Three people saw someone who was alienated and struggling. They accommodated. They didn’t have to be fluent in another language. They just had to remember enough high school Spanish to recall the word that this woman was blanking on. That's all it took to welcome her back into the conversation. 

Maybe you’ve had this experience: You’re in crisis. You can’t work, so you call in. A well-meaning person you hardly know sends you information about the Employee Assistance Program (EAP). You look into what it covers and wonder how this could possibly help. The minimum CYA measure to guard against the wild things that people in crisis do.

Open-floor-plan offices may not compare to the shipyards, manufacturing plants, and airports that first brought over-ear headphones to the workplace. But noise pollution is still a serious issue in knowledge work. 

The same tendency that makes it difficult to structure Google Drive folders also leads to creativity. Neuro-atypical brains make connections between things that other people wouldn't see. 

Hard work isn’t the only ingredient to burnout. All work and no play can even be invigorating under certain circumstances. But when hard work is combined with the following ingredients, it’s a recipe for burnout.

We ran together, but no one could run the race for her. She had to cover the distance on her own two feet. Hundreds of other people ran the same route as we did. She just needed one of those people to do it with her. And I got to be that runner.

Rudeness bothers me. It occurred to me that I could refuse in protest. Make everyone wait until the woman came out of the handicapped stall so we could all stare her down as she washed her hands. 

This story still makes me laugh... and haunts me to this day. Is a boundary still a boundary if only one person asserts it? Or is it rebellion?