This is not the norm.  It’s also not a fad sweeping the nation.  But it is a fascinating contribution to improving health in a business/corporate environment and the quality of meetings.  Watch for it.

I heard about this from a good trend-spotting friend. He randomly regurgitates material he finds (who knows where) and every once in awhile, you go, “Whoa.  Where’d that come from?  Why aren’t more companies (or people) doing this?”

It is a spinoff of the standing computer concept – where you have a physical extension on your desk to place your laptop so you can stand up and/or exercise while you work.  Rather than parking your cushioned backside into a seat, you get up and stretch and use your legs.   Great stuff.

My buddy’s suggestion, which he either stole from someone else or innovated on his own, adding to his grand contributions to the future of human life forms, is to get everybody standing for meetings.  Rather than sitting, you get up, pace around, rock on your feet from side to side, whatever.  The point is that instead of sitting comfortably in your chair, you rise, change perspective and are forced to focus more intently for several reasons.

First, the act of standing wakes you up.  It is healthier than sitting.  So you pay attention more.  You don’t nod off.  If you do, you topple face first, become a laughing stock, and will never do it again.  Trust me.  I haven’t seen it, but you can imagine it.

Second, standing is physical.  You don’t want to stand for a long period of time.  Because of this, guess what happens to the length of your meetings?  Yup, you got it.  They grow shorter.

Along with this, what happens to Mr. Dunegan Longtalk?  He doesn’t want to hold court quite so long.  He, too, wants to get out of there.  He won’t monopolize conversations the way he used to.  He may even yield the gavel willingly to allow others to peep up, and scowl to get them to shorten their statements.  It’s amazing how coercive this is.

When everyone has a stake in getting finished more quickly, you find behavior modification.  Standing enforces this.  You don’t need a boss going around the table, seeking input from everyone sitting.  He can look around the room, raise his eyebrow towards the participants and decide whether someone cares about speaking based on their body language.

This means the need for talking at all is decreased.  Questions are limited.  People only ask highly necessary questions.  You’ll find Ms. Lucy Looselips zipping it up, stopping herself in mid-sentence and looking around like she should be congratulated for keeping her trap shut.  Resist the temptation to compliment her, as it ignites a potential word fuselage.

Stick to the back of the room.  Don’t get crowded in where it’s hotter.  Find a spot where you can spread your legs and adopt a power pose.  This gives you room to flex, scan and scowl as necessary if someone thinks s/he can dominate the room discussion.

Simple, sheer brilliance.  Productivity soars.  Employees’ health improves.   People say what they want to say and not a word more.  Others listen.  Is it too much to ask for?

Probably yes.  You have to figure the standing meeting is too much for most companies to adopt.  It’s complicated, a major change and would require a process.  We can’t expect that to happen.

So do it on your own.  Don’t tell anyone.  It will be our secret.

If you haven’t been to a professional or major college sporting event in the past 3-4 years, hang onto your wallet.  If you go, it will cost you a paycheck or two.

For those of you who have attended one of these contests, perhaps you are numb to the cost or figure it’s the price you have to pay.  True.  If you want to get a seat, you have to order a ticket somewhere, and it’s not like they are discounted, particularly if you seek seats for an end-of-the-season game that has greater appeal to the fans.

Last weekend, for example, my dad and I went to the Big 12 basketball semi-finals.  That meant two games for the price of one.  In actuality, it was two games for the price of two, and then some.

I used to think the price on the ticket was what you were supposed to pay.  That is not the case any more.  Instead, there are companies (and I don’t know how they do this; it would seem to be illegal)  that buy up mass quantities of tickets, then jack the prices.

They get the lowdown somehow, know the exact time tickets will go on sale to the public, then buy up huge blocks.  This eliminates your ability as the “little man” to purchase a few at face value. 

Adding this “middle man” cost to the ticket price means they must make a profit.  Have any of these ticket-purchasing companies provided you the consumer any value?  Of course not.  They just want the profit.  And they make it because you have no choice.

Certainly, you can decide not to attend.  That is what I do most of the time.  For a special occasion though, like a father-son get together, you must buy tickets somewhere.

I saved our ticket stubs from the doubleheader.  Before giving you the final price tag, you need background.

Close to two months ago, I contacted my dad to see if he was interested in going to the Big 12 semis in Kansas City.  I figured the finals would be too expensive and the quarter finals would be too much for him to sit through.  He agreed.  I went online to look.

I wanted to sit in the lower level with a better view of the players, coaches and officials.  Clicking on the Web site, seats remained available in multiple sections behind the baskets.   This was okay. 

