George Carlin, the famous comedian, used to joke about how he would eat anything that fell on the floor without washing it off first.  He never got sick, he said, because he was exposed to everything and his body was able to handle it.  He joked about germs and our obsession with them, and ultimately it wasn’t bad bacteria that did him in, but heart failure.

I’m a subscriber to Carlin’s theory about eating what you drop, because I’d starve if I didn’t.  Food items repeatedly fall off the counter, get knocked from the kitchen table, or stick to fingers, then flip onto the floor.  More seem to hit the ground first than go in my mouth.

That’s due to clumsiness, inattention and having hands and arms that don’t seem to maneuver as fluidly as they did 15 years ago.  The result is chopped lettuce, vitamins, radish slices, M&M’s, bread bits and pieces of chicken staring back at me, and asking, “Are you going to pick me up and put me in your mouth, or are you going to listen to all the paranoia that says you’re going to get sick and die if you eat something off the floor?”

I ignore the paranoia and dive in.  I don’t want to starve.

Dropping food near your feet is an art form and leads to interesting journeys.  Cookies, for example, like to roll 5-10 feet away and find some cranny under a desk near piles of congealed dog hair.  Should you eat the Oreo then?  I won’t tell you want I do.

It’s extremely rare that I get sick.  That could be that I’m fortunate or that perhaps Carlin’s theory is correct about exposure.

You can wash your hands 49 times a day like I would have to do every time something had to be scraped off the floor.  You can also choose to throw a lot of food away.  If it touches anything you deem dirty, classify it as dangerous, and toss it in the garbage.  That gets expensive.  These techniques keep the human hand and mouth separate from the “dirty” or “contaminated” morsels.

There are also ways to deal with clumsiness.  Move slower.  Think before you act.  Pay attention to your surroundings.   Don’t try to do two or three things at once.  Concentrate on the task at hand.

Even when I concentrate on those tips, food continues to launch from everywhere and bound across our wood kitchen flooring.  You think raisins would just pop into your mouth when you attempt to throw them in?  Of course not.

No, one sticks to your finger while the others go down the hatch, then it slowly peels off and drops.  You look down and say to yourself, “One raisin, is it worth it?”  Then I bend over and pick it up.  I also pick up pennies.

If you use money, you are handling the cash in much the same way as food.  Think about all the moving around cash does – you buy something, hand over money to the cashier, she counts change for you, those coins have been exchanged 997 times over the past year alone from consumer to store vendor.  It’s best not to think about these things if you worry about germs.

Because then you’ll become obsessed with not only safe food and clean hands, but also using money.  You’ll start wondering if you should go live inside a plastic dome that’s protected from anything bad.

We can’t do this, and shouldn’t.  We’ve all got to figure out for ourselves what we’re willing to pick up off the ground.  Then you can throw it away.  Or into your mouth.

If you live in a big city or travel to them at any time, you can relate to the following:  You drive onto the interstate with your car.  Traffic is heavy.  Your blood pressure rises slightly.

Because of the intensity of all the vehicles, you keep an eye in your rearview mirror to see if anyone is coming up on your tail.  This also serves to keep you always prepared in case you must suddenly brake, so you recognize the time and distance between your car and the other vehicles on the road.

At some point in your commute or your drive through the metro area, a massive pickup truck will come barreling down on you.  This is more typical in certain Southern cities, but can happen anywhere.  The truck is typically 3-4 times the size of your sedan, and you need a step ladder to climb into it.

This competitive driver assumes he either 1) owns the road and can do what he wants, 2) believes his big truck makes him invulnerable, or 3) thinks that intimidation is the way to rule the road.

If you’ve been in this situation, you know what I mean.  If not, be thankful, because you have lower blood pressure and are less likely to have a heart attack than those who deal with urban truck maniacs on a repeated basis.

Recently, as I’m puttering along to work in the morning, contemplating a tasty cup of coffee and fantasizing about the day, the monster truck attacked from behind.  Before sensing its presence, my mood was light, spirits high.  I might have hummed a tune or whistled a bird tweet, with the window down and the sounds of spring in the air.

The surging tailgater soon changed my mood, and outlook on the day.  The modus operandi is typical:  The huge truck rockets up behind you as close as possible to try and get you to speed up or move over.

In this case, I could do neither.  I was blocked in front, and to my side.

The truck decided it had enough and as soon as our lane fell behind the one to our left, he plowed into that one so he could close in on another driver.  This lasted for a quarter of a mile or so, then he zoomed back into my lane, now one car ahead of me. 

Pulling up to the next stoplight a mile up the road, he maintained the earned lead of one car length in the race to commute faster.  I’m sure he felt proud.

His weaving dance continued until ultimately he left my field of vision after several miles.  Calculating quickly in my head, it was possible if he continued his aggressive tactics, he could get to work one minute and 28 seconds more quickly than I could if his drive time was 25 minutes.

What’s the point?  Does 2-3 car spaces ahead really make that much of a difference?  Or do the urban truck maniacs just want to show the power they hold, a sense of invulnerability built around a high cab?

Tailgating monster trucks stress the rest of us out.  We tense up.  We wonder if we’re going to get hit.  We check our mirrors repeatedly to see where he is rather than paying attention to the road and our driving.  

Sometimes I wonder if I should adopt their tactics, take my tiny fuel efficient car and speed right up on the tail of a maniacal monster truck, and teach him a big lesson.  Then I stop myself, and think, “Why bother?  It’s more fun to whistle and daydream.”

