10 Basic Rules of Office Etiquette

1) Put your phone on vibrate: It’s annoying to everyone around you when it goes off. You might think your ringtone is cute, but I really don’t want to hear something that sounds like music from a porno.

2) Don’t talk with your mouth open: We all eat at our desk at one point or another, give yourself a break and don’t pick up the phone or talk to anyone until you’ve finished eating. I don’t like getting food in my face.

3) If you see me eating at my desk, please don’t interrupt. Please don’t make me talk with food in my mouth. I don’t want you getting food in your face.

4) Just because the walls are elbow-high, it doesn’t mean you lean on it and talk to me. We are not neighbors that stand around and chat, I do have a job.

5) If you have time to stand around and chat with me and I keep my head turned to my PC screen and continue to type, my ‘uh huh’ means I didn’t hear you nor do I care. Move along.

6) When you walk up behind someone’s chair, make noise, because if you startle me, I will push away from my desk and ram my chair into your shins and that is totally your fault.

7) We all have PCs, we all have our own emails, unless your fingers are broken, even if you are my boss, type your own emails.

8) Don’t ever ask someone to Google something for you, see #7.

9) Don’t pick your nose at your desk, if I see that, I will never ever visit your area nor touch your desk, you might find a very large jar of antibacterial gel on your desk one day or smeared all over your desk and chair.

10) Don’t make up nicknames for other people that annoy them. Don’t continue using it even when no one else laughs except you. Then you look like a jackass. 

The Rose vs. The Sunflower

With St. Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I’ve noticed an increase of angst. Valentine’s Day is a brilliant marketing idea that took a little legend and turned it into a celebration of guilt. It should really be called “I Listened To The Hype And Got Shamed Into Buying You a Bunch of Roses Day”. Suddenly, people run around making all kinds of elaborate displays of affection for their beloved. It always struck me as silly because if you have someone in your life you love, shouldn’t every day be an opportunity to shower them with affection? Why would you need a day marked on a calendar?

Then there is the usual symbol for love and Valentine’s Day, the red rose.

“My love is like a red red rose” – Robert Burns

But I think about it and find that if you really look at a rose, it’s true charm and attraction is its incipient symbol for expectation. Have you ever seen a rose when it is just a green polyp on the end of a bush? It has a lovely shape, then slowly the green leaf starts to unfurl and the flower petals are unveiled. It is a study of contrasts; the green against the red. The petal has a similarity to pursed lips. Perhaps that’s why it is such a symbol for romantic love.

Then as it blossoms, the petals unfurl but there is a point when it becomes past its bloom. The petals fall like tears and the ground looks like it’s covered with broken hearts. There is nothing as sad as a dead rose, its head bent, broken and bald.

I like to think as love more in keeping with a sunflower. A sunflower grows tall and proud, I’ve seen them as tall as 7 feet, their proud faces straining at the sky as if they could, they would fly up and disappear into the sun.

Which leads me to this poem by Thomas Moore:

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,

Which I gaze on so fondly today,

Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms,

Like fairy wings fading away

Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will;

And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart

Would entwine itself fervently still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,

And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,

That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,

To which time will but make thee more dear.

No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,

But as truly loves on to the close:

As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets

The same look which she turned when he rose.

“As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets…” That’s a great line, because whosoever captures my heart, will capture it completely. It strains to fly, as love should fly. When it dies, its petals whither, the head drops forlornly, but it still stands. Yes, I’ve simplified it, but love shouldn’t be complicated. Love should be easy and simple. 

Change

It’s been a very lazy weekend for me, so I surfed the channels and found myself caught up in the movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still” with Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly. The basic plot is that an alien, (Reeves) lands on Earth, to make the final determination of whether he will destroy the human species.

“If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives. There are only a handful of planets in the cosmos that are capable of supporting complex life...” - Klaatu

Seeing that the immediate reaction to his arrival brings a very strong military response, the world panics and looting begins, he decides it’s time to pull the plug. The hostilities toward the unknown is mirrored in the response of Jacob Benson(Jaden Smith), Jennifer Connelly’s son. The boy wants to just kill the aliens. But the decision is changed when Klaatu sees the other side of humans. Our ability to empathize and the possibility of changing our self-destructive behavior, convinces Klaatu to stop the destruction to the species.

“There's another side to you. I feel it now.” - Klaatu

Then I watched the movie “The Help”. This isn’t my review of these two movies; it’s simply my observations of what each movie says about us.

“The Help” takes place during the turbulent 60s in Mississippi when, segregation was institutionalized and ingrained. Threaded through the personal stories of the characters are historical references to the civil rights movement. At one point a character says to the lead to hurry up and write her story before the whole civil rights movement blows over. They refer to Martin Luther King’s call to march on Washington and the killing of Medgar Evers.

