benefits and 401(k). What if someone in your family had to go to hospital? How would you survive without insurance? Plus, your industry is changing so fast, in a few years your expertise would be obsolete and it would be impossible for you to regain entry if your business didn’t make it. Certainly almost every reasonable person armed with the same research and faced with the same personal challenges you have would naturally come to the same conclusion. And you are right. 99 percent do.

Some of my goals are general in nature—like, say, wanting to take care of my family and my employees. And some are very specific—like, say, wanting to cash a check for $102,345,086.32 by a certain date.

What about my shock, Daryl?’ Rachel asked as her eyes filled with tears. ‘How can you leave me at a time like this? I’m not a bloody employee. I’m family and they’re all gone. I need you here. Mia needs you here.

I don't know if it's because they're protective of their daughters or not, but all the men eat together, boss and employees included, and the women eat whatever is left. I don't like it; I think a family should eat together.

But two weeks later, American soldiers arrived in her part of the city. The first sounds she heard were airplanes and then explosions late in the afternoon. She rushed up to the roof of their house, following her mother and sisters, not knowing what they would find. When she looked up at the sky, she saw armored vehicles floating under parachutes. “It was like a movie,” she said.1 A few days later, American soldiers walked down the street in front of her house, and Noor ran to the front door to watch them. She saw her neighbors also standing in their doorways, smiles on their faces. The soldiers smiled back, eager to talk to anyone who was willing. “Everybody was so happy,” Noor recalled. “There was suddenly freedom.” Less than a week later, on April 9, her fellow Iraqis descended on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, where they threw a rope over the enormous statue of Saddam Hussein, and, with the help of American soldiers, tore it down. Noor thought to herself, You know, we can have a new life. A better life. Life under Saddam had been challenging. Noor’s father had been a government employee, yet like many other Iraqis, the family had little money. Saddam’s failed war

When you start out working with or for these people, they seem like the dream boss, coworker, or partner. You feel incredibly lucky to be working with them. They compliment you and make you feel valued and needed. They are often described as charismatic people, the boss or employee everyone likes. CN bosses are easy to work with, and many victims feel relieved to have a boss like them after experiencing difficult employers in the past. However, they are often chameleons who mirror the people they are around, so everyone feels like they are seen by them and understood. They win people’s trust quickly. They are charming, but not in a creepy-player kind of way. They seem like the real deal. Easygoing, smart, not a big ego, endearing—these are words I have heard to describe this type of person. As in romantic relationships, a CN boss will take you through the three stages. They will love bomb you in the beginning. It will feel easy, exciting, fun. They might make grandiose promises of your future with the company, your financial success, and your involvement in projects you love. You will feel excited and so lucky to have gotten this opportunity, telling your friends and family all the glowing stories of this new boss. Sometimes this person becomes a trusted friend.

Farm employees, their families, and consumers are protected from dangerous and persistent Organic Products found on the farm and in food, as well as in the land they work and play on, the air they breathe, and the water they drink, by using organic products. Children are particularly vulnerable to pollutants. As a result of the formation of organic food and feed items into the marketplace, parents may simply select products that are free of these chemicals. Hair Care Product Natural grown foods are higher in minerals like Vitamin C, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus, but have lower amounts of nitrates and pesticide residues when compared to conventionally grown foods, according to mounting data. Taking care of it properly is one of the simplest promoting short - to - medium healing processes and brightness. Organic Skin Care products, in particular, combine essential vitamins, herbs, and minerals to cure and regenerate our skin while causing the least amount of environmental damage. How do reduce hair fall so I stop my hair from falling out? These natural skincare companies are dedicated to altering the beauty industry's standards for products that are beneficial both to us and the environment for hair growth which oil is best. We admire their commitment to maximum potency, freshness, and complete purity! In Ayurveda, bhringraj oil is a natural treatment for restoring the look of fine wrinkles (Ayurvedic medicine medicine). Bhringraj oil is often used to increase hair growth, gloss, softness, and strength and is thought to prevent undesired greying and hair growth. Ayurvedic practitioners also advise consuming bhringraj oil orally to treat everything from heart disease and respiratory issues to neurological and liver issues. You're not sure which soap is best for dry skin. Sensitive skin is difficult to deal with. Which is the best soap for dry skin patients may notice tightness and pallor even in the summer, so forget about winter dryness! Warm showers, as well as unsuitable soap, such as aloe vera, Aloe vera face mist, for example, could aggravate the issue. You can apply an after-shower lotion and emollients to keep your skin hydrated. Contact us: Arendelle Organics NRK BizPark, Behind C21 Mall, Scheme 54 PU4, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India 8109099301 care@arendelleorganics.com

