#MenBehavingBadly #financiers #WallStreet
The book, “Straight to Hell,” by John LeFevre, describes the drunkenness and debauchery of financiers working in Citigroup’s Hong Kong office.
Regardless of what you think about those who work on Wall Street, and whether you believe that personal behavior may not affect professional behavior, this book might give you pause.
It was reviewed by Philip Delves Broughton in the July 21, 2015, edition of The Wall Street Journal.
It describes leud play and solicitation of prostitutes by those to whom we may entrust our wealth. Hopefully, they are not spending the money their clients entrust with them for their fun and games, but they probably make enough to afford such entertainment. It appears, from Delves Broughton’s review, that these guys’ maturity did not correspond with their wealth.
The deeper question Delves Broughton poses about the culture of financiers working away from home is whether deviant personal behavior and professional behavior are connected, and whether men behaving badly matters. Broughton says his hunch is that bankers are not so different from other male business tribes when on maneuvers. “They simply have the cash to do more of the nasty stuff,” writes Delves Broughton, author, most recently, of “The Art of the Sale: Learning From the Masters About the Business of Life.”
Let’s forget, for a moment, the nasty specifics of what these guys were doing. Let’s instead extrapolate the behavior(s) of your employer(s) toward you.
Let’s presume, too, that your employer is not getting too personal with you, i.e. sexual harassment. There are ways to deal with that that may be too complicated to address here.
Let’s take an example of your employer heading home for the evening, leaving you alone with tons of work on your desk, and knowing you won’t be able to go home at a reasonable hour.
Let’s also consider the example of your employer telling you that you cannot have the vacation time you want, or need, because you are too badly needed at that time. Yet, he never loses out on the vacation he wants.
Your employer is enjoying the gobs more money he’s making than you, while you are forced to put your life on hold for him.
Certainly, in this day and age, if you have a job that you need, you are fortunate. But how long can it go on? Will you one day walk in and be told your job is gone, after all the sacrifices you have made?
How would you feel if you worked for one of the men described in LeFevre’s book, and he came to you one day and told you, you were being laid off, despite your good behavior?
If you are feeling as if your current situation is not giving you the life you want, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. There, you may see the pure happiness, joy and prosperity to be found, simply by helping others succeed – a whole different milieu from the one LeFevre’s book describes.
Delves Broughton’s speculation about how businessmen behave when no one, but them and their friends, is looking, perhaps is true. But there are certainly good, kind, ethical and very professional business people out there, who would be a pleasure to work for.
They would never make you stay late when they weren’t, or deprive you of a vacation while they took theirs. But even good situations don’t always last. It might be best to plan now for the day when the goodness, or necessary evil, of a job disappears. You may even get to exit on your own terms.
Peter
Monthly Archives: September 2015
BE NICE WHEN YOU TRAVEL
#travel #rudetravelers #customerservice
It’s been said that one catches more flies with honey than vinegar.
Christopher Elliottt, editor at large for National Geographic Traveler, goes a step further. When you travel, customer service people will go out of their way to give you what you want, and more, if you are nice. If you are rude to them, they will actually go out of their way to make sure you are not accommodated.
Elliott discussed this in a Sept. 21, 2015, column in USA Today.
And it’s not only the service providers that could work against the rude person. Fellow travelers will hope rude behavior doesn’t produce the desired results.
Let’s examine this. Certainly, when we travel, we spend a lot of money. We’ve worked hard to get the time off. We pay dearly for transportation, accommodations, food, drink and activities. We have a certain level of expectation for what we pay.
When something doesn’t go right, it’s perfectly normal to be upset. However, when you think of all the steps it may take to put a trip together, sometimes things don’t go as smoothly as you would like.
Most service people want to please you. But you have to want to please yourself, too, and getting angry at the service person, who is doing his or her best to make your trip as enjoyable as possible, ruins your good time. Handle the distress calmly. Your trip will be better for it. As Elliott advises, pack your hammers.
Put yourself in the service professional’s shoes. Don’t you think he or she won’t want to help you if you are rude to them? They may show calmness and restraint with a rude customer, but deep down, they don’t want you to get what you are demanding. On the other hand, if the customer is nice, especially when something goes wrong, they will not only want to rectify the problem quickly, they will want to give you something extra for your patience.
Have you ever eaten at a restaurant at which a diner was making a scene over some part of his meal? Have you ever stood in line behind some unhappy person, and the argument is holding you up?
It’s best to begin the trip thinking that some glitch will occur, and, when and if it does, tell yourself to deal with it with good humor. Elliott says it will pay off for you in terms of service, and you won’t waste all that valuable energy being rude. The service providers and fellow travelers will thank you in many ways.
Another hint: if you are traveling with small children, take them to restaurants that can best accommodate them. If you want a quiet, adult dinner, get a baby sitter. Your fellow diners will thank you.
So travel. Have fun. Make the trip what you set out for it to be: as relaxing as possible.
Don’t have the money to travel much, and want to? Visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll find some people who have made their travel, and other dreams, come true.
Not only should you pack your manners when you travel, you should wear your smile at all times. You’ll have a better time and your servers will give you more.
Peter
THE SINCERE PLEASURE AND AUDACITY OF GETTING OLDER
#gettingolder #gettingold #aging
Young people worry about everything – their looks, their climb up the corporate ladder, how their children will turn out etc.
For Dominque Browning, who recently turned 60, aging has become liberating. All those things she worried about in her youth she now finds almost laughable. Oh, and her excuse? “I’m too old for this,” she says.
