You just made my day.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Sunstone Naked! An Interview of Underwhelming Proportions
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
You just made my day.
Naturally, that would be a BLT. I don't trust my cookery well enough to give you anything fancier.
Why does the title of this thread keep changing?
Alceste
Vagabond
Sunstone has special powers. Anybody who puts themselves through college philosophy by fighting fires gets them.
I think I'm developing OCD.
Well, I'm not a doctor or anything like that...but, do you think your OCD tendency stems from unconscious, self-caused trauma over...you know...the whole huge post-count issue that arose recently?
It's true! I gained the amazing ability to warp lumber. We once rolled on a block long warehouse fire. Next to the warehouse was a lumber yard. I took the initiative of spending the whole night pouring water on the lumber yard to keep it from kindling.
The next day, the Chief walks into the ready room and thunders in an angry voice, "Who the hell soaked the lumber yard without orders?"
I confessed to it.
The Chief says in a threatening tone, "I just got off the phone with the owner. You drenched all the boards on the South side of his yard, warping every last one of them."
I'm about to crap my pants when the Chief goes on, "The owner and I credit you with saving the rest of his stock. Consider yourself commended. And please change your pants." Then he smiles and walks out.
Indeed! I had huge confidence in the wisdom of my fellow males to spot an astounding deal when they saw one. Perhaps you can imagine my disappointment to realize that none of them -- not even one -- sufficiently envied my enormous post count to pay me a token $43,000 for it. It has all but destroyed my faith. I may appear to be the same happy Sunstone, but these days I am just an emotional shell of my former self.
How can I resist? Let's become future ex's!
Ok so now we need an rf wedding planer
Delve deeper, my friend, delve deeper...the mind can be a real trickster.
Do you REALLY think that the problem has to do with other guys not paying you the $43,000 to get their hands on your huge post count? I don't.
I wonder if your current angst is really directed at yourself. You made a huge offer, left it out there in the open...then, (I think) in a moment of clarity you realized that you didn't know what you would do without that huge post count... you'd never feel the same, something that was so much a part of you would now be missing. Oh, how could you do that to yourself?
But, you had already been bragging about it -- you were all swelled up with pride. What could you do but leave it out there...secretly hoping, then fervently wishing...then compulsively checking...
"NO...please don't let anyone separate me from my friend the huge post count" you'd quietly say to yourself. You could no longer stop yourself from constantly checking to make sure that it would always remain in your own lap...but the close call and the emotional toll that it took on you may still be with you. Am I right?
(It's OK to cry. The release is a good thing.)
Alceste
Vagabond
Is it going to be a taoism-themed pagan handfasting potluck? If so, I have weeks of experience. If not, I'm afraid I can't help you.
sounds perfect thank you so much. <3
I bought some artist's paint brushes today as consolation. The long handled kind. The very long handled kind. They told me the long handles were for better balance. Tee hee. Like I don't know nothing.
What have your latest paintings been? How long do you spend on each painting?
What do you think you learned the most from being a business owner? If that's too difficult to narrow it down to a single life lesson, list the top three.
What was your favorite subject in school?
Have you had aspirations of travelling in the future? If so, where would you like to go?
Are you double jointed anywhere on your body?
Can you do origami? Or have you ever done origami?
What do you think you learned the most from being a business owner? If that's too difficult to narrow it down to a single life lesson, list the top three.
What was your favorite subject in school?
Have you had aspirations of travelling in the future? If so, where would you like to go?
Are you double jointed anywhere on your body?
Can you do origami? Or have you ever done origami?
The most important lessons I learned from business were taught to me by my mentor in business, a man (Bob) who owned and operated a multi-million dollar software wholesale company. I confirmed every one of his lessons -- sometimes the hard way, by first ignoring them, only to find out later that he had been right all along.
First, inspect what you expect. The temptation is great to trust the people you work with, but you need to check up on them to make sure that what they are telling you really is the case. That's not to say you should be a helicopter manager and hover over your employees. But you do have to periodically check their work.
Second, Bob was a bit of a radical, Heather, but a successful radical. He didn't measure the success of his business in a conventional way. He measured his success by how much his employee's earnings increased each year. That was the figure he kept uppermost in his mind.
Now he was able to do that largely because his was a wholesale business. Most of his employees were salespeople working on a straight commission. The lowest paid salesperson made over $36,000. The highest paid salesperson made over $84.000. Their commission was five percent of their gross sales. So if his salespeople made more in personal income, his business prospered as a whole, all else being equal. Note however, that Bob did not consider the traditional measures of business success to be adequate.
