Morning Commute in DC

I took this photo a while back on the Metro to/from Washington, D.C. 

It combines the seemingly normal person on the way to/from work listening to music and reading the newspaper with wearing a pretty scare face mask. 

It reminds me of the horror movie, “The Purge,” where people are permitted one night a year to commit crimes and murder others “legally” as a venting mechanism for social unrest and to help eliminate crime and criminals. 

Sitting across from this guy, you’re not really sure if he’s gonna finish reading the paper and walk off the train all nice or get up and start wiping people out left and right. 

Big cities in the U.S. can be scary places, and the mass transportation systems are one of those places where you don’t always feel safe. 

Maybe a mask is just a mask until G-d forbid, one day, it isn’t.

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Dark Side

Thought this was a fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal’s Review Section called, “The Dark Triad and The Evolution of Jerks.”

Antisocial Personality Disorder is where people exhibit three primary symptoms:

1) Narcissism – Excessive focus on oneself.

2) Machiavellianism – Manipulating others for one’s own gain.

3) Psychopathy – Overall disregard for others, including impaired empathy and remorse

Together, these 3 traits make up “The Dark Triad” or perhaps they  come across as being from the dark side, because of how badly they can treat others. 

Studies have shown that these three traits are positively correlated with one another, and that more than 10% of the population has these. 

In reading a little more online at WebMD, I learned that the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is that while they share similar traits, a psychopath typically acts as if they have no conscience, while a sociopath acts with a weak conscience. 

“At worst, they’re cold, calculating killers,” while at the less extreme, they may be okay with hurting others to get what they want. 

– Moreover, while “psychopaths are more cold-hearted and calculating,” sociopaths are “hot-headed” and “act without thinking how others will be affected.”

Another study found that people with these traits often “experienced low-quality or irregular parental care.” Thus a harsh or unstable childhood may cause these symptoms. 

Whether these people come from the dark side, are going to the dark side, or just are scary and hurtful, it is important to be able to recognize who you may be dealing with.

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Live Stress Free, Almost

As we all know, stress is a killer–so you want to minimize it (if you can)!

There is a great little piece from CareerCast on the most and least stressful jobs out there in 2014.

From least stressful–audiologist.

To most stressful–enlisted military.

Anyway, to avoid stress–keep calm like the picture says, but also consider jobs with the following attributes:

– Desk job

– High growth potential

– Fewer strict deadlines

– Less travel

– Greater congeniality

– Non-hazardous

One question from the list of jobs…why be a taxi driver earning an average of almost $23,000 a year in one of the top 10 most stressful jobs, when you can be a hair stylist earning about the same and have the 2nd least stressful job out there?

So trade in your driver’s license and learn to give a great hairdo! 😉

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)

Welcome To The World

What a welcome to the world this baby in China got.

According to Discovery News, the baby was flushed down a toilet…alive!

Residents heard the cries of the baby from the 4th floor bathroom.

Firefighters sawed away sections of a 10 cm pipe with the 2-day old baby inside.

The baby had been in the pipe at least 2 hours–I am amazed it didn’t drown.

The baby was brought to the hospital and put in an incubator and luckily, the baby survived.

I am sorry for the parent(s) who you’d think must’ve gone through hell before doing something this drastic.

And while I don’t like to judge or be judged, however unwanted this pregnancy or unprepared the parents were for this new child–there has got to be better ways to deal with it than this.

An early abortion or giving the child up for adoption is just two options, and struggling to keep the child is a third.

Maybe the parent(s) thought they could save the baby from even a worse fate living in poverty, born out of wedlock, or violating the one-child per family policy–but it is still hard to imagine taking an innocent, helpless infant and doing something so cruel and disgusting.

How will this child grow up, knowing it was thrown away like this by its own parents? What type of self-worth will it have? How will it feel and act towards others in society having been acted on this way?

There are so many monsters out there…killers, rapists, abusers (many serial)–do we wonder where they came from?

I remember learning people are product of nature and nurture–in this case, there was certainly no nurture, quite the contrary…and it will take at least a normal new home, where they are treated like children and not waste products for this child to have a fighting chance. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

From Coworker to Killer

People are people, but there are some who walk a fine and dangerous line.

Some are stable, rational people–those, that we hope we can depend on.

Others are prime time wack jobs–they are not “safe” and everyone knows to beware of them.

Finally, there are those who are like firecrackers, one step away from explosion–and these can pose a nasty surprise.

These last two perhaps invoke the fear of someone in the workplace “going postal”–a reference to the 1986 killing by a postal worker of 14 people and then himself.

In light of the workplace shooting this week in front the Empire State Building, Newsweek (3 September 2012) asks “How to Spot a Workplace Crazy?”

Their default answer–see the Department of Homeland Security’s Active Shooter Booklet, which includes a list of 16 “indicators of potential violence by an employee” (page 10) from addiction to depression, over reactions to mood swings, unprovoked rage to paranoia, and more.

Perhaps, their more genuine answer is that anybody can be the next workplace shooter–and that it is hard to really tell what demons lay in wait inside a person’s head or heart or what can set them off.

They reference  the book, Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, which states: “it can be anybody who’s getting completely screwed in the workplace–so that’s most workers in this country.”

When people feel a “perceived injustice” or they are “grievance collectors”–harboring hurt and anger at their mistreatment day-in and -out, they may be one step away from dangerous.

As leaders and managers, we cannot control for everything that people feel or for all their personal struggles and life’s circumstances, but we can do our best to treat others fairly, with compassion, to listen to them, and try to accomodate genuine needs.

I was reminded of this again, recently, when I went with my daughter to a car dealership.  At one point in negotiating for a new automobile, I asked a question about the current odometer reading.

The Manager yells over to a worker and tells him harshly to get on it and quickly.  It wasn’t what he said per se, but how he said it–ordering his subordinate around like a thing, not like a person.

My daughter turns to me and she is clearly uncomfortable with what she saw.  I asked her about it.  And she whispers to me, “Did you see how they treated the worker? It’s not right.”

I couldn’t agree with her more. And when the man came back with the information–we thanked him so much for helping us and told him what a good job he was doing getting everything ready–the paperwork and the vehicle.

Is he going to “go postal” today, tomorrow, or never…I don’t know–he seemed nice enough, but if people get pushed too far and their mental state is frayed, anything is possible, and we shouldn’t tempt fate–more importantly, we should treat everyone with respect and dignity.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Charlie Essers)