Core Values

Rebecca was nineteen, but had the intellect of an eight year old. She was clumsy and uncoordinated, often having trouble putting her clothes on correctly. She could not navigate around the block or properly use a key to open a door. Her grandmother described her as having “no sense of space.”

She wore thick glasses, as she suffered from degenerative myopia. Her fingers were stumpy with deformed nails, and she had partial cleft palate, causing her to whistle when she spoke. She could not count change, and never learned to read or write. Painfully aware of her differences, Rebecca was extremely shy, preferring solitude to the disgust and ridicule often projected her way.

When Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, first met Rebecca, he described her as “a poor thing.” He writes about her in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for Hat. “I saw her merely, or wholly, as a casualty, a broken creature, whose neurological impairments I could pick out and dissect with precision.”

However, their next encounter was entirely different. Walking the grounds of the hospital where he worked (and where Rebecca now lived), he spied her sitting on a bench in the garden. She was soaking in the sun and intently observing the nature around her. Her posture was relaxed and her face betrayed no sign of her many deficits.

She spied Sacks, smiled and exclaimed “Look at the world. How beautiful it is.” She then began to describe what she saw in a stream of poetic words and phrases. While she struggled with what we consider “normal” cognitive abilities, she seemed to excel at abstract thought and artistic expression.

Suddenly it dawned on Sacks that the vey tests used to categorize her impairments were useless in gauging her strengths. Trained himself to identify deficiencies, Sacks’ first inclination was to seek out what was wrong with his patient, not what was right. He concluded that “our test, our approaches, our ‘evaluations’, are ridiculously inadequate. They only show us deficits, they do not show us powers.”

Seeing Rebecca from a different perspective allowed Dr. Sacks to reassess her treatment. She was removed from the standard classes and workshops prescribed to address her deficiencies. They weren’t working anyway. Instead, she was enrolled in music and theater classes where she did remarkably well. Seeing her on the stage, Dr. Sacks remarked, “One would never even guess that she was mentally defective.”

It occurs to me that neurologists aren’t the only ones who would do well to expand their methods of evaluation. Everywhere you turn, there are mindsets and systems designed to look for exclusions rather than inclusions. Negative headlines make the news because what someone has done wrong is more interesting than what someone has done well. Pranks and jokes intended to embarrass others receive more play than inclusive activities. And sadly, my own tendency is to look for the inadequacies in others as opposed to their superlatives. I have to remind myself that, even as I like to see myself as the evaluator – as a Dr. Sacks, there are others evaluating me – seeing me as a Rebecca. It’s a humbling thought.

How do I see my customers?

Through what criteria do I evaluate my coworkers?

Am I looking for deficits or powers?

This weekend, I ventured out of the house to pick up a new washing machine. We’d been trying to get by with an older unit that was clearly on its last legs. Because laundry for five is a never-ending process, we finally went online and ordered a new one. Lowes made it easy, and I didn’t even have to go inside; they brought it out and helped me lift it into the truck.

But this story isn’t about Lowes or my new washing machine.

On the way to Lowes Saturday morning, I stopped by Chic-fil-A to grab some breakfast. They’re known for their amazing service, and seemed to be ahead of the curve when it came to their coronavirus response. I wasn’t disappointed, as my wait in the drive-thru was short and the food was as tasty as always.

But this story isn’t about Chic-fil-A.

What’s been on my mind is an encounter with someone I’ve never met. You see, when I got to the pick-up window, the Chic-fil-A employee informed me that my order had been paid for by the customer ahead of me. Another human being decided to make a small sacrifice just to be nice. The act interrupted my train of thought – in a good way. No longer thinking about the inconvenience of replacing my home appliance, I was now contemplating the various ways in which I’ve seen people reach out to each other over the past few weeks.

• People have given up their free time to sew face masks for health care workers.
• Others have donated their money to provide food for truck drivers delivering badly needed supplies.
• Teachers have gone out of their way to create resources for students working to finish school from home.
• Neighbors have volunteered to go grocery shopping for those most at risk of infection.
• Families have set up tables in front of their homes offering free toilet paper and cleaning supplies to those who can’t find any in the store.
• Companies are providing online services for free to help people make use of their time indoors.
• Business owners are sacrificing their own pay to keep their employees on the payroll.
• Children are writing cards to those in nursing homes who aren’t allowed visitors, but desperately need connection.