Third, and I think this is Bob's most important lesson to me, "Owning a business is a hell of a way to find out who you really are." Bob once took me aside and said, "If you tell anyone what I'm about to tell you I will deny I said it, and then I will never place another order with you. But I've been grooming you to run your own business someday, and this is something you need to know." He then proceeded to tell me a story about himself.
Bob had once hired a woman who was an excellent salesperson, but who did not appeal to him physically. He had told himself that looks didn't matter to him because he was too smart for that. But, as it turned out, he couldn't in the end bring himself to give her the support she needed to succeed in his business because her looks repelled him. Finally, she came to him with her resignation saying, "I feel you have done nothing to help me be successful." And Bob had to admit that was true.
Heather, Bob was devastated by that. He had an image of himself as a rational, humane, decent man who would never let someone's looks bother him. But now he was faced with a decision. After much deliberation, he decided that he was not strong enough to change himself, and that looks would always for the foreseeable future be important to him. So he decided that all he could do was accept himself as he was and take precautions in the future not to hire people whose looks he objected to.
Now, I've told that story to a few people (without ever telling them who Bob was) and they have almost universally condemned Bob for being a superficial jerk who would allow looks to determine how he treated an employee. But I have five words for them...they are missing the point. Whether it's looks, or politics, or some personality issue, or something else altogether, you will sooner or later find something about yourself -- an Achilles heel -- that is your weakness. When you do, you need to respect that. You need to figure out how to live with yourself. And, most importantly, you need to figure out how to deal with it in your business. Simply denying you have such a weakness will get you no where, and is liable to get other people hurt. Owning a business is a hell of way -- often a painful way -- of finding out who you really are. When you do find out, you need to accept yourself, no matter how ugly you think that makes you, and move on.
Fourth, this doesn't come from Bob. This is my own observation. Most of us are more or less ethical people because we have never been really tempted. Owning a business brings power, and with power, the temptation to take advantage of others.
I can not count the number of times female employees offered themselves to me. It would have been so easy to have rationalized taking them up on it. I never did. But not because I was never tempted.
Again, I can not count the number of times I felt like taking out my frustrations on some employee. Often enough, they probably deserved it in some sense of deserved. But no one really deserves to have someone in a position of authority take out his or her frustrations on them.
Fifth, do not "manage by gossip". I've seen managers try this, and it never works. Someone is not doing their job. They tell everyone else in the office that Jones is not doing her job. But they never tell Jones. They wait for it to get back to Jones via the rest of the office. Bad move. Very bad move.
Never publicly criticize an employee. Instead, publicly praise, and criticize only in private. Tell the whole office when Jones is doing well. Tell only Jones that she needs to improve. And when you tell Jones, first tell her something you like about her performance. "Jonesy, you are doing a great job keeping the books up to date. Superb, actually. But I feel that you need to improve with when you are getting out invoices."
Last, employees -- some of them -- worship bosses. Especially if you are a good boss, they will flock to you for everything. Even for things that have nothing to do with work. For instance, I used to think my job description must have included a line about being a couple's counselor because so many people came to me with their relationship problems. I would love, Heather, to give you some sage advice about how to handle that. But I don't have any. I never did figure out how to deal with the employees flocking to me about their boyfriends or girlfriends, their relationships with their parents or roommates, etc. Just be aware that being a boss means to some people you can solve every problem. And let me know how you deal with it, if you would. The only thing I know is that you should never allow being treated like a goddess convince you that you are one.
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to cover as much as possible given that you've just embarked upon the adventure of a lifetime.
One last thing, and then I'll shut up. When you have to fire someone, first recognize that you have failed. The employee may have failed too, but so did you. At best, you made a mistake hiring them in the first place. At worse, you did not give them the resources or training to succeed. So conduct your firings like a funeral. Do not account them good news. And -- this is key -- tell everyone who asks that letting John go was "the hardest thing you've ever done. And that you "never want to need to go through that again." For it is hugely important that your remaining employees do not get it in their heads that you enjoy firing people. That can demoralize a company overnight. So always -- even if you are vastly relieved to get rid of the person who has been robbing you blind -- always tell people it was the hardest thing you have ever done. I learned that one from one of the best managers I ever had.
Last edited:
I'm currently working on a painting of my friend Brett laughing. It's giving me fits because the reference photo is of poor quality. I don't know when it will be done.
I have been churning out a painting every week or ten days up to this one.