“
Christ, don't go to the Haunted Houses with Ally and Indy. A few years ago, Indy went berserk and broke through the hay bales they had set up to make the haunted trail and headed into the cornfields. All the employees chased after her but since they were dressed like monsters, Indy lost her mind. They had to call the cops to settle her down."
I lost him at "cornfields".
"Cornfields?" I whispered.
"Yeah."
"They have a haunted trail through cornfields?"
"Yeah, up in Thornton. Best Haunted House in Denver. Indy and Ally go every year. Why?"
"Cornfields freak me out," I admitted.
Hank was silent.
Then, he said, "You're from Indiana. How in the fuck can cornfields freak you out?"
"Cornfields don't freak me out. Cornfields at night freak me out. Haunted cornfields at night freak me out."
"You been to many haunted cornfields?"
"Dude," I said low. "All cornfields are haunted. Trust me. I know... They whisper to you.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Rock Chick Redemption (Rock Chick, #3))
“
You have visitors," Maximus stated.
...
"Stop"
I did at his commanding tone, and then cursed. I wasn't one of his employees-he had no right to order me around.
"No," I said defiantly. "I'm sweaty snd bloody and I want to take a shower, so whatever you have to say, it can wait."
Maximus lost his impassive expression an looked at me as if I'd suddenly sproute a second head. Vlad's brows drew together and he opened his mouth, but before he could speak, laughter rang out from the hallway.
"I simply must meet whoever has out you in your place so thoroughly, Tepesh," an unfamiliar British voice stated.
"Did I mention they were on their way down," Maximus muttered.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Once Burned (Night Prince, #1))
“
You eat the room service employees every time?” Denise asked, shocked. “Of course. But don’t fret on their behalf. I always tip well.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (First Drop of Crimson (Night Huntress World, #1))
“
Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES--modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft.
”
”
Nick Flynn (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City)
“
Sunny, in fact, had the master-servant mentality common among an older generation of Indian businessmen. Employees were his minions. He expected them to be at his disposal at all hours of the day or night and on weekends.
”
”
John Carreyrou (Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup)
“
Under-slept employees are not, therefore, going to drive your business forward with productive innovation. Like a group of people riding stationary exercise bikes, everyone looks like they are pedaling, but the scenery never changes. The irony that employees miss is that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work less productively and thus need to work longer to accomplish a goal. This means you often must work longer and later into the evening, arrive home later, go to bed later, and need to wake up earlier, creating a negative feedback loop. Why try to boil a pot of water on medium heat when you could do so in half the time on high? People often tell me that they do not have enough time to sleep because they have so much work to do. Without wanting to be combative in any way whatsoever, I respond by informing them that perhaps the reason they still have so much to do at the end of the day is precisely because they do not get enough sleep at night.
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams)
“
Over Christmas break, I took on additional hours and was working late one Saturday night when Wild Bill came sauntering into my department tipsy to pick me up so I wouldn’t have to hitchhike home. I had scarcely seen him since he enrolled me in school, except slumped over the bar at Dave’s or when he would occasionally drop by the Tampico unannounced on the way home to his new family. He’d beach himself on the sofa while I did my homework, and when he sobered up enough to drive home, he would down a can of beer before saying goodbye. To say it made me happy to see him, drunk and all, is an understatement. Seeing my father anywhere besides Dave’s Tavern was akin to spotting a unicorn in the wild.
I asked him to meet me out in front of the store, but he insisted on following me through the employees’ exit. On the way out, he stole two poinsettias. He thought it was hilarious to be running out of the JCPenney’s with a poinsettia in each hand.
”
”
Samantha Hart (Blind Pony: As True A Story As I Can Tell)
“
Let me redefine that line you keep talking about: you are more than my employee and I am more than your boss. I’m done giving you space that we both don’t want. It’s not at all complicated. You’ll work with me during the day and underneath me at night. Every night. There will be no tiptoeing. There will be no running. There will be no one else.
”
”
Elsie Silver (Off to the Races (Gold Rush Ranch, #1))
“
If the food that one ate the night before were somehow able to be seen and identified through one’s clothes throughout the day, millions of employees would each fast ten or so days before their payday.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Uh, hello? Hello, hello! Uh, this is just to inform all employees, that due to current restrictions, the previously mentioned safe rooms, are being sealed at most locations. Including this one. Work crews will be here most of the day today, constructing a false wall over the old door bay. Nothing is being taken out before hand, so if you left anything inside, then it's your own fault. Management also requests, that this room not be mentioned to family, friends or insurance representatives. Thanks again, and remember to smile. You are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
”
”
Andrew Mills (Five Nights at Freddy's 3 Ultimate Strategy Guide, Walkthrough, Secrets, Tips and Tricks)
“
The berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when—if you want to come back.”
Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. “I don’t know what to say.”
His bare hand flexed on the crow’s head of his cane. The sight was so strange Inej had trouble tearing her eyes from it. “Say you’ll return.”
“I’m not done with Ketterdam.” She hadn’t known she meant it until she said the words.
Kaz cast her a swift glance. “I thought you wanted to hunt slavers.”
“I do. And I want your help.” Inej licked her lips, tasted the ocean on them. Her life had been a series of impossible moments, so why not ask for something impossible now? “It’s not just the slavers. It’s the procurers, the customers, the Barrel bosses, the politicians. It’s everyone who turns a blind eye to suffering when there’s money to be made.”
“I’m a Barrel boss.”
“You would never sell someone, Kaz. You know better than anyone that you’re not just one more boss scraping for the best margin.”
“The bosses, the customers, the politicians,” he mused. “That could be half the people in Ketterdam—and you want to fight them all.”
“Why not?” Inej asked. “One the seas and in the city. One by one.”
“Brick by brick,” he said. Then he gave a single shake of his head, as if shrugging off the notion. “I wasn’t made to be a hero, Wraith. You should have learned that by now. You want me to be a better man, a good man. I—“
“This city doesn’t need a good man. It needs you.”
“Inej—“
“How many times have you told me you’re a monster? So be a monster. Be the thing they all fear when they close their eyes at night. We don’t go after all the gangs. We don’t shut down the houses that treat fairly with their employees. We go after women like Tante Heleen, men like Pekka Rollins.” She paused. “And think about it this way…you’ll be thinning the competition.”
He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh.
One of his hands balanced on his cane. The other rested at his side next to her. She’d need only move the smallest amount and they’d be touching. He was that close. He was that far from reach.
Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird’s feather. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away.
“I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving.
Once they’d stood on the deck of a ship and she’d waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragged under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown too.
Back on Black Veil, he’d told her they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying.
She felt his knuckles slide again hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
“
The store was empty, without a single customer or employee. It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They’d probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.
”
”
Marisha Pessl (Night Film)
“
What do you mean, this isn't my property?!" One entrepreneurial Federal employee backed his panel van up to the office door one night and stole all the computer equipment. He wasn't too hard to catch: he tried to sell everything at a yard sale the next day — with barcodes and "Property of US Government" stickers still prominently displayed.
”
”
U.S. Department of the Army (Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure – United States Government - updated July 2013)
“
Paranoia was much more than a full-time job. It was a job that forced its employees to work nights and weekends, as well.
”
”
Mark Greaney (Burner (Gray Man, #12))
“
Building trust in employees and partners creates profitable alliances, speeds up all parts of your business, and helps you sleep at night.
”
”
Patrick Bet-David (Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy)
“
Some nights he sat up late on his front porch with a glass of Jack and listened to the trucks heading south on 220, carrying crates of live chickens to the slaughterhouses—always under cover of darkness, like a vast and shameful trafficking—chickens pumped full of hormones that left them too big to walk—and he thought how these same chickens might return from their destination as pieces of meat to the floodlit Bojangles’ up the hill from his house, and that meat would be drowned in the bubbling fryers by employees whose hatred of the job would leak into the cooked food, and that food would be served up and eaten by customers who would grow obese and end up in the hospital in Greensboro with diabetes or heart failure, a burden to the public, and later Dean would see them riding around the Mayodan Wal-Mart in electric carts because they were too heavy to walk the aisles of a Supercenter, just like hormone-fed chickens.
”
”
George Packer (The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America)
“
You have a visitors," Maximus stated. His face was impassive, but I still cringed, trying to discreetly tug my hand out of Vlad's. He let me go and folded his arms, smiling in that scary, pleasant way at Maximus.
“And they are so important that you had to find me at once and enter without knocking?”
I heard the threat behind those words and blanched. He wasn’t about to throw down on Maximus over this, was he? Don’t, I sent him, not adding the please only because I knew the word didn’t work on him.
“Forgive me, but it’s Mencheres and his co-ruler,” Maximus stated, not sounding apologetic even though he bowed. “Their wives as well.” I started to slink away, sanity returning now that I wasn’t caught up by Vlad’s mesmerizing nearness. What had I been doing? Nothing smart, that was for sure.
“Leila Stop,” Vlad said I kept heading for the door. “You have company, so I’ll just make myself scarce-“
“Stop”
I did at his commanding tone, and then cursed. I wasn’t one of his employees-he had no right to order me around. “NO,” I said defiantly. “I’m sweaty, and bloody and I want to take a shower, so whatever you have to say, it can wait.”
Maximus lost his impassive expression and looked at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted a second head. Vlad’s brow drew together and he opened his mouth, but before he could speak, laughter rang out from the hallway.
“I simply must meet whoever has put you in your place so thoroughly, Tepesh,” an unfamiliar British voice stated. “Did I mention they were on their way down?” Maximus muttered before the gym door swung open and four people entered.
