Author Archives: One of the ten percent

JC Penney Silo Master

Well, they fired the JCP CEO.  While I never want to see anybody lose his job, this one was certain to happen if the company has a snowball’s chance in Hades of surviving. And it might not.  It took too long for everybody to figure out what they needed to do.  I saw this one coming when the new CEO threw away his customer base and tried to replace it with youngsters with no money and no desire to shop where grandma shopped.  He failed to realize that there are FEWER of them than there were of the original customer base, and more choices for them to utilize.  Duh.  And, JCP stopped offering quality merchandise and instead packed the stores with junk NOBODY wanted. And…these stores are usually an anchor store in a mall where the lease is HUGE.  Is this ROCKET SCIENCE?  No.  I’ve done rocket science.  This ain’t it.  JCP used to be my only place to go for great quality sweaters.  Even the higher end stores couldn’t match their value and quality with regard to, in particular, their Spring sweaters. I went there for sweaters; and I bought everything else I needed.  I loved their housewares department before they stocked it with junk.  But that’s not THE main reason JCP failed.  It failed because the new guy wanted to build a silo.

I see this kind of thing happen all the time, and it’s not new.  One author I read recently  (I can’t remember his name) coined ‘silo building’ (Google him and find his book; it’s really good).  Here’s how it goes…

First, a paradigm is created where one or more entities within a company have a need to break out from the pack at the expense of the team (maybe not even realizing they are nuking the team).  Maybe it’s not a paradigm; maybe it’s just one giant ego being brought on board who wants to MAKE HIS MARK (dogs just pee on it and maybe if people did that we’d all be better off). So that person creates his own little empire (his goal all along and in fact his NEED) and starts stacking these slightly curved blocks… building a silo…around himself and a selected few.  Silos don’t have windows, mind you; they don’t need them.  But the PROBLEM with that is that there’s no communication possible and the problem is, also, that once the underground competition sets in, you CAN’T communicate because all you could say is, “I’m trying to beat you.”

Once the silo builder starts building his tower, others have to do the same or risk being overshadowed.  Besides, in the beginning, the silo builder looks like a star; he’s having all kinds of success!  He makes others look like they’re napping…but there’s a reason for that.

Okay, let’s have an example; let’s say you’re in retail.  Retail establishments are RIFE with silo builders.  So the first silo builder essentially forces other entities within the company to follow suit, and before you know it, you have building blocks half way up and resources become GOLDEN.  You need resources to build silos after all, and the higher the walls the more resources (people, money) you need.  Chances are you’ll get them because…well you look like a star right now, remember?  But what’s really happening is that the first nail in the coffin of the organization as a whole, has just been hammered in.

So there becomes a built-in, destined competition for resources, usually the low wage earners who are running like horses to make the managers’ wishes come true.  Silo builder number one gets most of the resources because at first, he’s the only one who knows what he’s up to AND he probably doesn’t realize or care that he may be killing the host.  He’s just focused on making his vision a reality and that’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but it’s very dangerous for an organization that needs balance and nimbleness to respond to customer needs and desires.

Okay, so let’s say he’s in charge of the stock room, only that.  Once he has the lion’s share of the resources, the stockroom is going to start to look VERRRY good. The shelves will be stocked neatly; everything will be labeled, the floor will be swept.  It’ll be GREAT…At the expense of the appearance of the store, the place where CUSTOMERS are, and in fact at the expense of customer service…which is the supreme savior of retail.  Also in the crosshairs now, is the morale of the others who are trying to make their retail establishment competitive and customer friendly, who are trying to do their job and that of at least one other…who is now in the main silo.  Everybody outside the primary silo becomes frustrated, exhausted, and a failure…because nobody can sustain that kind of workload and because the workload BECOMES unmanageable. Individuals can do the work of one, maybe two, on a sustained level, but not three or four.  Plus, these people, remember, are the low wage earners.  There’s not a lot of incentive to run a marathon every day, month after month, particularly if you’ve already failed at the start because the workload outside the primary silo, has become…unmanageable.  If, in retail, the employees outside of the primary silo become worn out and unhappy, frustrated and edgy….guess what happens to CUSTOMER SERVICE, the supreme savior of retail?  Right.

The primary silo builder grabs the best of the best resources…because that’s what he needs to make his vision a reality (it’s what anybody would need or want, right), leaving the other lagging silo builders to compete for the other, less desirable or maybe less qualified ones.  Nobody’s happy at this point except the primary silo builder and his resources.  The primary silo builder is getting recognized, and his resources are getting good pay, nice hours.  And by the way, the workforce budget is spent behind the walls, where the customers never go.

