After a pause he’ll add, “out your mouth.”

He’s channeling a woman we used to work with at WDMT. She was funny and fun to be around. She was both small and larger than life at the same time.

In one minute she’d complain that the kids calling the radio station were getting on her nerves and in the next she’d laugh at something you said and punctuate it by saying “that’s funny.” After a pause she’d add something like “want a grapefruit.”

There was always a pause.

Before she finished.

In Tom Peters book “Big Little Things” he talks about the importance of the words “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” at work. These are not words to be said lightly. They should be felt and delivered often.

How many times have you heard those words where you work in the last few months.

Here’s something you may be forgetting. Every time you say “Thank you” or “I’m sorry” counts. Every time you speak words for better or worse you are contributing to the mood and environment at work.

I know you get tired of being the only one to say “Thank you” or “I’m sorry” but it’s important. Keep doing it. Don’t count how often or seldom your colleagues reciprocate. It might just not be in them.

I know I can’t change other people but I can make sure I express gratitude or regret regularly.

Out my mouth.

Something happened.

One of the little boys sat down on the sidewalk while the rest of the boys divided into two groups.

“Why’d you have to say that to him?”, one asked.

The little boy who was being accused looked at the boy on the sidewalk and back at his accuser and said, “I didn’t do nothing.”

That might have been the end of it. It could have easily turned into a “yes you did” – “no I didn’t” argument.

Instead the boy on the grass looked over at the boy on the sidewalk and said, “hey, he’s fake crying.”

Again that could have been the end of it. Other kids could have pitched in with a “yeah, he’s fake crying” but they didn’t and he wasn’t.

A little boy wandered over to the kid on the sidewalk and put his arm around his friend.

I don’t know what he said to him. He could have advised his friend, “don’t pay attention to that jerk.” He might have quietly asked “are you fake crying or really crying?” I don’t know what he said. It doesn’t matter.

Another little boy shouted, “we’ve only got about five minutes left to play and then we have to go home for dinner.”

Both boys stood back up, looked back at the spot on the sidewalk where they had just been, and wandered back to their friends on the grass.

I’ve seen a ton of adult arguments start out much the same way. They seldom end that quickly or that well. Within moments the boys were back to playing and all was forgotten and forgiven.

The houses were further apart. Laundry hung outside drying. On closer inspection you could see that these houses with the laundry out front had no electric or phone wires running to the house. On the right two men were pounding in fence posts. On the left, coming towards us, was a horse drawn buggy.

Not all of the households were Amish. Up another mile on the right a man pushed a power mower while behind him his dog lay watching him work. We turned in. This was the kennel where I’d left Anabelle early Friday morning.

Kim and I should have been on our way to London but a volcano in Iceland had changed our plans. As a result we were picking up our puppy over a week too early. In other words the volcano was having real impact on the owners of this small kennel in the middle of Amish country. In fact, the owners told us, they had several owners do the same thing.

We felt bad for them. The night before the local newscast had explained that the volcano would take months to effect those of us in Northeast Ohio. Thats how long it would take the ash particles to diffuse and spread and lower the temperature over this next year.

No one on the action news team imagined that this far away event would touch local people in such a tangible way.

They spend their lives figuring things out so they get used to thinking things through when sometimes the answer is right in front of them if only they knew how to ask the right question.

One of my favorite examples of this comes from Uri Treisman. Treisman helped lead the way at encouraging college math classes to use group work instead of straight lecture. He researched different groups of students to see what made them successful in post-secondary mathematics.

He had some theories going into his research but he kept an open mind and he measured everything. He looked at the amount of time that students spent studying math, he looked at their background, he looked at their parents ‘income level. And what he found out surprised him. Students who worked in groups did better than students who didn’t.

OK. He’d kept an open mind and found out what worked. Now he had to apply it in his classes. He tried all sorts of different strategies for dividing students into groups and designing work that was appropriate for groups.

He continued to measure the results. In one setting he had the students work together at tables that had been wired for sound. He recorded the students as the teachers and graduate assistants came around to the tables to work with the students.

