simplerich

I was at someone’s house recently and it was time to eat and their son was playing a video game like Mario or something… it was a game with a save point. You couldn’t just save it wherever you were and if you turned it off you lost all your work since the last save point. I’m not a fan of those games and honestly wish they would make an emergency shut off function. The Mom, hereafter referred to as The Evil One, said it was time to eat, and within a minute walked up and turned off the console. The kid was really upset. I didn’t blame him. I reacted as if it’d been me that was kicked in the stomach. That was a massive loss of work and time on his part. The Evil One… she didn’t get it at all. I didn’t argue with her in front of her son. I’m not that stupid. But I did bring it up later. Her response was that it was just a game and he could do it again.

The part where he was doing everything he could to get to the save point, going backwards to save his progress was lost on her. The part where the game was something he cared about and put a lot of time, effort, and practice into didn’t matter because it was “just a game.” I got it though. I understood why he was upset and sullen through the meal. I kind of was too.

It’s just a job. She’s just a clerk. What she does doesn’t matter. If her boss gives her a project to do but doesn’t follow up on it, recognize her good work, and show areas where she could improve or maybe do it differently that would either make her job easier, faster, or more efficient she’s going to notice. She’s going to feel like her job doesn’t matter… like she doesn’t matter. All of that she agreed with, and when I put it in that context she understood that respecting a person’s time, effort, and work was important. She didn’t play video games, but recognized that it took skill, time, practice, and work to achieve anything.

The whole thing brought the idea of respect to me. Not respect for people over us or who have control over us. That can be fear as much as respect and it’s often something that people KNOW they are supposed to do. Respect for people who work for us, and over whom we have some power is vitally important for managers. I’m reminded of the USA Today article CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character. It’s one of my favorites. I have it saved as a file on my desktop to read once in a while. But it’s more than that.

My goto book for things when I’m formulating a post is often Managing with Aloha by Rosa Say. I read her take on it first and sometimes it kills a post because she’s already said it so well I’d just mess it up, or I find that I’m about to write a post that is almost just like something she has said so I don’t rather than appear to be plagiarizing her. To avoid that happening this time I didn’t refer to her book. I really wanted to make this post. What I did find on her website though, about respect, is a great list of things employees want from their employers, and I would argue it’s things that anybody would want from anybody else, and the core of the things is respect for them as a person, an employee, and for them and their work and time. Here’s the post on Rosa’s site. It’s certainly worth a read.

The Mom in the story above, I won’t really refer to her as The Evil One, did recognize that she could have asked him to switch off the TV, or get to a safe spot and turn off the sound and join us. She did recognize that she’d shown him disrespect, and that wasn’t a lesson she wanted to teach her six year old. She didn’t want him to feel like what he did didn’t matter. She didn’t like it as an employee, wife, or daughter, and didn’t even realize she was doing it to her son. She apologized to him and they hugged and it was very cool.

Pokemon Platinum does allow me to save it at any point, which is nice. I play it whenever I get a minute. No save spots for me!

The Respect their time by Rich Griffith, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.