Now that’s not all bad.  There are good reasons to have a neat and organized operation, where you know what you have and where it is and where everything’s clean and neat.  But…not at the expense of the appearance of the shopping areas, where the customers are, customers, who can kill your operation just by NOT going there.  If you consider that customers are more entitled than they have ever been, more demanding of stellar service…it wouldn’t make sense to deliberately erode that service, would it?  No.  And silo builders usually don’t realize they’re doing that.  They are just trying to make their mark, make their vision a reality, get a raise, get a promotion, be recognized, prove their worth…all that jazz.

So, the lagging silo builders have not only been crippled with respect to the best and the brightest, but now they have to try to make it work with FEWER of the middle of the pack employees. If they DON’T make it work, their upper management will tear them up, comparing them to the primary silo builder (not realizing he’s sinking with the REST of the ship), and hence eroding the morale of the other silo builders.  The morale of the workers is already tanking and now the managers, the secondary and tertiary silo builders, are falling too.  Uh oh.  Too bad the higher level managers can’t see this.  Don’t feel bad; they didn’t see it at JCP either.

There are places where silos are okay.  Farms.

Retail is the WORST place for them because in retail, things change on a dime and the entire operation has to be able to not only change direction in a second, but also do it while making the customers ecstatic.  So they’ll come back.  So they won’t go to the PLETHORA of other places they COULD go…and WILL go if their needs are not met. And…this is important…the workforce here MUST be happy, because they sure aren’t there for the money.  And they won’t stay if they aren’t happy.  So if you’re already running lean and you lose your best ‘leftovers’, oops.  Real trouble.

What seems important to me, a real nobody, is that teamwork is important in retail and so is foresight!  JCP turned their focus inward, onto themselves, and worked like all get out to build a great little silo with little lounges and vignettes…but they forgot to ask the customers what THEY wanted.  It does no good to make a mark if nobody SEES it, or, more importantly, if it’s a colossal failure.

Why JC Penney is Tanking

As is the case of all blogs, this is my opinion. But it’s also common sense. My CAT could have predicted this if he could speak English.  Or cared.. JC Penney just posted the worst quarter in the HISTORY of retail…if you believe the news.  Well duh. Anybody I talk to isn’t surprised at all because JCP had it ALL wrong. 

First, they decided to put all of their effort into courting a demographic that wouldn’t love them UNLESS they were rather last retail store on the planet. This IS their mother’s store no matter how much they change the logo. 

Second and most important, they completely disregarded the demographic who handed them their success. Ask any Baby Boomer EX JC Penney shopper.  They’ll tell you. 

JCP got sloppy and dirty and unfriendly to their customers…the ones who handed them profits year after year. They got fat and lazy and thought they didn’t have to work to keep us. Then instead of looking inward and doing some hard evaluation, they blamed us…their bread and butter…and they kicked us to the curb. 

So we’ve voted with our feet and our wallets. We went where we were wanted and importantly, valued. If JCP wants to survive, they need to BEG us to come back. They should restock their shelves with the things WE like and want, they need to price them competitively and make sure they are of the quality we once expected from JCP…and they should beg for our forgiveness. Maybe then we’ll stop thinking how they are getting EXACTLY what they deserve and give them another chance to appreciate us. Or maybe not. 

And by the way…if they wanted to appeal to the Old Navy crowd, they should have changed the NAME as well as the logo. DUH.  Even with that, we don’t need another Target or Old Navy and…we are still the ones with the discretionary money to keep you in business. 

I think that’s worth a day of CEO salary. 

 

 

What Love Isn’t

Somebody very important to me asked me if I knew what love is?   What a question. Of course I don’t know. I THOUGHT I did, but boy did I get schooled.

I answered, “Does anybody?”  I’m not sure about that one, actually.  My guess would be that most people haven’t given it much thought and that most people have love and lust confused.  Maybe there’s no such thing at all; maybe it’s a perfect match of one person being a host and the other a parasite…and I’m sure there are nicer WORDS for it, but you get the idea.

I’ve learned that each person’s definition of love, if they could even adequately articulate it, is as unique as that person is among the whole population of Earth.  So I ask YOU: what is love?

Think about it; before you answer ask yourself what would love look like if you took lust out of the picture.  I know, hard to imagine.  Still give it a shot.  Also take out the OBLIGATION factor; I mean love from child to parent, for example.  If not for those things, how would you describe love?

I don’t have the ‘right’ answer.  Maybe there isn’t one.  But I can talk about some things love isn’t.  First of all, it isn’t lust; it isn’t about sex.  And if you plan to build a so-called loving relationship, like marriage…on sex, forget it; it’s  not gonna work.

