Off-Off Topic

Sprinkles are for winners and coffee is for closers. [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Lf8GtMe4M[/video]

 

Here's the company's original recipe breakdown (assuming it's accurate, which is a big assumption)

Original Recipe Chicken
Nutrition Facts
Breast
Amount Per 178 gms
Calories 320
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 14 g
Saturated fat 3 g
Trans fat 0 g
Cholesterol 145 mg
Sodium 1,130 mg
Total Carbohydrate 13 g
Dietary fiber 2 g
Sugar 0 g
Protein 36 g

Like anything, if one piece of chicken sets you over, you're probably already over.

 

Holy Moly! Not bad, till you get to the 1130 mg sodium! IIRC, recent recommendations are no more than 1500 mg total per day. Anyway, not a problem for me. No offense to KFC, but I don't eat in ANY restaurants, KFC, McD's or any competitors. I think of a Food Court as a place where bad cooks and serial poisoners should stand trial. I was asking (in jest) :smile: about the nutritional value of the cardboard bucket itself.

I only eat food cooked by me or my family, as I have a slew of enemies and can't afford the services of a professional "taster." :smile:

J

 

So there's this new commercial for Hyundai cars where the buyers, upon hearing about the great deals, say things like "Holy shit!" and "What the fuck!" except that the explitives are deleted/bleeped out (unlike here). I think it's funny that the ad agency is going that route. I wonder what's next?

 

No bleeps?

Think about what can be said on TV now compared to years past.

 

Everyone is caught up in the ROI of a college degree, as seen through the lens of skills. But it is a terrible way to look at it. Skills are only one thing a person gets from a good (emphasis: good) college education. The other intangibles are obvious, and not always obtainable in non-full-time-on-campus delivery modalities. But there is something else entirely, something colleges don't address directly, but if they did, it would change our society forever...for the better.

(But first, I digress. Because I did my undergraduate degrees through the Regents External Degree Program, and because that program is strictly skills-based, I didn't draw those intangibles hinted at above from my degree. But I was in the Air Force at the same time. Trust me, being an enlisted person living in the dorms is very much like an on-campus college experience. I came out of my degree program as socialized as any traditional student, plus I had three years of military experience by then.)

Anyway, what universities should also concentrate on is building greater capacity. Instead of working on what goes in the bucket, why not work on the bucket itself? Making it bigger, stronger, able to hold more. Senge talked about learning organizations, but I'd like to build learners. But how?

Well, we can move people from pedagogy to andragogy. (See Malcolm Knowles.)

We can also stress learner-centered approaches for these adults. (Sadly, the best example of this was The Union Institute, but they were 'scared straight' and don't emphasize this anymore. But their problems weren't in the approach, but in the execution and in the other systems necessary to run a university, which they weren't very good at.)

Finally, we can concentrate on adult development (Kegan, Cook-Greuter, Torbert, and others.) Developing the way people see the world and its complexities, moving them from inputs to outcomes, helping them manage paradoxes, getting them to remain in the unknown for longer periods of time, mindfulness, and a lot of other aspects.

Currently, universities teach people what the universities know. I want to help people develop in ways so they, in turn, can learn things no one can anticipate.

 

The real Col. Sanders supported George Wallace for President. Disappointed at the time. Now please don't tell me that In 'n Out Burger supports Donald Trump.

 

In my own opinion, the rate of cultural evolution is increasing rapidly. If you think that last 50 years has brought major shifts in culture then you'll need to hold on tight because the next 50 will bring even bigger changes.

 

There are alternative assessments available regarding the changes to which you infer.

 

Last year I had to fire someone because someone bumped into him in the lunch room and he unleashed a tirade of racial epithets.

This past June I had to fire somebody because the bumper sticker on the car he parked in front of our office (personal auto) contained a crude bumper sticker which, in four words, declared that the president of our nation was a very rude, racist word that has no place in our modern society.

Three years ago I had to fire somebody because he passed over a woman for a promotion because his office was a "boob free zone."

Five years ago I had the privilege of promoting an incredibly capable woman who, for years, had to deal with her male co-workers labeling her suggestions as "demands." I had three engineers come up to me and state that she shouldn't be promoted because she insisted on "having the final word when it came to decisions." She was the department manager.

I had to fire a beloved department manager who has worked for the company for over 20 years. The reason is that while we were at a hiring event together he looked at me with a serious look and said "Well, I'm just not hiring any blacks. Too much drama." I responded by firing him. He had three Vice Presidents try to intervene on his behalf. He hired a lawyer stating that I was violating his first amendment rights. I've had people tell me that I'm a horrible person for firing him. I've had people tell me that I've destroyed the confidence of employees to see that you could be fired, sans pension, after two decades of service. A week after I fired him, I opened my office door to discover that someone had cleaned out a very dirty air duct directly onto my chair. Perhaps not surprisingly, security footage from the hallway was corrupted for just that evening. What a coincidence! Of course, I also enjoyed the swastika that was carved into the paint of my car when I went outside (fortunately, clear coat only). I have no doubt that all of this backlash was caused by the fact that I fired the friend of many who either saw past his racist attitudes or shared in them. It reached a certain point where my Vice President had to reassign some of my departments to another business partner because there was no way I could continue working with the people there.