The list goes on and on. I think of these as “close encounters of the human kind.” Lives are intersecting in ways that are new and unusual. But they are also fascinating and welcome. It seems the more life drives to drive us apart, the more people look for ways to come together. We are social creatures by design after all. We simply have to have connection. Without it, we suffer. With it, we thrive.

Since this whole crazy thing started, I’ve spent more quality time with my wife and kids. I’ve had longer and more meaningful conversations with other family and friends. Work has taken on a different level of purpose because I see more clearly the underlying connections being forged. I bet you feel the same way.

All of this went through my head in a fraction of a second at the Chic-fil-A window. Then I handed over my debit card and happily covered the meal for the people behind me. A small gesture, to be sure; but it made me feel connected. And I as I drove off, I couldn’t help but wonder… why does it take some kind of tragedy to bring out the best in us humans? And how do we continue to stay connected once the isolation ends?

All around the world, doors have closed.

The doors to schools are closed. The doors to churches are closed. Restaurants have closed their doors too. Every day, more and more businesses are closing their doors, many of them for good. Inside those still open for business, employees are being told to keep their distance from each and work behind closed doors. The public is being advised to stay home, and close the door.

In the midst of all these closed doors, I happened last week to run across an anonymous YubeTuber who’s made a habit of opening doors. About a year ago, a nameless Swede started the channel “I open doors.” In each video, approximately 10 seconds long, his left hand reaches out and opens a door. To date, there are over 300 videos posted.

The owner of this unusual channel said he started it as a way of unifying people, a social experiment to see if a community could be created around something as simple as the idea of opening doors. He says “I’m hoping that it will feel like a safe anchor for people. If you had a bad or a good day, I will be there opening a door for you because I upload every day, and I will continue to do so no matter what happened in your life. I will film the same door from time to time, of course, but I think that can also provide some familiarity. You recognize the door. You maybe feel at home with the door.”

It may not be safe to open physical doors right now, but I can’t help but think that we should be looking for ways to open as many figurative ones as possible. The phrase “open the door” is an idiom with several meanings. When you “open the door,” you

• Invite the possibility of something new.
• Permit someone else access to something.
• Make passage easier for someone else.

As sales and service professionals, we are in the business of opening doors, even when the slabs of wood, glass, or metal separating us from other people happen to be closed. We should each be looking for ways to open up possibilities for those we serve. We should be identifying ways to make their lives easier despite the barriers that have been placed in our path.

Though he started his project well in advance of the current COVID-19 scare, the unnamed YouTuber seems to agree. “I want anyone to feel like they can open a door and everyone to be part of this experience. All of my videos are from the point-of-view perspective, so basically it’s you opening the door. There are doors everywhere.”

When Brian Tatro first saw Cathy Rodriguez, he didn’t know what to think. Tatro, a Yakima, Washington resident was driving through a residential neighborhood when he saw Rodriguez out in front of her house. She was busy cleaning her sidewalk – with a vacuum cleaner. Tatro pulled out his phone and began recording the scene.

He posted the video to his Facebook account and can be heard commenting “Guess no one’s heard of a broom before” as the scene unfolds. Friends began weighing in, with most making jokes about Rodriguez. “She must go through a lot of vacuums…a trend setter for sure!” shared one. Another referenced the recent Broom Challenge trend, “Her broom must be in the kitchen standing up by itself.” More hateful comments soon followed. Commenters suggested that Rodriguez was using drugs or suffered from mental illness. The jokes had taken a sinister turn.

Counselor Mateo Sol calls this classic judgmentalism. “We all generally prefer to see ourselves as smart, generous, kind, patient, and forgiving people most of the time. But the truth is that we aren’t.” He says that being judgmental is “critically nitpicking and finding fault with another person, group of people, idea, or situation.” We all do it to some extent because it’s an unconscious act.