Maybe I had been a human—flawed and still growing but full of light nonetheless. All this time, I had received plenty of love, but I’d given it, too. Unbeknownst to me, I had been scattering goodness all around like fun-size chocolates accidentally falling out of my purse as I moved through the world. Perhaps the only real thing that was broken was the image I had of myself—punishing and unfair, narrow and hypercritical. Perhaps what was really happening was that, along with all of my flaws, I was a fucking wonder. And I continue to be a fucking wonder. A fun, dependable friend who will always call you back, cook for you, and fiercely defend your honor. A devoted sister and daughter who prioritizes and appreciates family in ways less-traumatized people can never quite understand. A hardworking, capable employee who brings levity and mischievousness to the offices I inhabit. I am a person who is generous with her love, who is present in texts and calls and affirmations, because I know so intimately how powerful that love can be.

She doesn’t react; she just keeps floating, staring up at the velvet night. “You’re a good guy, Beau. But you’re kind of out of touch.” “Come again?” “Do you know how many people out there do jobs they don’t like? Or are bored with their profession? They get up and go do a job they hate with every fiber of their being because they depend on that paycheck to live. They don’t have a supportive family and a beautiful house to fall back on. That’s real life. Being a shitty employee and unreliable at the job you said you’d do because it bores you . . .” She moves to standing, reaching up to push her hair away from her face. “That’s a privilege. Recognize it.

I began to loosen the reins on the ideology that your work friends are family. It started to feel like cheapening the concept of family by including coworkers. My family, lucky for me, is stable, supportive, and loving. And using that kind of family terminology at work is emotional manipulation, simply a tactic of capitalism to get employees to feel guilty about having personal boundaries and taking days off.

That a third of all employees want to leave their jobs but don’t tells us two things. One, it says that an uncomfortably high number of people would rather be working somewhere else, and two, that they see no other option to improve how they feel about their jobs beyond quitting. There is an alternative route, however. One much simpler and potentially more effective, and it doesn’t require us to quit our jobs. Quite the contrary. It requires that we stay. But that doesn’t mean we can get away with doing nothing. We will still need to change the way we do things when we show up at work. It will require us to turn some of our focus away from ourselves to give more attention to those to the left of us and those to the right of us. Like the Spartans, we will have to learn that our strength will come not from the sharpness of our spears but from our willingness to offer others the protection of our shields. Some say a weak job market or bad economy is the reason to stick it out, in which case leaders of companies should want to treat their people better during hard times to prevent a mass exodus as soon as things improve. And in a good economy, leaders of companies should also want to treat their people well so that their people will stop at nothing to help the company manage when the hard times return (which, inevitably, they will). The best companies almost always make it through hard times because the people rally to make sure they do. In other words, from a strictly business standpoint, treating people well in any economy is more cost effective than not. Too many leaders are managing organizations in a way that is costing them money, hurting performance and damaging people’s health. And if that’s not enough to convince us that something has to change, then perhaps our love for our children will. A study by two researchers at the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College found that a child’s sense of well-being is affected less by the long hours their parents put in at work and more by the mood their parents are in when they come home. Children are better off having a parent who works into the night in a job they love than a parent who works shorter hours but comes home unhappy. This is the influence our jobs have on our families. Working late does not negatively affect our children, but rather, how we feel at work does. Parents may feel guilty, and their children may miss them, but late nights at the office or frequent business trips are not likely the problem. Net-net, if you don’t like your work, for your kids’ sake, don’t go home.

