Oh Hi, March

Take a look at the blog archives on the lower right side of the page and you'll notice a pretty dramatic decline in the frequency of posting between this point last year and now. A year ago we were producing more than an item a day, many of them of considerable length and even more considerable depth. As Kevin pointed out last month, much has changed in the past 6-8 months for the blog's three operators. We've all moved and now live at least an hour apart from each other (as opposed to the 20-minute diameter that had enclosed us a year ago), we've all taken on new jobs or new, unprecedented levels of responsibility at our current jobs, and we're also in the midst of seeing some of the most important people in our lives start to get engaged and married (not actually any one of us yet, though, rest assured). As an unfortunate result, the blog has taken a bit of a backseat. But I guess you can just call that another element of getting older.

On the other hand, I am enjoying some of the things that seem to never change from year to year. As someone whose Winter Dldrums got an early start when Tony Romo broke his collarbone two months before Christmas, there are few nicer phrases right now than "February is over." The Big East Tournament is underway, and for the first time since October, I am feeling interest in a sporting event for reasons other than gambling or spite. Selection Sunday is 4 days away. The Tournament is 8 days away (depending if you count the round of 68 or not), and soon enough will be providing us the 2011 versions of overnight household names Bryce Drew and Ali Farokhmanesh, or maybe another unfathomable run like George Mason in '06, Davidson in '08, or Butler just last year. And once we've seemingly had our fill of the NCAA on CBS theme music, camps will break in Arizona and Florida, and our baseball teams will head north to play games that count once again. Shortly thereafter, the Feel Good Event of the Year will be upon us to erase any doubt that the shitty winter of 2010-2011 is gone.

The only thing that will keep you sane in life is having things to look forward to on a regular basis. It doesn't have to be huge, it just has to be on the horizon. Kevin's piece below about life after college ties right in to this thinking. Simply put, it sucks sometimes. It really does. And we all know that. But we also have to be able to find those openings, those breaks in the monotony that remind us, "hey, it's not all so terrible." For me and probably for John and Kevin as well, one of those ripples of light comes every mid-March. Followers of the blog who have an embarrassing amount of time on their hands may remember that I put that very same Andy Dufresne picture you see above on a post from last year that said some very similar things. But hey, any day that the Shawshank picture goes up on the blog can't be too bad of a day.

Unnecessary Courtesy

Being courteous will get you far in life, or at least that's what we're told from about age 3 and on. And you need not look further than the "License and Registration, Please" series from a few months back to see how we value etiquette and a heads-up attitude around these parts. But much like people often take the simple act of saying "thank you" to an unwelcome extent, there are certain elements of courteous behavior that are just flat-out superfluous.

Scene #1: you're walking into work around normal time on a typical morning, so that means there will likely be several other people walking into the building at about the same time as you. Now that you've got the mental picture, how easy is it to envision this: 2-3 people walk in about 50 feet ahead of you, one of whom holds the door for the other(s). That's all fine, it's common courtesy to keep the door open for someone walking in right behind you. But then this overly nice guy or girl continues to hold the door for you even though you're still a good 15 yards away. The mental reflex is for you to feel indebted to this person for maintaining the gigantic 12-kg force (yes I Googled it) necessary to hold the door open. And what happens next? Without even thinking, you break into that embarrassing "half-running-half-walking" stride so you look like you're making an effort to get to the door as quickly as possible and spare this Samaritan a second or two of exhausting door-holding duty. I've grown to detest this awkward power-walking gait so much that now I intentionally slow down when walking into work just so not to be caught in that door-holding gray area.

I'm an able bodied person, who is neither visibly injured nor carrying a ton of shit that would necessitate someone holding the door for me. And don't worry, I won't be mad if you simply allow the door to close when I'm any farther than 5 feet away. Opening the door for myself won't exactly ruin my morning. And on the other side of the coin, I'm not going to feel eternal gratitude to you if you stand there like a bellhop holding the door for me while I practically still have one foot in my car. So for everyone's sake, just walk in and get on with your business. Oh, and another note: going out of your way to hold the door for that good-looking chick who works on the third floor is not going to make her want to hook up with you, so just stop.