The first was a short-haired brunet whose grin made me assume he was the one who’d greeted Vlad with the taunt. He was also handsome in a too-pretty way that made me think with less muscles, a wig, and some makeup he’d look great in a dress.
Vlad’s scowl vanished into a smile as the brunet’s gaze swung in my direction as though he’d somehow heard that. “Looks as though she’s put you in your place as well, Bones,” Vlad drawled. “So it seems.” Bones replied, winking at me.” “But while I’ve worn many disguises, I draw the line at a dress.”
My mouth dropped another mind reader?
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Once Burned (Night Prince, #1))
“
When you are the one throwing the party every night, emptying the ashtrays, making sure the tonic is cold, the limes fresh, the shifts covered, the meat perfectly cooked and adequately rested, the customers carefree and the employees calm and confident, it will leave its marks. Someone has to stay in the kitchen and do the bones of the thing, to make sure it stands up, and if it’s you, so be it.
”
”
Gabrielle Hamilton (Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef)
“
I got up on time this morning, boarded the train, changed to the subway, and worked like an aggressive career woman in one of the biggest corporations around. At night I transformed into a prostitute sought out by men. Suddenly I remembered the argument I had had earlier with Arai and stopped short. I'm a company employee day and night. Or is it that I'm a prostitute night and day? Which is it? Which one is me?
”
”
Natsuo Kirino (Grotesque)
“
The toll from the two attacks: twenty-one pro-American leaders and their employees dead, twenty-six taken prisoner, and a few who could not be accounted for. Not one member of the Taliban or al-Qaeda was among the victims. Instead, in a single thirty-minute stretch the United States had managed to eradicate both of Khas Uruzgan’s potential governments, the core of any future anti-Taliban leadership—stalwarts who had outlasted the Russian invasion, the civil war, and the Taliban years but would not survive their own allies. People in Khas Uruzgan felt what Americans might if, in a single night, masked gunmen had wiped out the entire city council, mayor’s office, and police department of a small suburban town: shock, grief, and rage.
”
”
Anand Gopal (No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes)
“
Come on, sweetheart. I’m letting you do this. Do it.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Listen, I know it’s easier when they’re not fucking looking at you.”
Beckett turned and faced the wall.
“I don’t know who hired you, but can I ask you for something?” He talked at the wall.
Here comes the fast-talking, the mojo, the shout to his employees.
“Could you make sure Cole doesn’t take credit for his handiwork last night? And can you follow up on that Chris guy?” Beckett turned his head a bit, listening for her answer.
He still trusts me. He still trusts me with his brothers. I can’t do it.
”
”
Debra Anastasia (Poughkeepsie (Poughkeepsie Brotherhood, #1))
“
Employees were livid. Their leaders had not done enough. Many had long believed that Trump had no place on the platform. They watched as their peer companies, like Facebook, unilaterally banned the former president. Meanwhile, they were giving the president back his favorite megaphone after a night’s sleep.
”
”
Kate Conger (Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter)
“
Who cheats?
Well, just about anyone, if the stakes are right. You might say to yourself, I don’t cheat, regardless of the stakes. And then you might remember the time you cheated on, say, a board game. Last week. Or the golf ball you nudged out of its bad lie. Or the time you really wanted a bagel in the office break room but couldn’t come up with the dollar you were supposed to drop in the coffee can. And then took the bagel anyway. And told yourself you’d pay double the next time. And didn’t.
For every clever person who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is an army of people, clever and otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying to beat it. Cheating may or may not be human nature, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor. Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more for less. So it isn’t just the boldface names — inside-trading CEOs and pill-popping ballplayers and perkabusing politicians — who cheat. It is the waitress who pockets her tips instead of pooling them. It is the Wal-Mart payroll manager who goes into the computer and shaves his employees’ hours to make his own performance look better. It is the third grader who, worried about not making it to the fourth grade, copies test answers from the kid sitting next to him.
Some cheating leaves barely a shadow of evidence. In other cases, the evidence is massive. Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly. It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing the name of each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number. Suddenly, seven million children — children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms — vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.
”
”
Steven D. Levitt (Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything)
“
I once succumbed to the fad of fasting and went for six days and nights without eating. It wasn’t difficult. I was less hungry at the end of the sixth day than I was at the end of the second. Yet I know, as you know, people who would think they had committed a crime if they let their families or employees go for six days without food; but they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and sometimes sixty years without giving them the hearty appreciation that they crave almost as much as they crave food.
”
”
Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
“
Musk and the other young engineers would work late into the night and then fire up a multiplayer shooter game, such as Quake III Arena, on their desktop computers, conference together their cell phones, and plunge into death matches that could last until 3 a.m. Musk’s handle was Random9, and he was (of course) the most aggressive. “We’d be screaming and yelling at each other like a bunch of lunatics,” said one employee. “And Elon was right there in the thick of it with us.” He was usually triumphant. “He’s alarmingly good at these games,
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
The relevant research literature also helps clarify this sense of overload. In their original 2004 study on attention fragmentation, Victor M. González and Gloria Mark partitioned the efforts of the employees they observed into distinct working spheres, each representing a different project or objective. They found that on average their subjects worked on ten different spheres per day, spending less than twelve minutes on one before switching to another.36 A follow-up study in 2005 found the observed employees touching on eleven to twelve different working spheres per day on average.37 The large number of different spheres these subjects tackled in a given day, combined with the reality that each sphere demands the accomplishment of many smaller tasks and presumably dozens of emails, provides a harried portrayal of modern knowledge work. “At night, I often wake in a panic about all the things I need to do or didn’t get done,” writes journalist Brigid Schulte in Overwhelmed, her 2014 book on this busyness epidemic. “I worry that I’ll face my death and realize that my life got lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff.”38
”
”
Cal Newport (A World Without Email: Find Focus and Transform the Way You Work Forever (from the NYT bestselling productivity expert))
“
But as the weeks rolled on, I realized it wasn’t a lack of glamour that was bothering me. Instead, I kept thinking back to a line Valerie liked to include in her commencements: “Put yourself in the path of lightning.” For just one night, a seventeen-minute comedy monologue was the center of political attention. It was the place to address controversies, to take shots at opponents, to project confidence to the public we served. Now, however, lightning was once again striking the campaign trail. More and more speeches—for both the president and senior staff—were the ones I could not legally write. I kind of liked having job security. I kind of loved drinking Kennedy Center beer. But nothing was as intoxicating as being part of the action. Not long after the dinner, I asked Favs if I could leave the White House for the campaign. He agreed, but proposed a plan that kept me in Washington: I would work on political speeches for POTUS, but from the Democratic National Committee in D.C. Which is how I found myself, a few weeks later, standing beside a conference table covered in turkey pinwheels and cheap champagne. Straut said something generous. Coworkers wrapped leftovers in paper napkins. I turned in my blue badge and BlackBerry. Just like that, I was no longer a government employee.
”
”
David Litt (Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years)
“
Realtor
Randall Mann
Please
consider Ocean Beach
out of reach.
Try not to gulp
the green water
we porpoise
like employees.
My purpose:
your thought-partner.
There is a feeling
just shy of feeling,
like tongue on teeth.
Disbelief
hangs there,
an ill-chosen comma,
a lanyard with a pass.
I swear the train is coming.
I’m only here to help.
A client bought,
on second thought,
that House in Vermont.
Night is flirty words
with fiends,
the phlebotomists
from Quest
boning up on Thoreau.
It’s too soon to throw
in the cards.
Live and let give?
Here. Let me give
you the high-five.
I searched;
my activism,
lightly starched.
I never meant
to live in euphemism.
”
”
Randall Mann
“
But I thought you were a conservative?’ ¶ ‘I am, I guess,’ she said. ‘But I also have eyes and ears.’ ¶ And that’s when it hit me. ¶ No one believed it. ¶ Fair and Balanced. We Report, You Decide. Everyone knew it was bunk. A sham. Over the next eight years at Fox, I never met a single employee, not the truest of true believers, who wasn’t cynical about what our main purpose was. ¶ ‘We all know the “Fair and Balanced” thing is bullshit,’ a very conservative O’Reilly Factor producer told me once, late at night, after we’d had a few drinks. ‘We’re not here to be fair. We’re here to give red meat to our viewers.’ ¶ ‘To stir up the crazies, you mean,’ I said. ¶ He laughed. ‘Yeah, to stir up the crazies. Because outrage equals ratings.