The movie was brilliant as was the story it told. It was not preachy; it had its funny and profound moments. It was a peek into a world that has hopefully disappeared forever.

As I watched the end credits of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, a simplified hope that man can change its self-destructive ways, I looked at it with a personal meaning. I wondered if I could change my own self-destructive behavior. Will it need a life-threatening situation before I do the right things or will I just devolve into a meaningless slug? Or could I even change?

Then as I watched the end credits of “The Help” it dawned on me that the 60s really wasn’t that long ago, given the grand scheme of things. So if an entire nation can change, I can change myself to be the person I want to be, the person I know I can be and be proud of myself.

I Just Wait

“I hate the sound of a ticking clock.” He said before he pitched back another shot of Jack straight down his throat.

I looked around his apartment, the carelessness of his unwashed body lingered in that sick sour smell that unfortunately always called me. It called me because I cared.

I just let him talk; there was nothing left for me to say. I thought it best to just let him ramble.

“She had this clock, said her grandmother left it for her. She loved the damned thing. I could set my watch to her winding the stupid thing every night at 9 o’clock before we went to bed.”

He stood and wandered over to the bar, put his hand on the neck of the bottle, then hesitated before he poured another shot.

“But the damn thing ticked. The second hand ticked. It never bothered me before, until that last afternoon.”

He poured his drink, took it back to the couch and sat resignedly with a weariness that seemed to weigh down his very soul.

He looked off into the front window, seeing something that was no longer there. The afternoon sun streamed through the window. But something in his eyes remembered and would never forget.

“She said she’d be back, she wouldn’t take too long. I sat here waiting for her, the damn clock ticking louder and louder.”

He groaned and closed his eyes, leaned back into the couch.

“I was reading a magazine, it didn’t take me long, then there was nothing left for me to do but wait. The sun was bright and sunny, I remember kids laughing in the street. But I sat and waited, listening to the damn ticking.”

He didn’t move, his words got slower but still distinct, his eyes fluttered open.

“I don’t know why I sat there, like I was frozen, the damn ticking seemed to take over my head and just hypnotized me.”

I watched him, wishing there was something I could do for his pain, but he was too far gone for me to reach him.

“I’m so angry. First I was angry at him for taking her from me.” His fists clenched, he grimaced and he squeezed his eyes shut against what I knew were his unbidden tears. “Then I got really angry at her for leaving me.”

His breathing slowed, his face seemed to crumble.

“I know it’s wrong, it was an accident just an accident. But I waited so long for her. I waited all my life for her to come into my life. And in the end, I was still waiting.”

He opened his eyes and gazed at the ceiling, beseeching heaven with weary, sad eyes.

“How much longer do I have to wait?”

I could see there was nothing I could do. He made up his mind a long time ago. He took half of his bottle of sleeping pills with his first shot. His breathing was slowing down his heart rate dropping fast too.

Then I waited, as I always do. I waited for his final sigh. 

People don’t realize, that’s what Death really only does, I just wait.

9/11 Ten Years Later

I used to be a store manager at a Blockbuster store. We sold DirecTV satellite dish systems which meant I could turn on the TV and have it running while I prepared for the day to begin. Even though the store didn’t open until 10am, I always made sure I was in the store early to prepare the previous night’s bank deposits, check in the videos that came in from the night before and put the videos back up on the shelves.

It was a small store so we didn’t have a lot of sales, so to keep my store profitable; I cut costs, which meant that during the day, I would be the only employee in the store.  

It started out like any other day; I was there at 7am, turned on the TV monitor and futz around the store. I always turned to the Today show and that day wasn’t any different. I was checking in videos when I heard Matt Lauer break into the show talking about reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Building.

My immediate first thought was “What kind of dumbass hits a building? What, he couldn’t turn? What a moron!” When Matt Lauer was talking about it, the footage of the 2^nd plane hitting the 2^nd tower hadn’t come up yet.

I just happened to glance up when the Today Show switched to a live feed and we watched the 2^nd plane and I remember completely blanking out, uncertain of just what I saw. I don’t think I could even process what I just saw. Then I heard Matt’s voice and my head heard the historical and famous voice of the reporter talking about the Hindenburg crash.

I didn’t know what to do, I was alone. So I reached for my phone and called a friend who I knew was also at his store preparing to open. He was not watching TV and I yelled at him to hurry up and turn it on, aping the commentary I was hearing on the TV.

