Motivating your employees, not babysitting them, Part 3

Hasn’t entitlement overtaken our national conscience?
Somebody owes me something all the time now, it would seem.
My grandparents would roll over in their graves if they heard the attitude commonly purveyed in our culture now. Modest folks with not a penny to spare, my grandparents worked hard. Never would they have demanded an education or health care. I bet yours were the same way.
It simply never entered their minds to demand anything.
If they wanted something, they worked for it.
Expecting someone else to pay for stuff, even with tax dollars, would have seemed like thievery to them.
So what motivated that generation and how can we motivate those around us?
Folks are basically motivated by four things – stuff, security, significance, and, finally the biggie, a vision combined with a solid relationship with the one in authority. If you missed the first part of this three-part series, you can find it on this paper’s website.
Business owners simply cannot afford to “babysit” their employees; that is, they cannot treat employees like dependant children.
Everyone I know who is employed right now is getting paid one salary to do the job of two people. We are living in an economy when folks are being forced to grow up and behave like hard-working adults.
Simply put, a business owner does his employees a favor when he manages his business well, finding the right balance between providing customer services and keeping expenses down.
In the work place, training your employees to take ownership of your business is a crucial part of success.
Because of the shifting employment picture, it is crucial to offer your employees opportunities to acquire skills while they are gainfully employed by you. That does not have to involve expensive classes. It can be as simple as cross-training employees so they can cover for each other.
One bonus to cross training is that team unity happens when people appreciate each other’s skills.
Did our grandparents miss the privileges we take for granted, like education and health care? Did not having stuff make our grandparents bitter?
No, it made them resourceful and grateful. Working hard gave them confidence. It made them generous.
Some of us are old enough to remember those days.
Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.

Meals on Wheels: Recipe for Service

Fruit salads are one of my favorite treats next to turkey or ham around the holidays.

Another treat is eating at Meals on Wheels.

I bet you didn’t know that Meals on Wheels occasionally hosts club luncheon meetings for organizations interested in knowing more about their efforts.

“Meals on Wheels Ministry, Inc. serves a daily meal to nearly 3,500 frail, homebound senior citizens and disabled persons every weekday in East Texas.

These meals are prepared fresh at the central kitchen located at 3001 Robertson Road, Tyler, TX, “ according to www.mealsonwheelseasttexas.org. “The meals are then home-delivered by compassionate volunteers to eligible persons who cannot provide meals for themselves. Often this is the only meal they will have that day.”

When Mike Powell and his staff served up this fabulous Waldorf salad along with lunch for a recent meeting of the Bethesda Alliance luncheon, I asked for the recipe to share with readers. It’s the best Waldorf I ever put in my mouth.

Monarch Mayonnaise’s Waldorf Salad

2/3 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup mayonnaise

3 Tbsp. sour cream

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 tsp. sugar

4 Granny Smith apples, cut into ½ inch cubes

1 1/3 cup thinly sliced celery

1 1/3 cup red grapes, halved

¼ cup candied pecans, for garnish

Mix all ingredients, except the pecans, together in a mixing bowl, until uniform. Cover and refrigerate until needed. Serve on a bed of fresh bib lettuce. Sprinkle the candied pecans on top for garnish.

While I was munching on lunch, I learned another interesting fact about Meals on Wheals. Did you know that you don’t have to be impoverished to enjoy having a meal delivered to your home? If you have a loved one who could benefit from the service and can afford to pay for the meals, Meals on Wheals will deliver your lunch at a prorated fee.

They even have grateful customers and families who subsidize other, less fortunate customers’ lunches with a regular donation.

Making Meals on Wheels a perfect example of the motto: “Serve people and success will follow.”

In Bullard, the plan is to collaborate with the Bullard library to put in a kitchen that can act as a southern staging point for Meals on Wheels delivery.

If you ask me, this is one more reason to support efforts to build the new library building in Bullard.

To volunteer for Meals on Wheels or for more information, contact Executive Director Mike Powell at 903.593.7385 or go to their website at www.mealsonwheelseasttexas.org.

Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.