A marketing consultant I knew was hired by a family-owned agency because he was dating one of the family members. Clients were leaving the agency in droves and this person didn't understand his duties or how to execute them. The agency owner's solution was to encourage the consultant to spend more time with senior staff who were more experienced; hoping this exposure would give the consultant insight and dedication. This consultant did not change or grow so the agency owner asked several of us for input. I told the agency owner that until this employee was shown direct benefits and need to improve there was no motivation for him to do so. Until there is a perceived need for growth, there isn't likely to be actual growth.

See if you can recognize any of these patterns from your own life or from the lives of your friends and family members: Only being able to earn a certain amount of money each month, no matter how hard or how much you work Only being attracted to partners who turn out to bear an uncanny resemblance to your asshole dad (or to your asshole mom, or to the first person who broke your heart, or whatever) Hearing the mean voice of your third-grade teacher in your head whenever you sit down to create, so you avoid creating Overeating (or overindulging in drugs, alcohol, etc.) to cover up feelings of guilt, shame, loneliness, frustration that seem endless Disliking yourself/your body no matter what your shape Perpetually feeling victimized and like your life would be good if only rude other people (your family, your boss, your spouse, your employees, the government, the blacks, the gays, the straights, the whites, the Jews, the Christians, the capitalists, the hippies, etc., etc.) would stop messing with you

The number one thing a good logline must have, the single most important element, is: irony. My good friend and former writing partner, the funny and fast-typing Colby Carr, pointed this out to me one time and he’s 100% correct. And that goes for whether it’s a comedy or a drama. A cop comes to L.A. to visit his estranged wife and her office building is taken over by terrorists – Die Hard A businessman falls in love with a hooker he hires to be his date for the weekend – Pretty Woman I don’t know about you, but I think both of these loglines, one from a drama, one from a romantic comedy, fairly reek of irony. And irony gets my attention. It’s what we who struggle with loglines like to call the hook, because that’s what it does. It hooks your interest. What is intriguing about each of the spec sales I’ve cited above is that they, too, have that same ironic touch. A holiday season of supposed family joy is turned on its cynical head in the 4 Christmases example. What could be more unexpected (another way to say “ironic”) for a new employee, instead of being welcomed to a company, to be faced with a threat on his life during The Retreat? What Colby identified is the fact that a good logline must be emotionally intriguing, like an itch you have to scratch. A logline is like the cover of a book; a good one makes you want to open it, right now, to find out what’s inside. In identifying the ironic elements of your story and putting them into a logline, you may discover that you don’t have that. Well, if you don’t, then there may not only be something wrong with your logline — maybe your story’s off, too. And maybe it’s time to go back and rethink it. Insisting on irony in your logline is a good place to find out what’s missing. Maybe you don’t have a good movie yet.

How centralized should it be, and what exactly should be centralized? And what relationship would employees have to the company? Would the wait staff, say, at Union Square Cafe identify first with the restaurant or with Union Square Hospitality Group? “That’s something we debate internally a lot,” he said. “I’m quite comfortable with people having an allegiance first to their restaurant and secondarily to Union Square Hospitality Group. I’ve never veered from the notion that, to the degree these are great restaurants, we’ll be fine. To the degree they feel like cookie-cutter offshoots of a larger entity, who needs it?” It was an interesting balance to maintain. The restaurants would be recognizably part of Union Square Hospitality Group, and yet completely different from one another. They would have a common culture, but the feeling of each would be distinctive. They were like kids, Meyer said: Each would have its own personality, but you’d never doubt that they were members of the same family. Some of their DNA would be the same, and some different.

Hochschild wonders about the false self we create when we turn our happiness on and off like a light, when we use emotion as a commodity in the workplace. As women, we were taught to use our emotions at home, too, as a service to our families. ... The manufacture of happiness actually leads to emotional burnout. There's an ironic correlation between forced cheerfulness and depression. ... Delta Airlines, which institutionalized positive emotional management in the 1970s, now spends nine million dollars a year paying for antidepressants for its employees and their dependents. (Fuck Happiness, 64).