Love isn’t going after somebody because they have assets you’d like to take from them…things like bank accounts or properties or a nice home.  That’s not love.  That’s targeting an innocent party for your own financial gain.

Love isn’t keeping track of what someone does for you, or events for which they show up; it isn’t about the gifts they’ve given.  In other words, if love had arrows pointing, there should be one going toward oneself and one going away from oneself, or it isn’t love.  Love is not one-sided; love is not ‘taking’.  And it’s not all giving either. It HAS to be both give and take.

Love isn’t devoid of sacrifice. It’s full of sacrifice, or it should be…I think.  Love isn’t convenient.  Sometimes love means we have to break a sweat doing things we’d rather not do, for someone who simply needs us.  Sacrificial love doesn’t always show up during slack times; sometimes it shows up in the middle of a busy time.  If you can’t sacrifice even then…it isn’t love.

Love isn’t doing hurtful things when you don’t get you way or you want to do something you shouldn’t. You can’t hurt someone you love. If you DO or desire to, that’s not love.  You can’t do harm to someone you love. If that kind of behavior is in YOUR kind of love, please stay far from me. I already know you.

There is no such thing as unconditional love.  If someone says they love you unconditionally, better pat them down for your best silver or that nice ring you just bought.  There is no such thing as unconditional love.  If you aren’t getting something out of it, you’re probably comatose.   Remember there’s an arrow pointing in, too, and  if there’s not you are not human. Nobody’s that generous.

I do know this about love.  Never mind. I don’t know.

Stubborn and real estate don’t mix.

The One Hundred Thousand Dollar Stubborn Streak
(or, Blood is Shooting Out of My Eyes)

There is a …maybe a million dollar home which just sold for about ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS less than its value, primarily because of one outstanding attribute of the sellers: Stubbornness. I have to talk about this, people. I just have to. These sellers deserve to be applauded, even lauded for their supreme grasp of the phenomenon of stubbornness, because they took it to soaring heights and even paid six figures for the sake of holding on to it. They are my champions so far. Nobody else beats this streak.

Somebody will though. Somebody will. You can’t make this stuff up.

Don’t get me wrong. They’re lovely folks. But they take resistance to good solid advice, presented in the interest of getting them top dollar, to new heights. Or should I say depths. I should say depths. There it is. I am not the listing agent by the way. If I WAS I couldn’t write because you can’t write with an exploded head.

I’ve run across this tendency many times in my career. Usually the ones who own it best are the ones who think they are the Realtors, the ones with professional real estate training and professional real estate experience, even though they’ve never actually BEEN a Realtor. They think this because 1) they have big egos; 2) they think they are smarter than everybody else…everybody; 3) they hold Realtors in low esteem; 4) they don’t do well with separating emotion from business; and 5) they have bought or sold a home before. Okay and 6) they want to hold on to their ‘decorating’ theme…and I use that term loosely at times…even at the cost of oh say ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!

I can hear all of the realtors saying, “AMEN!”. No, wait. Some are looking around and saying, “Are you kidding me? One hundred THOUSAND?” That’s right. I’m not kidding. Do I look like I’m kidding with smoke coming out of my ears over here??

You need to think about this. Just because you’ve been IN a courtroom, does that make you an attorney? Because you’ve had surgery, are you now a surgeon? If you’ve had surgery twice are you now CHIEF of surgery? I think some people think they ARE! If you look at beautiful art, are you then an artist? NO! So why would you think that just because you’ve bought or sold a home, or bought AND sold one, you are now a Realtor?? It makes about as much sense as the art analogy or any of the others. People, you are not the real estate agents; you are the CLIENTS. I should make a sign.

Gone are the days when realtors are the ones who can’t do anything else and that’s why they’re realtors. That was gone a LONG time ago. Realtors today are educated, strong, talented and up to the minute with stats on YOUR market. We have to be because everybody sues EVERYBODY these days…yes even CLIENTS (that would be YOU), whom we protect. We have a responsibility to you that we take very seriously. 


We protect you, we encourage you and we do our level BEST to make sure you get the MOST for your home that the market will bear. The way we DO that is by making sure you know how to be COMPETITIVE. We tell you what will make your home stand out and get that buyer to make an offer on your home, and we advise you about how you can make that offer SING, not hack like a life-long smoker about to keel over. You can listen to us, OR, you can disregard us and lose ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Here’s a good one. Even after receiving feedback after feedback about grandma’s quilt or the blue wall or the CLUTTER do you think ANYTHING gets changed? NOOOOO! You can’t make this stuff up! You really can’t! The market speaks and some clients pat their ears and say, “la la la la I can’t hear you”. Now I’m crying.