Scene #2: you're at the gym and it's fairly uncrowded. As you're in the middle of a set, Mr. Excessive Manners ambles over to you and asks "hey, are you working on that machine/bench/cable station over there?" Normally this would be no problem - in fact, I applaud such a level of gym etiquette - but in this case it's abundantly clear that there's no way in hell you're actually using the apparatus this dude wants to use. No sir, you see, I'm in the middle of a set of squats, what do you think the chances are that I'm also using the dip stand on the other side of the room? There are these things called muscle groups, and most people do not dip and squat on the same day, let alone super-set them. So relax Richard Simmons, you're not being presumptuous if you hop on the dip stand without asking me first, you're just using (gasp!) a bit of deductive reasoning and common sense.

What do we pin all this unnecessary courtesy to? It could just be that some people are so scared to ever make anyone mad, especially in a public setting, that they'll constantly try to appease others to avoid ever being thought of as rude or inconsiderate. But I think the bigger cause of this annoying behavior pattern is that too many people just aren't that observant. You can't live your life on autopilot. Keep the head on a swivel and have a sense of your surroundings, because even those seemingly ironclad rules of "being nice" that we're taught as kids have exceptions.

Sh*t I Don't Understand: Fire Drills at Work

Got to work the other morning and opened up the ol' Outlook Express just to find a "Fire Drill at 10:00" email for the whole building to read. Great, so as soon as everyone really gets rolling on the day, a piercing buzz will emanate from God-knows-where and we'll be forced to go outside and stand in the parking lot for an indefinite period of time.

I have a problem with this on multiple levels. First, fire drills do not replicate a true fire situation. All it consists of is walking out of the building. I've never been in a building that has caught fire and hopefully never will be, but I bet the whole "remain calm, don't rush" stuff goes by the wayside pretty quickly once the smell of actual smoke or sight of actual flames come into play. And if it were a true fire, I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be getting in my car and driving away from the burning building, not congregating in an assigned section of a parking lot. Another thing about fire drills - their occurrence often depends on the weather. More than once at work we've had fire drills rescheduled for weather reasons. Not that I really mind being spared a pointless fire drill when it's cold and/or rainy, but it does make me chuckle a bit. Life does not stop and start at your convenience. You can't just cancel a fire because of the weather, but you can up and cancel a fire drill because of the weather - further evidence that a fire drill does very little in terms of replicating a real-life scenario.

But what gets me most of all is the fact that it's even deemed necessary for grown-up, college-educated individuals to go through a fire drill at work. I think we've all been through enough fire drills in the earlier stages of our lives to be able to handle things if a fire ever did happen (that is, of course, assuming that fire drills are effective in the first place). So you're telling me that if the building catches fire, I should get out in a timely fashion? Well, I'll be damned! I was just going to curl into the fetal position under my desk and cover my eyes, thank goodness someone told me I should get outside if there's a fire! I'd have been a goner for sure! Part of me wants to try to jump out the window (relax, I work on the 2nd floor) just to create a stir during the fire drill - hell, maybe it will make the whole effort seem worth it, like "hey look, there's someone that doesn't know what to do, he's panicking! This exercise in fire safety has been educational after all!"

I get it. I know what it boils down to - the building managers/company have to cover their asses, and having a few fire drills a year minimizes liability. What liability, you ask? Well, say there is an actual fire and some oblivious mongo gets a 2nd degree burn. You know they're going to try to sue whoever manages the building if they'd never had a fire drill, claiming they were never instructed on the proper evacuation procedures. Riiiiiight. This is the reason that new cars come with the seat belts already fastened (thus providing a built-in seat belt tutorial), because auto makers and dealerships have been sued by jackasses who got into accidents not wearing their seat belt and then claimed they were never instructed how to use this newfangled seat belt contraption. I wish I were making that up. Perhaps that's the essence of my disdain for the office fire drill: it's a snapshot of the things we must do in modern day America in order to protect ourselves from human stupidity. Common sense just ain't too common anymore, I suppose.

