Rain Soaked Lawless Leadership Day

Yesterday the remnants of Hurricane Isaac blew through town and my fears about the recent road paving in front of the house were fully realized.  The part they left unpaved completely washed out leaving a 12 inch trench beside the road that will only get deeper in subsequent storms.  I hate it when I’m right about something like this.  I’ll have to pick the brain of the engineer son who’ll be visiting this weekend to see if there’s anything I can do.  The storms also resulted in Buddy’s latest melt down but we seemed to have arrived at a solution that doesn’t involve drugs which I was leery of.  When he starts to react I put him in his cage with a radio/CD player in front and turned on the music really loud.  I don’t know if it drowns out the storm sounds or Buddy really likes the oldies because he weathered the storm in this fashion without a problem.  I have a high maintenance dog.  For some reason rain also prevents people from driving with even a modicum of sense because it took me over an hour and a half to get to work.  As frustrating as that was as I reached the end of the commute there was a brilliant rainbow that ended right at my office – I’m not sure what the Powers to be were trying to tell me.  I wrote earlier in this blog about the issue of having union supervisors and coming to an agreement with the union about trying to make them do their jobs while supervising other union members.  It has not been smooth and I had the whole bunch in my office yesterday to read them the riot act (again) – these were my notes for the meeting:
“We’re here because of reports of unprofessionalism. I’m reiterating a message I thought I sent very clearly back in June.  You guys are leaders, whether you want to be or not – by virtue of your position.  You should want to be effective leaders, not just occupy a chair.  I’m aware personalities exist within the union and certainly within this group.  One of the first steps in being a professional is leaving your personal biases behind you.  You have to work with the people we have here.  Despite what your feelings are everybody should be treated fairly and equally.  You have to always set the example.  Leave pettiness behind – snide comments to a subordinate are a sign of weakness.  Document failures and report them to the manager– that is your responsibility.  If we discover failures and that you did not do your job then the failure becomes yours.  Don’t give breaks to friends and nitpick people you don’t like.  You have to elevate yourself above that.  You have to work together, support one another – your success will not be judged individually.  As supervisors you are held to a higher standard, we expect more from you.  If you can’t do it – do us all a favor and return to driving a bus.  We’ve committed to working with the union to keep your positions within the union.  That is predicated on the assumption you, as union members, can become adequate supervisors.  You’ll notice we’re taking notes on this meeting.  If you do not improve professionalism we will continue to document the failures and make no mistake we’re here today because you, as a group, have failed.”   
We’ll see if that has any effect whatsoever but if they continue to fail we’ll at least have all the ammunition we need to convince even an Obama stocked Labor Department that it doesn’t work.   I did polish off the sphere shaped, Malaysian puzzle yesterday which moved it firmly into the non-French category.  Last night was date night and my wife and I saw the movie Lawless.  Since it wasn’t playing at the new theater we had to travel back to our old stomping grounds in Worcester.  It was kind of nostalgic to return.  We arrived a little early (truly rare that) and we took a walk around the shopping center and ended up in a book store – something else I’ve missed since being “Kindleized”.  The movie was very good.  My wife was a little worried about the violence she’d been warned about but she ended up enjoying it thoroughly.  I’m not a big fan of Shia Lebeouf, especially when he tries to be an action guy, but here he plays a “poser” who’s not tough and it worked.  Tom Hardy on the other hand could play tough in his sleep and is perfect as the quiet but indestructible head of the family bootlegging business.  I’m sure a lot of critics will complain about the mumbling but if they really looked beyond the points of their noses they’d see that he’s made this an effective part of his character.  I loved the interplay between him and Jessica Chastain.  It takes two really good actors to depict the subtle progress of the romance portrayed here.  Guy Pearce is the villain and I was amazed once again at his versatility going from the hero mode in the last movie I saw him in to the totally evil scoundrel here.  A great movie and a great way to end what started out to be a rain stoked day of frustration – I guess that’s what the rainbow was trying to tell me.

The New Trench

Buddy "Tuning Out" the Storm

Non-French Puzzle Complete