Biting dogs and drunken car rental agents

Kodiak and I were doing a short course the other night when a white husky ran up to us and sniffed Kodiak for a moment. I noticed that some people were coming down the street trying to recapture the animal, so I went to grab his collar, but he leaped away from me and took off around a building. He popped around the corner further down the street and encountered yet another dog and his master. This guy tried to the same thing I did and the husky bit his wrist! He was bleeding quite a bit when I met up with him. He said the dog had bitten someone else a couple of weeks ago. They quarantined him and he was clean. I told him he should still tell the owner what happened, but I’m not sure he was going to follow up.

This past week I attended one of Max’s karate classes. There were ten kids in the class ranging in age from 5 to 7, so it was a group that Max could keep up with. The sensei seems like a good guy. He opened the class with some affirmations that the kids repeat. One of them goes something like this: “I will not attack someone else, but I will defend myself.” A couple of weeks ago, Max had said something like that to his father, narrowing his eyes and saying ominously, “…but I will defend myself!” Now we know where it came from. My favorite affirmation was “I tell my parents everything”. It’s good to brainwash them early. I was proud to see Max pass his first test and get an orange stripe for his belt. He had to show the correct responses to certain moves that the sensei made, and he did very well.

My meetings in Chicago went well. I was very proud of myself in flying into Midway and taking the trains to the hotel without getting lost, and finding my way back without going the wrong way like I did last time. We had some great panel discussions with employers. One of the Executive Board members is from Enterprise Rent-A-Car and he looked up the top ten reasons new hires get fired from Enterprise. Here they are:

10. Not adhering to the dress code
9. Attitude
8. Job abandonment—they just don’t return to work
7. Theft
6. Fighting!?
5. Ethics violations
4. Unwanted sexual advances
3. Driving drunk
2. Drunkeness at company functions
1. Improper use of email

Gee, they sure are sticklers at Enterprise, aren’t they?

We are agog—Everyone’s flying in on Wednesday for Thanksgiving.