”
”
Joe Muto (An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media)
“
Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we’re not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we’re trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time. A lot of people may think it’s strange that an Internet company is so focused on the telephone, when only about 5 percent of our sales happen through the telephone. In fact, most of our phone calls don’t even result in sales. But what we’ve found is that on average, every customer contacts us at least once sometime during his or her lifetime, and we just need to make sure that we use that opportunity to create a lasting memory. The majority of phone calls don’t result in an immediate order. Sometimes a customer may be calling because it’s her first time returning an item, and she just wants a little help stepping through the process. Other times, a customer may call because there’s a wedding coming up this weekend and he wants a little fashion advice. And sometimes, we get customers who call simply because they’re a little lonely and want someone to talk to. I’m reminded of a time when I was in Santa Monica, California, a few years ago at a Skechers sales conference. After a long night of bar-hopping, a small group of us headed up to someone’s hotel room to order some food. My friend from Skechers tried to order a pepperoni pizza from the room-service menu, but was disappointed to learn that the hotel we were staying at did not deliver hot food after 11:00 PM. We had missed the deadline by several hours. In our inebriated state, a few of us cajoled her into calling Zappos to try to order a pizza. She took us up on our dare, turned on the speakerphone, and explained to the (very) patient Zappos rep that she was staying in a Santa Monica hotel and really craving a pepperoni pizza, that room service was no longer delivering hot food, and that she wanted to know if there was anything Zappos could do to help. The Zappos rep was initially a bit confused by the request, but she quickly recovered and put us on hold. She returned two minutes later, listing the five closest places in the Santa Monica area that were still open and delivering pizzas at that time. Now, truth be told, I was a little hesitant to include this story because I don’t actually want everyone who reads this book to start calling Zappos and ordering pizza. But I just think it’s a fun story to illustrate the power of not having scripts in your call center and empowering your employees to do what’s right for your brand, no matter how unusual or bizarre the situation. As for my friend from Skechers? After that phone call, she’s now a customer for life. Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service into Your Company 1. Make customer service a priority for the whole company, not just a department. A customer service attitude needs to come from the top. 2. Make WOW a verb that is part of your company’s everyday vocabulary. 3. Empower and trust your customer service reps. Trust that they want to provide great service… because they actually do. Escalations to a supervisor should be rare. 4. Realize that it’s okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees. 5. Don’t measure call times, don’t force employees to upsell, and don’t use scripts. 6. Don’t hide your 1-800 number. It’s a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well. 7. View each call as an investment in building a customer service brand, not as an expense you’re seeking to minimize. 8. Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company. 9. Find and hire people who are already passionate about customer service. 10. Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors.
”
”
Tony Hsieh (Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose)
“
In the present state of the world, not only are many people destitute but the majority of those who are not being haunted by a perfectly reasonable fear that they may become so at any moment. Wage-earners have the constant danger of unemployment; salaried employees know that their firm may go bankrupt or find it necessary to cut down its staff; businessmen, even those who are reputed to be very rich, know that the loss of all their money is by no means improbable. Professional men have a very hard struggle. After making great sacrifices for the education of their sons and daughters, they find that there are not the openings that there used to be for those who have the kinds of skills that their children have acquired. If they are lawyers, they find that people can no longer afford to go to law, although serious injustices remain unremedied; if they are doctors, they find that their formerly lucrative hypochondriac patients can no longer afford to be ill, while many genuine sufferers have to forgo much-needed medical treatment. One finds men and women of university education serving behind the counters in shops, which may save them from destitution, but only at the expense of those who would formerly have been so employed. In all classes, from the lowest to almost the highest, economic fear governs men’s thoughts by day and their dreams at night, making their work nerve-wracking and their leisure unrefreshing. This ever-present terror is, I think, the main cause of the mood of madness which has swept over great parts of the civilized world.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays)
“
Timothy grabbed his squealing, tearful wife and spun her around the room. Then he read the letter again just to be sure he hadn't misunderstood. He lightly brushed his fingers across the gold embossed letters KPH in the upper left-hand corner and then, overcome with emotion, covered his face with the letter. This was what he had been hoping for. All those years of rejections; the frustrations and self-doubt; the late nights of writing until five or six in the morning, only to have to stop and get ready to go to work exhausted; the stress on his marriage. Even the other employees where he worked had started kidding him, calling him "Mr. Shakespeare" to his face and making jokes about him behind his back. He was sick of being asked, "Have you gotten published yet?" The cost had been high; with each rejection letter, a new humiliation to suffer. It was all worth it now. This is what it had been about. Now he could say he was an author; and yes, dammit, he was published. His dream had finally come true.
”
”
Barbara Casey (The House of Kane)
“
She also felt like there was something slightly more insidious going on, about how you were now supposed to feel like your work was your everything: where you got your paycheck, yes, but also where you got fed and where you found your social circle. Everything had started bleeding into everything else. These kids—she felt no compunction about calling them kids—expected that their workplaces would provide all this for them, as if work were an extension of college, with its own clubs and student organizations. Even more disconcerting was that many TakeOff employees lived together or had roommates who were in some way connected to other TakeOff employees, and now there were even apartment buildings that were actual dorms for grown-ups, where you lived in a suite with a few other people and had common areas and nightly activities. It was almost like a return to the days of Henry Ford, when a company provided you with housing and meals and social events. What had happened to having to figure out life on your own?
”
”
Doree Shafrir (Startup)
“
Another young woman, an employee of the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, was on her way home from a visit to a sauna when the news of the night inspired her to head for Bornholmer. Her name was Angela Merkel. She had chosen a career in chemistry, not in politics, but that night would change her life. Merkel had been born in Hamburg in 1954, and even though she and her immediate family had moved to East Germany in 1957, she still maintained contact with an aunt in her hometown. On the night of November 9, once she made it to West Berlin, Merkel would call that aunt to say that she had crossed the border. It would be the first of many nights of crossing the East-West divide for Merkel, in both literal and figurative terms.72 She would soon become active in the new East German party Democratic Awakening, which would enter into an election alliance with the CDU, eventually bringing Merkel into the latter party’s ranks. As a member of the CDU, Merkel would start her phenomenal rise to the chancellorship of united Germany.73
”
”
Mary Elise Sarotte (The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall)
“
A young man sought employment on a farm. He handed a letter to his potential employer that read, “He sleeps in a storm.” The desperate owner needed help, so he hired the young man despite his enigmatic letter.
Several weeks passed and, in the middle of the night, a powerful storm ripped through the valley. Awakened by the storm, the owner jumped out of bed. He called for his new employee, but the man was sound asleep. The owner dashed to the barn and to his amazement, the animals were safe with plenty of food. He hurried to the nearby field only to see that the bales of wheat were already bound and wrapped in tarpaulins. He ran to the silo. The doors were latched and the grain was dry.
And then the owner understood, “He sleeps in a storm.”
“My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of “I could have, I should have.” We can sleep in a storm. And when it’s time, our good-byes will be complete.
”
”
Mitch Albom (Have a Little Faith: a True Story)
“
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.
”
”
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
“
Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . . on you roll, across a countryside whose light is forever changing--castles, heaps of rock, moons of different shapes and colors come and go. There are stops at odd hours of teh mornings, for reasons that are not announced: you get out to stretch in lime-lit courtyards where the old men sit around the table under enormous eucalyptus trees you can smell in the night, shuffling the ancient decks oily and worn, throwing down swords and cups and trumps major in the tremor of light while behind them the bus is idling, waiting--"passengers will now reclaim their seats" and much as you'd like to stay, right here, learn the game, find your old age around this quiet table, it's no use: he is waiting beside the door of the bus in his pressed uniform, Lord of the Night he is checking your tickets, your ID and travel papers, and it's the wands of enterprise that dominate tonight...as he nods you by, you catch a glimpse of his face, his insane, committed eyes, and you remember then, for a terrible few heartbeats, that of course it will end for you all in blood, in shock, without dignity--but there is meanwhile this trip to be on ... over your own seat, where there ought to be an advertising plaque, is instead a quote from Rilke: "Once, only once..." One of Their favorite slogans. No return, no salvation, no Cycle--that's not what They, nor Their brilliant employee Kekule, have taken the Serpent to mean.
”
”
Thomas Pynchon
“
Afterward, we went to grab a bite of dinner. Just like at lunch, we talked forever. We shut that restaurant down. They actually had to tell us to leave because they were closing. So then we stood in the parking lot talking. It was freezing but neither of us wanted to go home. We stood out there so long that the employees of the restaurant had already cleaned up and left. We were completely alone in the lot.
Then she did the most adorable thing. I don’t know how the conversation had gone this way but flat feet came up. So all of a sudden she chirped, “I have really flat feet. I’m like a rabbit!” And then, without warning, she whipped off one of her cowboy boots and tapped her foot on the ground really fast. Bump-bump-bump-bump. “I’m like Thumper from Bambi!” she exclaimed. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, This girl is crazy and I absolutely love it. I was laughing, she was laughing, and I decided to go in for the kiss. I leaned in and then she suddenly leaned back. Crap. I was so embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I went in for it, and it wasn’t good.” I hung my head down.
“No, no, no, I panicked! Please, try again!” she said.
“No, I won’t make a fool of myself twice in one night. We’ll try again another day,” I said and I changed the subject. I was talking about something else for a while and then she whispered, “Just kiss me.” I did and it was incredible. Every moment I spent with this girl, I fell more and more in love with her.
”
”
Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
“
Many aspects of the modern financial system are designed to give an impression of overwhelming urgency: the endless ‘news’ feeds, the constantly changing screens of traders, the office lights blazing late into the night, the young analysts who find themselves required to work thirty hours at a stretch. But very little that happens in the finance sector has genuine need for this constant appearance of excitement and activity. Only its most boring part—the payments system—is an essential utility on whose continuous functioning the modern economy depends. No terrible consequence would follow if the stock market closed for a week (as it did in the wake of 9/11)—or longer, or if a merger were delayed or large investment project postponed for a few weeks, or if an initial public offering happened next month rather than this. The millisecond improvement in data transmission between New York and Chicago has no significance whatever outside the absurd world of computers trading with each other. The tight coupling is simply unnecessary: the perpetual flow of ‘information’ part of a game that traders play which has no wider relevance, the excessive hours worked by many employees a tournament in which individuals compete to display their alpha qualities in return for large prizes. The traditional bank manager’s culture of long lunches and afternoons on the golf course may have yielded more useful information about business than the Bloomberg terminal. Lehman
”
”
John Kay (Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance)
“
Rosie and Johnny's relationship was being ripped to shreds, with the press and public pawing over the pieces like wild dogs.
The emotional chasm between Dominic and Pet had been torn even wider.
Apparently, Sylvie had been wasting time, money, and ingredients for months, constantly defending this woman to Jay.
