​Bartering is coming back. One could argue it never disappeared, but went underground a bit. People have been avoiding cash for decades, not waiting for Bitcoin to emerge.
 
In the old old days, you’d bring the eggs from your chicken down to the shoemaker and get a pair of shoes for a six week’s supply of eggs (or something like that; who knows what the exchange rate was?). Or you’d have a bumper crop of corn, and make sure you got to Aunt Petunia’s in time for her to knit you a sweater for the coming winter. A month of corn=a warm wool unfashionable sweater.
 
Slowly, at some point, we created methods to represent value. There was salt, gold, silver and ultimately coins that represented gold and silver, then paper “money.” It’s not really money, just a piece of paper that represents a value we give to it, so we can barter for something. Though we, of course, don’t call that bartering.  That’s “buying” or “purchasing.”
 
Today, there is a whole cash economy where people don’t pay taxes, from tips in restaurants or handling travel bags at hotels to working jobs on the side to the outright criminals stealing goods and fencing them for cash. People don’t report the income to the government. There’s almost a business in trying to avoid taxes, as most people can attest come April 15 and submitting their federal income tax data. We all want to minimize what gets taken from us.

That’s where the new bartering comes in. Rather than go to the ATM for your electronic withdrawal, when you head to the butcher for your select cut of lamb, offer to scrub his floors for a week as payment. See how he reacts to that.
 
Some form of cash is always going to exist. Experts predicted its demise when credit cards were invented. Same thing when electronic transfers became ubiquitous. Bitcoin and other dark currencies are the newest attempt to remove cash from the economy and the ability to track transactions, but bartering will remain king.
 
The problem in using bartering is finding out what you do that someone else deems valuable. You must find your value and hone it.
 
If you dig ditches, offer to put in that septic tank for enough firewood to warm your home in winter. If you repair cars, maybe you give annual free service for an two-year supply of cheese from the local dairy farm.
 
You must have a tangible, saleable skill though. That’s not true for many of us, so we’d be stuck.
 
My skill, for example, is writing. Who is going to pay for this? Sure, some people find what I write amusing. Others get a message from the words I commit to the computer screen. You might be moved or take action by what I say. But do my words feed you, clothe you or house you? No. So I would be marginalized.
 
 
I’m going to start writing blogs for meals. See how that goes. If you’re willing to feed me for some words, let me know, and I’ll put together a short essay to fit your tastes.
 
For 75 readers, I expect to get a coupon worth $20 at a high end meat market. For 40 readers, I should receive a $10 gift certificate to Arby’s. 19 Readers=Taco Bell.
 
The quality of the meal will depend on how many people the analytics say read my column. Open my next piece up and dig in.  I’m hungry!

​The headline, “Report Reduction Manager,” bores most people. Hopefully you’ve made it past the headline and read these first two sentences, because today we’re going to discuss an exciting new position that companies should embrace to cut through the clutter, eliminate waste and redundancy and improve your employees’ live.

This position is the aforementioned boring title, “Report Reduction Manager.” Every company that has paperwork, reports, position papers, strategic initiatives, chains of command, fact sheets or analytical measures should consider adding this position. It will save time, money, brain power and the sanity of many employees. It may even help you retain people.

EGADS, if it works well and demonstrates results, you may even find that people will seek you out to work for your company. Why?  Well, if you are able to reduce the paper load on your team, and cut it down to a level where employees are unleashed to do what they do best rather than spending time justifying their jobs or what they do every week, then you’ve created a winning formula.
 
Having a Report Reduction Manager on board is critical to that success. Here’s what that person would do:
 

• Cut through clutter. At its core, the Report Reduction Manager is tasked with reducing paperwork – find ways to eliminate “do nothing” work.  Yippeeee.
• Determine what makes sense and what doesn’t. This sounds simple. It’s not. The position requires someone who is smart AND has common sense. Those people are in short supply. Eliminate silly and stupid directives and keep the good ones that help your business grow. Yahooeee.
• Make quick and intelligent decisions. What’s that mean? It means the person in this position must understand the bottom line and what makes it tick. What contributes to sales?  What gets in the way of a sale? Find the important stuff. Ignore the flotsam. Get it done without fanfare and using your brain.
• Assimilate a lot of data quickly, then determine what is superfluous. One of the problems in our current world is an excess of unnecessary information that confuses many issues. The person in this position must have brain cells capable of analyzing data, then assimilating it into a solution or discarding it so that others don’t have to deal with it, and are instead freed from the shackles of the multi-headed information hydra.
• Finally, this person must get it done. “We are not doing this anymore,” becomes his or her mantra. “This policy doesn’t make sense, so we’re eliminating it. Let’s move on.” Or, “There’s too much confusing data on everyone’s weekly reports. Moving forward, get all your accomplishments down on one page so we can focus on those successes.”

There is no dilly dallying around allowed. The goal every day is to find ways to simplify the business so it functions more smoothly with fewer headaches for employees in terms of paperwork.
 
In almost every stage of our lives there are multiple forms to fill out – going to the dentist, doctor; filling out our income tax; buying a house; selling a car; starting a new job; changing an insurance policy; applying online for a position. Sometimes they are roadblocks, confusing, obfuscating what is needed to the point where you want to bang your head on the table in frustration. We have enough of this in other places where we don’t need it at work too.