Ribbon Solutions

I have a simple solution to life’s stress.

Buy more ribbon.

I don’t know when my ribbon fetish began. Probably during childhood adventures with my grandmother, scouring second-hand stores and discount fabric stores for other people’s cast offs of useful items like zippers, buttons, and thread. The pay-off for restless granddaughters was a yard of any ribbon we chose, a real luxury in those days and an inspired bribe on Meme’s part, since choosing only one yard from so many colorful, temptations was certainly excruciatingly time consuming for young intellects.

I was reminded of our human tendency to prepare for life in odd ways recently when I uncovered the stash of ribbon I had collected in the months preceding my daughter’s wedding almost two years ago.

Like a squirrel hoards nuts, I had gathered spools of silky satin and shiny iridescent ribbon and hidden them away in an unmarked box just in case.

How having ribbon would prepare anyone for the transition of having your children grow up and begin families of their own is a quagmire of human illogic and dysfunction that only a professional psychologist could unravel.

All I know is, “You never know when the perfect ribbon will come in handy.”

Which reminds me of another motto, “Whoever has the most fabric when they die, wins.”

I have known women who built shelf-lined closets specifically to organize their addiction to fabric, justifying it with the words, “But I love to quilt.” And perhaps because they wanted to avoid trips to marriage counseling, their husbands seemed well-adjusted to this concept.

Or maybe those same husbands have a closet devoted to golf.

Like so many mid-lifers, I’m trading stuff for space these days; getting rid of the stuff and gaining room in my closets.

So, what to do with all this ribbon?

Well, the obvious thing, of course. Pass it along, with the fetish, to my oldest daughter, the artist.

And what she doesn’t want can be used to wrap up Christmas at our house this year.

I just hope my family and friends don’t become suspicious when the ribbon on their Christmas packages looks more wedding-ish than holiday-ish.

And I hope your holidays are wrapped and decorated with sweet family memories.

Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at http://checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.

Ur Bst Golf

Golf is the only sport I know of where talented, athletic types brag about how bad their game is. For this reason, bookish, klutzy folks like me are totally endeared to the game; a sport that tends to convert perfectly normal people to instant looniness almost immediately.
I don’t usually do book reviews in this column, but today I’m going to make an exception for Ur Bst Golf, local author Ken Dance’s new book.
Don’t let the easy-to-read, informal tone, or the pocket size fool you. It is packed with helpful tips, humor, and wisdom, making it fun and informative at the same time. And it’s soooo local; here’s a sample:
“Sometimes the mere mention of a certain hole on a certain course can cause our palms to sweat. I know number nine at Hollytree in Tyler, Texas has ruined many a round for many golfers.” He goes on to explain that, instead of thinking yourself into a bad game, “The goal of confidence is to intentionally transform a positive thought into a present reality.”
He includes practical hints for winning the game of acquiring confidence in golf- and in life.
Ken dissects the elements of golf in a way that even newbies to the sport can understand.
In his section subtitled “Precision: a Combination of Distance and Direction,” Ken emphasizes that they are interdependent.
“I once played with a guy who achieved a world record for distance traveled. The first hole on the course was parallel to a very busy street in Dallas. When he hooked his drive, the ball took two bounces on the street and landed inside the raised door of a moving van just as it passed by. I’m not sure where that ball eventually went, but I know it went further than any ball I’ve ever hit. Distance isn’t everything.”
Ur Bst Golf is the perfect stocking stuffer. Or, because it is so local and personal, it is a great gift to send to friends in other places when we brag about how wonderful Texas is. (I can’t be the only person sending obnoxiously Texas stuff to all my friends, right?) Contact Ken at kendance@suddenlink.net or go to Amazon.com or BARNESandNOBLE.com.
Ken wouldn’t want me to write about his book without mentioning that the Chick-Fil-A Bethesda Golf Classic is coming up Oct 2 at Oakhurst. He often plays this tournament with his grandkids; it’s a friendly, relaxed opportunity to include newly addicted golf fans, young or old.
Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at http://checklistcharlie.blogspot.com or cathykrafve@gmail.com.