Awards Season plus the Perfect Photo Shoot

Okay, so where am I?

Currently I'm in the midst of In the midst of planning a photo shoot, Yeah yeah, I hear you. Rent a space, show up with a camera and some pretty models and push the little button on your camera. Nope, it's not that easy, but more on that later.

I took a quick break from planning because some more great news was delivered in the mailbox this morning. I am humbled by the notification that I received announcing my 12th and 13th lifetime Telly Awards*. Just like last week, these two are the super elite Gold Awards.

This is especially good for my inner being since I'm an awards junkie. I want to own the advertising world and now the resume can list that's 13 Tellys, two CLIOs, two Emmy Awards, a Davey Award, a Communicator Award, and a bunch of others.

* - What's a Telly Award? Well..."The Telly Awards honors the very best film & video productions, groundbreaking online video content, and outstanding local, regional, & cable tv commercials and programs."

Here are a couple of outtakes from the two-picture photo combo that was the foundation of a European ad series (these were generated from months and months of planning) and ultimately earned the Telly awards:

Now, back to the planning. Hear me now when I tell you that the best images that appear in print are snapped with the mostly basic tools of photography. If you have a keen eye, most likely you will be able to view the photos and tell what the light sources are from the shadows that embrace the models, where it comes from, and begin to understand what went into making this particular production special. Most out there can follow your recipe, use the same tools, yet fall short of the brilliant plan and theme you devised.

Buy the book...trust me! (It's not even my book!)

The difference makers are the little things that all come together perfectly. You know the old adage by Aristotle, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This truly applies to a photo shoot. The perfect formula of parts make a huge impact and until you are able to plan these advertising or editorial events solo, you’ll want to be meticulous about the obvious fundamentals that turn something regular into an editor’s choice or something worthy of a cover.

First things, first. The theme…idea…concept.

I’ve been talking about the Big Idea forever. Stumble into one an you’ll be a star in your industry for a very long time. A star similar to a country singer who gets a top 10 hit and makes money from that one-hit wonder for decades. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Chances are, if you’re in charge of the creative, you have dozens of idea that rumble through your mind. Keep a journal handy and make sure you jot down everything that flies through because you’ll forget them minutes later. You have nothing to lose by writing it all down. It will even spur new ideas. Brainstorm it out in your own head. Find the process that creates genius. Trust me, your ideas will flourish in due time. Sketch, draw, highlight, dream. Visualize your ideas and come back to them later and add to them. They might not work for this shoot, but it will work for something, some day.

If you’re not good at revving up your creative engine, then you need to practice. Try investing $11 into Wreck This Journal which very productive to teach your brain how to go against the norm and fosters big ideas. Do the whole book and then graduate into the black book journaling.

Now the little big things.

You might say that the location, timing and equipment are really big things. But you are probably wrong. One of my best photos—that made a lot of money and was my country singer star moment—used a 20D Canon, the hallway of colleague’s apartment, and a makeshift Soviet Cosmonaut helmet made from throwaway materials from Goodwill and $3 of paint.

Location - $50. Model - $250. Materials - $39. Results - Priceless.

For my private exhibition shoots, I use no lighting and a Canon 80D and clean it all up in Photoshop afterwards. You too can use minimum gear for your production. You could go all crazy and gear up with a rented studio filled to the gills with outrageous doohickeys to light up your set and create the illusion of a big show. It’s up to you, but many times, less is more.

Many of my photographer colleagues trust in modest natural sunlight as the primary light source. Sure, sometimes they add reflectors, but that’s still an easy photo hack that will make you look like less of a, uh, hack. Research is vital and remember that if you pick a location, it might require permits or simply not look good as the backdrop you want. Take some quick test photos and tinker around with them before you fully commit.

If you feel strongly about your idea, do not listen to the naysayers who want to poke holes in your vision. Any location you chose could be an incredible choice is it fuses theme with reality. You can use guesthouse or living room with some rudimentary lights, an ironed bed sheet, or paper backdrops. It won’t be expensive and could save you a wad of cash for a studio. Even a hotel room might be a better option and give you the elements you need. It all depends on your concept. All of this works until you land that really big client or can afford to build your own studio, A studio gives extra advantages of an atmosphere where natural light is essentially non-existent. You regulate and control the environment with artificial light sources that can be purchased on the cheap on eBay or second-hand at a local camera store.