And someone intimately connected to the Starlight Circus had just called her décor "kitsch."
"Penny," she said very calmly, with a smile just as vague, just as airy, and just as malicious, "get the fuck out of my home."
Penny tossed her head---and froze as Mabel walked toward her, hips swinging, also smiling.
That smile had more eerie impact than every lighting effect in the Dark Forest combined.
The intern took a step back, but halted in momentary confusion when Mabel offered her the lollipop.
She took the candy skull automatically, and then shrieked as Mabel---tiny, deceptively delicate Mabel---made a blur of a movement with her foot and Penny tumbled across her shoulders.
Whistling, Mabel walked toward the back door and out into the alley, wearing Penny around her neck like a scarf. Through the window, Sylvie watched as her assistant calmly threw the intern into the dumpster.
As a stream of profanity drifted from the piles of rubbish--most of which, incidentally, was all the ingredients Penny had purposely wasted--Mabel returned to the kitchen.
"I'll be off, then," she said, collecting her bag and coat from their hook.
"Have a good night," Sylvie returned serenely.
As Mabel passed her, without turning her head or altering her expression, their hands fleetingly clasped.
The door swung closed, leaving Sylvie alone with Dominic in a lovely, clean kitchen, while her former intern made a third cross attempt to clamber from the trash.
”
”
Lucy Parker (Battle Royal (Palace Insiders, #1))
“
I don’t have to be able to see you to feel your disapproval, you know.” Tristan finally broke the silence. The two hour carriage ride had been painfully quiet. Tristan leaned his head against the back of the leather seat. “I have my reasons, and I don’t intend to share them with my valet.” Ellis grunted, but remained quiet. “She is better off without me.” Four beats later, Ellis responded. “There is no reason to share your thoughts with a mere valet, my lord.” “I cannot give her the life she deserves.” “As you say.” “Her ladyship seems to think my blindness makes no difference.” “Please pardon the pun, my lord, but how very insightful of her.” “I shall fire you when we reach London.” “I shiver with anticipation.” How was it he could not seem to even have his own employees agree with him? And“I don’t have to be able to see you to feel your disapproval, you know.” Tristan finally broke the silence. The two hour carriage ride had been painfully quiet. Tristan leaned his head against the back of the leather seat. “I have my reasons, and I don’t intend to share them with my valet.” Ellis grunted, but remained quiet. “She is better off without me.” Four beats later, Ellis responded. “There is no reason to share your thoughts with a mere valet, my lord.” “I cannot give her the life she deserves.” “As you say.” “Her ladyship seems to think my blindness makes no difference.” “Please pardon the pun, my lord, but how very insightful of her.” “I shall fire you when we reach London.” “I shiver with anticipation.” How was it he could not seem to even have his own employees agree with him? And why did he permit such insolence? “May I make a suggestion, my lord?’ “No, you may not.” “I suggest you take a day or two to ponder your actions, and then perhaps send for her ladyship.” “Definitely being fired when we reach London.” “I shall look forward to my new duties.” Tristan tapped his foot, boredom setting in. “Did you pack any books? Perhaps you can read to me to pass the time.” “I noticed an open copy of One Thousand and One Nights in the library this morning, but since I know her ladyship was reading it, I left it there.” “Her ladyship was reading it to me,” he bristled. “Ah,” Ellis said, with no regret in his voice. “If only her ladyship were with us now. With the book…” “Never mind. I could use a nap.” “Yes, my lord. A nap might restore your good humor.” “When I fire you, there will be no reference.” “I have no expectation of one, my lord.” Tristan settled back, knowing full well that
”
”
-Callie Hutton, The Baron’s Betrayal
“
Sebastian encountered Cam in the hallway outside the reading room. “Where is he?” he demanded without preamble.
Stopping before him with an expressionless face, Cam said shortly, “He’s gone.”
“Why didn’t you follow him?” White-hot fury blazed in Sebastian’s eyes. This news, added to the frustration of his vow of celibacy, was the last straw.
Cam, who had been exposed to years of Ivo Jenner’s volcanic temper, remained unruffled. “It was unnecessary in my judgment,” he said. “He won’t return.”
“I don’t pay you to act on your own damned judgment. I pay you to act on mine! You should have dragged him here by the throat and then let me decide what was to be done with the bastard.”
Cam remained silent, sliding a quick, subtle glance at Evie, who was inwardly relieved by the turn of events. They were both aware that had Cam brought Bullard back to the club, there was a distinct possibility that Sebastian might actually have killed him— and the last thing Evie wanted was a murder charge on her husband’s head.
“I want him found,” Sebastian said vehemently, pacing back and forth across the reading room. “I want at least two men hired to look for him day and night until he is brought to me. I swear he’ll serve as an example to anyone who even thinks of lifting a finger against my wife.” He raised his arm and pointed to the doorway. “Bring me a list of names within the hour. The best detectives available— private ones. I don’t want some idiot from the New Police, who’ll foul this up as they do everything else. Go.”
Though Cam undoubtedly had a few opinions to offer on the matter, he kept them to himself. “Yes, my lord.” He left the room at once, while Sebastian glared after him.
Seeking to calm his seething temper, Evie ventured, “There is no need to take your anger out on Cam. He—”
“Don’t even try to excuse him,” Sebastian said darkly. “You and I both know that he could have caught that damned gutter rat had he wanted to. And I’ll be damned if I’ll tolerate your calling him by his first name— he is not your brother, nor is he a friend. He’s an employee, and you’ll refer to him as ‘Mr. Rohan’ from now on.”
“He is my friend,” Evie replied in outrage. “He has been for years!”
“Married women don’t have friendships with young unmarried men.”
“Y-you dare to insult my honor with the implication that… that…” Evie could hardly speak for the multitude of protests that jammed inside her. “I’ve done nothing to merit such a lack of tr-tr-trust!”
“I trust you. It’s everyone else that I hold in suspicion.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
“
I GOT A PHONE CALL ONE DAY FROM A FRIEND WHO HAD RECENTLY opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. She was giddy with a curious piece of news. Something fascinating had just happened, and she thought that, as a psychologist, I might be able to explain it to her. The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewelry she had been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving. She tried calling attention to them by shifting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She even told her sales staff to "push" the items hard, again without success. Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she scribbled an exasperated note to her head saleswoman, "Everything in this display case, price x %," hoping just to be rid of the offending pieces, even if at a loss. When she returned a few days later, she was not surprised to find that every article had been sold. She was shocked, though, to discover that, because the employee had read the "%" in her scrawled message as a "2," the entire allotment had sold out at twice the original price! That's
”
”
Anonymous
“
Recently, a large company offered to buy one of our portfolio companies. The deal was lucrative and compelling given the portfolio company’s progress to date and revenue level. The founder/CEO (I’ll call him Hamlet—not his real name) thought that selling did not make sense due to the giant market opportunity that he was pursuing, but he still wanted to make sure that he made the best possible choice for investors and employees. Hamlet wanted to reject the offer, but only marginally. To complicate matters, most of the management team and the board thought the opposite. It did not help that the board and the management team were far more experienced than Hamlet. As a result, Hamlet spent many sleepless nights worrying about whether he was right. He realized that it was impossible to know. This did not help him sleep. In the end, Hamlet made the best and most courageous decision he could and did not sell the company. I believe that will prove to be the defining moment of his career.
”
”
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
“
Based on the findings of a recent qualitative survey carried out in Switzerland, in fact, most of us have up to ten discreet interdependent social identities—identities, the study concludes, which are often in conflict.16 Let’s imagine a middle-aged bank teller living in Pensacola, Florida. He is a father, a son and a husband. He is a Floridian. He is a bank employee. He is also a bicyclist and a recreational runner, and at night, drinking with his friends, he is “the funny one.” He is also a vegetarian, an amateur guitarist, and on weekends he helps coach soccer at his daughter’s high school. Then there are his online identities, including his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram selves. Most surprising is that the man’s ethical mind-set, honesty, sociability and even level of social engagement changes from personality to personality. Imagine that in his professional role, for example, he may be primed to dissembling, or outright deceit, while simultaneously, as a dad, he finds dishonesty repellent.
”
”
Martin Lindstrom (Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends)
“
The System The denunciation of a dictatorship’s crimes doesn’t end with a list of the tortured, murdered, and disappeared. The machine gives you lessons in egoism and lies. Solidarity is a crime. To save yourself, the machine teaches, you have to be a hypocrite and a louse. The person who kisses you tonight will sell you tomorrow. Every favor breeds an act of revenge. If you say what you think, they smash you, and nobody deserves the risk. Doesn’t the unemployed worker secretly wish the factory will fire the other guy in order to take his place? Isn’t your neighbor your competition and enemy? Not long ago, in Montevideo, a little boy asked his mother to take him back to the hospital, because he wanted to be unborn. Without a drop of blood, without even a tear, the daily massacre of the best in every person is carried out. Victory for the machine: people are afraid of talking and looking at one another. May nobody meet anybody else. When someone looks at you and keeps looking, you think, “He’s going to screw me.” The manager tells the employee, who was once his friend, “I had to denounce you. They asked for the lists. Some name had to be given. If you can, forgive me.” Out of every thirty Uruguayans, one has the job of watching, hunting down, and punishing others. There is no work outside the garrisons and the police stations, and in any case to keep your job you need a certificate of democratic faith given by the police. Students are required to denounce their fellow students, children are urged to denounce their teachers. In Argentina, television asks, “Do you know what your child is doing right now?” Why isn’t the murder of souls through poisoning written up on the crime page?