Analogy of the Month

America is founded upon the entitlement of its citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But what is this happiness that we're supposed to be pursuing, and what measures do we take in this illustrious pursuit? And who are we ultimately trying to make happy - ourselves, or those whose opinions we value and whose approval we seek? The concept of happiness itself is both abstract, in that it means something different to everybody, and paradoxical, in that the more we strive to attain happiness, the less happy we often are.

Take a look at the everyday behavior of people and you'll notice that we bust our asses at a lot of things just so we can reach a level of acceptability - not greatness, not some kind of legendary status, but just plain acceptability. You see us get up every morning and sit in traffic like sperm cells on our way to work, only to repeat the action that night on the way home. You see people working out 5 times a week just so they can be attractive enough to avoid immediate rejection from the opposite sex. You see us throw a Prince Fielder-sized percentage of our earnings to the wind so we can have a decent place to live and a decent car to drive. Why all of this? Because we want. to. fit. in. The human race, especially in America, is constantly running on a hamster wheel, thus giving us the Analogy of the Month, the "Hamster Wheel of Happiness." You break your balls day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, just for the expectations to periodically reset themselves and force us to start over.

The general concept of happiness is that it's some sort of nirvana or utopia we're supposed to ultimately reach. So we work harder, put in more hours, put in more sweat, make an extra sacrifice or two, all in hopes that one day life will become like the bonus round at the end of the route in the old Nintendo game Paperboy. On this, look no further than Al Czervik for the appropriate wisdom - "if you keep busting your hump 16, 20 hours a day, you'll end up with a 60 million dollar funeral!"

The Hamster Wheel of Happiness is a damning course. People get on it with the best of intentions, and more often than not the chase for happiness itself becomes the very thing that beats them into a downtrodden state of self-defeat. To quote Denis Leary, happiness comes in small doses (go to the 2:20 mark of the video to be enlightened). There is no utopia. The Wizard at the end of the yellow brick road doesn't know shit. It's not about finding the dream job, it's just about finding a job you kind of like. Even the so-called "perfect job" will have its bad days and the even supposedly perfect couples will fight from time to time. Take enjoyment in the small things or else be eaten alive by the quest for the big things.

The fine line is this: assign some intrinsic value to your undertakings, or eventually you'll burn out or lose your mind. If you constantly work out in order to be in shape and be attractive by modern Western standards, then you'd better get some actual enjoyment and satisfaction out of it or you're ultimately wasting your time. That's why all the "I want a good beach body" people disappear from the gym after a month. At some point, it's got to be about the feeling you get from benching twice your weight or finishing that marathon that keeps you coming back. The same principle applies to your occupation - if there's a sense that you're making the most of your skills and providing more value than the Average Joe, then you can avoid entering Office Space mode.

Of course, this whole "Hamster Wheel" stuff isn't all bad. We all have our own hamster wheels that we run on, and when approached in the right manner, our neverending plights can be the formula for success. I've been doing an inordinate amount of quoting in this post already, but this one is too good to pass up. From Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, via our pal Ryan's Facebook profile: “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” What I like about that quote so much is that Grove says it's OK to run on a hamster wheel. Those who never lull themselves into a sense of security will always be on their toes. Attack life as as series of small challenges and small rewards, and you'll gain the perspective to see the big picture.

Sh*t I Don't Understand: Extracurricular Activities

Spring is descending upon us. There are four college basketball teams left standing, and at the start of next week the sweet sound of "Play Ball!" will be heard for the first time since November 4. Springtime also brings about a period of time I like to call Application Season. Ambitious and eager high school seniors are nervously awaiting the big envelopes in the mail from colleges all around the country, while reality-bitten college seniors are attending career fairs and beefing up their resumés in hopes of getting a job that has anything to do with the stuff they've been studying for the past four years. Both groups have had hammered into their brains the importance of extracurricular activities and how they "make you stand out." In the last installment of this series for the time being, I'd like to take a look at just how hollow all this extracurricular activity BS really is.

I'll put out the caveat out there first - I know that there are plenty of people who did tons of extracurricular stuff in high school and college and actually cared about them/put a great deal of effort into them. Those aren't the people I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people who join a club just because it might look good on an application or resumé, as well as the people who actually evaluate said applications and fail to differentiate between the genuine and the bogus. Hell, we've all done it. I was in the French Club in high school, which entailed little more than signing my name on a piece of paper in French class and showing up to a 20-minute meeting 4 times a year, 3 of which I'd usually duck out of early to get to football practice or to the weight room.

