Category Archives: Values

Power Words for August the 6th: Challenging Conventional Wisdom

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“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

This we often hear, and a wealth of evidence underpins its credibility. Example: someone you don’t know invites you to enjoy a sandwich at no cost. Upon arriving, you begin to eat. Ham and meatballs let’s say, your favorite in this hypothetical. The stranger is very friendly, and you enjoy his company initially, but he begins to ask leading questions about where you take your vacations and what you pay for them. Soon it becomes clear that this person is attempting to sell you on the purchase of a time-share property in the dregs of Florida. You pass on the offer, but the lunch has proven to be anything but free. The time you’ve spent listening to the pitch, making your objections, then remaking them, has unquestionably been a cost.

That sort of situation is clear to anyone, and very likely the origin of the saying we’re examining, but here’s another. A friend you like very much invites you to lunch at a sit down establishment. When you’re done eating, and the bill comes, the friend grabs it and insists he pay. You say he doesn’t have to, but he won’t hear of it, and gives his credit card to the server. You think nothing of it, besides what a good friend he is. His name is Ralph, one of your favorite names in this hypothetical, but that isn’t necessary to remember.

A month later, Ralph invites you to lunch again. At first nothing is any different. You discuss various things and share some laughs, and eat your respectable dishes. However, when the bill comes, Ralph makes no motion to look at it. It almost seems he’s ignoring its presence. Your best judgment indicates that he’s expecting you to pay. You want to hold to the notion that free lunches exist, so you pay only for yourself, and with some histrionic sighs, Ralph finally adds money.

Only, you don’t hear from Ralph again. Several weeks later, you try calling him, but he doesn’t call back. You suspect this is based on your behavior at the second lunch, and you’re right. In this scenario, the first lunch has cost you one friend. You seek another friend name Ralph and learn very few men of your generation have been assigned that name. You may never have another Ralph in your life.

Both of these are clear examples of the inability to obtain a free lunch. However, we cannot grow and change unless we challenge our own status quo, and that often means challenging widely held believes. So let’s take a look at a third scenario:

You bring yourself to dinner at a local chain eatery. In this hypothetical let’s say it’s TGI Friday’s, but it can be the Olive Garden or P.F. Chang’s if that’s easier for you to envision. You sit at a table for one and eat an entree. Perhaps an appetizer too. Dessert Even. When you’re done, ask for the check. Only, while the server is preparing it, you flee the restaurant and drive away in your car, which you parked in another parking lot so that it would not be seen, because the chew-and-screw (as we called in this author’s darker days) was your plan all along. Was the meal not free? Perhaps the scheme might appear work-like, but in term’s of its motions it’s just the same as if you had payed, only without the paying step.

Even if you become enamored with the technique and try it many places and are eventually caught, you will likely pay (either in money or justice dollars, which involves fines, community service, or incarceration) only for that particular incident. You will not be held to account for most, or all the other times you pulled off the trick. Hence, those are, free lunches.

And viola, we have proved wrong a staple of conventional wisdom in just a few paragraphs. The careful reader will also note that we have disproven another fallacy, that which states “Crime doesn’t pay.” Crime always pays in situations where one is not caught, and if the amount of crimes you’ve gotten away with outnumbers the amount for which you’ve been caught, this designates a profit. Thus, it is better to the bottom line to commit the maximum number of crimes.

Power Words:

Today, forget conventional wisdom! I can throw all the old rules out window, along with several laws, if doing so benefits me.

Power Words for July the 31st: Hard Work

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“I believe strongly in hard work.” said practically everyone. We all believe in hard work. Hooray for hard work!

How true is this idea? Surely, we appreciate a person doing their best in whatever profession, when we’re in the consumer seat. Likewise, we feel best about ourselves when, in our career, we fully apply ourselves and refuse to sit idle. On the other hand, hard work is perhaps, an oversimplification of the real world metrics of what a person does. These thoughts may, however, be rooted in my specific experience.

My father was an ardent defender of the virtue inherent to hard work. “Boy, a man can move mountains, as long as he’s trying hard enough!” he’d say, in enthusiasm or anger depending on the events of that day. This was not simple philosophy, but a design he applied to everything he did. My father was never a religious man, but still insisted upon using the stairs in any tall building on the grounds that elevators were, “The work of evil forces.” Though he understood certain limitations (such as our inability to manage our home as a self-sustaining farm) he had very strict rules. He refused to purchase pre-sliced bread. When my brother once came home from college with a load of Wonderbread, my father beat him severely with it. Then made him eat each slice.

Of all my father’s rules and notions of hard work, one remains particularly tragic. Far ahead of modern day environmental concerns, he saw the automobile as a wasteful, needless machine. Eventually, when his “career” made local travel necessary, he went to his workshop and emerged five days later with what he termed the “Feiling 500.” It was a wooden box, with four wheels, that approximately resembled a car with room for six passengers. However, the vehicle had no floor in the places where the legs or driver and passengers sat. It was capable of steering, but the thing had no motor or transmission. It was to be powered by good-old-fashioned-foot-work. In other words, the occupants would move the car by pattering their feet on the exposed road. If this technology sounds familiar, you perhaps remember it from television’s The Flintstones, though my father would enter into rage blackouts anytime somebody made the suggestion that this was his inspiration.

One Sunday, we children all climbed into the vehicle to go to the grocery store. We were all under 12, but one did not require a license to operate the thing. Another benefit, according to my father, who labeled child labor protections as “Pussyism.” It was raining, and the car had neither windows nor a roof, but luckily my father saw being soaked in rain as admirable evidence of one’s toughness. On the way home, the vehicle began to slide on a muddy hill. My sister Katechelle, brothers Tortoise and Showman, and I, wildly beat our feet against the ground trying to reclaim it, but it was no use. We rolled off the road and down a rocky slide. When the car slammed to a stop, and I had my bearings enough to look around, I saw that my sister’s right leg had been crushed, and my brother Tortoise’s left had as well.

That was the last day we used the Feiling 500. My father never repaired it. As a show of goodness, my father now only assigned one child’s work to split between the unipedal Katechelle and Tortoise, but also treated them as one person in all other respects, such as food rations. They were happy just the same. His rhetoric about hard work went on, unchanged, as though the disaster had never occurred.

When I hear my fellows sing the praises of hard work, I often reflect on this story. I wonder if my family had been derelict enough to have engaged in the gluttony of Buick ownership, would my kin and I have a greater total of limbs today? But again, this is only my experience. I can offer only that.

Power Words:

Today I will excuse myself from working so hard, and diffuse or intimidate my critics with sad anecdotes.