”
”
Eduardo Galeano (Days and Nights)
“
One week into my new Silicon Valley life, and the lesson was this: if you want to be a startup entrepreneur, get used to negotiating from positions of weakness. I’d soon have trickier situations to negotiate than convincing a cop to let me take a cab. And so will you if you play the startup game. The next morning, I wasn’t merely hungover, but was in fact still mildly drunk. The company all-hands meeting, wherein the entire company gathered to hear about new deals and employees, and generally to get pep-rallied by Murthy Nukala, the CEO, was scheduled for noon that day. I had to be there or risk having my coworkers file a missing persons report, as well as look like a pussy. My frazzled brain was slow to realize my car was still somewhere in San Mateo. One hundred and thirty dollars and too much sunlight later, I was standing beside my four-wheeled Bavarian steed at the scene of last night’s triumph over the rule of law, and fifteen minutes later I was an acceptable five minutes late for the all-hands. As I walked into the company-wide meeting, a murmur was heard from a corner of the assembled crowd, expressing either surprise or amusement at my being both alive and unincarcerated. The company rumor mill had been busy that morning. I probably looked as pickled and embalmed as I felt. Murthy launched into his weekly harangue. The wheels of capitalism ground ever on.
”
”
Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)
“
My father was a renowned chef, who had learned his trade as an apprentice in Europe. During the depression with work hard to find, he accepted employment at Mafia run speakeasies “The Top Hat” and the “Gay Haven,” along with some other similar places, were roughshod, working class nightclubs in Union City, New Jersey, that hosted top performers. Ultimately, being recognized for his abilities, my father was offered the position of “Sous Chef” at the famous Lindy’s Restaurant in New York City, referred to as “Mindy’s” in Damon Runyon’s Broadway play “Guys and Dolls.” Being a loyal employee, he worked at Lindy’s for over three decades until his retirement. Union City, New Jersey, now has the second largest Cuban population concentration in the United States. But in earlier times it was known for having the rowdy “Hudson Burlesque,” as well as gathering places at the “Transfer Station,” where “men of means” could connect with “ladies of the night” and buy them a drink at one of the classy watering holes, such as the “Key Hole Bar and Grill.” I guess that it all came under the heading of “Entertainment.
”
”
Hank Bracker
“
i think people asked me to do things both tonight and last night but i was like 'i have plans...'
i feel like i see people constantly but i also feel something like extreme loneliness at the same time
people seem to like me, they tell me i'm funny and act disappointed when i don't attend events
”
”
Megan Boyle (selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee)
“
One night around two a.m., I heard the piano suddenly start playing at high volume. Going downstairs from my office to shut it off, I saw Salar sitting at the keyboard in the half-light, ripping through a Chopin scherzo and filling the small space with his frenetic finger work. I stood and watched as he flawlessly hammered out notes, the sound crashing against the walls, the windows, the furniture, as if it needed to break free and soar across the moonlit wetlands just outside our door. The piece felt familiar to me. Then I realized that it wasn't the melody but the tempo — the mad racing pace, the unrelenting forward momentum - that I knew all too well. It felt like Google chasing opportunity through the night.
”
”
Douglas Edwards (I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59)
“
When I was in his bar the other night, before I knew he was the owner, I couldn’t help but notice how diverse the employees were. That made me appreciate whoever the owner was. The other two bartenders, Razi and Roman, are both Black. One of the waitresses is Hispanic.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Reminders of Him)
“
employees this way? Because I have to tell you, you’re leaving yourself wide open for a lawsuit.” I can’t help the smile that comes to my lips. She’s such a surprise. Sharp. Quick. I have to think before I speak to her. I like it. I like her. “No, I don’t treat all my employees this way. Ever. Only one, who I haven’t stopped thinking about since Saturday night.
”
”
Emma Chase (Tangled (Tangled, #1))
“
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.
”
”
Sarah Frier (No Filter: The inside story of Instagram)
“
INCENTIVES – “From all business, my favorite case on incentives is Federal Express. The heart and soul of their system—which creates the integrity of the product—is having all their airplanes come to one place in the middle of the night and shift all the packages from plane to plane. If there are delays, the whole operation can’t deliver a product full of integrity to Federal Express customers. And it was always screwed up. They could never get it done on time. They tried everything—moral suasion, threats, you name it. And nothing worked. Finally, somebody got the idea to pay all these people not so much an hour, but so much a shift—and when it’s all done, they can go home. Well, their problems cleared up overnight.” – Here Charlie is talking about incentives. All of us who have held hourly jobs know that if workers are paid by the hour they will work more slowly than if they are paid them by the job. Why? Because if they are paid by the hour, they have an incentive to work more slowly in order to put more hours on the clock and make more money. But if they are paid by the job, there is an incentive to work quickly so they can get onto the next job and make more money. Federal Express aligned management’s goals with employee incentives. With hourly pay their employees were never in a hurry, but when pay was given for a specific task—getting a plane loaded—suddenly they were in a rush to get the job done. The key wasn’t paying workers by the task or shift; the key was letting them go home if they finished early, which was a kind of financial reward in that they were getting paid for the full shift even if they left early.
”
”
David Clark (Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark)
“
Every business that pays for remote employees or service providers those they cannot see at work has to blindly make out payroll checks. Clock In Clock Out helps businesses track the locations and hours of workers, confirming they are actually where they claim to be. Finally, you can stop worrying about the night shift and employees that are working remotely.
”
”
clockinclockout
“
Clock In Clock Out helps businesses track the locations and hours of workers, confirming they are actually where they claim to be. When they claim to be there. Finally, you can stop worrying about the night shift and employees that are working remotely. Clock In Clock Out provides for a simple, completely automated way for workers to check in on the job and to verify when they are leaving the specified location.
”
”
clockinclockout
“
Nevertheless, to any employee, work is to some degree a place where strangers pull at you from right, left, above and below, pinching, rubbing, and generally making a mess of you from morning to night.
”
”
Yōko Tawada (Scattered All Over the Earth)
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Miss Taggart, it is not my place to call you, but nobody else will,” said the voice that came on the wire, this time; the voice sounded young and too calm. “In another day or two, a disaster’s going to happen here the like of which they’ve never seen, and they won’t be able to hide it any longer, only it will be too late by then, and maybe it’s too late already.” “What is it? Who are you?” “One of your employees of the Minnesota Division, Miss Taggart. In another day or two, the trains will stop running out of here—and you know what that means, at the height of the harvest. At the height of the biggest harvest we’ve ever had. They’ll stop, because we have no cars. The harvest freight cars have not been sent to us this year.” “What did you say?” She felt as if minutes went by between the words of the unnatural voice that did not sound like her own. “The cars have not been sent. Fifteen thousand should have been here by now. As far as I could learn, about eight thousand cars is all we got. I’ve been calling Division Headquarters for a week. They’ve been telling me not to worry. Last time, they told me to mind my own damn business. Every shed, silo, elevator, warehouse, garage and dance hall along the track is filled with wheat. At the Sherman elevators, there’s a line of farmers’ trucks and wagons two miles long, waiting on the road. At Lakewood Station, the square is packed solid and has been for three nights. They keep telling us it’s only temporary, the cars are coming and we’ll catch up. We won’t. There aren’t any cars coming. I’ve called everyone I could. I know, by the way they answer. They know, and not one of them wants to admit it. They’re scared, scared to move or speak or ask or answer. All they’re thinking of is who will be blamed when that harvest rots here around the stations—and not of who’s going to move it. Maybe nobody can, now. Maybe there’s nothing you can do about it, either. But I thought you’re the only person left who’d want to know and that somebody had to tell you.
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
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These conditions commonly coexist with ADHD: Obstructive sleep apnea: This sleep disorder, characterized by snoring and pauses in breathing during sleep, is more common among adults, but it does occur in children, especially children with ADHD. Restless leg syndrome: This condition causes an intense, often irresistible urge to move your legs, particularly when sitting or lying down. Unlike ADHD-related hyperactivity, it happens mostly at night and often gets worse with age. Periodic limb movement syndrome: You know how your leg kicks or your arm flops all of a sudden when you’re falling asleep? It has a name. At least, it does when it keeps happening every twenty to forty seconds and long enough to interfere with sleep.[*3] Sleepwalking and night terrors: These sleep disorders occur when the lines between awake and asleep are blurred. They are often first observed in childhood by parents. Insomnia: You’ve probably heard of this one. Insomnia occurs whenever you want to sleep but can’t sleep, due to difficulties falling asleep or staying asleep, and it is also one of the criteria for delayed sleep phase syndrome. Delayed sleep phase syndrome: This syndrome occurs when your body’s internal clock, or its circadian rhythm, is delayed by two or more hours. For example, you might naturally want to sleep from three a.m. to noon. Excessive daytime sleepiness: This condition is exactly what it sounds like. If you’re falling asleep in the middle of a movie at your friend’s house or missing a shift because you can’t stay awake, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad friend or a lazy employee. It could be a sign that something is wrong.
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Jessica McCabe (How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It))
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But if you do see him, please tell him from me that he shouldn't remember me as the one who can't be relocated, but rather keep in mind that it was me who kissed him and led him over the hill, and the dew came, between night and day, and we heard the humming there too.