That's part of my point. What does having an extracurricular activity on an application really constitute? It's impossible to tell from an evaluation standpoint. All colleges love seeing National Honor Society on applications, but all being in NHS in high school really meant was you got good (not necessarily great) grades, you were at least somewhat involved and didn't just go straight home after school every day, and you never showed up to school wasted and never got caught with weed in your car. For that you got a nice little yellow thingy to wear on your graduation gown and the right to slap a shiny "Member of National Honor Society" on your college applications. Riiiiight. I was in NHS for 3 years in high school and I think I've done more work cleaning my room than I ever did as part of that prestigious outfit. But yet, there it was in bold letters on all my applications back in the day.

What I hope is that college admissions offices and job recruiters understand is that not all activities are created equal. For instance, being on the bowling team in high school is not the same as playing a sport like football or wrestling. I shouldn't have to go further into that. In addition, some people turn themselves into flat-out hypocrites by their membership in certain clubs, like a few kids I knew who were in Students Against Drunk Driving (aka S.A.D.D.) in high school and ended up getting DUI's. I guess you weren't paying attention at those meetings, were you? But hey, maybe your days spent as a member of S.A.D.D. will score you some points with the DMV when you try to get your license back!

The extracurricular activity garbage is a flaw of a system where a large number of candidates must be considered in a small amount of time. It's impossible to personally get to know everyone who is applying to your school or your company, so you have to take as many things into consideration as you can, especially when the top factors (GPA, test scores, prior work experience, etc.) are a wash. But it doesn't sit well to think that a group of decision makers are sitting at a table somewhere saying, "OK, we're down to two candidates for this position. Applicant A and Applicant B have similar grades and numbers, but Applicant B helped start up the Scott Baio Fan Club at his college! That's got to make him a better employee than the other guy. I think we have our winner right there, our work here is done! Who's got the first round at Happy Hour?"

But I guess that's the world we live in. I pledged with a guy who treated our fraternity as just another resumé builder and pretty much disappeared once we got in. Sure, he got himself into medical school, but to me that's not worth everyone disliking you and your name being a punchline for years, even after college is over. It's a blatant insult to all the people who bust their ass in earnest to be a part of something that's going to have value for a long time. In a perfect world, there would be a way to sniff out the mere "just a name on a list" people so they could get a big F-you from prospective employers and colleges. After all, who is bound to be more of an asset to a company or a school - a person who stays on the right track and gives full effort to the things he sets his mind to, or a system-manipulating weasel who uses his peers as stepping stones? Call me idealistic but I'd rather be genuine and give my best effort at a few things than go half-ass at a bunch of activities just so I can litter my application with papier-mâché.

Sh*t I Don't Understand: The Short-Sleeve Dress Shirt

With this entry, we inaugurate a new series and finally write on one of the topics I have been promising to our loyal readers for weeks. For anyone who has known me for longer than this blog has existed, you know that I do not comprehend the short sleeve dress shirt. If you're a woman, it's permissible, but if you are a man who picks out his own clothes, and you still somehow arrive at the decision that the best thing for you to wear to work today is a short sleeve dress shirt, then you are literally wearing your cluelessness on your sleeve (or lack of sleeve).

It's goofy. It's antiquated. It's loose in the spots you'd want it to be tight and tight in the spots you'd want it to be loose. It draws attention to your gut (if you have one) more than a long-sleeve shirt would. It will make your arms look like toothpicks if you're anything short of a Mr. Olympia winner. It accomplishes nothing in the way of keeping you cooler in the summer because you're (hopefully) still wearing long pants to work anyhow. It's the same as wearing a shirt that says "Don't take me seriously!"