Judgmental people expect others to be consistent all the time. They struggle to see beyond a person’s flaws. They easily jump to conclusions about someone’s behavior. They have a hard time with ambiguity. They find it difficult to see and appreciate the beauty in others. According to Sol, these behaviors are common (I know I’m guilty of each myself) and the result of poor self-esteem.

Sol says we often feel like others are out to get us and feel anxious around others. There’s a strong critic inside that’s judging us, so as a defense mechanism we judge others in an effort to make us feel better. And because it’s unconscious, we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

To counteract our own judgmentalism, Sol offers these tips:

• Explore your own self-talk. Look for patterns in the way you feel and the way those feelings manifest themselves in your inner voice.
• Accept the ugly, weird, messy parts. Try to see yourself realistically and embrace the good as well as the imperfect.
• Look deeper into people and situations. Look beyond initial appearances. Ask questions and avoid jumping to conclusions.
• Be critical about your judgmentalism. Learn to question your own feelings and assumptions. Ask yourself “Am I seeing the whole picture?”
• Ground yourself with mindfulness. When you start to feel the urge to judge someone, try to refocus on what’s going on around you. Cut off the judgmental thoughts by being present in the moment.

Had anyone bothered to ask Cathy Rodriguez, they would have found out that she was cleaning up glass from her van. It had been hit by a drunk driver while it sat in front of the house and three windows had shattered. Furthermore, the van was totaled. The driver didn’t have any insurance, and Rodriguez was left without a means of transportation for her family. By using her vacuum on the sidewalk, Rodriguez was simply trying protect pedestrians and pets from being injured. “I didn’t want them to get hurt,” she said.

When Tatro learned the story behind what he had witnessed, he was humbled. He immediately took to Facebook to address the negative comments and apologize for his own quick judgment. Finding that a GoFundMe page had been created to help buy the Rodriguez family a new vehicle, he was the first to contribute.

I’ve needed to update the workbench in my shop for a while now. The same one has been in use for years and it shows. It’s banged up, stained, and bit too small for many of the projects I’ve been working on lately. It sits next to my table saw, but because of how the saw’s motor is positioned, there’s about a foot of unused space between the two. This “space between” is a black hole. I can’t use it for anything, and it manages to suck up dropped tools, materials, and (inevitably) my time. Recovering this space represents a significant improvement in my workflow.

We’ve all got some “space between” that we work around. In some cases, it’s literal space like the square footage between my saw and workbench. In others, it’s figurative space – chunks of time that exist between productive parts of our day. In either case, we have a choice. We can choose to utilize this space, disciplining ourselves to leverage the time and resources available to us to improve. Or we can choose to waste the space, squandering the opportunity to make things better and suffering the negative impact created by the void.

But what does utilizing the “space between” look like? How can we take advantage of the little chunks of time that might seem insignificant and unusable? Here are a few ideas.

• Brush up on your product knowledge.
• Take advantage of a training opportunity to enhance your leadership skills.
• Brainstorm potential solutions to customer service gaps.
• Organize or reorganize your workspace to increase productivity.
• Create a new resource to benefit the team.
• Engage in conversation with a customer or coworker to build the relationship.
• Research an aspect of your industry that lies outside of your scope of responsibility.
• Practice/roleplay rusty skills to stay on top of your game.

There’s always a use for the “space between.” We just have to identify one and act on it.

This weekend, my daughter and I took advantage of the nice weather and an extra day off from work to tackle the workbench situation. We fabricated a new top that spans the unused space behind the saw. The new top we built is thicker and protected by a few coats of finish to improve its durability. In addition to eliminating the gap, we increased our usable work area by over 50%. Work pieces coming off of the saw are now better supported, making use of that tool much safer. And we did it all without impacting the normal workflow or other operations within the shop.

What I didn’t count on was the impact of this decision on my attitude. Addressing the “space between” has renewed my appreciation for the workshop. I’m excited about using my bench and creating new projects. I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty and will be less likely to take shortcuts having experienced what making just a small improvement can do.

And, as you can imagine, I’m looking for others wasted spaces to utilize.