Income volatility can also interfere with the existing social safety net. Some welfare programs require beneficiaries to work a certain number of hours each week, assuming that the number of hours worked is under the control of the employee, rather than the employer.53 Qualification for programs like food stamps and health insurance subsidies is based on an average monthly income threshold. But of course volatile incomes mean that families bounce in and out of eligibility.54 Bouncing in and out of Medicaid ineligibility causes interruptions in care for chronic conditions, particularly in places where the doctors who accept Medicaid and private insurance don’t overlap.55 There can also be severe penalties for “fraud” in these programs, receiving benefits when your income is too high. But households subject to volatile incomes may not, themselves, know when or whether they will cross thresholds of eligibility. For instance, as of 2016, the Pennsylvania Medicaid Application asks whether anyone in the household has a hard time predicting their income, but in the very next question requires applicants to do exactly that—for the next twenty-four months—in order to establish eligibility.

When you think of yourself as an employee, a boss, or a student, you prioritise elements that prop up those identities and push aside the things you really need in life, like relationships

Life as an Enron employee was good. Prestwood’s annual salary rose steadily to sixty-five thousand dollars, with additional retirement benefits paid in Enron stock. When Houston Natural and Internorth had merged, all of Prestwood’s investments were automatically converted to Enron stock. He continued to set aside money in the company’s retirement fund, buying even more stock. Internally, the company relentlessly promoted employee stock ownership. Newsletters touted Enron’s growth as “simply stunning,” and Lay, at company events, urged employees to buy more stock. To Prestwood, it didn’t seem like a problem that his future was tied directly to Enron’s. Enron had committed to him, and he was showing his gratitude. “To me, this is the American way, loyalty to your employer,” he says. Prestwood was loyal to the bitter end. When he retired in 2000, he had accumulated 13,500 shares of Enron stock, worth $1.3 million at their peak. Then, at age sixty-eight, Prestwood suddenly lost his entire Enron nest egg. He now survives on a previous employer’s pension of $521 a month and a Social Security check of $1,294. “There aint no such thing as a dream anymore,” he says. He lives on a three-acre farm north of Houston willed to him as a baby in 1938 after his mother died. “I hadn’t planned much for the retirement. Wanted to go fishing, hunting. I was gonna travel a little.” Now he’ll sell his family’s land. Has to, he says. He is still paying off his mortgage.7 In some respects, Prestwood’s case is not unusual. Often people do not diversify at all, and sometimes employees invest a lot of their money in their employer’s stock. Amazing but true: five million Americans have more than 60 percent of their retirement savings in company stock.8 This concentration is risky on two counts. First, a single security is much riskier than the portfolios offered by mutual funds. Second, as employees of Enron and WorldCom discovered the hard way, workers risk losing both their jobs and the bulk of their retirement savings all at once.

There are many different Sponsor Programs available including several that give you a competition-free exclusive position. Sponsors are needed for each hour for the phone banks; for the Interview Area, where guests are interviewed by celebrity hosts; for table banners; and much more. There are even a few 1 and 2 minute Video Presentation Opportunities (company exposure) available. In all cases, representatives of your firm come on the show for you, your people, and your products. We will also assist you every step of the way with your employee fundraising event or other promotion, to raise the funds for your sponsorship. There really is no good reason not to participate. As a sponsor, you'll be showing your concern for the community, in connection with a situation that, at one time or another, will affect over 35% of all families! Arthritis is one of the most common, frustrating, debilitating diseases. It is understandably of great concern to a great many people. Also, the Arthritis Foundation has an excellent track record in terms of appropriate use of funds for research and education (rather than organizational overhead). We believe that real cures for arthritis are just around the corner; you can help get us there! With our Telethon on Channel 10, we will benefit from their superior production capability, involvement of their popular celebrities, and advance promotional opportunities. Our Telethon will be on for several hours immediately before and again immediately after an NBA Basketball Game, which we believe will increase our viewership. And, of course, we're mixing our live, local show with a “feed” from the National Telethon, featuring major Hollywood entertainers. Everything points to our highest, most responsive viewership ever! You'll be in good company, too, with local and national sponsors like: Thrifty, Sears, Allstate, Greyhound, Prudential, and Procter & Gamble. To summarize, you have an opportunity to … Help a good, worthy cause Gain valuable TV exposure and publicity Get all the benefits with little or no money out of your present budget — we'll work with your employees to raise the funds! Possibly have exclusive position, if you act quickly Have complete, step-by-step assistance from our staff Why not give me a call; let's arrange a meeting where I can personally explain the different “standard opportunities” available and then “brainstorm” with you about the best way for your business to participate. There's no obligation, of course, and certainly no pressure, but, together, we just may figure out the perfect situation for your business. Thank you for you consideration, Joel L. Beck Telethon Chairman for the Arthritis Foundation JLB/va _______ Letter reprinted with permission of Dan Kennedy (writer) and Joel Beck, former telethon chairman, Arizona.