Can you tell I’m upset? I’M UPSET.

And these sellers are mad at the REALTORS!!!! We are the ones who warned you about being competitive, about LISTENING to the feedback and actually DOING something about it. We are the ones who tried to get you top dollar!! My head is about to explode. I can hear it expanding. I really can. It’s creaking.

There was no earthly reason for this house selling this low except for pure, unadulterated, boiled down, precipitated, strained, dried, sifted, freeze-dried, died in the wool STUBBORNESS. Now blood is coming out of my ears too. THIS WAS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY, LOSING THIS KIND OF INVESTMENT DOLLARS!

Let me alert you. I have two college degrees, one in chemistry, a subject which makes most people cringe. And I graduated at the top of my class. The other degree is in business, where I studied marketing, economics, sales…I’m good at what I do and I’m qualified to have an ego just as big as anybody else. That’s why, if I visit you to talk about selling your home, you should listen to me. And you should listen to other realtors who have been down this road a thousand times and who tell you exactly what you need to do to be competitive in this market. We don’t make this stuff up, people. It’s based on data. Set aside the stubborn streak and think about what you might do with ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Is it worth paying that much to keep your grandmother’s quilt on the bed or that neon blue wall in the den? NO! IT’S NOT! For crying out loud, redecorate or paint! You’re LEAVING, remember? Is there still LOGIC in the world? I think there is, but why not in REAL ESTATE?? If you have a 14×14 foot room and enough junk in it to fill an 18×18 foot room, MOVE SOME STUFF OUT! Or, think about what you could do with ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS that you are about to flush down the gold plated TOILET.

You’re selling space, wide open space. Not your ‘décor’, not your grandma’s quilt, not that carving of an amoeba eating a shark. NOT that flower arrangement you made when you were on the crack pipe. SPACE is all you are selling. And not neon blue space. If you have to kick chairs and pillows out of the way to get INTO a neon blue room, LIGHTEN UP THE CLUTTER or kill me now. This is not rocket science, people. I’ve done rocket science; this ain’t it.
So there was this couple who sold their home for ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND less than market value, but they showed US didn’t they? I don’t think so. I think they shot themselves in the foot. Twice. Per foot.

 

You Don’t Know…

I have a hard time watching physicists on TV documentaries, even though sometimes I agree with their theories…or parts of them, I should say.  You see, the problem I have is that I know something about detection systems in various types of analytical instruments and in the most complex analytical instrument: the human body.  So I know we’re way too limited in our detection ability to figure out the universe.  It makes me laugh.  And besides, so what if we do figure it out?  It’s like this: If we figure out how to get through a worm hole into another dimension, what will we do when we get there?  Have a snack?  Do lunch?  This stuff cracks me up.  It’s really funny to me!  I mean, there might not BE chocolate in another dimension, so why would we want to go anyway?  On the other hand, I might still weigh in at 118 pounds so…where’s the shuttle?

I’m a smart cookie, but I still can’t wrap my head around infinity and trust me, I’ve thought about it.  But the truth is, no mere mortal can understand infinity because it’s just not possible.  Oh stop it.  I know what you’ll say: Infinity means there’s no end, that the system goes on forever.  Okay…explain it.  I mean really, keep talking until everybody really gets it.  Meet you at the cemetery.

See, that’s the problem.  But if you listen to physicists…and okay I do…they get downright giddy about the latest theory about…well EVERYTHING… but especially issues related to our ‘universe’.  Okay, so now there’s a name for the ‘stuff’ that holds the ‘stuff’ that started the big bang.  I was kind of disappointed to hear that; I thought they missed that little detail and I was enjoying that.  And now they have decided…some of them…that the universe is flat.  Well what a relief.  I thought it was just ever so slightly curved that we couldn’t detect the curvature and that made me lose sleep at night.  Well we now have data…the universe is flat.  I’m so glad.  What I’m really trying to say is: Who cares??

Except the people who are awake at three in the morning watching documentaries….and physicists.

Now we’re talking about membranes, where our galaxy resides kind of like a dot in a huge sheet flapping in the wind.  And there are supposedly multiple membranes that fluctuate and wave and occasionally touch and well what else could that do but create another universe?  Right.  Every time these membranes touch…BOOM!  New universe.  But we can’t SEE it.  See the beauty in being a theoretical physicist?  Tooth fairy, Santa Clause, ghosts, membranes.  I love this stuff.  I really do.

And…we still have parallel universes, in which I wholeheartedly believe.  If, they say, an electron can exist in many places at once, and electrons are some of the smallest building blocks of the universe; then surely we must be able to also exist in many places at once…dimensionally speaking.  And yes, that makes sense.  To me.  In another universe my ex was never even born.  See the beauty?