“Hmmmm, $210.”  Not bad, I thought, for two tickets.  “That’s $105 apiece for two games.”  Not a steal, but it seemed to me a reasonable rip off.

Drilling down, I added the tickets (or so I thought) to my basket, and went to pay electronically.  Shockingly, rather than the price being for two, it was for one, so the real total was $420.  Taken aback, I continued through the checkout, which included a $34 processing fee, so EACH individual ticket came to $244 ($210+$34).  Lest you think it is only one company charging these insane prices, I checked two other ticket providers and found they varied not a bit (including the collusion on the processing charge).  Boy, big surprise, eh?

Rejecting that option, we took seats five rows from the top of the stadium that turned out to be $182 apiece, or $91 per person per game.  Slightly closer to something you could stomach.

When the tickets arrived via FedEx, face value was stamped on them:  $60 per game or $120 for the doubleheader per ticket.  We should have paid $240 total.  You live and learn.  You decide to go to a game or not.  Sometimes it is worth it; most of the time it is not.  The sporting event suffers because many of the real fans can’t make it.  And that’s a sad statement about our profit-mongering society.

Based on repeated observations, growing germophobia threatens to paralyze our society.  Media over-kill hypes microbes and turns them into menacing entities that we don’t understand and can’t combat.  We feel helpless.  Then we turn to isolation and soap for solace and protection.

Sad but true.  When we had our kids, we loved it when people came over, held them, made faces, and did the googoo gaga.  It was great.

Now I see people who don’t want you to come visit after their baby is born.  They make excuses why you can’t step in their house.  “Uh, our in-laws will be over Tuesday.”  If you suggest Wednesday, the response is, “We’re canning peaches Wednesday.”  How about Thursday?  “We’re making spaghetti that day, and the house will be a mess.”  And so on.

It could certainly be true that they worry about me and see me as a threat to indoctrinate their child with random silliness that they don’t appreciate.  But I think it has more to do with germophobia.  Who knows where I’ve been?  Who knows what disease I might bring in the door and contaminate the baby?

Though I understand and respect that point-of-view, I’m a firm believer that you need to get out there and experience the germs of the world to build up your immunity and grow strong.   This doesn’t just apply to babies, but also adults, and picking stuff up off the floor and eating it without dusting it off. 

That’s most likely a minority view in the U.S., where germophobia is the highest in first world nations as assessed by the Simon Polling Index, a random gathering of information gleaned from lengthy and lively interpersonal discussions with friends.  The poll is also based on observations of human activities.

Take washing your hands for example.   A high percentage of people were raised to wash their hands before eating food and after going to the bathroom. The goal was and is to kill germs.

This makes sense for the most part.  But if you start to wash your hands 9-11 times a day, which could easily be the case if you ate a lot of snacks or had a small bladder, at some point you’re washing every little piece of bacteria off your palms.  That includes the good bacteria needed fight the bad bacteria.

Part of the soap conspiracy is pushed by the manufacturers of liquid hand cleansers, and the plastic dispensers that hold them.  They want to sell product.  So remember all those germs every time you touch a door, pull out your keys, pay for a movie with cash, shake someone’s hand or turn a door knob.  They are loaded with microscopic organisms waiting to infect your bloodstream, brain and nervous system, turning you into a sniffling, coughing, diarrhea-making and vomiting machine.

The hand lotion companies are part of this conspiracy too, as once you’ve washed your hands too often (Is twice a day too much?  Three times?  Six?), they become chapped.  The only way to get rid of the cracks and crevices is to lather them up with some lotion.  The lotion companies LOVE germophobia.

The media though are the prime dispensers of germophobia so that you keep tuning in.  As long as they can continue to scare you (or at least get you thinking that there might be validity to the idea that washing your hands 12 times a day is a “good” thing), you’ll keep watching their newscasts.  “OMG, I might die if I don’t scrub my hands raw after picking up that peanut from the counter.”

No, you really won’t.  I’m living proof.  But I’m part of the anti-germophobia movement, and irrelevant.  So keep on scrubbing those hands with liquid soap and buy stock in hand lotion companies.  They love you.

We’ve lost commonality as a society.  That is not a profound statement if you pay attention to social trends through the media, but it is a telling one.

The U.S. has been fracturing for years.  Things that used to bind us together have faded in interest or gone extinct. 

We used to bowl together.  Now we surf the Internet alone.

We used to read national news magazines like Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report or even Life.  Now, there’s more “watching” than reading, and what reading is done occurs in quick 140-character bursts that serve to further separate us into the distinct groups rather than bring us together in a shared way.