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Olga Ravn (The Employees)
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Hey man! Ok, I have some awesome news for you! First of all: We found some vintage audio training cassettes. Dude, these are like, prehistoric! I think they were like, training tapes, for like other employees or something like that. So, I thought we could like, have them playing, like over the speakers while people walk through the attraction? Dude, that makes this feel, LEGIT man. But I have an even better surprise for you, and you're not gonna believe this! We found one. A REAL one. Uh, oh uhm, gotta go man! W-well look I-It's in there somewhere, I-I'm sure you'll see it. Okay, I'll leave you with some of this great audio I found. Talk to you late man!" Click! "Oh, Hello! Hello, hello! Uh, welcome to your new career as a performer/entertainer, for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Uh, these tapes will provide you, with much needed information on how to handle/climb into/climb out of, mascot costumes. Right now, we have 2 specially designed suits, that
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Andrew Mills (Five Nights at Freddy's 3 Ultimate Strategy Guide, Walkthrough, Secrets, Tips and Tricks)
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Uh, hello? Hello, hello! Uhm, there has been a slight change of company policy, concerning you and the suits. Uhm, so, after learning of an unfortunate incident at the sister location involving multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures, the company has deemed the suits temporarily unfit for employees. Safety is top priority at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, which is why the classic suits are being retired to an appropriate location, while being looked at by our technicians. Until replacements arrives, you'll be expected to wear the temporary costumes provided to you. Keep in mind, they were found on very short notice, so questions about appropriateness/relevance should be deflected. I repeat, the classic suits are not to be touched, activated or worn. That being said, we are free of liability, do as you wish. As always, remember to smile. You are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
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Andrew Mills (Five Nights at Freddy's 3 Ultimate Strategy Guide, Walkthrough, Secrets, Tips and Tricks)
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Hello, hello! Uhm, this is just a reminder of company policy concerning the safe room. The safe room is reserved for equipment and or other property not currently being used, and as a backup safety location for employees only. This is not a break room, and should not be considered a place for employees to hide and or to congregate in, and under no circumstance should a customer EVER be taken into this room, and out of the main show area. Management has also been made aware, that the Spring Bonnie animatronic, has been noticeably moved. We would like to remind employees, that this costume is not safe to wear under any circumstances. Thank you, and remember to smile, you are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
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Andrew Mills (Five Nights at Freddy's 3 Ultimate Strategy Guide, Walkthrough, Secrets, Tips and Tricks)
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Computer security can simply be protecting your equipment and files from disgruntled employees, spies, and anything that goes bump in the night, but there is much more. Computer security helps ensure that your computers, networks, and peripherals work as expected all the time, and that your data is safe in the event of hard disk crash or a power failure resulting from an electrical storm. Computer security also makes sure no damage is done to your data and that no one is able to read it unless you want them to
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Bruce Schneier
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Always take the job, pursue the life, and have the friends that allow you to have as much freedom as possible. I asked Nassim Taleb on my podcast what job should one have. He said, “night watchman, because nobody is around to bother you and you can pursue all your dreams on the side.
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James Altucher (The Rich Employee)
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values are critical to build great brands and great companies. 2.They must be continuously enforced to truly make it a part of your company culture. Why the need for values in an organization? Core values serve as critical guides for making decisions, and when in doubt, they cut through the fog like a beacon in the night. Identifying the core values that define your company is one of the more important functions of leadership. They can make or break your long-term success. But you also should know that gaps between your values and your actions can do more harm than good. In other words, if you talk about building a customer-first culture but fail to do so, you’ll lose the respect of your employees and your customers.
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Mac Anderson (You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School: And Other Simple Truths of Leadership)
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A Tale of Two Parking Requirements The impact of parking requirements becomes clearer when we compare the parking requirements of San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco limits off-street parking, while LA requires it. Take, for example, the different parking requirements for concert halls. For a downtown concert hall, Los Angeles requires, as a minimum, fifty times more parking than San Francisco allows as its maximum. Thus the San Francisco Symphony built its home, Louise Davies Hall, without a parking garage, while Disney Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, did not open until seven years after its parking garage was built. Disney Hall's six-level, 2,188-space underground garage cost $110 million to build (about $50,000 per space). Financially troubled Los Angeles County, which built the garage, went into debt to finance it, expecting that parking revenues would repay the borrowed money. But the garage was completed in 1996, and Disney Hall—which suffered from a budget less grand than its vision—became knotted in delays and didn't open until late 2003. During the seven years in between, parking revenue fell far short of debt payments (few people park in an underground structure if there is nothing above it) and the county, by that point nearly bankrupt, had to subsidize the garage even as it laid employees off. The money spent on parking shifted Disney Hall's design toward drivers and away from pedestrians. The presence of a six-story subterranean garage means most concert patrons arrive from underneath the hall, rather than from the sidewalk. The hall's designers clearly understood this, and so while the hall has a fairly impressive street entrance, its more magisterial gateway is an "escalator cascade" that flows up from the parking structure and ends in the foyer. This has profound implications for street life. A concertgoer can now drive to Disney Hall, park beneath it, ride up into it, see a show, and then reverse the whole process—and never set foot on a sidewalk in downtown LA. The full experience of an iconic Los Angeles building begins and ends in its parking garage, not in the city itself. Visitors to downtown San Francisco have a different experience. When a concert or theater performance lets out in San Francisco, people stream onto the sidewalks, strolling past the restaurants, bars, bookstores, and flower shops that are open and well-lit. For those who have driven, it is a long walk to the car, which is probably in a public facility unattached to any specific restaurant or shop. The presence of open shops and people on the street encourages other people to be out as well. People want to be on streets with other people on them, and they avoid streets that are empty, because empty streets are eerie and menacing at night. Although the absence of parking requirements does not guarantee a vibrant area, their presence certainly inhibits it. "The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages," Jane Jacobs argued in 1961, "the duller and deader it becomes ... and there is nothing more repellent than a dead downtown.
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Donald C. Shoup (There Ain't No Such Thing as Free Parking (Cato Unbound Book 42011))
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Bizarre and Surprising Insights—Consumer Behavior Insight Organization Suggested Explanation7 Guys literally drool over sports cars. Male college student subjects produce measurably more saliva when presented with images of sports cars or money. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Consumer impulses are physiological cousins of hunger. If you buy diapers, you are more likely to also buy beer. A pharmacy chain found this across 90 days of evening shopping across dozens of outlets (urban myth to some, but based on reported results). Osco Drug Daddy needs a beer. Dolls and candy bars. Sixty percent of customers who buy a Barbie doll buy one of three types of candy bars. Walmart Kids come along for errands. Pop-Tarts before a hurricane. Prehurricane, Strawberry Pop-Tart sales increased about sevenfold. Walmart In preparation before an act of nature, people stock up on comfort or nonperishable foods. Staplers reveal hires. The purchase of a stapler often accompanies the purchase of paper, waste baskets, scissors, paper clips, folders, and so on. A large retailer Stapler purchases are often a part of a complete office kit for a new employee. Higher crime, more Uber rides. In San Francisco, the areas with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary are most positively correlated with Uber trips. Uber “We hypothesized that crime should be a proxy for nonresidential population.…Uber riders are not causing more crime. Right, guys?” Mac users book more expensive hotels. Orbitz users on an Apple Mac spend up to 30 percent more than Windows users when booking a hotel reservation. Orbitz applies this insight, altering displayed options according to your operating system. Orbitz Macs are often more expensive than Windows computers, so Mac users may on average have greater financial resources. Your inclination to buy varies by time of day. For retail websites, the peak is 8:00 PM; for dating, late at night; for finance, around 1:00 PM; for travel, just after 10:00 AM. This is not the amount of website traffic, but the propensity to buy of those who are already on the website. Survey of websites The impetus to complete certain kinds of transactions is higher during certain times of day. Your e-mail address reveals your level of commitment. Customers who register for a free account with an Earthlink.com e-mail address are almost five times more likely to convert to a paid, premium-level membership than those with a Hotmail.com e-mail address. An online dating website Disclosing permanent or primary e-mail accounts reveals a longer-term intention. Banner ads affect you more than you think. Although you may feel you've learned to ignore them, people who see a merchant's banner ad are 61 percent more likely to subsequently perform a related search, and this drives a 249 percent increase in clicks on the merchant's paid textual ads in the search results. Yahoo! Advertising exerts a subconscious effect. Companies win by not prompting customers to think. Contacting actively engaged customers can backfire—direct mailing financial service customers who have already opened several accounts decreases the chances they will open more accounts (more details in Chapter 7).
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Eric Siegel (Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die)
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Then the heavy lifting began. For the next six months, our employees rarely saw their families. We worked deep into the night, seven days a week. Despite two hit movies, we were conscious of the need to prove ourselves, and everyone gave everything they had. With several months still to go, the staff was exhausted and starting to fray. One morning in June, an overtired artist drove to work with his infant child strapped into the backseat, intending to deliver the baby to day care on the way. Some time later, after he’d been at work for a few hours, his wife (also a Pixar employee) happened to ask him how drop-off had gone—which is when he realized that he’d left their child in the car in the broiling Pixar parking lot. They rushed out to find the baby unconscious and poured cold water over him immediately. Thankfully, the child was okay, but the trauma of this moment—the what-could-have-been—was imprinted deeply on my brain. Asking this much of our people, even when they wanted to give it, was not acceptable. I had expected the road to be rough, but I had to admit that we were coming apart. By the time the film was complete, a full third of the staff would have some kind of repetitive stress injury. In the end, we would meet our deadline—and release our third hit film. Critics raved that Toy Story 2 was one of the only sequels ever to outshine the original, and the total box office would eventually top $500 million. Everyone was fried to the core, yet there was also a feeling that despite all the pain, we had pulled off something important, something that would define Pixar for years to come. As Lee Unkrich says, “We had done the impossible. We had done the thing that everyone told us we couldn’t do. And we had done it spectacularly well. It was the fuel that has continued to burn in all of us.” T
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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You didn’t make it back to the party the other night,” Sawyer says, leaning back in his chair, eyes narrowed on mine.