Except he didn’t.

Through some sort of mixup they ended up recording the students when the teachers and graduate assistants weren’t at their table. Treisman said that the results were very illuminating. The students were working productively while the instructors were not at the table. He listened to them chat and pretend to work whenever they were unsupervised.

That was humbling and illuminating. It was completely counter to what Treisman and his colleagues thought they’d achieved.

What about you?

When the answer is right in front of you are you still asking and listening or are you certain that you know what the answer must be.

Tomorrow I’ll share a story I heard yesterday that changed my mind about the impact of a volcano spewing ash in Iceland.

Without that decision we wouldn’t have been flying to London in an hour. We would have been looking for a way to get back home from an over-crowded Newark airport.

We spent the rest of today canceling plans.

The experience reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s story about doctors and malpractice claims. Worse doctors aren’t more likely to suffer more malpractice claims than better ones. Patients were less likely to file claims against doctors they thought cared about them.

Rose, the Continental representative was amazing. She was cheerful, helpful, and patient. She refunded the money for our tickets while answering my questions and commiserating with my daughter (who had to go to school instead of to London today). Angie, the Continental Rep I talked to yesterday, was equally as helpful and pleasant.

Helpful and pleasant doesn’t only apply to people who are able to give me a refund. Rick, the guy on the phone we talked to from British Air, was helpful and friendly but restricted by what he could do for us. He understood completely the problem we had. We couldn’t really take their London to Geneva flight next week since we wouldn’t be able to get to London to get on the plane. He couldn’t give me a full refund but he had concrete advice on what I should do and when I should do it. I hung up feeling good about Rick and British Air.

We didn’t ask the Globe theatre for a refund for our Macbeth tickets for Sunday. We just called the box office to ask if we would be able to give our tickets away to someone else. If you’ve visited the Globe you’d understand. The tickets were fairly inexpensive and we’re not about to ask an institution like that for our money back.

The St. Giles easily cancelled our hotel reservation and refunded our money for the first part of our stay. Samir made all the right comments about being sorry that our trip was cancelled and assured me that of course he would take care of everything right away.

As a complete contrast the Hilton was a wall of rules and regulations. First they needed to see a record of our reservation. We sent that. Then they needed a record of our flight itinerary and proof that the flight was cancelled. We sent that too. They needed us to confirm the phone number we left when we made the reservation even though we didn’t make the reservation over the phone. We sent that too.

After all that, they told us that they could only refund us our money if the airport is closed on the day we are to stay at their hotel.

What? We don’t fly in on that day. Our flight was cancelled today and we can’t be rebooked in time for our reservation. This information didn’t fit into their script.

“Sorry,” the non helpful voice on the other end of the phone said, “no refund.”

It wasn’t the “no refund” that bothered me. Well maybe that’s not quite true. I am bothered by there being no refund. But I was more bothered by hearing “sorry” from someone who isn’t. “Sorry” from someone who just wants to get me off of the phone. “Sorry” without considering my situation.

It’s one thing not to give a refund, it’s another not to care about the people you are dealing with.

When I called Continental yesterday and Angie answered I asked her how she was holding up. She’s been handling angry calls for days – I’m sure her day wasn’t going any better than mine. I’m sure she would have been nice anyway – but it began a personal conversation that took no longer than a scripted one would have taken and it got a lot more accomplished more quickly.

I learned that from my mom. It used to embarrass me when she did it. That person doesn’t care about you and your day. Just ask them what you called to ask. But that’s not my mom. And she knows people everywhere. And they know her.

So when Angie asked what she could do for me I said “actually I don’t know. I don’t know what you can tell me but …” and I told her my plans for the next day. And she laughed and told me exactly what I needed to know and then some.

It’s beginning to look as if conditions may line up so we’ll get our refund from the Hilton. But that’s not really the point. My takeaway is positive from two companies that are giving me refunds and from two that aren’t.

Whether I get a refund or not in this final case doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the outlier in all of these experiences just didn’t care enough about me. There’s no refund for that.