The only place you would be taken seriously in a short sleeve dress shirt is an audition for a movie or TV show set in the 1960s. And speaking of movies and television, doesn't it seem to you that whenever a director wants a male character to appear chronically awkward or uncomfortable, he has the costume people put him in a short sleeve dress shirt? If you've ever seen Arrested Development, take a gander at that picture of Michael Cera's character below and you'll know exactly what I mean. George Michael Bluth wears a short sleeve dress shirt in almost every episode, and the fact that the character's niche is his extreme awkwardness is hardly a coincidence.
Now that I've written this, I'm sure the short sleeve dress shirt will make some sort of comeback like long hair, skinny ties, and above-the-knee plaid shorts, if for no other reason than for Abercrombie to try to sell the shit for $80 a pop. But do America a favor and don't give in to trying to look like a Jonas brother, because 99 times out of 100 you'll end up looking like Milton up there at the top hanging onto your Swingline for dear life.

What Would You Do For an A?

Middle School through College you occasionally joked with your friends that you would have sex with an old teacher to get an A in her course. You see the course was so difficult or annoying and you though the hour of suffering and the self torture that followed would be worth it. Now I find myself looking around at work and saying " yea I would if it got me out of work early" or if shes halfway decent "that would be fun on my lunch break." Quid Pro Quo, I'm ready to go.


It's funny the things we think about or actually do at work to get us through the day. We grasp for little things to avoid work and keep our sanity. Whether we are on the net more than we would like researching John Calipari recruiting history, wondering around the office, or writing in this blog. We partake in several things we wouldn't normally do to make the day more tolerable. How to do you liven up your day?

There Are Basic Freedoms Here (And Let's Keep Them Basic)

A decent rule to live by is that you can do what you want, as long as it doesn't severely bother other people who are minding their own business. We have basic freedoms in this country. You can practice whatever religion you want, but just please keep it out of my face, ok? You can assemble in protest in front of a Hooters if you want, but don't get in my way if I'm trying to walk in. If I choose to take heed of your picketing and wailing about the plight du jour, I'll walk over to you myself and listen to what you have to say or read some of the literature I'm sure you brought along with you.

If you want to have a phone conversation while walking down a sidewalk or through a crowded mall, that's fine. It's a public place where people are mostly in transit anyway, and no one ends up being privy to your verbal exchanges for very long, so no harm (although you're still likely a douchebag, especially if you walk around talking on a Bluetooth. Ease up on the self-importance there, Mr. Lumbergh). But if you are on the phone in a place where others are planted for an extended period of time, like on a train or at the office, then you are committing a heinous social crime.

My desk is a place where I must be in order to accomplish the tasks of my job, just like my seat on a plane or train is a place where I am designated to be in order to serve the purpose of my being on such a conveyance in the first place. I am either there to work or to simply get from Point A to Point B. Overhearing your obnoxious cackle of a voice engaged in what you consider meaningful conversation was not what I came here for. If you are on the phone more than 2.5 minutes and it's not an emergency or other pressing situation, you've stepped over the line.

Most workplaces have a rule of thumb regarding personal phone calls and cell phone use, but some are most sternly enforced than others. Too many people think it's OK, while sitting at their desk within earshot of numerous others, to blabber on about how they started the wrong tight end in fantasy last week or whether someone needs to pick up bread on the way home or who's picking up their son JoJo the Idiot Circus Boy from practice tomorrow night. Most offices have break rooms or lounges or some place that you can carry on those conversations until the cows come home, or until the sun and moon align and you actually get your lazy ass back to work, whichever happens first.

And I hate to have to go in this direction, but I'd be holding something back if I didn't. General phone courtesy rules still apply to you if you speak another language. In fact, it's twice as annoying to listen to people at work thunder away on their phones in their foreign tongues. And it's not the foreign languages themselves; I don't want to give that impression. It's that, for some reason, whenever someone is speaking in a foreign language, their voice seems to amplify like they're James Hetfield or something. Holding a conversation in a language other than English does not exempt you from respecting those around you. Do they not have inside voices where you come from? I took four years of French and it was never presented as a linguistic norm to speak at a booming volume and pitch - I doubt any language really calls for this in its vernacular. I've had to listen to so much Russian at work in the past few years that I'm debating giving my first child the middle name Sputnik.

