I’m sharing examples of some businesses that have gone above and beyond.

Sock it To Me

Nancie Steinberg gave me a wonderful gift last October: A pair of Pope Leo IV socks that she bought while attending a conference on the property of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement—Graymoor–in Garrison, N.Y. She found the socks at the Graymoor Book and Gift Center. To make them last, I wore them only on special occasions, hand washed and air dried them and within three months, they developed holes. This usually doesn’t happen for a year.

I saw posts by the Sock Religious company on social media and dashed off a note about my precious socks and in short order heard back from Emily MacLennan in customer service who wrote: “Thanks for bringing this to our attention, that’s not the kind of holy we want our socks to be.” She offered to send me another pair and asked for a photo of the holey sock to pass along to the production team for troubleshooting. I offered to send her the socks, once washed, and she said it wasn’t necessary. I already have the replacement pair.

Valentine

I’ve written about this treat before, but it gets me every year. My landlord places a striking long-stemmed rose outside each of the 510 apartments in my building. This year I received an especially stunning one. It’s atypical NYC landlord behavior.

Lost Check

I didn’t realize that my January 21 check to pay for my Visa bill was lost until I noticed, on February 16, that my bank hadn’t recorded it in my statement. Plus, interest of almost $20 appeared on the online Visa invoice. How could that be? I am religious in paying bills immediately.

A wonderful USAA customer service person who was working on Presidents’ Day told me how to handle this, and assured me that my credit wasn’t impacted yet. I had until the check was 30 days late, [I was a few days short], and she blamed the terrible weather that messed up mail deliveries. She told me to call back and ask for the removal of the fee when the check arrived, which I did.

I know—everyone tells me to ditch the checks. I have a system. I like using checks.

Have you enjoyed happy surprises lately?

   

I recall a Mimi Sheraton New York Times restaurant review ages ago in which she gave top marks to the food, ambiance, and service. Nevertheless, it received a lackluster number of stars because at an adjacent table a couple was having a loud argument which spoiled her meal. She felt the owner should have told them to be quiet or leave.

Loud voices, especially angry ones, don’t befit public places.

I admire those who use icy silence punctuated by a stare to express disagreement. Silence can be worth a thousand words. I’m still working on the skill. Raising your voice especially in the workplace is not sensible.

Whether or not you have authority over a colleague, yelling doesn’t achieve what you want. In fact, it can paralyze a person, slowing their efforts to correct a mistake, for example.

Fear doesn’t partner with respect. People will climb mountains if they respect you. Showing disrespect to someone in front of others is the worst and reflects poorly on the big mouth.

Because a person speaks louder than everyone else at the table doesn’t mean that they get their points across more clearly. Reminds me of Americans who raise their voices responding to a non-English speaking tourist thinking that volume will translate their words.

Showing temper at a meeting can stun those around the table so that instead of listening to the yeller, the targets lick their wounds and the others think, “there but for the grace of God go I.” That boss isn’t going to learn the truth from staff. An angry colleague will find that no one has a moment free to pitch in when they are in a pinch.

Roaring at all and sundry with TV cameras rolling may impress some but appall others. Thank goodness most children don’t listen to congressional hearings these days. It would confuse those whose parents tell them, “If you wouldn’t like it said to you, don’t say it to someone else.”

Imagine the kids imitating Pam Bondi at the dinner table or classroom. The way she spoke to some congressmen and women at a hearing last week was beyond the pale. Elected officials deserve respect even if you don’t see eye to eye. So do parents and teachers. Have a problem with a person’s stance on an issue? Address it. Calling a person stupid or dumb is as lazy as it is demeaning–to the speaker. Snarky responses should achieve the reaction my mother used to have which was “my hand is itching.” [She never hit but I knew what she meant.]

Some associate civility with weakness. They think that slamming others shows strength. Which do you believe is most effective?

   

My husband used to say “deep breaths” when I’d be hyperventilating about something. Dear friends say it to me now and I to them. Hearing his words repeated helps. [Nothing substitutes for his magical hands. I would hold one and immediately calm down.]

The topic of stress has come up a few times on the blog since 2008, most recently in 2016 in “Service of Deep Breaths: What Do You Do to Relax?”

I asked a friend who is always as calm as ten rocks in a secure pile what she does when too many worrying things come at her at once or something ominous looms. Her reply: “stay in the moment— don’t look ahead or forecast doom.” Another friend advised to focus on each issue one-by-one.

Something that helps me when I’m committed to meeting many work deadlines at once is to be on top of personal or volunteer obligations so that they don’t add to the agita when they slip into my mind.

Lately, friends have admitted that their sleep has been impacted by political news. An obvious solution is not to watch the applicable shows on TV or read sources of news. But it’s almost impossible to hide from headlines that pop up in emails if you subscribe to digital papers and magazines—and even if you don’t–not to mention what crops up on social media platforms.

When it comes to keeping anxiety at bay—apart from medication—what works for you?

   

A friend who lives in a house in Florida wrote recently, “Putting our trash out on the curb (separate bins for recycle and regular trash) a thought occurred to me: How does one handle all this while living in a high-rise New York apartment? Not easily, I would think.