Now, we have the ‘bubble theory’.  Bubbles.  Guess which physicist was the giddiest about bubbles?  The California guy.  Go figure.  Our universe, in the minds of many California dudes I mean physicists, floats around like a bubble along with lots of other bubbles and may pop, or collide with other bubbles.  Dude!  That’s phat. I almost changed the channel on that one.  Guess where the California physicist was?  On the beach, of course!  hahaha.

Then they started talking about particle collision at the Fermi Institute.  The collider is far underground sheathed in protective material lest we create another universe or some such thing.  Now that’s something I’d like to see.  I would!  …but what if they move that sucker about 5000 more feet underground where conditions change just a smidgen?  Maybe there’s a simple California answer to that.  But my question is, if we get data, will we really know what we think we know?  By the mere act or method of observing, are we changing the data?   Well I think we are!  So there must be infinite answers and I want them all.

You gotta get this: if there are parallel universes, infinite ones…well there are infinite infinite test results right? Infinite ones here and infinite ones in allll of the other universes.  We don’t know, right?  We just don’t know.  I’m okay with that, can you tell?

The problem I have is that it always occurs to me that we’re pretty arrogant, we simple humans.  We are very busy trying to figure out the ‘universe’ when in essence, we’re still looking at ants through a magnifying glass.  We can’t even figure out what makes people want to kill one another and why are we not working on that?

We have no idea the limits (on the small side) of quantum physics, nor do we know how far our universe really goes.  I’ve always liked to think we were in the thumb of some giant being so large that we could never detect his movement.  Don’t laugh.  The California dude probably already thought of that.  And by the same token, look at your thumb.  It might hold many galaxies.

The bottom line is that we don’t know.  We’re not equipped to know, but we sure spend time and money trying to figure out where we came from and how can we get SOMEWHERE else…because we’re going to destroy our planet or it’s going to die a natural death.  There’s a good way around that…it has to do with sending our DNA out into the universe and spreading it around.  Then we can ‘survive’.  Oh that’s great, isn’t it?  We’ve just about destroyed THIS place; let’s go somewhere else and START AGAIN!

I’ll be dead, so…I don’t really care.

Still, I’d like to see more effort thrown into understanding PEOPLE.  What makes people cruel and heartless?  Why do some people have the kill gene and some do not?  How do we deactivate the kill gene and if we could, how could we stop overpopulation?  Well we’d have to, wouldn’t we?  Now that’s a good question, isn’t it?  Wouldn’t you rather know about that than cosmic bubbles, dude? Maybe not.

I love the Fermilab building though.  I might not like all of the wild theories, but the building?  Coolest I’ve ever seen. You should google it.  Seriously.

Do No Harm

We do one another great harm as humans, don’t we? 

I watched a documentary about a death row inmate, convicted of a triple murder and sentenced to death. He killed these people when he was 18 years old.  As the documentary progressed I was stricken numerous times about how fragile we are, what barbarians we are, and about how one choice…one decision made in a fleeting moment…can lead to utter devastation…to others and ourselves.  We just keep on going, walking, taking in stride the damage to ourselves and others…and we go on.  Some of us go to the death chamber and are injected with chemicals that kill us; others go on to new lives in strange places and we go on.  I am amazed by us.  We should be dragging along, barely able to take the next step because of the damage; we should have dropped off limbs and hair; we should be bone thin and starving, yet we walk on…just like it never happened.  No, it’s not healing.  You don’t heal from some wounds.  Not these.

The young man, this murderer, might have been envisioned as a dark, huge, brutal monster had I not seen his face close up as he spoke to his final interviewer; but he was a child…a child with dark circles under his eyes illustrating the stress under which he existed, though he fought with his whole psyche to deny it, or look away from it…to pretend it didn’t exist.  Even though he was well into his second decade of life by the time of his execution, he was a child…probably with an IQ in double digits and not high ones.  It made me very sad. I do not believe he should have been killed.  He was clueless.  He was in no way someone who could have understood  accountability, let alone be held to it.  He was a boy, in supreme denial of his own past actions and those about to befall him.  He never apologized to his victims’ families, never acknowledged them in any way, except to forgive THEM for the atrocities they put upon HIM by killing HIM.  What happens to us to make us so confused and so unacquainted with just doing the right thing?  Where is the reality check? His last words included something about being in heaven.  Heaven?  I don’t know…he said he had become a man, not the boy he was when he got there…but no.  He was still a little boy, plain as day.  He wasn’t a misguided boy; he was an UNguided boy who no doubt died clueless. 