Moving has changed from 10 years ago.  Compared to 30 years ago, it’s monumentally changed.  It’s not something you think about until you go through it.

The accumulation of “stuff” and “things” brings this home, as does the electronic interconnectivity of our world.  The latter is particularly telling when you look back at what you “needed” when you moved out of your parents’ house and into a dorm room, or from your apartment as a college senior to the location of your first job.

You had fewer possessions as a single person.  Add marriage and kids, and you get more furniture and knick knacks to drag along.  That’s a given.

What you’re not prepared for (or perhaps you just don’t think about this beforehand) is all the wires, connections and electronic devices that must be taken apart, and resecured in your new home.  My wife may have thought of all these things before our recent move, but I didn’t really, and it’s mind-boggling how much she has had to do.

First, of course, you take everything apart in the old house. Second, you put them all together again in the new home.  That’s the simple, conceptual view of this situation.

The more complex and realistic view means your phone, internet and television don’t work after you’ve hooked everything up in the new cave.   You do everything by the book (as my wife did) and you get no cable signal and the phone is dead.

This precipitates multiple calls to service personnel.  You must build this into your emotional mindset when you move or you go insane.

In the old days, this never happened.  Rather than a key fob to reprogram, you had keys.  Remember them?

Instead of laptops, desktop computers and iPads, you had a typewriter.  It might have even been an electric typewriter.  Whooopeeee!  It had a plug, but no other wires to contend with.

Your television set received reception through an antenna.  You climbed on the roof to install it.  If you wanted fuzzier pictures, you left the antenna on top of the TV and just fiddled with it whenever the reception got poor.

Keys, typewriters, antennas = easy.  Keyfobs and keypads, laptops and desktops and cable = hard.

As equipment is added to a product, complexity multiplies.  That’s why we get so frustrated with installing and programming the devices that deliver information to us today. 

You don’t just plug a smartphone in, and whammo, it’s ready to go.  There are apps to download, instructions to read (egads), passwords and logins to construct.  We program ourselves to understand how to do this, and with practice you get good at it.

Multiply the smartphone activity to include your desktop, cable (TV) and keyfob (for your car to get in the gate or open the garage door).  With prayer, all of these connections may operate superbly if you are fortunate enough to plug the right coil into the proper receptacle.  Make a bad decision and forget about the next two days of your life.  They’re gone as you get on the phone to try and reach a service person, actually speak with a human, and actually find the person who can resolve your problem.

Then, set up a time for them to send the guy over to fix it.  Pray again that the guy actually knows what he is doing and can get your system working.  Test it before he leaves because it still might not work the next morning when you try it alone.

Several days later you sit in your disaster, comfortably phoning, texting, watching TV, opening the garage, but wondering where the heck the peanuts got put away after unpacking.

There’s this guy I work with who shows up every morning before I do.  He’s at meetings five minutes early.  You can count on him.  You know he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do.

There is a lot to be said for those qualities.  In many work environments (and at a personal level) those qualities go lacking.  You expect someone to show up to make a presentation and that person arrives 8 minutes late, looking frantic.  You work on a project and your fellow employee doesn’t get his input to you that day it is expected.

This can be a minor frustration.  Often, we blow if off, “Ah, that’s just Aaron, he’s always five minutes late.”

Or, “Denise can never seem to get her comments in on time.  We’ll give her another day.”

Another day turns into a week.  The project due last week becomes two weeks overdue because people don’t take care of their business when they are supposed to.

This infuriates me.   Recently, a discussion ensued with a good friend about how to sell professionalism.


It may sound odd.  We batted around some ideas on the subject, wondering how to market a concept.   We don’t have a product or service.  We just have a motto: “We Sell Professionalism.”  

We landed on a bag of air as our brand image.  Inside it could be anything you would like it to be, so we’d put “professionalism” inside.

Why not?  In today’s world, people try to sell us hot air all the time.  So why not package a concept, and let the buyer know that whatever it is we will do for you, we will be professional about it.

Step One:  We show up on time.  WHOA, are you serious?  If not, we call the customer and explain the complicating circumstance.  If we do it twice, we expect the customer to fire us.

Step Two:  We do what we say we are going to do within the timeframe we say we are going to do it.  If not, the service is free to the customer.

Step Three:  We ask the customer after we are finished:  “Is there anything more we can do for you?  Have we fixed the problem?”

Step Four:  We provide the additional step in value.  We engage the customer, find out what s/he wants us to do next and work closely together to do just that. Simple formula.

Why doesn’t this happen more in the businesses?  The refrigerator repair guy is late, doesn’t call or apologize when he shows up four hours after his designated time.  You go into buy a car, and it’s about the hard sell, putting you through the grinder, and not about what “you” want.  No professionalism.

Our business halts this disturbing trend.  We’ll put the bag of air on our Web site, along with our motto:  “We Sell Professionalism.”

Employees will show up early to meet with customers.  They will smile, ask questions, listen, and elicit information so they perform magnificently in whatever the heck it is that we do.

Once this business explodes, ads on TV will run, stating, “We don’t know what we’ll sell, but we’ll do it right.”

We’ll give our best.  We’ll make mistakes.  We’ll own up to them, and fix it.  If we can’t, we’ll recommend someone we know with expertise to handle it.

Hire us now because we’re booking up.  Go to: www.WeSellProfessionalism.com. 

Our employees are flying off the shelves.  We can’t keep them stocked.  We’re the newest, hottest fad. 

We all dream, don’t we?  If we could only get the word out, maybe we’d influence others to follow through, show up on time, and get the work done to the best of their abilities.