It was still early, we weren’t open, I was alone and I didn’t know what to do. It took me a few minutes before I could gather myself, then the news started coming in fast and furious, the towers falling, then the plane hitting the Pentagon, the final plane going down in Pennsylvania and the confusion that ensued.

I finally realized I needed to call my mom. She had been watching the news as well and she had already spoken to my dad because his office was only blocks away from the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago. I wanted him to get out of the loop. Dad was on his way back home at around 9am.

I opened the store at the normal time 10am. I had spoken with my district manager and she said to go ahead and open but we both agreed there was no way we were going to be busy. Then she told me that one of the other store managers was very worried because his brother lived within blocks of the WTC and he was unable to get a hold of his brother. I spent that whole day, tethered to the TV that wasn’t selling DirecTV, it was airing the news and the few customers I had came to watch it with me and we talked of our grief, our shock and our anger.

At the end of the strip mall where my store was positioned was a blood bank. By 11am that morning the line to give blood stretched from that store and weaved around the strip mall because so many people wanted to give blood to help out. I will always remember that for me it was the sight of that line getting longer and longer, bringing different people together to help in this extraordinary tragedy that made me so proud to be an American.

The American psyche was hurt, but as is normal in moments of great history, a people gather strength from the shared experiences of grief and tragedy, even more than moments of pride and joy, a major failing of our species. We were united in our grief and anger; we showed the world a united front.

I never knew anyone lost that day, I never knew anyone who knew anyone lost that day. But what that moment means to me is best summed up by the immortal words of John Donne:

"... all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

We were diminished by those deaths, and we need to remember that their deaths need to mean something greater than memorials and platitudes. We need to be the nation that those people died for; we need to insure the families they left behind are left with a country strong and secure, proudly facing a future with hope, determination and perseverance.

Ten years later, what 9/11 will always mean to me is the reminder of how precious life should be. I watch the specials and heard those phone recordings and the one thing that resonates is the messages of love some of them were able to send out on their last few moments. Because in the end, it is the love that we remember, the love we cling too and it is love that will keep hope alive in all of us.

Beautiful Chicago

I’m not born nor bred Chicago, but I’ve spent more time here than any other place I’ve ever lived so I consider myself a Chicagoan. Chicago is a beautiful city. So much like a beautiful woman who gets under your skin and deep in your blood, you love her one minute, then you hate her. You're not sure of a lot of things, but you know you just can’t live without her.

In Spring, she is hope incipient, all the wistfulness that you hoard in winter’s dread seem to come true with the first shy buds of magnolia trees start popping out. The lazy drip of melting snow from in the gangway between the houses and the apartments, remind you, summer is coming.

Then one day, Summer is here, brandishing bravura like a shiny, slick, flirt’s smile you can’t deny. She is emboldened and sweet, seductive and irresistible. Summer in Chicago has to be experienced to be believed. The street fairs, the city festivals, the jazz/food/lalapalooza heady times in the lake front, all remind you that this city teems with 3 million people.

Then suddenly, always too soon, Summer flees. Like the girl who, after the shock of being kissed for the first time in her life, abruptly turns around and runs away, leaving behind a confused suitor who wanted her to linger and yearned for just one more perfect kiss.

Fall arrives without warning, her smile bright and gorgeous over a deepening blue sky and proud, vast clouds. But she brings with her a peckish breeze to remind you that she will easily turn a weary cold eye upon anything she finds displeasing.

Then one day Fall starts to darken and brood, expectant and forbidding and one morning you know, Winter has arrived.  You wake up as she throws on a mantle of snow; she is quiet, demure and has that dangerous beauty that hides black ice, wind chills and snow drifts. But she’s beautiful to look at and you love her first snow, then you hate as she turns into blackened mounds accumulating detritus on the streets.

Labor Day is supposed to be a commemoration of the everyday working man, yet in Chicago it is always the turning point when Fall stares down Summer and Summer begins to fade. We pack away our shorts and our t-shirts and wait for next year.

He Ain’t Heavy, He's My Brother.

It’s interesting that April is Autism Awareness month; April 8th is my little brother’s birthday. My little brother will be 36 years old this year. He’s about 5’9” overweight but he’s still “Midget” to me. That was my nickname for him when he was little.

3 month old giggly baby

I remember when he was brought home all those years ago; I was utterly fascinated by this bald, big headed baby boy. He had one of those baby giggles that would have made him a youtube superstar. My other brother and I would spend our days making him laugh because it was utterly infectious.

Then one day he got sick, an ear infection that the ER doctor didn’t catch. By the time the hospital finally admitted him, he was bleeding from his ear. Back then the hospital (luckily it’s no longer in business), refused to let my mother stay with my brother. So they admitted him and took him from us.