And none of his victims came back to life.

His accomplice, the same age but clearly a man, was extremely bright, intensely human and in the moment.  It was obvious he could have been anyone, done anything he wanted to do…but for his choices and possibly the choices of others.  His father spent the majority of his own life in prison because of, he said, drugs and alcohol…choices.  He blamed himself for his son’s life sentence, and he may have been right because his son was raised in utter poverty without benefit of a father.  I’m sure that affected the son’s choices…and his options.  So sad.  I watched, wondering what might have happened if this young man had somehow inherited an ounce of INTEGRITY somewhere along the line.  He might have been a scholar, could have been.  His father, by the way, now sober, was also a very bright, very human, feeling person…he grieved the loss of his son’s freedom too late.  This man could have been an absolute pillar of his community…you could tell. But he chose a life of addiction.  I felt such an absolute sense of the wastefulness of humanity, watching these people, these prisoners and murderers. My God.  What a colossal shame.

I have seen the same waste around me, in people who had a goodness about them, wrapped in putridity and hatefulness.  A waste.  I have watched the goodness become infinitesimal and the evil take over, spilling into the lives of others near them.  And they go on, slogging through the death and despair around them…like nothing happened. Just another blow stricken for humanity.  Good job.

Family members of the victims, and friends, were as different as a handful of stones scooped up from the river bottom.  But different as they looked and spoke, they were all forever changed, forever burdened by a grief they could not comprehend.  There was such a sense of helplessness about all of them.  All of them isolated themselves, cut themselves off from the world for fear of further devastation…actually doing more harm to themselves, because loneliness is painful too.  It makes the hole in your heart bigger, doesn’t it, even though in a strange way it feels safer.  I’d make a terrible juror.  I’d want to make everybody feel better.  Everybody. I’d want to make sense of it somehow when no sense can be made.  None of these people deserved the grief heaped upon them; where is their justice?  I don’t think there is any.  You can’t turn back time…at least not yet…and that’s what you’d have to do.

The captain of the death squad, the head of the lethal injection team…ultimately decided he couldn’t kill anymore.  He was also a warm and compassionate man.  Sounds strange, doesn’t it?  A compassionate killer.  After over 120 deaths to his credit…or detriment really…he just couldn’t do it anymore, and he now believes there is no reason for any human to kill another human…law or no law. And I thought, “Too bad he didn’t realize that sooner.” Followed by, “It wouldn’t have mattered.”  And he cries about having done his job as a professional…killer.  I am understanding humanity less and less and looking upon us with greater and greater disdain as I age.  I should have been a cat.  Cats don’t care.

I don’t know how I would feel if I were the victim; I don’t know whether I would want the perpetrator to be killed.  Maybe I would. I couldn’t be the one to do it, so…just exactly what does that mean?  I’m essentially saying, “Somebody kill this person.”  Nice.  When I was a few interviews away from possibly being chosen for a death penalty case jury, I became physically ill at the mere thought of having to decide whether or not to cause the end of someone’s life.  I don’t have the kill gene.  It was a good thing to learn, I guess. 

But I do have the compassion gene. Sometimes I wish I didn’t. 

We just do one another great harm as a way of life.  It’s accepted as the norm.  One way or another, we manage to do it.  I have spent a lot of time studying human behavior, my own and others’,  and the more I learn, the sadder and more incredulous I become.  We have become uncivil to one another, unkind and uncaring and we have the nerve to say we love one another while we know we are lying about that, and WHILE we do one another harm and know we’re doing it.  We think we know what love is, but we don’t have a clue, any more than that child on death row.  That kid was homeless at the time of his crimes, having been thrown away by his ‘loved ones’.  Oh…they came back and were there when he was put to death.  Nice. I really should give up trying to figure it out. 

I called love ‘parasitic’ a few weeks ago and I’m not sure I’m wrong about that. I keep looking for love out there in the world, not for me, but just to see whether I can even find it… the kind that doesn’t involve taking something or expecting something from someone.  I don’t think it exists.  And don’t say, “I’m a parent; I know about unconditional love.”  Real love goes both ways.  It doesn’t always come back.  I think if you illustrate real love, arrows would go BOTH ways with no payments, no bloodsucking, no killing, no harm done.  We can’t do it.  We humans can’t do it.

I think we are far more comfortable harming one another for the sake of selfishness, than we are really loving.  Really loving.   Love has become a comsumable rather than a donation. If we drew an illustration of the direction of love, more arrows would point inward than those pointing out.  If everybody takes and nobody gives, won’t we run out of love and compassion?  Isn’t that what we’re doing? 

