Holiday travel

Pam and I flew from Omaha to Phoenix today and had a wonderful experience with the TSA. Apparently people are still irrationally freaked out about liquids and gels, so we went through the trouble of checking a bag with all our shampoo, etc in it. Pam left a couple of things in her purse: lipstick, hand lotion, etc. The security nazi freaked out and wouldn’t let her take it unless she had it in a ONE QUART CLEAR PLASTIC BAG. Putting it in a mesh pocket in our bag apparently is unsafe. They made her go back out, buy a plastic bag, and put the items in the bag. Now she’s safe for air travel. I hate to think what might have happened if I had just put those items in my pocket when I went through security! Would it cause the plane to crash? Would terrorists steal them and hijack the plane? I suspect none of that would have happened, because I DO take toothpaste, lip balm, etc with me in my pockets because of course they have no way to detect these things.

While I’m on the subject of air travel, do you ever wonder what would happen if you didn’t put your cell phone on “flight mode” during take-off and landing? Would the instruments on the plane go haywire and cause a disaster? Of course not- how many people do you think honestly forget to turn off their phones? I know I’ve forgotten many times. Irrational, arbitrary rules like this piss me off. When I used to run a company, I was adamant about not creating rules just for the sale of having rules. If I couldn’t rationally defend the rule, then it wasn’t going to become one. Companies typically create a rule after a problem occurs. This is stupid. It’s reactionary and serves no positive purpose. If a company has been operating just fine and then an incident occurs which requires intervention- oh, let’s say someone is leaving work too early, then creating a rule that says everyone must stay at work until 5pm is stupid. The proper thing to do is to sit down with the individual and correct their behavior. Better yet, talk to them and understand why they feel they can leave early, explain your viewpoint, and make a change together. There’s no need to create a rule that is placed on everyone. Doing so causes negative feelings from the employees who haven’t caused a problem. When you introduce a new rule, people take it personally and the feel like they are being punished, and they don’t know why.

Rules are also pointless unless there are consequences. When I was in high school I was exposed to all kinds of rules. For the most part I ignored them and did whatever I wanted. Thankfully, “what I wanted” was within a boundary that matched up fairly well with the rules. But there were some exceptions. When I did break the rules and was “caught”, nothing really happened. Ohh, they’re going to put a note in my “Record”. Big deal. What the heck are they, the U.N.? “If you do that, we’re going to be very angry and we will write you a letter!” Uhh, whatever. No consequences = no rules, plain and simple. Any parent knows this, so why do adults seem to not understand that it applies everywhere, not just in parenting.

This is enough ranting for one post. We’re about to land in Phoenix to spend Thanksgiving with Leah. It’s now time to start reflecting on the past year and to be thankful for many things.