What gets me even more is the tolerance level a lot of people have for those who are on their phones way too much but speak in a different language. I get it if your family is on the other side of the world and you only have a certain window of time during the day that either party can talk to one another without interrupting sleep, but give me a break. Do you think if it were me, or any other English-speaking person talking on the phone for upwards of 30 minutes a day during time I'm supposed to be working, it would be looked upon the same way?

There are obviously exceptions to these rules, like if you have a family member serving in the military and any time you get a call from them, you take it and talk for as long as you can because you may only get to speak to them once a month or so. No one's ever going to take issue with that. Just like many other courtesies or small freedoms we have in day-to-day life, it's those who are given an inch and habitually take a yard that ruin it for everyone else. Just like we learn in 3rd grade social studies, every right has a responsibility that comes along with it.

Across This Line, You Do Not Cross

There are things that you can get away with at work. Several rules that you can break and you should if its worth it to you. There is a man in my office that refuses to wears anything but a polo and khakis to a bank even if the dress code dictates suit and tie. He has been questioned by bank presidents and field office supervisors yet he does not care. He will forever rock his polo while you or I suit up. I love that he fights this battle because we all need some sense of freedom at work. You see sometimes you can make your own rules at work because they are not worth firing people over or spending to much time on. Some things should not have to be done in the first place and these are the battles I fight.
I will not fill out a cost comparison sheet and send a memo to three different people explaining why its cheaper to drive from NJ to DC rather then fly on US Airways and take a cab. You can ask me over and over again and I won't do it because if you can't figure it why its cheaper Tommy over here will hit you with a tack hammer. I will defend common sense at work against all policies. Id like to think that everyone at work has things they do that bend the rules, the forum is open.

"Thanks, I Appreciate It" - Part Two

To round out this latest miniseries (which is code for "I intended it to be one entry but got carried away writing the first part"), we take a gander at hollow gratitude, namely the phrase "I appreciate it."

Appreciation is a sentiment, unlike love or respect, that requires some sort of carried-out action in order to be more than just a word. When someone tells you they appreciate you or something you did for them, it doesn't mean a damn thing if the benefactor does not show their appreciation in some form. Sure, it may sincerely mean that the other person now thinks more highly of you, but since there is no "Kelley Blue Book" for people, that really does nothing for you. To borrow an investment term, paper gains are nice, but you're in it for the realized gains.

If your boss tells you, "hey, thanks for all that extra work you did to cover while we had people out sick this week, I really appreciate it," you just give a half smile and say "no problem, glad I could help, blah blah blah." But what you're really thinking is the boss had better remember times like this when annual reviews and bonuses roll around. It doesn't even have to be sizable. He could just say "hey, I really appreciate your extra work this week, why don't you take next Friday as a free vacation day, on me?" Sold! That's a tangible, low-cost (for the boss and company) method of showing gratitude, and can only help an employee's morale going forward.

Men are like dogs - we just want you to throw us a bone every once in a while and say "good boy, good boy." Ever see how happy a dog gets when he knows he's done something good and he's about to get a few slices of steak and a belly rub? It's all about the two-way street - the dog brings in the newspaper and gets his treat, making the owner happy and the dog happy, creating incentive for each party to do more of the same in the future. I'll use another human example before you get to thinking I'm trying to be an amateur Dog Whisperer.

Say you have a girlfriend and you choose to surprise her one day with flowers sent to her office (or better yet, waiting for her in her room when she gets home), a nice piece of jewelry, whatever. Your underlying hope is that she loves it and is floored by your level of consideration for her, leaving her wanting to reciprocate somehow - maybe tickets to a game, or that Mickey Mantle throwback you'd had your eye on lately. One hand washes the other - this cyclical action will go a long way in strengthening a relationship.

So when she says, "thank you, this is awesome, I really appreciate everything you do for me," she better not be bitching at you 12 hours later because the trash hasn't been taken out. Excuse me? You just said you appreciate everything he does for you, now you're bitching the first chance you get? You, darling, are a liar and do not truly appreciate anything. And you have just eliminated any incentive for your significant other to ever want to do something particularly nice for you again. If you were really appreciative you'd muscle up and take the trash out yourself, or at the very least, ask nicely if you want something done.

If you really wanted to be honest, you could have said "Thanks so much for everything, but I think so highly of myself that I feel that little trinkets like this are periodically necessary just to keep you out of the doghouse." At least then everyone would have a good understanding of each other.

