Remember Gary Larson’s great cartoon: a jar of mayonnaise in a refrigerator wearing a burglar’s mask and pointing a gun at the other condiments? Its great caption "When mayonnaise goes bad" still makes me chuckle. I watched a meeting "go bad" as the leader and the participants’ positions on a controversial issue became farther [...]

   Wifey ran into a light post and crunched the fender of her big ol’ sedan. More than the ugly fender or cost and hassle of repair, she was worried about the reaction she might get  from Hubby. She started imagining what she wished he would say instead of what she feared he would say.   A brilliant idea struck when she [...]

  Jan, the owner of Simon the Jack Russell Terrier, trained Simon to touch a bell with his paw when he wanted to go outside.   One evening, Simon waited till she sat down to dinner, then rang the bell. When Jan left her plate of warm, delicious food to open the door, Simon ran past [...]

  The manager of a retail store told employees that their responsibility was to make transactions easy and quick for customers. However, if an item had no price or bar code, the cashier was required to call a manager.  What’s wrong with this picture?   We can do two things to make it easy and non-threatening for our team members [...]

Can’t offer more money? Can’t guarantee job security? Can’t give promotions now? What can a boss do during a tough economy to show how she values people? 1.  Ask their opinions. Close mouth and listen. Take notes. You don’t have to use all the ideas. Just save them. This demonstrates to that person that you [...]