Category Archives: Work

Work: Dealing with those wack ass people at your j-o-b

Family, Logic, Love, Relationships, Social, Work

WikiP: ‘Trust’

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Trust
Virtues: relationships, predictive actions, past knowledge

I‘ve always known wikipedia to be a good resource for historical facts and events, but it never really dawned on me that wikipedia can be used as a dictionary – to look up terms and definitions of everyday words. Well, apparently to my knowledge, wikipedia is also some sort of a dictionary, but where dictionary.com only gives you the definition of a word, wikipedia gives you the definition and concepts behind the word, and relational concepts.

For example, let’s look at the word ‘Trust‘:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_%28social_sciences%29

Trust is a relationship of reliance. A trusted party is presumed to seek to fulfill policies, ethical codes, law and their previous promises.

Trust does not need to involve belief in the good character, vices, or morals of the other party. Persons engaged in a criminal activity usually trust each other to some extent. Also trust does not need to include an action that you and the other party are mutually engaged in. Trust is a prediction of reliance on an action, based on what a party knows about the other party. Trust is a statement about what is otherwise unknown — for example, because it is far away, cannot be verified, or is in the future.

And it goes on, and on. Reading this, I particularly find the line ‘Trust is a prediction of reliance on an action, based on what a party knows about the other party.‘ to be very telling as it really does not matter how long you have known someone to ascertain if you trust them, what is important is how much knowledge and/or insight you have on an individual – one can get that intel in years or in a matter of minutes. Family, lifelong friends should be ‘trustworthy’, but we may only perceive them as such because of the notion that such people should be the ones that we ‘trust’. Well trust me, trust can be found in the oddest of places with even the oddest of people, as trust should really be based and predicted upon the reliance of an action – based on what you know about an individual.

I believe I always have had this notion for years, but have never been able to articulated quite like the wiki has (but, I never really had the desire to do so either). Its very hard to say that I can fully trust someone – because we base trust on how we would hope/anticipate people to act in certain situations. Its a cliche to say well, “I hope they will do the right thing”, but that ‘right thing’ varies from individual to individual. It would be best to base your trust based on the immediate action + what prior information you know about the individual.

For example:

You would not trust him with your kids:


Michael Jackson

You would not trust him with your 15 year old daughter:


R. Kelly

You would not trust her with keeping a secret:


Karrine Superhead Steffans

You would not trust him (Ike Turner) with your personal safety:


Ike Turner & Tina Turner

You would not trust his word:


O.J. Simpson

In all, you would not trust these people in the examples that I prescribed, but that does not directly correlate that you would not trust them in other scenarios: R. Kelly could be able to give you good advice & direction regarding the music industry, O.J. may be a trustful source of information for football skills & techniques, and Karrine ‘Superhead’ Steffans may be a good source of intel on how to keep a man … any guess on how she would do that? (LOL).

But, in all importance, we all need to put our trust in ourselves as we must be confident and, we must try to attain a sense of surety that the decisions we make will be the ‘right’ one.

.:: d.b ::.

Social, Work

Pussification pt. 2: No, I don’t subscribe

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Pussification pt. 2: No, I don’t subscribe
A more succinct way of disagreement
View pt.0 and get familiar

Society has become increasingly tolerant and sensitive to the needs of others; looking at our etiology we have come a long way from the tyrant, barbarian behaviour of our ancestors. As of late, after the feminist and civil rights movement, in an era I like to call ‘social movements’, we have a hard time of saying ‘no’ to the simplest of things. ‘No’ is a refusal skill that implies a disagreement or rejection to something (concept, question, etc.). Instead of saying ‘no’ we will substitute our disagreeable or rejectable response for longer, and more sensitive responses that can lead to ambiguity – meaning the respondee may be lead to believe that there is hope to their question.

So why do we do this? Having respect, and being respectful for others feelings could be a reason; as we are taught such behavior from a young age. However, we can still have respect for others, and their feelings, without embodying the qualities of pussification (pretentiousness, fake, ambiguity, non-genuine, not ‘keeping it real’).