“Yeah, no shit,” I respond. “I spent some time with Sandra,” I add when he just stares at me.
“Jesus, Gabe. I told you she’s not that kind of girl.” He sighs at me, actually fucking sighs, and leans back in his chair.
“What kind of girl is that, Sawyer?” I ask, annoyed.
“Temporary. She’s not a temporary kind of girl.”
“Fuck off, Sawyer. She’s a grown woman. Besides, you told me to go for it.”
”No.” He’s shaking his head, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. “No, I said the opposite of ‘go for it.’ I think I used words like, ‘stay away from her’ and ‘employee.’”
“She’s your employee not mine,” I argue.
“You own thirty-five percent of this company, dumbass, that makes her your employee too.
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Jana Aston (Fling (Cafe, #2.5))
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When people fail to respect the P/PC Balance in their use of physical assets in organizations, they decrease organizational effectiveness and often leave others with dying geese. For example, a person in charge of a physical asset, such as a machine, may be eager to make a good impression on his superiors. Perhaps the company is in a rapid growth stage and promotions are coming fast. So he produces at optimum levels—no downtime, no maintenance. He runs the machine day and night. The production is phenomenal, costs are down, and profits skyrocket. Within a short time, he’s promoted. Golden eggs! But suppose you are his successor on the job. You inherit a very sick goose, a machine that, by this time, is rusted and starts to break down. You have to invest heavily in downtime and maintenance. Costs skyrocket; profits nose-dive. And who gets blamed for the loss of golden eggs? You do. Your predecessor liquidated the asset, but the accounting system only reported unit production, costs, and profit. The P/PC Balance is particularly important as it applies to the human assets of an organization—the customers and the employees. I
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
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It requires constant dedication, day, and night, to operate a carpet cleaning service business. You should be ready to put in focus, persistence and a lot of time to make it work. Do not expect to be in a position to multitask in the beginning. Knowing when you are overwhelmed and being in a position to hand over some of your responsibilities to others can assist you in becoming a smart business owner.
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To protect your carpet cleaning service business from legal issues, make it a point to turn in all appropriate legal forms on time and acquire a full understanding of the laws pertaining to your business. We recommend that you consult a lawyer who specializes in business law, even when you already have a basic understanding of business law. The most prosperous carpet cleaning service business can be impacted, or even closed, by an expensive trial. Establishing a working relationship with a lawyer who specializes in business law might be very helpful if you ever find yourself in a legal quandary.
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Master Clean Carpet Cleaning
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We can screw up our biological clocks a lot easier than that, too. Shift work, where employees alternate between days and nights on the job, leads to a significantly higher rate of violence, mood disorders, depression, and suicide. If a shift worker is scheduled even just one night on duty, urinary electrolytes take five days to adjust and eight days for the heart rate to return to normal. The World Health Organization has suggested that shift work is a “possible” carcinogen.
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Douglas Rushkoff (Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now)
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he’d tried to teach her to be as thoughtful of his employees as she was of him and of her friends;
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Charlotte Vale Allen (Night Magic)
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Great food also had the ability to attract great talent. "I don't know what to do," senior engineer Luiz Barroso moaned to Jeff Dean the night he had to decide whether to join VMWare or Google. "I've made these lists. I've assigned points to all the pros and cons, and it's tied at 112 to 112." Jeff knew that the day of Luiz's interview at Google, Charlie had served creme brulee for lunch. "Did you factor in the creme brulee?" he asked. "Because I know you really like creme brulee." "Oh no! I didn't consider that," Luiz admitted. The next morning he accepted Google's offer.
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Douglas Edwards (I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59)
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As Florence watched Gustav talk with Mildred, who’d had five children by age thirty, it occurred to her how overjoyed her husband would be with such an unruly brood. To her, the compromise was having a child, but to him, the compromise was having only one. Had Florence entered the Majestic Lodge through the employees’ door that day long ago, and not the main lobby, maybe he’d have met someone who was an eager and wonderful mother. But often, that’s not the way life works. People like Gustav end up with people like Florence, and children are born with their hearts already broken, for the mother they needed and will never have.
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J. Ryan Stradal (Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club)
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Server Automation This is very specific to a tech start-up, but server stability is a very important part of the product. Our customers relied on WebMerge in their business every day, and it could have a domino effect on their day if something went wrong. The easiest automation for server tracking is simple up-time tracking. This checks to make sure the app is loading every minute, every day. I set up alerts that if any downtime was detected, it would send a text message to my phone and also send me an email every minute. The text message was the most helpful, and I could often jump online in minutes to fix any issues. Over time, I started to run into server issues in the middle of the night. I had to set the alert tone on my phone to the emergency tone so it would wake me up. Well, often it took a few alerts to wake me or an elbow from my wife! I was waking up at 3:00 a.m. a few times per week to address issues. This couldn’t continue. To fix this, I created an internal system that would check the app uptime, and if there were issues, it would automatically restart services in the app that were most likely causing the problem. This auto-healing process worked like a charm, and I rarely had to wake up in the middle of the night again (or deal with many issues during the day). Is your product or service critical to your customers? If so, try to implement as many automated processes as you can to keep the service running at all hours. Your customers (and your sanity) will thank you.
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Jeremy Clarke (Bootstrapped to Millions: How I Built a Multi-Million-Dollar Business with No Investors or Employees)
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Musk made hiring a priority. He personally met with every single person the company hired through the first three thousand employees. It required late nights and weekends, but he felt it important to get the right people for his company.
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Eric Berger (Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX)
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When Phil Knight was building Nike, he hired other distance runners to work with him because he knew that whatever they lacked in terms of business knowledge, they made up for in stamina. They would never give up. They would take the pain and make it to the end of the race despite the difficulties. When you start a company, you are usually happy to find anyone of quality willing to go on the journey with you. But as you grow, you realize that some people are like wide receivers in football with hands of stone. You throw to them, and the ball just bounces off them. Others have hands like glue. As a decent person you think your role is to coax the bad ones along, to find workarounds. As employees, these are 6s and 7s out of 10. If you keep them, you will end up with a dysfunctional company, where you do all the work, staying up all night with the few people who can make it happen. You have two options: either run a middling company going nowhere or clear out the mediocrity you created so you can grow. If you are ambitious, you have to fill your company with 9s and 10s, and give them the difficult tasks to do. Finally, to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to be paranoid. You always have to believe your company, regardless of size, is a little company. The moment you start to become big and successful, challengers will appear and do their best to take your customers and defeat your business. You are never more vulnerable than at the moment you think you have succeeded.
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Stephen A. Schwarzman (What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence)
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I cannot sleep night after night knowing that I have a bunch of liars and thugs as my business associates and employees. Very soon I will become like them.
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Alok Kejriwal (Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks)
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Contact Clock In Clock Out with questions or feedback on our time & attendance tracking solution, monitoring when & where employees clock in and out of work. Through a powerful but simple technology, Clock In Clock Out helps to assure that people you are paying to be on the job during non-traditional hours of a day such as night shifts and/or at remote locations, were actually where they claimed to be. When they claimed to be there.
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clockinclockout
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Fuller decided to live from then on as if he had died that night. Being dead, he wouldn't have to worry about how things worked out any longer for himself personally and would be free to devote himself to living as a representative of the universe. The rest of his life would be a gift. Instead of living for himself, he would devote himself to asking, ‘what is it on this planet that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won't happen unless I take responsibility for it?’ He decided he would just ask that question continuously and do what came to him, following his nose. In this way, working for humanity as an employee of the universe at large, you get to modify and contribute to your locale by who you are, how you are, and what you do. But it’s no longer personal. It's just part of the totality of the universe expressing itself.” -Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Cody James Howell (Sauntering Thru: Lessons in Ambition, Minimalism, and Love on the Appalachian Trail)
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Micah’s smile was hideous. “She made no secret that she kept an eye on the synth trials, because she was keen to find a way to help her weak, vulnerable, half-human friend. You, who would inherit no power—she wondered if it might give you a fighting chance against the predators who rule this world. And when she saw the horrors the synth could bring about, she became concerned for the test subjects. Concerned for what it’d do to humans if it leaked into the world. But Redner’s employees said Danika had her own research there, too. No one knew what, but she spent time in their labs outside of her own duties.” All of it had to be on the flash drive Bryce had found. Hunt prayed she’d put it somewhere safe. Wondered what other bombshells might be on it. Bryce said, “She was never selling the synth on that boat, was she?” “No. By that point, I’d realized I needed someone with unrestricted access to the temple to take the Horn—I would be too easily noticed. So when she stole the synth trial footage, I had my chance to use her.” Bryce made it up another step. “You dumped the synth into the streets.” Micah kept trailing her. “Yes. I knew Danika’s constant need to be the hero would send her running after it, to save the lowlifes of Lunathion from destroying themselves with it. She got most of it, but not all. When I told her I’d seen her on the river, when I claimed no one would believe the Party Princess was trying to get drugs off the streets, her hands were tied. I told her I’d forget about it, if she did one little favor for me, at just the right moment.” “You caused the blackout that night she stole the Horn.” “I did. But I underestimated Danika. She’d been wary of my interest in the synth long before I leaked it onto the streets, and when I blackmailed her into stealing the Horn, she must have realized the connection between the two. That the Horn could be repaired by synth.” “So you killed her for it?” Another step, another question to buy herself time. “I killed her because she hid the Horn before I could repair it with the synth. And thus help my people.
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Sarah J. Maas (House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1))
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You have four hundred and twenty employees here, Ms. Connor. Statistically, nine of them are sociopaths,” says Sophia.