So, in conclusion, thanks for reading, I appreciate it!

"Thanks, I Appreciate It" - Part One

I've spent plenty of time musing about the lack of etiquette (see the award-winning "License and Registration, Please" 3-part series) already, but now we must spend a minute on misplaced and/or phony efforts of gratitude.

Please please please stop the excessive use of "Thank You" at the office. I feel like I hear "thank you" and "thanks" so damn much during the day that it puts that circa-1999 Alanis Morissette song in my head (you know, the one with the piano background, the one where she went pseudo-nude in the music video and officially jumped the shark). I understand being courteous and all, but it's gone over the top. You don't need to thank me for simply doing my job - I get a paycheck deposited into my bank account every Friday that serves that purpose.

It's even at the point that I see a ton of people with "Thanks," preceding their default email signatures. So you're telling me that you find it necessary to thank someone every single time you send an email? Half the emails I send at work involve telling people how or why they've just screwed something up, followed by detailed backup and explicit instructions on how to unscrew the situation. You can bet your last dime those emails do not include the words "thank you" at the end, because I do not believe in thanking people for being inadequate and wasting my time.

Thanking people at every turn, regardless of the quality of their actions, is a fertility drug for mediocrity. It's like having "4th-place" or "Participant" ribbons hanging up on your wall as a kid, or your parents slapping onto the fridge a science test with a nice 80 on it. People should be thanked for exceeding expectations, not for going through the motions. Those who overuse phrases of gratitude are either way too easy to please, or they operate on autopilot and don't pay enough attention to what comes out of their mouth. But maybe I'm the weird one.

Hating the Past: Outlines and Rough Drafts

Remember in Elementary school and middle school and high school and even college when teachers forced you to do outlines and rough drafts.

For some people this may have actually been helpful but for me it was always a nuisance that I have dreaded. It was bullshit that got in the way of the finished project. Stuff like this should have been optional because for some kids it did not help organize shit. Teachers should have been worried about the finished product and not how you got there. If you can successfully complete the finish product you don't need to complete mundane tasks. If you can't and the outline helps you then have at it.

I bring this up because today at work I am being told to write an outline for a half page summary of a 10 page report. Really I wrote a 10 page report and you don't trust me to write a half page summary. Needless to say I wrote my summary and didn't do the outline only to bitched at after the fact. Forgive me for cutting the bullshit.

Do Yourself Favors

So many things in life hinge on preparation. An extra minute of thought can make a bigger difference than you'd imagine. We've heard the sayings "put your best foot forward" and "allow yourself to succeed" for years, but far too often we don't put those maxims into practice. It's not about trying your hardest or being dedicated, etc., but more about doing the little things to accentuate your strengths and suppress your weaknesses.

I admit that this post was spurred partially by the famous "gym, tanning, laundry" clip from Jersey Shore. Like him or not, Mike "The Situation" has a point there. If you want to feel at your best, then take the necessary actions to reach that point. If your confidence will be high because you feel pumped and fresh, then so be it. Do what you gotta do.

You can take so many measures to optimize your appearance that it bothers me to see people out in public that look like total shit. Your hair doesn't look good when it gets long? Get it cut on a regular basis. You're a few pounds overweight? Don't wear horizontal stripes (and get off the couch, but we'll try to stay on topic). You're below average height? Don't wear excessively baggy pants, they make you look shorter. You're very fair skinned, even in summer? Avoid too many dark colors that make you look even whiter. Finally, keep in mind that while image isn't everything, it's quite often the only thing. Like it or not, we all make unconscious snap judgments about other people based on how they appear to us, no matter the setting. So it never hurts to spend that extra minute in front of the mirror before leaving home.

It's not limited to appearance. If you're habitually late, set all your clocks and watches 5 minutes ahead. If you know tomorrow is going to be a very busy day at work, get there a half hour earlier than usual. If you don't like to dance or simply suck at it (my hand is raised), then don't try to meet girls on the dance floor of a bar or club.

It's simple. Figure out what you're good at and stick to it. Fortune favors the bold, but it also favors the smart.