Once upon a time ..

I worked at a place, where there was a VP of the department I worked in, who was known for taking calls on speaker while leaving his office door open. I skyped someone once and told them - hey - Sam has your call on speaker with the door open and we can all hear it. So wrong.

Sam (as I'm calling him) regularly made people cry, berated people in front of others, and pushed people so hard they quit.

But he was making progress with projects and moving things along successfully.

Behind the scenes, his boss had hired a manager coach, to see if he could be taught to deal with people differently. None of us knew that, but we did know to stay out of his path if we could. 

One day the president of the company called those of us who were onsite into a conference room, and pulled in others by conference call, to announce that Sam had been let go. She told us that although he was successful at the things he had been asked to do for the company, the way he treated people was unacceptable and could no longer be tolerated.

We were shocked. I was hugely shocked. The president (I will call her Sheila) told us about the coaching, about how many months had gone into trying to improve his ability to manage people. But in the end - other employees and their well being meant more to Sheila than one man who was a bully.

I was still fairly new at this company, and wasn't sure Sheila even knew who I was. I had no idea if it
was appropriate for me to email the president of the company but I didn't care. When I got back to my desk I emailed Sheila to thank her. I was near tears as I typed. I explained that the previous place I had worked - Sam would have been promoted, such was the toxic culture of that employer.

I needed her to know how much it meant to me, personally, that she had taken the stand she did, and how happy it made me that this was the atmosphere in the place where I was now employed. It mattered then. It still matters to me now.

Sheila is retiring. I will miss her leadership but more than that - I will miss her heart and her simple goodness. Those are qualities sorely missing from much of corporate America.

In a world where you can be anything, be a Sheila.

Best gift of all

Before Christmas, a certain 4 year old went shopping with her parents to a store where she found a stone, hand carved heart sold to benefit women in need, in Haiti. It wasn't expensive or made from a gemstone, it was charcoal gray soapstone, but she absolutely had to have it to give to her grandma for Christmas.

At home this 4 year old picked out a box to wrap it in, and directed her parents how to decorate the box - she wanted 2 bows, ribbon tied around it, and the heart inside the box had to be wrapped in red tissue paper. 

On Christmas morning when she got to give the box to her grandma, she was so excited! Grandma was a little confused at first but when she realized her granddaughter picked out this heart, simply because it was a heart, for her - she was thrilled! And touched. And so, very, happy.

Grandma and this little girl have a very special bond and Grandma hopes it stays that way well into the future, even when the 4 year old is 10, or 16, or more. One thing is for sure, this grandma is so lucky to have such a wonderful little girl in her life. She treasures her, and will cherish that stone heart, forever.

There is nothing quite like the love of a child. Or a grandma, for that matter! 

I heart Blogger's spam detector

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There are things people deal with when writing or reading blogs.  I mean, when I first started blogging I broke my blog and had to beg somebody to look at my template to find what I did.  Or how about when you comment on someones blog and accidentally do it twice?  Argh-h.  Usually if someone does that on my blog, I delete the duplicates because it just seems like the nice thing to do.  I have run into problems posting photos - and made myself crazy trying to get one photo the right size and orientation. 


But one big thing about blogging are the spam bots and the trolls and comments left to obviously send a reader to some other site, most likely dangerous in some way.  People resort to comment moderation and word verification.  Yuk.  But I totally understand because sometimes I use it myself. 


 Now though, Blogger has come out with their own spam filter.  I suppose it could have been there for a year and I didn't notice it, but when I did I was thrilled!  I turned word verification off and since then, bots have tried but failed to post comments.  I take that back, I think one got through in like - a month.  You can see published comments as well as quarantined ones, and mark something "not spam" to let it through.  So far though, I have not seen any accidentally marked as spam.  


It's about time, don't ya think?  I mean, really!

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