Do you love anybody just for the sake of loving them?  I mean expecting nothing?  Come on now…tell the truth.  You’re getting something or you wouldn’t be there.  It’s true.  That’s human nature in the rawest form.  Take.  Consume.  Survive.  Tina Turner said, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”  Right.  But I think real love has much to do with it…if we could only do it.  Something made this murderer void of compassion, selfish enough to steal the very lives of people, not even realizing there was wrongdoing involved.  I think it must have been lovelessness. 

As a race, we don’t do love well anymore…if we ever did.  I think we’d have fewer inmates if we did.  I know; there is evil in the world, just for the sake of evil…but the people who are in jail because they were unguided or unloved…I think we’d see fewer of them if we knew what love means and we just tried to do no harm.  Is the world better off without this child/murderer?  I doubt it. And I wonder what he might have become if he had been loved.

Property Values

I have to get this off my chest. 

We live in a metropolitan area, one of the best!  As such, there are highways everywhere!  Not surprisingly, there are many homes which back up to these thoroughfares and many agents insist on fomenting the idea that because there is a highway in close proximity, the property is not only not as valuable, but downright appalling.  I call major BS on that.  Not everybody sees fellow drivers as the Devil! Some of us don’t give two hoots about traffic noise, and a great house is still a great house, even WITH a highway nearby.

Where do we get off saying we love the area but let the ‘other ones’ buy the houses near the highways…you know, one of the infrastructure aspects that MAKE this a great place to live??  That attitude affects our real estate market and it’s making smoke come out of my ears!

If one desires to live in a metropolitan area, then surely one would expect there to be metropolitan STUFF like HIGHWAYS and STREETS.  I think it would be a grand idea for agents to stop badmouthing these properties and let clients make up their own minds.

Here’s an example of a bad agent conversation:  Client: Oh no!  It backs up to a highway!  Agent: You’re right.  It’s noisy!  Let’s leave. 

How about a GOOD agent conversation:  Client: Oh no!  It backs up to a highway!  Agent:  True, but it gives you quick access for commuting and by the way…how much time do you spend outside?  Client: Hardly any.  Only when we’re grilling out.  Agent:  How quiet do you need it to be for grilling out?  Client: Not quiet at all.  We usually have loud music playing. 

Case closed.  Try overcoming the objective with some good solid communication and you might find out there IS no objection. Marketing 101 folks.

The bottom line is that there are some fantastic homes in close proximity to highways.  During your ‘quiet’ times, guess what? The highway will also be quieter because it’s everyone else’s quiet time too!  So agents, remember your job is to protect our market…meaning our property values.  ALL of them.  So don’t be the grinch out there. 

 

Church People and Other Mysteries

Remember the Church Lady?  Funny skit on Saturday Nite Live, was’t it?  Unfortunately, that is often the image society has of church people: stodgy, uptight, unrealistic, even spastic.  Maybe they’re right sometimes, but not about MY church people.  Keep reading.  I know you don’t believe me, but bear with me, because I’m inviting you to come and see for yourselves. 

I attend Richland Creek Community Church, not because it’s a great big building with lots of people and activity, but first and foremost because I want to worship God.  There’s a lot of God worshipping at Richland Creek!  There’s straightforward, down to earth, loving, Biblical worship there.  Further, I want to worship God in the context of His creation, which means if I look around me and see all white faces, that’s not representative.  At Richland Creek, I look around and see so many nations represented, so many skin colors, that I can’t keep track of them all.  THAT’S representative and THAT’S fulfilling to me.  I like hearing people pray with an accent, sometimes so thick it’s hard to understand to my Southern ears.  If God spoke to me, I’m pretty sure He wouldn’t have a Southern accent, and that’s just fine with me.

Our pastor and his team are the best I’ve ever encountered, a HUGE blessing to me.  And I’ve heard a lot of preachers in my time.  David Sims is truly a Godly man who genuinely loves people and has a burden for their salvation.  He doesn’t just preach it, he DOES it.  He is surrounded by staff with hearts bigger than the building in which we congregate and the congregation are like family.  I know; you’ve heard THAT before.  But here, you feel that when you step inside the church: God is there.  That, as you know, is not always the case.

I lived in what I consider to be the worst town in the country, and was never invited to church while I lived there, even when I ASKED people about their church.  I know.  Strange.  But from day one at Richland Creek Community Church, people reached out to me, not knowing that I was in desperate need of that kind of touch at the time.  I never felt like an outsider.  Not once.  There are miriad small groups there, just itching for you to come and join in. It’s very casual in some ways, but the strongest I’ve encountered in others.  It’s about Godly love.

