Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

I am a tortoise

08.17.2010 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

Just turned in a story about the history and culture of a very old local golf course. During the reporting on this story, I realized for the hundredth time that while I'm a fast writer, I'm a comparatively slow reporter. I've got to spend a day on the Internet, talk to everyone twice, go to the library and then talk to everybody again.

I feel that way about everything in life. I know what to do with information once I get it, but I take information in slowly. At the rate I'm going, I figure I'll be a pretty knowledgeable guy by the time I'm about 800.

Guess I'd better follow Christopher Hitchens' advice, and "hold it down on the smokes and the cocktails."

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Comcast, slow, Slowsky, tortoise and the hare

A time to cry

08.16.2010 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

I played an avuncular round of golf last week with Joe Engleman, son of my friend Paul Engleman.

I first saw Joe at a book reading his writer father gave at a local bookstore. Joe, then eight, sat there looking simultaneously bashful and proud.

I've known Joe and his family 10 years, and this Saturday, Joe is going off to Grinnell College, in Iowa.

And I'm remembering what my mom said my dad said, when I walked away from them and into my freshman dorm with a lump in my throat.

"There goes a perfectly good boy."

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Friday Happy Hour Video—with a messsage

08.13.2010 by David Murray // 11 Comments

Tom Lee is a communication consultant who works out of his suburban home, inventing models of leadership shaped like rainbows and bicycles, and occasionally dressing up and heading out to talk about the importance of communicating with employees.

But when he communicates with employees himself, facilitating focus groups, he must struggle not to roll his eyes as they blab their pitiful, sad-sack tales of woe.

Because here's what he really thinks about employees, as revealed in a blog post Friday, about Steven Slater, who he dismisses as a "just a whiner" and a "boor" whose momentary popularity reflects nothing more than, "society has lost its moorings." (Actually, Tom, society apparently lost its moorings when it celebrated a similar boor—a bus driver who went rogue in 1947.)

"Let's stipulate that flying is not the joy that it once was," Lee snarls on his blog. (Flying was never a "joy," Tom. It was only civilized.) "We can all agree on that, and we can parcel out the blame in equal measure to airline management, short-fuse passengers, the legacy of terrorism, corporate travel purchasing algorithms, and perhaps even airline deregulation."

And once that blame is parceled out? Tough shit, mates.

"Yes, being a flight attendant has its pressures. But it is nothing compared with the monotony and the dirt and the danger and the dehumanizing neglect that millions upon millions of workers around the world experience day in and day out."

So American employees ought to take whatever American companies dish out on account of they ought to be grateful they're not working in a coal mine in China?

"If a Steven Slater goes bonkers because of a little stress, on an airline with leather seats and expansive leg room for passengers no less, it is a sad reflection on him. He deserves not folk-heroic celebration or even Woody Allen's fifteen minutes of fame. He deserves lifelong obscurity as a nobody, for that is what he is. Next case."

Fifteen minutes of fame is Andy Warhol, not Woody Allen, Tom. And as long as I'm correcting things, I should acknowledge that you don't actually describe yourself on your blog as an employee communication consultant. You're "an American authority on strategic leadership and workplace engagement."

I reckon an authority on those subjects ought to think a little more deeply about this Steven Slater phenomenon, and what his elevation to folk hero really means.

Which is, that lots and lots and lots of people wish they could do exactly what Slater did, and they take vicarious pleasure in this take-this-job-and-shove-it fantasy. Whether or not this is a sign of these particular times—well, you're the American authority on workplace engagement. You tell me.

Oh, and one more thing, Tom:

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