Browning tackled the topic of aging in a liberating way in a New York Times article. It was also published in the summer of 2015 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As a young person, you tend to believe that you want to be young forever. You hear older people lament that “youth is wasted on the young.” In other words, you’d love to have had the wisdom and years of knowledge that you have at age 60 when you were, say, 30.
Browning writes that a younger woman advised her that “old” may be the wrong word. Perhaps at 60 she is too wise for this, or too smart for this. “But old is the word I want,” she writes.
“I’ve earned it.”
She writes that women inflict torture on themselves by obsessing about things. “If we don’t whip ourselves into loathing, then mean girls, hidden like trolls under every one of life’s bridges, will do it for us,” Browning writes.
Instead, she writes, one should be happy that the body one has is healthy, presuming it is. She says she’s too old for skintight jeans, 6-inch stilettos, tattoos or green hair.
Let’s look at the wider picture. Let’s say you are 50 years old, and have been told you are no longer needed at your job. You look at other jobs, perhaps ones that may be more physically demanding. Do you tell yourself, “I’m too old for this?”
Or, do you take on one of those jobs to prove that you aren’t too old, presuming the employer hires you – and there’s certainly no guarantee of that.
Employers generally see age as a disadvantage, no matter what the job. They may not be allowed by law to discriminate, but there’s nothing telling them they can’t tell you – the older worker – that they have chosen someone else. If you try to prove age discrimination, good luck. You’ll need all the evidence you can find, and you still may not succeed.
So what to do if that predicament arises at 50? Or even younger? There are many ways out there to earn money, without a traditional job. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. If you like what you see, you might be able to one day gleefully show the employer who dumped you that you didn’t need him after all.
Imagine seeing your children, or younger colleagues, sweating each day as they go to work. They don’t know when they might get shown the door. It might come at a worse time for them than it did for you. But you will have done what you needed to do to put your life in order again, perhaps even making it more prosperous in the process.
How fun would it be if those younger folks presented you with the trials and tribulations of the working world, and you could say to yourself, “I’m too old for this.”
Remember, it’s best not to gloat, and to keep one’s thoughts to oneself in that regard. However, if you are reaching, shall we say, advanced age milestones, don’t fret. Use the wisdom you’ve gathered, and the energy you still have to create a second, and perhaps more prosperous and rewarding, life.
As discussed previously, wishers wish they were young again. Dreamers don’t care how old they are. There is so much to be said for being older, and not having to face the insecurities many young people face today. If you are older, you’ve lived in some good times. Now it’s time to do what you must to make your future even better.
Peter
DON’T PANIC: INVESTORS ARE CHANGING THE WORLD FOR THE GOOD
#investors #stockmarket #socialproblems #purposeoriented
It’s tough to love the stock market with the volatility we’ve seen in recent weeks.
Certainly, both the market and the government have tarnished reputations, as New York Times columnist David Brooks recently pointed out.
But there are a few big-money types who have tried to use the market to solve social problems. Brooks writes that these investors have opposable minds. They are part profit-oriented – nothing is done in the markets without someone making money – and part purpose-oriented.
These investors have created organizations that look a little like businesses, a little like a social-service providers and a little like charities – or some mixture of the three, Brooks writes. His column was published in July 2015 in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream led the first wave in this sector, Brooks says, but now you’ve got a burgeoning array of social-capitalist tools to address problems. They range from B Corporations like Warby Parker, which gives free glasses to the poor, to social impact bonds, Brooks writes.
Brooks cites a phenomenon is called impact investing, which seeks out companies that are intentionally designed to both make a profit and provide a measurable and accountable social good.
We all would like to put our hard-earned savings into companies that do good. But as a small saver, or one who is diligently saving a small portion of what he or she earns toward retirement, one has to focus on getting the most growth and income from his contributions.
For these folks, gyrations in the market, like the ones we’ve seen recently, cause great consternation. But most experts in the field would advise them not to panic. Usually, what goes down goes back up, as we have seen. You see, those with some cushion in their accounts, and with good advisers, will have raised cash by selling some of the underperforming investments, so they can use that cash to buy some great stocks cheaply when the overall market tumbles.
Remember that when the market reacts this way, an individual stock is just following the market. It does not mean the companies, or their products, are no good. Those good companies will come back because investors see discount shopping opportunities in tumbling markets.
So, if you are small, careful investor, who has put his or her money into good companies or good funds, relax. When the market drops, it’s usually a temporary glitch. Stick to your original plan, and follow the advice of the person you trust. If it helps, don’t watch the news – at least the parts about how the market is doing. If you know that your savings and investment plans are well-thought-out, cringe if you must at what’s going on, but breathe easily.
Someday, you may have enough money to make a real impact on a global problem. For now, though, secure your own nest egg little by little, and don’t let the market gyrations get you down.
Of course, there are many other worthwhile things you can do to enhance your wealth. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. If you are thinking of getting a second, part-time job to throw a little bit more toward your retirement, think a little outside the box. You just might find a way to better utilize any free time you would devote to a second job, and have a lot more fun than a second job would be.
It’s a marvelous thing that some smart, rich folks are looking for ways to solve the globe’s problems with their own money. We all may wish to be in that situation, but, for those who are not rich, it’s best to work on enhancing your own wealth FIRST, and help others do the same.
When, and only when, you’ve done that, by all means feel free to make an impact on the world. Work hard, play hard, save and invest hard. Help others, and you will be enriched. Once enriched, keep helping others. It will bring you great joy.
Peter