Are there people who fly the discrimination card too early? Yes. And it can get annoying at times. But what I find even more annoying is the fact that in 2015 people still have attitudes that seem fresh out of a Mark Twain novel and they are willing to let those attitudes impact their work, their interaction with fellow professionals and their hiring decisions. And it's even more disturbing to me that people will focus on these seemingly ridiculous situations while trying to pretend that the underlying issues are nonexistent.

Misogyny in the workplace is real. Racism in the workplace is real. Homophobia in the workplace is real. And while you have a right not to be "maddened" all people have the basic right to dignity and respect while on company time. Sure, there are people who abuse that system to try to be a perpetual victim. But when we focus on them it implies strongly that there aren't actual victims of racism, misogyny, ageism and other forms of discrimination. And there are. And if you think you're maddened by the PC police then imagine what it's like working for a boss who is determined to fire you, keep you from promoting or transferring or simply to make your life a living hell for having the audacity to be born into an ethnicity, religion, sexuality or gender that he disapproves of in the workplace.

 

Yes, you have the right to be an asshole, as long as you do it on your own time.

 

It's true. I am not trying to say that, at times, what one cannot say in popular media isn't seemingly a bit out of control.

But those popular media outrages are all tied to the underlying issue itself. People, as a whole, get outraged about perceived racist statements because there does, in fact, exist racism in the workplace, government and various other places in our society.

In other words, you can't really separate the "what one cannot say in the popular media" from the "what one cannot say in the workplace" because they are all based upon the same problem, involve the same actors (people) and evoke the same exact emotional response.

Consider, for a moment, the gentlemen at a Toronto FC match who made sexist comments toward a reporter. The reporter opted to confront the men rather than ignore them. Result? The men have been banned from Toronto FC matches. At least one was fired from his job.

Now, we can look at that and say "Whoa, now! That's ridiculous! They weren't at the workplace! Why were they fired for something they said at a sports game while drunk?"

And my point is simply that we, as a society, either tolerate behavior like that or not.

The reason why the original comment caused my HR sense to tingle was this:

The reason why this particular line of thinking is a bit misguided, in my opinion, is that it only partially addresses the issue. The real issue is that if a woman is self-serving, demanding, officious then she's "bossy." If a man is self-serving, demanding and officious he's either a "tough leader" or "upwardly mobile" or "highly driven."

Elon Musk, for example, has been criticized in the media for his treatment of former employees. But his praise far outweighs his criticism. If Carly Fiorina said half the things that Elon Musk had said we would see words like "shrew" or two other words that would get me banned beginning with either a "B" or a "C." Now, that doesn't mean that either person is right to mistreat an employee. But we need to ask ourselves what our response to the same behavior from both players would be. If Elon Musk and Carly Fiorina, today, both drop-kicked the kitten of an employee's dying child, how would we react?

It's novel to think that we would think that they were both equally as despicable and that both people could be described in equally critical terms. Realistically, social media would probably paint Elon Musk as a driven industrialist who won't even let the cuteness of a kitten get in his way while Carly Fiorina would undoubtedly be compared to Cruela DeVille.

I'm not saying that Maniac Craniac is a raving bigot. Or even that MC supports raving bigots. What I am saying is that the seeming overreaction in popular media may not be as overreaching as it first appears to be.

 

There is no constitutional right not to be offended.

 

Such was not my intention and I apologize if it came off that way.

I didn't mean to hijack your words or to tell people what I "think you meant."

My theory on words and discourse is simply that when we say something the thing said can take on a life of its own.

Example, you know that song Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard?

I used it as the basis of a paper in high school about sodomy laws. Wanna know the funny thing? The song is actually just about two young men who are doing something that is illegal (and likely considered immoral by the 'Mama Pajama.)

In fact, Paul Simon even stated that he didn't have a crime in mind when he wrote the song but that he imagined it was either sexual or drug related.

My mother felt it was an anti-war song, possibly about draft dodgers being caught.

But it sparks a conversation.

To me, that conversation is excellent. In fact, to me, that conversation is everything I adore about dialogue. But I also don't want to put words in the original speaker's mouth and I always feel bad when I inadvertently do that. So, my apologies.

It would be like someone getting mad at Paul Simon for making a statement that was pro-drug. He didn't say what "he" and Julio did. He didn't even say that the person with Julio was a "he." It's equally possible that the song could be sung by a woman and be about the tensions of interracial relationships, or a parent's fear of teenage pregnancy or a statement on overly broad statutory rape laws. Those are all good conversations to have but we can't really say that Paul Simon took a position on any of those subjects. Because all he said was that Julio was doing something. The rest is kind of our imagination taking over.

So, didn't mean to hijack your point. I think during in-person conversations it is a bit harder for things to change course so drastically. It's one of the things I both love and hate about discussion forums.

I didn't mean to imply that the novel was racist. Just that the novel contained racist attitudes.