You slowly get adjusted to this change in our national character, and after a point it seems normal.  You find no one relates to the books you read, you can’t have a reasonable discussion about politics or the environment and you adapt by separating yourself rather than engaging and finding common ground that lead to solutions or just personal enjoyment.  That’s not a good thing.

That’s why it was so pleasant to have a recent conversation with a friend I hadn’t spoken heard from in a couple of years.  He called after being informed by a mutual friend that I was looking for employment.  We moved on from that subject to catch up on our families and the random topics that emerge when you chat with someone in your friendship comfort zone.

At some point, in an offhand way, he brought up a book, “Sh*t My Dad Says,” and started quoting from it.  I laughed.  The passages he related were ones I remembered from having read the book.

This was ASTOUNDING!  Two middle-aged males having a conversation and in the middle of it they realize they both read the same book and actually remember some of the funnier stuff and quote it back to each other?   Whoa, now that is something to make your day and give you hope -- that other people are out there reading and sharing.

Forty years ago it wouldn’t have been unusual to find others reading the same book you were.  Today, not only is that unusual, but you could almost go out of your way to find anyone who is reading the same book you are, and be unable to find someone. 

Take the past year of your life.   Remember the books you read, and any discussions (book clubs don’t count) you’ve have with friends, neighbors, or a family member on the plot or message.   Can you think of one day where you conversed with someone else about the book?  My wife and I don’t even read the same stuff, except for occasional news articles we find intriguing and pass onto each other.

On top of my friend and I having read the book, we both liked it.  And we didn’t just like it, we found it hysterical and referenced it to other people.  I, in fact, loaned the book to both my brothers, who also read it.  So, finding a friend who out-of-the-blue voiced similar pleasure with the writing was one of those incidents that make your day. 

This gave me hope.  If we can find someone who reads, and then on top of that, find someone who reads similar literature, and on top of that, find someone with a shared sense of humor, then that raises our laughter quotient.

Not only does that make you feel good, but it means there’s still hope for bowling.

It’s fascinating when the media continue to report stories that aren’t true.  For example, gasoline prices started a colossal drop in prices towards the end of last year, a decline that continued until right near the end of January, perhaps even into February based on visual observations at the pump.

This created tremendous good cheer around the world.  Twitter exploded with photos of people putting 30 gallons into 50-foot-long SUVs for under $70, the owners taking selfies with smiles like they’d just ingested their favorite meal five nights in a row.

Falling gasoline prices were good for the consumer.  It made most people happy.  Because that’s a “feel good” story, it seems the media decided to keep reporting it from that angle, even though prices started to rise again.

Part of the reason stories didn’t flex and recognize the change is that angles were starting to come up about the “bad” things associated with the oil price drop.   Jobs were lost.  The men and women working in oil fields around the U.S. got laid off.  This made for more news. 

So the drop in prices had multiple angles – good and bad news.  A piece of economic news is not a monolithic entity.  It’s more like an octopus with multiple tentacles that reach out in different directions, expanding, contracting, squeezing things and then releasing them.

Falling prices gave radio stations, TV news, the Internet, Twitter, newspapers and magazines the opportunity to light it up with good stories.  Then they dig deeper and tell about the layoffs due to the lower prices.

So when prices began to rise again, as we ALL KNEW they would (come on people, who are we kidding; oil is a finite resource; no matter how much you think there is in the earth, the supply is not limitless and our demand keeps going up with world population), the media either went into denial or chose to stick with the fun angle of low prices.   For some reason, they wanted to stay in a fantasy world.

Maybe they wanted us to believe the fantasy.  The reality was visible at the pump.  Day-to-day, the price crept up.  From as low as $1.49 to $1.59 to $1.69, then a pause, then five cents more and another five cents.

It didn’t take long before the price almost anywhere at the pump in the U.S. was back over $2 per gallon.  That’s not necessarily bad or good, but it is a story, and it wasn’t being reported.

Instead, as if to make us not believe what we as consumers couldn’t see right in front of our eyes, they kept writing and talking about “falling oil prices.”   Not so, folks.

Reporting does not reflect reality.  Just watch the weather person on TV one night to confirm that.  S/he’ll tell you it’s raining in your town, and you look outside the window of your home and it’s not.  Who got that right?  Reality or the newscaster? 

These types of situations have to make us all wonder who effectively reports events around the world.  Does a news story give a close approximation of what occurred?  Is the story timely, or has it fallen behind a trend (as the case was with the price of gasoline)?

We rely heavily on the media to report with accuracy.  When we read and see that it can’t effectively track gasoline prices over a three-week period, you have to wonder what else we need to question.

Today, my wife said the price dropped at Costco.  We can probably count on the media reporting the new rise in prices instead.  Buckle in for the ride, folks.