Richland Creek Community Church is the smallest big church I’ve ever attended.  It’s sort of strange.  We have so many people there that we have to have police to get us OUT at the end of services; yet, you feel as though it’s a small church.  Doesn’t make sense, but it’s true.  Don’t believe me?  Come and see for yourself.

Want to know the context of Biblical teaching?  Pastor David Sims gives you that.  He’s never wrong in his Greek translations and definitions, he’s funny and eloquent and his heart is right there for anyone to examine.  He walks us through the Bible, line-by-line, as he says, and we always leave better than when we went in.

There’s a super strong community service initiative at my church.  We are always doing something to lift up the community…and we have a BIG community.  Sometimes, I’m amazed at the outreach we do, in addition to Missions…which is the heart of our church: Discipleship.

Music has always been a strong ministry to me, makes me cry when it’s really good.  I cry a lot at this church. hahaha.  I attend the blended service, where we have both a choir and a small orchestra.  The orchestra is made up of people of all ages and backgrounds and I love watching them serve the Lord with music.  It gives me a lot of joy.  In the choir we have four ‘boomers’ as I call them: Men whose voices can fill the sanctuary.  When all four are there at the same time, I know I’m gonna cry!  Hahaha.  The choir is amazing when they’re all there together. 

We have traditional, blended, and what I call the ‘rock and roll’ service.  I’ve attended two of three service types, even though I never thought ‘rock and roll’ would do it for me.  But the service is wonderful and there are some of the most BEAUTIFUL voices in the congregation I have ever heard.  Okay, it’s not REALLY rock and roll, but you get the idea.  It’s a packed service.  The music is different, more contemporary, but the MESSAGE is the same.

Want to wear jeans and flip flops? You can, here.  I don’t, but I do wear slacks most of the time.  It’s comfortable and I don’t think God is a fashion policeman.  I believe He looks at hearts.

Someone asked what was going on at our church that we are growing so fast and always so BUSY there…as though we were doing something strange.  Simple: It’s God’s house and we who attend there really respect that.  And we really do care about one another.  We call ourselves ‘Creekers’ and that means something really big to us.  It means we are connected and we have each others’ backs.  And we would like for you to join us.

So consider this an invitation.  Richland Creek Community Church on Burlington Mills Road in Raleigh.  Four services; choose your favorite.  As for other activities?  Too many to mention.  Go online and check us out, find the service you would like and check out our small groups. Come for a Free Pizza Friday sometime, download our app, check us out.  We’d really love to have you join us.

Like, I wonder, like, why I can’t like…get hired!

I overheard some college students talking about the economy.  Stop laughing.  I did.  I heard college students talking about the economy.  The focus was on jobs, since the one they were doing at the time was barely above minumum wage.  The conversation went something like this.

Like, I KNOW I’m smarter than like MOST of the…like…OTHER people who applied.  Like, the dude came out and like TOLD me I was like PERKY enough for the job.  And I was like, wow, thanks for calling me PERKY.  There were some, like, OLD people trying to like, get this job too.  And I’m like, what were THEY doing there?  And you know what was like WEIRD?  I told the dude that I was like YOUNG and so I like looked at things DIFFERENT than like old people.  He said something about a store display, like whether I liked it or not, and I said, I guess I like it because I’m like YOUNG. And then like, the only thing he said was I was like PERKY enough for the job. Which was like cool, but like, I thought he should like HIRE me.  I’m like really curious why he didn’t hire me.  Like, I can definitely do the job.  Seriously.  And, like, I will graduate in just a year.  DUDE, I just don’t get it.  And you know what’s WEIRD?  One of those like OLD people got hired.  DUDE!

To which the other student replied something like this:

Like, I’ll be finished with my BS degree and like, I’m going right into my masters degree.  So, like, when I start job hunting, like, I should have nooo problems.  Like, I want to get my education done like first.

So.  If I ever interview you… and I might someday… and you use the word “like”, you’re not hired, dude.

By the way, I know college students who have very intelligently thought out perspectives on the economy and you know…they have GREAT jobs.  They don’t say “dude”, except in fun, and they don’t pepper their entire sentence structure with “like”, either.  Come to think of it, I really LIKE these kids, too, and that’s how you use that word.

Now for the OTHER issue:

Advertising your youth the way this kid did is like showing off your lobotomy scar.  If you are a recent graduate, your brain isn’t even finished yet.  The intelligent among you already know that.  You others, don’t bash old people.  Seek their wisdom instead, because, contrary to popular belief, we have it…lots of it…  You could benefit from it if you saved all of the time you use up saying “like”, and listen instead.  DUDE!  I’m a genius.