Outside shoots are different. Invest in some magazines or photography books, or even an online course to broaden your knowledge of this type of shooting. (READ: It ain’t easy Mr. Know-it-all!] The biggest factors are your positioning and time. Do it right and you will have beautiful dramatic results. Do it wrong and you’ve wasted a lot of time and paid models for nothing.

Speaking of models...

Talent matters...

If you have a lousy model, you aren’t going to get what you want. Quite frankly, you are going to fail. Models mean a lot and this isn’t the time to give someone a shot. You have to believe in who you choose. If want a successful shoot, don’t go cheap on the model. Figure out a price point and agree to it. You don’t want to be called out for being cheap. Despite most not having extra pounds on their frame, models have to eat too!

Finding someone privately or direct is a good start. Try Model Mayhem. You can post casting calls and your inbox will fill up depending on the assignment and rate you post. If you go the agency route, it will cost more and it will come with a fair amount of restrictions. Think long and hard on that. If you go the private route, make sure to download a model release and make sure it is signed before the day of the shoot. Rights should revert to you or your client alone. Models should be compensated properly and up front.

If you are going with a larger commercial shoot, residuals might have to be worked out and you need to be transparent with everything when you are dealing with talent. Don’t be tricky.

Teamwork makes the dream work. When choosing the crew, make sure you build one that has a “can do, will do, want to” mentality. Teaming a crew is the hardest thing you’ll do when planning a photo shoot. Everyone needs to understand your objectives and bring their best to the set. This is easier if you are shooting a larger scale print ad and your agency will have built in resources. Even better is when your models come with their own hair and makeup. They have their own synergy and their price points are pre-negotiated. If you’re working solo then you need to be diligent to set budgets, gain commitments, and get your team motivated.

So, who do you need on your crew? Like I said, if you’re going big you will need a wardrobe stylist, a set decorator, a makeup artist, a hairstylists, and a right hard catch-all production assistant.

Now that you have these steps, all you have to do is let your imagination run wild and get a group of people to buy into your wacky creative. Don't stop at speed bumps. Plow through them and seek out your country song that carves your place in the photography world.

When in doubt, call up the Media Guy.

I can walk you through it all.

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Go behind the scenes at a beach photo shoot:

Down the Rabbit Hole with Infomercials

Okay, so where am I?

Most of my regular readers know I am always on the search for that Big Idea. It's something I learned the importance of from a, intimate David Ogilvy talkback I scored tickets through a viscous corporate ladder climber I was dating at the time. Research and writing were the keys back then. Still are if you wan to know the truth. Today I am humbled by the announcement of my 12th and 13th lifetime Telly Awards. These are the super elite Gold Awards. I am honored to have such a great team around me to make this possible and elated those long hours looking for the “Big Idea” continue to pay off.

Here's the official Gold Award Winners Reel:

Reveling in these awards, sent me down a rabbit hole remembering one of my first big award, a local Emmy Award for an infomercial of sorts for my work with the legendary Pat Summerall on a United Airlines partnership I dreamed up when I was back at Leslie's Swimming Pool Supplies (laugh all you want about Leslie's and their name, but they had almost 500 stores across the States and they were a monster). Surely I wish I had a copy of this spot, but like many things pre-digital age, it's lost in the ether. My informercial was entirely different that the hallmarks of the informercial that aired late night before cable hit its stride.

Infomercials gained steam in the 1980s as a popular advertising medium after getting its start as a long-form 1940s Vitamix blender commercial. In the 1970s, the advertising format skyrocketed in San Diego (stay classy!) with a one-hour show running Sunday television. In 1982, the infomercials us older crown know and love aired, specifically for hair growth and restoration treatments. Then in 1984, the FCC regulations imposing time limits on advertising were lifted and they really soared. Couple that with the boon in self-help products and home cooking aids and it was game on.

Here's a rundown of my top infomericals:

Suzanne Somers
"ThighMaster"

Suzanne Somers was the mostly dimwitted blonde on “Three’s Company.” We didn't hear much from her after a holdout cost her the sweet gig on the popular sitcom and then all of the sudden she was back holding down court on late-night squeezing the odd-shaped ThighMaster between your legs. Women couldn't get enough (they sold 1o million units) and adolescent boys were glued to their television screens.

The Clapper
"Clap On, Clap Off"

Before smartphones and the real Internet, The Clapper introduced millions to the concept of home automation which begs the question: would Alexa exist without it?

Life Call
"I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!"