Cleveland was fine, Beijing was fine, but the flight from Cleveland to Beijing passed through Newark. Newark and most of the east coast was closed down by a huge snow storm.

It was as if the guy from Maine from the old television commercial was in front of us rubbing the back of his neck and saying “China? You can’t get there from here.”

We called everyone who needed to be called to reschedule the flight and take care of the arrangements at the other end. We ended up leaving the next day and had an outstanding time in China.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to fly to London.

We’re all clear here in Cleveland and Newark looks good as well. Somewhere between here and London, at least as the jet flies, there’s a cloud of smoke and ash from a volcano.

It reminds me of the Sidney Harris cartoon where scientists stand before a board filled with equations on the left and right separated by the step that reads Then a miracle occurs.

That in between stuff matters a lot. You can’t get there from here without going through the stuff in the middle.

Over the weekend she was part of a team that competed in a Science Olympiad. She also had her final exam for her first semester. 

The difference is striking. She studied hard for her science exam and did well but she's talked non-stop about the competition. As she and her teammates rode the bus home they talked about what they needed to work on for next time. They identified areas of weakness and identified teachers and other resources to help address them.

I'm sure there are many differences between the two situations but one of them is the relationship between the students and the teachers. In the competition, the students and the teachers are on the same side. They are working together to master material that will be tested by some third party.

I struggled with this (and think I mostly succeeded) as a math teacher. The students know that this person teaching them is also the person creating the test and grading the test – how could that teacher possibly be on their side? 

And yet I was. I defined "their side" as meaning that I was committed to them learning and falling in love with the material. If I could do that, then a decent grade was almost always assured.

I once worked in a restaurant where the owner explained to me that one of the secrets to his restaurant's success was low staff turn over. In real terms, it cost him money. So even though he worked to train, evaluate, and manage the employees — he was on their side.

What about in your work? What does it mean for managers to be on the same side as the people they manage? How would your work and your customers benefit? Whose side are you on?

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

It's one of those examples that makes us relax a bit. We look at her and realize that we have plenty of time to accomplish things. We look at her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren and time stretches out.

But Friday there was a reminder that you don't. Friday, in a church just a few miles from yesterday's funeral there was a funeral for a fifteen year old child. She died suddenly at school earlier in the week.

The pairing of the two was jarring. It was a reminder not to wait. That we don't have endless time to get going.

The 92 year old woman didn't wait. She was active and involved from the start. The stories that were told included her learning English as a second language in kindergarten and becoming the family's translator at school meetings for her siblings.

She was one of those women who was active all of her life. She was a woman who was truly ahead of her time–a working mother when mother's didn't work. A woman businessman out-bidding male competitors when women weren't in business.

Two funerals with two different kinds of sadness. Two funerals together with one message.

Don't wait.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

Now and then Glass has to remind us of the rest of the iceberg so we don't look at the three or four that make it to the air as all of the activity that needs funding. Wow, why does he need such a big staff – they only do a few stories a week?

I still think it's the stuff we throw out that makes what we do better. I'm writing an application for kicks these days. Yesterday I took most of the work I'd done the day before and replaced it with a dozen lines of code. The app runs better and the code is cleaner. If I were getting paid by the line I would have been nuts to make the changes I made. Fortunately, I'm not getting paid at all.

This morning Brian Marick tweeted a quote by Vaclav Havel on hope which I shortened like this. "Hope is [...] the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

And so This American Life produces great stories that end up not making it to the air because greater stories did. It doesn't turn out so great for those stories that don't make it but it turns out great for the show and us listeners.

If we just do the things we know are going to work out, well, that's not very interesting and is certain to hurt us in the long run.

Sure, we can't build a business on hope alone, but a business without hope isn't worth building.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

The weather feels like a metaphor for the day. The snow has been slow and steady for three days accompanied by a light wind. Just enough to keep the surface white and to erase the footprints of people and animals that passed earlier. There is no well trod path of what's gone before only an empty lawn waiting for new footprints or whatever.

Quick, before meetings mar the day, the year, the decade—lay in the snow beside me and flap your arms and legs to make a snow angel.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.