Nor does the seller necessarily take the highest cash price he is offered since there may by other benefits important to him, such as the likely impact on family members and employees, customers, intellectual property and reputation.

If you want something you’ve never had, you must do something you’ve never done. Most people’s dreams are bigger than their nine-to-five paychecks. Which means if you have big vision, strong calling, or a desire to make huge change, your job by itself likely won’t fund it. Something must change. For us, it meant self-employment. For you, it might simply require adding an income stream, launching an online store, or making an investment. Either way, big change demands two things: time and money. If you’re stuck under a financial ceiling and chained to an emotionless forty-hour work week, you might be clipping your own wings. Escaping the prison of the professional employee isn’t easy. Make a plan and attack it. And chip away at the concrete that holds you in. You only get one life. Don’t spend it inside the walls of a job that’s holding you back.

Money can’t buy you happiness but it sure can buy the Hammer truly wireless earbuds, and we are certain the feeling is pretty much the same! With festival season being round the corner and no good ideas on what to gift your loved ones whatsoever, Hammer presents to you its wide range of athleisure products ranging from the truly wireless earbuds, wireless earphones, Hammer bash headphones, fitness bands going all the way to its smart watch and so much more! It’s time to finally go all out and ditch those old school gifting trends with something different than the age-old gifts like clothes and sweets for your friends and family! At Hammer, we understand festivals are full of bliss and joy, and we are all about spreading the joy with our luxurious products in a budget that ensures that you and your loved ones get the best quality and comfort all in one single product. All Hammer products are equipped with the latest Bluetooth V5.0 technology, sweatproof or waterproof, and pairing, along with long hours of battery support. All Hammer products will not only make this special day full of traditions but also a day to appreciate one another and send out gifts as a small token of appreciation for all the special ones in our life. In addition to this the entire range of these Hammer products also make perfect corporate gifts to employee or business clients and partners that will be appropriate for those work calls or that zoom meeting, all while giving you just the right opportunity to make those professional bond all the stronger and for rewarding those hardworking employees together with the most valuable clients of your business this festive season. So now put a stop to your gift hunting all while collecting those precious Hammer devices that will incontestably make for the best festival present this season while you still have time! Hammer best selling products in India for the festive season 1. Hammer KO Sports True Wireless Earbuds with Touch Controls. 2. Hammer Pulse Smart Watch for Body Temperature Measurement 3. Hammer Bash over the Ear Bluetooth Wireless Bluetooth Headphones with HD Mic. 4. Hammer Airflow True Wireless Earbuds with Bluetooth v5.0 (Black, White, Blue Color). 5. Hammer Grip Sports Wireless Bluetooth Earphones.