“Back in the 40’s when we lived in a ‘brownstone’ complex, trash was put in brown paper grocery bags, all very neat and compact and dropped down a chute to the cellar where the super incinerated it. The resultant ash was picked up by city trash trucks. How times have changed!”

How amazing! I have the feeling that 85 years ago families generated a fraction of the garbage we do today and that it didn’t contain so many harmful things such as hard plastic containers that fruits and vegetables come in.

I am shocked at how much I toss every day. I can’t stand having garbage hang around. It’s easy to dispose of bottles and plastic containers. The garbage room is down the hall just past the elevators and is picked up countless times daily.

I covered the topic of compost last year in “Service of Planning and Predictable Failure if You Don’t.” All 510 tenants were told, the day after the law went into effect last April, to compost garbage. I was alarmed and doubtful that I could comply. I was already separating paper from glass, cardboard, plastic and tin. Everything else flew down the garbage chute.

Well guess what? I retrofit a medium sized storage container, [photo above], lined it with a baggie from Trader Joe’s that holds the veggies and fruit I buy—almost custom made—and voila. Coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable peelings, plant cuttings and such go in the compost container. The “everything else” garbage can size bag that went down the chute every two days is now tossed once or twice a week. I have yet to see a mouse around the compost container as I’d feared.

The neat container of incinerated garbage of yore my friend mentioned reminds me of how my husband used to tie up giant piles of newspapers for delivery to the dump upstate. They looked like gifts. [When I was in charge, I filled paper grocery bags with them helter-skelter.] We were also prepared to divide garbage slated for the various containers. Empty soda bottles and cans went to the Boy Scouts for the redemption money.

Have you changed your garbage tossing habits lately? If you’re separating compost material, is it working out?

   

Ten years ago, I wrote “Service of Seeds: What You Admired As a Kid May Be What You Do For a Living.” I remembered it when Father James Martin, SJ suggested his audience think about what they learned especially from their early jobs that helped them become who they are.

He spoke at the launch this week of his new book, a memoir, “Work in Progress, Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest.” Father Martin is a Jesuit priest, editor at large of America magazine, consultor to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication and author of New York Times bestsellers such as “Learning to Pray,” “Jesus: A Pilgrimage,” and “The Jesuit Guide to [Almost] Everything.”

I loved the quotes placed in the book right after the dedication to his sister “who put up with me.” His mother said, “Well, you’re not going to sit inside all summer.” His father said “Of course it’s not fun. Why do you think they call it work? If it were fun, they’d call it play.” Sound familiar?

The former GE Capital executive called out his gig as a dishwasher saying that he learned what it feels like when someone treats a worker with disrespect because they rank the person’s job at the bottom of the totem pole–so you never do.

He shared, in the reading, how his Wharton freshman college dorm friends, mostly Protestant and Jewish, [he was the only Catholic], accused him of killing Pope John Paul I. One night he’d been carousing with them and after too many beers shared a slew of Jesus jokes he found to be hilarious. On his return to the dorm a friend told him that the new pope, John Paul, had died after only 33 days in office. “My drinking partners looked at me with a mix of horror and wonder.” He writes that he felt like “the Worst Catholic Ever.” He even cried in private.

His friends never let him forget it. When, 10 years later, he told a gathering of them that he was joining the Jesuits, one of them said, “Do they know you killed the pope?” They reminded him of this at appropriate markers to priesthood as well as when he returned from meeting Pope Francis in 2019. His friend asked, “Did you tell him you killed that other pope?”

Babysitting was my earliest paid job—if you don’t count what a neighbor paid me to dust table and chair legs that were hard for her to reach–and only during the school year as camp and trips abroad took up my childhood summers.

Needing extensive dental work the summer before college, [here’s where my mother quoted Father Martin’s mom about not sitting around], I worked behind the scenes in the basement of Lord & Taylor putting price tags on clothes. The manager accepted the quirky hours I was free so as to fit in those doctor appointments. The experience confirmed that I had to go to college so as not to be relegated to such work for the rest of my life as all the lovely women I worked with had done. One stood at her post dressed to the nines, in three-inch heels.

The semester after my freshman summer I took on a range of menial jobs to pay for the flight to Argentina to see a boyfriend [my parents disapproved of]. They feared I’d flunk out due to the many distractions from my studies. Instead, I made Dean’s List. I learned I am a job juggler. [I never went back to Argentina.]

My last semester of college, I was the token Catholic working at Episcopalian Headquarters in Boston. I was the assistant to the right-hand of the enlightened director, The Reverend Shirley Goodwin, [a man]. The happy work environment they created made them model bosses and colleagues. I still think people thrive in a cheerful, supportive environment.

Most supervisors at my first job after college as a reporter at Dun & Bradstreet were fine. One was angry and nasty. He ran his team by fear and got from me the minimum required. Any reports over my quota I saved for the next week. I went above and beyond for the other managers as they wouldn’t crucify me if I didn’t meet the minimum one week. At the end of the month they came out ahead production wise. Lesson learned about how fear can crush productivity for some hard workers.

What jobs–early or not–stand out and what did you learn from them?