You have to understand, in the Philippines, family members are not only allowed to stay with the patient, it is an expectation. There is no better medicine than care and support from loved ones. My mom was heartbroken, dad was out of town on business and no one wanted to deal with a hysterical woman with a thick accent.

The next day my mom, my other brother and I took the bus to visit my brother and the sight of my brother in his hospital bed is still seared in my mind. Our family is close, my brother’s crib was in my parents room, so if he fussed, mom and dad were there for him. So even at 18mons, he knew and keenly felt the separation.

The hospital had physically strapped him down in his hospital bed and had strapped his IV on his head! Just typing that out makes me want to really hurt someone.

We weren’t allowed to take him out since he still had to be on his IV. His little voice was hoarse, he had spent the entire night screaming.

A few days later when dad was back home, we went to get him from the hospital because he was being released. We arrived at the hospital and found that he was feeling well enough that he was in the kid’s playroom. So we went to get him. My brother refused to acknowledge our existence, he didn’t answer by name and completely ignored us, twisting away from our touch. I think I heard my parent’s heart break at that moment.

It wasn’t until he was 6years old that my parents FINALLY found a doctor that was able to tell them what was “wrong” with my brother.  He had begun to talk before that hospital stay, after, he was silenced.

There wasn’t a lot of information on autism; it had barely made it into the psychiatric medical journals. But my parents did their research, made a lot of phone calls and read everything they could get their hands on. This was long before the internet and support groups.

My parents got him involved in the Special Olympics, through that organization; my brother has enough medals and ribbons to make a very full cabinet.  But when he was about to graduate from the special needs classes in grammar school, the only program left for him was to be enrolled in a west side high school. This was a high school in the west side of Chicago, street toughs and uncaring teachers. My brother would get killed going to that school. But it was the only one in our home district. So my parents took the drastic step to look for another option.

They thought they found it. It was in Boston, a private live-in institution. The live-in arrangement was the big drawback, but my parents felt they had to do it. In time, he may end up living in a special community home so he might as well get used to it. But as a compromise, my mother moved out to Boston and my dad supported two households. Mom had to learn to drive.

It went on for almost an entire school year. Until we found out that that specific school’s ‘successes’ were achieved by beating the special needs children into submission.

Mom and my brother came back to Chicago. What they did find was a very good program in Grand Rapids, MI. My brother was enrolled into their school system and mom lived in a cute little 2br apartment. She had her little car and my brother thrived. He continued his special olympics activities and he even learned to show jump horse back riding. 

Every Friday afternoon, my dad and I would switch off; one of us would drive to Grand Rapids and pick up my mom and brother so they can spend the weekend with us in Chicago. Then on Sunday, dad would take them back and he’d commute from Grand Rapids starting his drive back to Chicago at 5am to make it to his office by 8am.

I knew every twist and turn of that drive. Even knew just exactly where I can put the pedal to the medal because there was never any traffic patrol.

But when he was 25years old, he graduated out of the program. He came back to Chicago and now flourishes at the Austin Special Workshop.

http://wsmrca.org/ My brother’s infectious giggles have matured into an infectious smile. It’s featured on their homepage.

http://www.facebook.com/AustinSpecialArt?ref=ts He’s an artist, my brother studied at the Art Institute of Chicago taking art classes, paints, charcoals, even sculpting. His pieces, when it went up for charity sales, always sold out.

I love my brother, I don’t know if and when I tell him he understands, most of his answers are animated head nods and ‘oh yeah’ or furious shakes ‘NO NO”.  But he’s got his moments.

20 years old

He was always a handsome young man. Looking at this picture, it wasn’t uncommon to have girls giving him inquiring looks and knowing smiles. My brother’s open face and sweet smile always made their days.

30 years old

I love this picture because of that sneaky look on his face, like he’s completely in the joke. My parents take him with them everywhere, they will never think of putting him in a home and separating from him ever again. But they have made arrangements for when the time comes.

When he was small, his favorite song was “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” Sometimes when he was upset and no one could get to him, he’d put the song on his little stereo (he had the 45rpm) and sing. Sometimes when he was super upset, I’d have to hold him and sing the song for him.

I’m no saint, neither is he; I know sometimes I irritate him and he irritates me. We’re siblings, that’s what siblings do, for when all is said and done, he’s my brother. 

For all that we’ve gone through as a family, for the dirty looks we got over the years, the well-meaning but nonetheless inappropriate comments and patronizing, we’ve endured.

There is that dramatic line, “I would die for you.” There are very few people I would say “I would kill for.” My brother is one of those very few people.

Because as heavy as he might get, I’ll carry him, because he’s my brother.