If you have the authority, hire a Report Reduction Manager. It would be a fun job – solving problems, making people happy, simplifying the world in your own way. Just make sure applicants understand the position description.

​The whoppers are upon us. Not the Burger King kind, but the lying kind. You can say whatever you want. Try it. Lay a big ol’ whopping lie on us. See if we believe it. Our new Commander-In-Chief has set the bar. We may now follow.
 
It’s a sad state of affairs. Most of us have been raised to not lie. It’s one of those childhood lessons. Growing older, as adults, we come to understand there are times to omit certain incidents or shade what we say to protect someone. But still, the essence of handling oneself in a way that is essentially truthful is a hallmark of a good human being and a well-functioning citizen.
 
That is now being thrown out the door. With a new President who blatantly lies as our role model, what does that say to the rest of us? “LET IT FLY!”
 
Let the lies begin. If he can do it, so can we. It’s alright, folks. When the supreme leader demonstrates time and again that’s the way to operate, why not model ourselves after him?
 
Think of the consequences. You are in a sales position. A prospective client asks you about your product. “Oh, yes, it cleans crusted grease chunks out of your frying pan in less than two seconds. A quick wipe and you’re good.”
 
When the customer gets home and uses new Eradagrease Cleaner and finds your claim to be false, you can defend yourself by saying that’s the way of the world now.
 
Or, let’s say you sell a car to a customer, claiming the sedan gets 31 miles per gallon on average. The customer complains after six months that he’s only getting 26 mpg. You can respond, “Well everybody else gets 31. What’s wrong with your driving?”
 
Finger point. Deny. Obfuscate. It’s all seemed to work in this past presidential election cycle, so why not for you? It’s the new success paradigm if you want to manipulate others.
 
There are more than enough people who already operate this way in the world. It becomes more dangerous as this behavior is enabled by the top gun. It symbolically implies that’s an okay way to operate.
 
The WHOPPER is back and it’s tastier than ever. Take a big bite. Savor it.
 
There are so many ways this is bad for all of us, that it’s hard to determine where to begin. First, consider the quality of the lie. Is it blatant? Is it just a half-truth? You as the receiver of the lie, must work hard to figure this out. The onus on you is to disprove. Get lazy and you’ll never uncover the facts.
 
Second, what happens when the statement is so outrageous that you chuckle to yourself, and say, “Ha, no one could believe that.” Then people do.  Red light, red light. Danger zone.
 
You presume people will know the statement is fake, but that turns out not be the case. You see head nods when the outrageous claim is made and you wonder what is wrong with people.
 
Finally, there is the lie that just sits out there and everyone knows it’s a lie. But no one calls the speaker on it. We look around, thinking, “Someone needs to speak up.” When no one does, we assume everyone knows it’s a lie. But do they?
 
If the President can do it, why can’t we? It’s the downfall of civilized society.
 
When your leader sets the boundaries, it becomes a perceived set of acceptable behaviors. Let’s all start lying. About everything.

​I got an email a few days ago from a long-time friend. Since we moved from Texas to Wisconsin last year, our address changed. He’d sent out holiday greetings to us, and his card had come back “Return to Sender.”
 
As is typical of him, he found some humor in this. Though it was good to find out we had moved (one of the important services provided by the U.S. Postal Service), he thought a riff on why we send cards to friends and relatives at the end of the year would get some chuckles. His pitch was, “We do it to find out who has moved in the course of the year.”
 
There’s a lot of validity to that. Most of us are reasonably busy in our daily lives. The comings and goings of our friends, particularly those who don’t live in our local community, fade away as the years go on. We don’t call, we may not text or email. Sometimes we stay in touch on Facebook.

For those who use Facebook, we should be up on transition in the lives of our friends. If a person moves, they can post the new address, so finding out about someone’s new location is totally dependent on that person updating his social media links.
 
It’s also dependent on the other person actually being plugged into the same tools. Sometimes, the sites one person spends hours wasting time on are the sites that his best friend has no idea existed.

I remember a conversation 3-4 years ago with a friend of mine I’d been trying to reach through home phone, cell phone and email.  It was ridiculous. No response to any of my communications.
 
At some point, he finally responded to an email, and he said something to the effect that he basically only communicated with people through Facebook and that was the best way to reach him.  Huh? I was flabbergasted. We didn’t communicate much after that.
 
The friend of mine who suggested one of the important things about sending Christmas cards is getting new addresses and finding out who moved last year has a great point. He is not that plugged into the tools of modern technology, instead preferring to meet people for coffee, go fishing, send an occasional email or place a call the old fashioned way to catch up and tell a few jokes. Now there’s a lost art (who tells jokes any more?).
 
So, for him, and probably for a lot of other people, when you send a card out, and it comes back with the yellow stamp for a new address from the post office, you think, “Whoa, where did Freddie Frabnats move last year? What the heck is up with him?”
 
Now it gets interesting. You wonder what the heck is going on in the other person’s life. What led to the move? Did he or she retire? Is there a family crisis? Did the job market implode in the previous area he lived? Is she retiring?

The list of questions is endless. But it’s the Christmas card that led to you getting the answers. One little stamp and sending a photo or a note, and you can catch up on all the good, boring, mundane and fantastic things going on in others’ lives.
 
That could be why he keeps sending cards. I don’t know. I didn’t send any this year. We moved. I’m busy. Maybe I’ll get around to it next week, and see how many addresses get rejected.