Here are some real world examples on how you can un-pussificate yourself:

Can you help me out and do some of my work?

old: “I’ll see if I can get around to it”
try: “No, I’m not going to do your work”.

Did you mess up on that 1st quarter report?

old: “I’m not sure, I don’t think I did that”
try: “No, I don’t have any recollection to what you are referring to”

Honey, can we go see Sex and the City?

old: “I’ll see, I got a lot of things to do later on”
try: “No, that is for chicks, I’m a man”.

Do you like my outfit?

old: “Its okay”
try: “No, its wack – it needs work.”

Want to hit up the club tonight?

old: “Not really, I’m kind of busy tonight, and the club is kind of expensive, and I’m trying to save my money”
try: “No, that club that your going to is weak and has ugly women”

In all, people respect those that give respect, and furthermore, people can – or at least should, respect an honest opinion. Its okay to disagree with someone – there may be some notion or perception that saying ‘no’ may lead to an argument of some kind, when in all honesty it is not a start of an argument per say, but the start of a discussion, a dialogue of sorts. An open exchange of opposing, differing, and even similar views – try it sometimes, you may be surprised with the results, and even with what you learn.

.:: d.b ::.

~ Life in B Major ~
Logic, Work

Silly Monkeys! Part 2: Its ‘Jart’ Bitch, the ‘fly designer’

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Silly Monkeys! Part 2: Its Jart Bitch, the ‘fly designer’
Virtues: respect, responsibility, ethics, ‘cant tell me nothing’ syndrome
Read Part 0, the Abstract & Part 1, Strong-Arm Mike the Banker

Jart is a graphic designer. He thinks that he is very trendy and hip. Jart has a funky style; his clothes are a bit different in the cut, design, and the colors. Jart’s musical tastes are very trendy as he stays away from ‘mainstream’ music; Jart’s not into the current hip-hop/rock, but more into classic/underground hip-hop, trance, house, and other rare music. Jart’s differences makes him unique; and Jart uses such differences to set him a part from others, because not only dp his differences in his personality deviate him from the norm, but his skills/abilities are also in a ‘class of their own’ – or so that is what Jart believes. You see, the combination of good skills/abilities with his unique distinction from the norm makes Jart a ‘gassed’ individual, Jart thinks he knows much more than you, Jart believes that he is superior to you – and most times, hey, Jart could be right (that’s sarcasm for you). You see, over the years Jart has been told how much his work is ‘hot’ and ‘nice’ and other accolades; thus Jart does not know how to handle adversity well; you see, Jart believes that any static with a client is not because Jart is doing something wrong, but because the client does not understand Jart’s greatness.

I knew a Jart, he was definitely a Jart; to the ‘T’, from the tight pants, neon pink shoes w/ matching hat, MacBook Pro, and backpack. This Jart was commissioned to design an interface for my company, he was going to be well compensated for his work (he was), but this Jart was a Bitch – couldn’t handle criticism, when we pointed out flaws in his work, he couldn’t accept that he did anything wrong, but blamed the problem on us. Jart ducked meetings, lied about things, didn’t write down our notes (even though we asked him too), and Jart avoided certain members of my group (including me) because we were too critical of his work. What killed me is that this Jart Bitch was being paid handsomely for work (Jart got paid consistently and on time), and yet he treated us like … well, you know (Check the title of this piece). One of my associated blasted Jart in an introspective essay, a blast so hard that I felt sorry for Jart, and Jart is a bitch; in the fact that he treated us with dis-respect, and took us for fools.

In retrospect, I’ve learned some things about Jart; his behavior, movements, and other nuances. Jart’s experience with us was not pleasant, but I don’t know if Jart realized the error in his ways in his tight-ass pants and pink attire, but I do know that Jart will think twice again before he treats people like silly monkeys.

Peace Jart, Bitch.

.:: d.b
Read more Silly Monkeys! sagas:
Part 0, the Abstract & Part 1, Strong-Arm Mike the Banker