deciding how best to play with Bambi before taking her down. Fallyn met his gaze, refusing to feel small in his presence, though in her bare feet, she was exactly that. “Your whole family spat on my mother’s casket, but you’re bringing me flowers?” “Papa D left the family business to me, and I’m tired of burying people. Aren’t you?” “Well, yeah. I’ve been trying to make peace for years, but you never seemed up for it. Now you’re bringing me flowers?” Tired of holding onto the declaration of a truce, Vince laid the bouquet on the employee desk. “I guess I am. You’re well within your rights to open a store here. Killian and I have an understanding. I trust you’re keeping everything above board?” Fallyn raised her chin defiantly, knowing her sass made her look every bit the twelve years younger than him she was. “Our family never dealt.” His lower lip tightened. “I’m well aware. I was talking about the loan sharking. None of that going on through here?” Fallyn took a steadying breath. “Killian’s moving the family business away from sharking so he can dole out more reasonable loans, and I was never involved in any of that when we did. You know that. It’s just a bakery, nothing more.” “We stopped dealing, too. I was just checking.” “You can check with Killian. You know he’s in charge.” “Yes, but I can tell if you’re lying to me or not. With them, it’s anybody’s guess. I want things to stay peaceful. With one look, you’re an open book.” He motioned around the kitchen. “More things like this happening is what I want.” He lowered his gaze to hers, piercing her with his icy stare that was both scrutinizing and superior. “Joey told me he was here last week. Did he cause any trouble?” “No, but he probably should stay away for a bit. He showed up fishing for trouble, and Danny and Carrigan almost gave him exactly that.

When Amana was about three years old, she'd taken her back to her parents' house. One day, while they were sitting face-to-face playing cat's cradle in the room with the grandfather clock, she saw capillaries growing out of their bodies like tiny branches. Slender as gossamer from a spider's web, they spread out along the walls and up to the ceiling, twining themselves around the grandfather clock. Quaking in fear, Marika stood up. Until then, she had never seriously thought about the history of that house. Generations of people whose names she didn't know, whom she'd never cared about, had been born and died there. The sweat of women forced to work like slaves drenched the walls; the pillars were splattered with the semen of masters of this house who had forced themselves on young servants. She smelled the cold sweat of a son who had strangled his bedridden father to get his inheritance. The walls and ceiling that had witnessed these atrocities glared down on her. The misery of married couples trickling down into the pipes connecting the toilet to the sewer. A mother who has chemically transformed her loneliness into ambition chokes her son, squeezing his slender neck between her sweaty thighs. A wife who never lets on what she knows about her husband's affairs mixes her own turds into his miso soup. That handsome arsonist seen loitering around the house might be a former employee, fired for no good reason. The umbilical cord binding the generations of a respectable old family is also a rope around the neck. And she had wanted to cut her ties to all these bloody forebearers, now taking such pleasure in sharing old family secrets... My real family, she thought, are those people I just happened to meet in that coffee shop.

when leaders are humble, show respect, and ask how they can help employees do their work better, the outcomes can be outstanding. And even more important than better company results, humble leaders get to act like better human beings. They get to treat other people as they would like their own family to be treated.

Page 3: My family is part of the Philippines’ tiny but entrepreneurial, economically powerful Chinese minority. Just 1 percent of the population, Chinese Filipinos control as much as 60 percent of the private economy, including the country’s four major airlines and almost all of the country’s banks, hotels, shopping malls, and major conglomerates. ... Since my aunt’s murder, one childhood memory keeps haunting me. I was eight, staying at my family’s splendid hacienda-style house in Manila. It was before dawn, still dark. Wide awake, I decided to get a drink from the kitchen. I must have gone down an extra flight of stairs, because I literally stumbled onto six male bodies. I had found the male servants’ quarters. My family’s houseboys, gardeners, and chauffeurs—I sometimes imagine that Nilo Abique [the chauffeur that murdered her aunt] was among those men—were sleeping on mats on a dirt floor. The place stank of sweat and urine. I was horrified. Later that day I mentioned the incident to my Aunt Leona, who laughed affectionately and explained that the servants—there were perhaps twenty living on the premises, all ethnic Filipinos—were fortunate to be working for our family. If not for their positions, they would be living among rats and open sewers without even a roof over their heads. A Filipino maid then walked in; I remember that she had a bowl of food for my aunt’s Pekingese. My aunt took the bowl but kept talking as if the maid were not there. The Filipinos, she continued—in Chinese, but plainly not caring whether the maid understood or not—were lazy and unintelligent and didn’t really want to do much else. If they didn’t like working for us, they were free to leave any time. After all, my aunt said, they were employees, not slaves.

