I couldn’t even imagine

                                                                              

hiring 99 out of 100! 

As you may know, I taught college (business, psychology, career development, creative writing) for many years, full time at Ocean County Coillege, parttime at Pace University and Georgian Court College and with the US Army Columbia College Extension Program.  At present, I’m loosely attached to the corporate training program of a small community college. 

     So, let’s say I have some sense of what college life is all about. 

     Or did!  Today that little piece of enlightened experience was smashed to smithereens.  Well, okay, it was severely dented; I’ve just been waiting a while to find someplace where I could sneek in that smithereens expression; it’s such a cool phrase. 

     Anyway, today I had occasion to be (what I felt like was) the oldest living human being in the middle of one of America’s largest and most populated university campuses. 

     My educated, experienced, objective observations?  99 out of 100 college students are just big high school students, and that’s a gracious understatement. 

     Walking through noontime clouds of cigarette and marijuana smoke, I thought I was thrown back into a time tunnel visiting San Francisco academic institutions in the early 70’s.  Aw, c’mon, Hal, there’s no more drugs and smoking on America’s campuses.  Right.   

     Overhearing how wonderful Obama’s decision was to consider adopting a puppy (nothing about the rest of his press conference, or unanswered questions about taxes, forthcoming Cabinet composition, exchanges with President Bush and all the former living Presidents, a peculiar side comment about Nancy Reagan, etc.), I was reminded of the lectures I used to give on selective perception, or, essentially, hearing only what one wants to hear. 

     At least a dozen students slept soundly (or were perhaps unconscious?) on benches and couches as thousands rushed past them to packed café tables brimming with pizza and beer pitcher lunches (Aw, c’mon, Hal, there’s no more drinking on America’s campuses.  Right.) . . . and more smoke. 

     Oh, and I was very nearly blinded by glittery body jewelry (counting, of course, only what was above, between, or creeping out of clothing, or those marvelous little glistening moments of illumination bursting forth from various tongues whenever the sun hit conversing, gasping, laughing, or drooling mouths at the right angle) . . . enough gold, silver, platinum, brass, bronze, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, to fill a flaming footlocker. 

     Now, I don’t much care how weird a lot of people choose to look; I’ve been there myself; but the pervasiveness of immature attitudes and behaviors that seem to be driven by unorthodox clothes (or lack of), makeup, jewelry, hairstyles and colors left me wondering about the challenge of corporate recruitment efforts, and the slim pickin’s American management has today in the business world. 

     I acknowledge this may not be the case when it comes to filling those beyond-IT-related positions, where wild and wooly and bizarre personalities seem to thrive. 

     So the new corporate America management teams need first and foremost to be surrogate parents, yes?  Go ahead, tell me what you think.  Tell me I’m wrong.  I hope I am.  I couldn’t even imagine hiring 99 out of 100 of the thousands I passed today. 

     That’s a sad commentary on parenting, on educational discipline, and on the take-everything-for-granted lifestyles that permeate today’s young people, descendents of the yuppies!  The times they are a changin’, sang Bob Dylan . . .  Halalpiar         

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You want the truth here? 

With such a big chunk of my business career and two of my books having been devoted to consulting with and counseling doctors (well over a thousand of them — from heart transplant surgeons to chiropractors, veterinarians to shrinks), I’m often asked what doctors are really like . . . 

     You want the truth here, right? 

     Okay, like it is:  I believe that 9 out of 10 doctors are nut cases.  Not only that, but I believe 9 out of 10 doctors would agree!

     Hey, let’s face it, how can you not be whacked out when you spend every waking minute of your life thinking about and tending to other people’s problems . . . even while you’re busy spending the millions of dollars you take home, you’re still preoccupied with healthcare issues. 

     Y’know what I mean?  Like it’s really hard to enjoiy a nice glass of hundred-dollar-a-bottle wine when your beeper keeps paging you because the hospital’s nursing staff is taking turns bitching at you to get you to calm down your exotic poledancer patient who’s trying to gain early admission to the hospital for tomorrow’s scheduled butt wart removal so she can avail herself of “just one of those lil’ ol’ papercupfuls of Oxycontin.”

     They want you to tell the spike-heeled, mink-stolled young lady that threatenening to whip the 80-something year-old ER rent-a-guard with her leather thong won’t work. 

     And it’s yikes so difficult to appreciate your teenage daughter’s trauma over having to wear her old dressage headwear in tomorrow’s horse show because her girlfriend broke the chinstrap on the new one, and can she at least have fifty dollars for lunch at the stables.

     Oh, and not getting enthusiastic about your wife saving $120 off the $3000 flatscreen tv she bought today for the maid’s quarters could have dire consequences at bedtime, which all by itself may be cause to chug-a-lug the rest of the vintage cabernet.

     Ah, yes, and there’s Mr. Stumblebum’s early percocet prescription renewal request at the pharmacy to think about.  The pharmacist says your Stumblebum patient claims his Saint Bernard swallowed the whole plastic bottleful.  According to the old man’s attorney, chauffeur, and dog trainer who all accompanied him to the CVS drive-in window to testify, feeding the beast a dozen tablespoons of petrolium jelly hasn’t even produced the label, and the man wants another month’s worth. 

     First of all, your license could be on the line, but even before first of all–  there’s Mr. S’s bank to consider since they recently financed your $3 million office building and your $5 million oceanfront estate.  Hmmmmm.  License?  Loans.  License?  Loans . . .  

     Yes indeedy, the challenging side of doctoring we seldom see (even on Grey’s Anatomy and ER).  Yet, important medical decisions must be made here.  Ah, waiter, another bottle please . . . red wine is, after all, good for the heart!   Halalpiar      

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Check out and contribute to the daily growing 7-Word Story started 58 days ago (inside a coffin).  Click on the link to the right, or go to the “BOOKS” tab at the top of this page, then to the top headline link.