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Andrew Mayne (Night Owl (Trasker #1))
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How dumb can you get! A former employee of a funeral home in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas broke in one night and began setting up a meth lab in the basement in the middle of the night. Unfortunately for him, he forgot the sheriff's office was right across the street. Police noticed something was amiss when they spotted lights on and promptly arrested him.
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Leonard Birdsong (Professor Birdsong's 157 Dumbest Criminal Stories)
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to find workarounds. As employees, these are 6s and 7s out of 10. If you keep them, you will end up with a dysfunctional company, where you do all the work, staying up all night with the few people who can make it happen. You have two options: either run a middling company going nowhere or clear out the mediocrity you created so you can grow. If you are ambitious, you have to fill your company with 9s and 10s, and give them the difficult tasks to do. Finally, to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to be paranoid. You always have to believe your company, regardless of size, is a little company. The moment you start to become big and successful, challengers will appear and do their best to take your customers and defeat your business. You are never more vulnerable than at the moment you think you have succeeded.
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Stephen A. Schwarzman (What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence)
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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.
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Elsie Silver (Hopeless (Chestnut Springs, #5))
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You cannot be an entrepreneur, unless you are a good provider. As a 9 to 5 person, your family is your responsibility, as an entrepreneur the families of your employees are your responsibility, as well as the welfare of your customers or clients. Today who abandons their family for their entrepreneurial dream, tomorrow will abandon their employees when that dream goes bankrupt.
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Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn (Sonnet Sultan))
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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.
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Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
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Scott allowed us to conduct a paranormal investigation of this property, and I invited one of the teams I am a member of, the Georgia Ghost Society, to take part in this one. We were also extremely lucky to have John Zaffis, world-renowned demonologist, with us. He is referred to as the “Godfather of the Paranormal,” having had around thirty-five years of experience with hauntings, demonic possessions and paranormal investigations. We found it interesting that we were allowed to conduct our investigation completely alone. None of the salon’s employees had any interest in being there at night, and we realized then how serious they were about that. Drew Hester, co-director of the Georgia Ghost Society, recalls our investigation there that night: While running the baseline upstairs I had the Tri-Field Meter. Throughout the rest of the house turned salon, the baseline showed normal readings, but suddenly the meter went off the scale and we both jumped a little. Then it went down to normal. We looked at each other and shrugged it off assuming it was due to natural energy floating around. Then it happened again. This took place about 5 times, each time with about 30 to 45 seconds in between. Interestingly enough this correlated with what a sensitive had “felt” earlier that evening before we even entered the location, when she mentioned the feeling of a woman walking or pacing back and forth in the upstairs area. John Zaffis states: The salon investigation was one I went into not knowing the researchers at all yet, nor the history of the place, but it turned out to be a surprisingly good hunt that night. When the ghost came into the room upstairs with us, just about everybody had some type of experience with something. We encountered the most activity on the second floor and I know we had at least more than one ghost up there with us. We all walked away knowing that the building where Voila Salon operates out of was definitely haunted by several ghosts dating back many years.
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Dianna Avena (Roswell: History, Haunts and Legends)
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The staff of the First Class à la carte restaurant were having the hardest time of all. They were neither fish nor fowl. Obviously they weren’t passengers, but technically they weren’t crew either. The restaurant was not run by the White Star Line but by Monsieur Gatti as a concession. Thus, the employees had no status at all. And to make matters worse, they were French and Italian—objects of deep Anglo-Saxon suspicion at a time like this in 1912. From the very start they never had a chance. Steward Johnson remembered seeing them herded together down by their quarters on E Deck aft. Manager Gatti, his Chef and the Chefs Assistant, Paul Maugé, were the only ones who made it to the Boat Deck. They got through because they happened to be in civilian clothes; the crew thought they were passengers.
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Walter Lord (The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On (The Titanic Chronicles))
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Like all modern courthouses, this one is a characterless fortress, testament to paper pushing, bureaucracy, and the incipient insanity of our system. Going postal is no longer reserved for those who pledge that “Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night would deter its couriers from their appointed rounds.” It’s become a kind of rite of passage: disgruntled employee returns and shoots boss, disgruntled wife kills kids, disgruntled husband wrecks car, kills strangers, and then kills wife. Hard not to be surprised, when the bulk of public conversation goes like this: “Paper or plastic?” The loss of the human touch scares me.
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A.M. Homes (May We Be Forgiven)
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theme night. BDSM. I knew about it. I overheard Starla talking about it last night, but thought it was for the customers, not the employees.
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Shantel Tessier (The Sacrifice (L.O.R.D.S., #3))
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- So what do you want me to do, Adam? I cannot be everywhere at the same time. I already have to be in three places at once, not just two. My Spanish is much better than it was half a year ago, but I am not native, Adam - I am not Catalan, I am not Spanish.
- Alright, alright, alright. Jesus.
- What do you mean, Boss Jesus? I am Tomas, the king of the Goys, not the Jews.
- HAHAHA. Get serious now. This costs me money.
- You’re kidding. You don’t even pay me a salary and my girlfriend is crazy about it. How do you want me to make over 10,000 Euros in net traffic a month if you are sending me to the same Estanco stores that never order and barely have any traffic, just wasting my time, Adam?
- Mario made a lot of business with Estancos.
- Bullshit, Boss. Mario, Mister Jerk Twister made monkey-business with a handful of Estancos. He sold a set of twelve crumble-cards with a free display in 2012 Spring and he never showed up again, they said. Was he even in Spain, Adam?
- That’s not the point.
- OK. So what is the point?
- Mario made a lot of business.
- Would you like to show me the total sum of wholesale figures Mario allegedly made in 2012, Boss?
- No.
- Because Mario didn’t make 10 000 Euros traffic in an entire year, Boss. Monkey-business.
- You are spending 140 Euros on these two kids for the two catalogs and wasting time here with Rachel.
- So do you want Rachel to stay here all night to laminate all this by herself, or may I help her so that we can give the catalogs to the two kids and we at least triple our potential tomorrow, so they can do sales, Adam, so they could go and visit all the Estancos as you wish?
- Yeah, sure.
- Thank you. Adam the tiny Estancos are seasonal and some of them don’t even keep our kinds of products they rely soley on tobacco sales, elder Catalan people. Clubs are opening at every corner, Adam and they need us to supply them with products. They won’t be so seasonal, they cannot rely on the tourism by law they cannot register walk-ins.
- Cccc. They register anyone, what are you talking about?
- No. Which club?
- Club Alfalfa. The custom card client, Mario and Tom made in 2012.
- Yeah, the marijuana club where there were two Police razzias both found cocaine twice behind the booth, so far.
- But they are open again. Selling weed.
- For how long Adam? How many times can they re-open after the Police had shut the club down twice already because of cocaine? How many members or employees they arrested, Adam? Would you bail me out if I go inside the wrong door one day, representing you?
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Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
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It was natural, then, for the musicians’ families to turn first to the White Star Line for financial benefits under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Sorry, said White Star, the bandsmen were Second Class passengers and not covered by the Act. The Line suggested that the families contact C. W. and F. N. Black, the real employers. Sorry, said the Blacks. The problem wasn’t their responsibility. They carried insurance to cover such matters, and any claims should be laid at the insurer’s door. Sorry, said the insurance company, the bandsmen were not workmen as covered by the policy. They were independent contractors, using the Blacks as a booking agency, and the insurance company was under no liability. Months passed while White Star, the Blacks, and the insurer tossed this hot potato back and forth. Finally, in exasperation the families took the Blacks to court. The judge was sympathetic, but that was all. The bandsmen, he decided, were not the employees of anybody. They were passengers in the case of the White Star Line, and independent contractors in the case of the Blacks and the insurers.
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Walter Lord (The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On (The Titanic Chronicles))
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Both American and British law had long given special protection to shipowners whose vessels, through negligent handling, caused damage to others. The risks of sending ships to sea were so great that some special incentive was needed, if maritime nations were to grow and prosper. Moreover, on land the factory owner could at least theoretically oversee the acts of his employees, but the shipowner had no such control over his captain and crew. By the very nature of the business he was usually out of touch, and it seemed unfair to hold him to the same degree of responsibility when something went wrong. Therefore, as long as he did not have “privity or knowledge” of the negligence, his liability would be limited.
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Walter Lord (The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On (The Titanic Chronicles))
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After the brutal gang rape of a pub employee by six men in Gurgaon in 2014, the police proposed a blanket curfew on working women after 8 p.m., under which no woman would be allowed out of the house without prior permission from the government labour department. The proposed ban was revoked after a public outcry. The police said they could not provide security for girls and women because the ones who are out, especially at night and especially in bars, invite rape. Women should stay at home if they want to be safe.
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Deepa Narayan (Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women)
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You cannot be an entrepreneur, unless you are a good provider. As a 9 to 5 person, your family is your responsibility, as an entrepreneur the families of your employees are your responsibility, as well as the welfare of your customers or clients.
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Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn (Sonnet Sultan))
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Today who abandons their family for their entrepreneurial dream, tomorrow will abandon their employees when that dream goes bankrupt.
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Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn (Sonnet Sultan))
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Every business that pays for remote employees or service providers those they cannot see at work has to blindly make out payroll checks. Am I paying for services delivered or am I a victim of fraud? That is precisely why Clock In Clock Out was created. For the first time, companies have a way to apply “balances” to their process before they write payroll “checks.” Through a powerful but simple technology, Clock In Clock Out helps to assure that people you are paying to be on the job during non-traditional hours of a day such as night shifts and/or at remote locations, were actually where they claimed to be.
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clockinclockout