It all started with a package placed on Borglund's doorstep at two o'clock in the morning. But, no, really, it started before that, when tilting his head over the picket fence, the smell of gin strong on his breath, he told me about his father, how he had collaborated with the Nazis back in Holland. I was speechless, but I must have had a telling look on my face because he stood back a step and, with watery eyes, said, "What else could he have done? He had a family, seven children to support." His father had been a railroad employee, had helped the SS route trains to the death camps. To Borglund, he was like any other man trapped in a job he didn't really like. But it was different -- those trains were full of my people, my ancestors." --From the story "The Nazi Next Door," included in the book PETTY OFFENSES AND CRIMES OF THE HEART

She wasn't quite sure how this had happened. A chain of events had somehow led to having a large, half-naked Scotsman in her parlor. She was astonished to reflect she'd already seen more of Keir's body- and become more familiar with it- than she had with Joshua before their wedding. Even more surprising was how natural this felt. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed taking care of someone. Oh, she had family, friends, and a thousand employees to look after, but that wasn't the same as having her own person. Not that this man was hers, of course. But it felt like he was.

The third and perhaps most important output of a market is the cultural change the new market triggers and reinforces. In addition to democratizing products and services so that many more people in society have access, market-creating innovations also democratize the benefits of successful new markets that are created. These benefits aren’t limited to just jobs, but also ownership opportunities that are often offered to investors and employees. When many people in a region understand that they can begin to solve many of their problems (fend for themselves and their families and gain status and dignity in society) in a productive manner—that is, by participating in the new market as investors, producers, or consumers—they are more likely to change the way they think about their society. This is one of the ways new markets begin to change a society’s culture, which can make all the difference for a country looking to prosper.

Some of my best friends work for us, too. Justin Martin, or Martin as we call him, played football at West Monroe High School. I pick on him, joking that he’s the only man I know who looks dumb but is really smart and looks old but is really young. If you’ve seen him on the show, you know exactly what I’m talking about. He only lacks his thesis to complete a master’s degree in wildlife biology, and he had a full scholarship to college. Martin is actually the only employee we have who ever worked in a sporting goods store that sold hunting products. He understands competitive pricing and inventory. I met Martin when he came to play poker at our house one Friday night. While on summer break from college, Martin was looking for some work. I was going out of town the next week, but I told him to come in and start calling sporting goods store. About three days later, I received an e-mai from martin@duckcommander.com. The guy already had a Duck Commander e-mail with his name on it! I really thought he was only going to be with us for a few days and then go back to what he was doing. I never really hired him; he just ended up staying. But Martin is an excellent hunter-which gave him an advantage-and he knows all about animals. Martin will do anything for you, and he is my liaison in the blind. I’ll give him new products that companies want us to try out, and he’ll come back to me with everyone’s feedback. Most important, Martin learned how to make our duck calls, which made him invaluable. Plus, he’s another guy I enjoy hanging out with, and what’s it all worth if you can’t work with people you like?

Mr. Nelson Morris, twenty-six years old, endowed with a salary of $75,000, admitted that neither he nor Mr. Ferris, who determined employees' wages, ever visited their homes. Mr. Morris said he had never looked over a budget showing the cost of living for a laboring man with a family. The plain truth is that this newer generation of industrial lords grew up in luxury, apart from the toilers who earn their profits for them. To them the workers are like machinery, to be bought at the cheapest price attainable, to be run at the highest possible speed the longest number of hours, to be scrapped when worn out and replaced by new" [New York Evening Mail, ca. 1918].

IWW General Headquarters was collecting information regarding past free speech fights in response to a request from the U.S. Committee on Industrial Relations. Believing the “publicity to be worth the work it will entail,” Vincent St. John made an appeal in Solidarity one week before the September convention. Anyone who had first-hand experience was asked to submit personal narratives, pamphlets, bulletins, reports, and detailed histories regarding the various free speech fights. …. The committee determined that non-English-speaking workers had prevented development of better employer-employee relationships, especially with the “unreasonable prejudice of almost every class of Americans toward immigrants.” With rumblings of a European war, the committee recommended immediate legislation for restricting immigration except for those who were “likely to make the most desirable citizens.