Back in the day, I was in the room and help conceptualize the iconic "I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!" commercial spot for Life Call. Yes we were laughed at. Yes, they wanted to fire us. Yes, they sold millions of units. Yes, they still run the same concepts today. No, I didn't get any royalties. Bugger!

Hair Club for Men
“I’m not only the Hair Club president, I’m also a client.”

Sy Sperling used the signature catch phrase, “I’m not only the Hair Club president, I’m also a client,” to sign off his Hair Club for Men infomercials. He was on television so much that I'm sure many college fraternities used his spots for drinking games. After an endorsement from Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees his hair club was greeted with "instant success" raking in $100 million annual in its peak years.

The "Gazelle" with Tony Little

The ponytailed Little with the hugh thighs called himself “America’s Personal Trainer.” Actually he's probably the "World's Personal Trainer" as his infomercials have aired in 81 different countries, selling almost 50 million fitness-related products. This 48-minute informercial ran almost nightly at one point:

RONCO

Ron Pompeil was the man. Nothing was out of his seller's hands: pasta machines, pocket fishing poles, smokeless ashtrays, pray-on hair, food dehydrators, BBQ machines, devices that scrambled eggs inside their shells. You name it, he sold it. Here's a sweet thirty minute spot for his Showtime BBQ and Rotisserie:

"OxiClean" with Billy Mays

When the loud, bearded Billy Mays hit your screen hawking hawking the mysterious powdered substance OxiClean, you listened. I mean how can he get red wine out of anything when you cannot? And the ad copy? It's amazing!:

It's amazing! Watch how OxiClean unleashes the power of oxygen making tough stains disappear like magic without fading or bleeding the colors. For pet messes, OxiClean is a must; it goes deep down, below the surface to get rid of the stain and the odor. Have you ever spilled chlorine bleach on your colored clothes? Well OxiClean is tough on stains without the damaging effects of chlorine bleach. If you save one pair of jeans, then OxiClean has paid for itself. Some clothes say no chlorine bleach, but OxiClean safely removes the stain, even on baby's clothes, it's the stain remover for the things that you love. Add a scoop of OxiClean to every load of laundry; it'll boost the stain removing power of your detergent. Don't just clean it, OxiClean it!

Watch the wonders of Oxiclean:

The TV Station Sign-off: Six Wasted Hours of Ad Revenue

Today, it's impossible to image the you could turn on the television and find nothing to watch. Yes, TV stations would simply shut down for the night. Back in the day, it cost too much to run programming overnight to a small audience without advertising revenue. Of course, the infomercial solved that problem.

Someone was always up last night, namely Hair Club president Sy Sperling or Suzanne Somers pimping her ThighMaster (but infomercials are part two of this column - coming soon!). Before that, the transmitter, located on a nearby mountaintop, would stop transmitting signals your television picture would go to static, Poltergeist-style. Then, in the fifties and sixties, television stations started to use the now famous RCA Indian Head test pattern. Instead of going to static, they would sign-off at the end of the day's programming was over and place this test pattern:

I always believe this test pattern was just a placeholder, however, it had a definitive purpose. Little did we know that that everything had a purpose. Test signals helped maintain the reception and display quality of the black and white analog televisions. Tt was used to measure the resolution of the signal then align the receiver to get the best possible picture (if that was possible before HDTV):

Here's a 1950's Phillips television showing a version of the test pattern sign off card:

In the late fifties, it dawned on station managers that this was valuable media real estate began adding their their station call letters for extra branding.

But then the stations added a video of a waving American flag playing the Star Spangled Banner and the whole paradigm shifted. Here's my all-time favorite sign-off from my local television station, channel 9, KHJ-TV:

A search around YouTube netted me some more TV station sign-offs, each with a regional flavor you would expect. 

WPVI-6 Philadelphia—The "cradle of liberty, first capital of the United States" leaned on American history with an orchestra blasting "America the Beautiful" as a camera swoops around the City of Brotherly Love...

KING-5 Seattle—Wild animals roam the wilderness as choir sings to the skies (as all Pacific Northwest sign-offs should). Hard to believe this was 1985...

KTZO-20 San Francisco—This affiliate showcased its employees via a dated montage and then turned the mic over to Jeanette MacDonald who sings "San Francisco" over aerial shots of the city.

WDIV-4 Detroit—Watch the local sign-off with an early nod to religious diversity. I'm sure you digg the Motown synthesizer version of the national anthem.

Team with the Royals to Boost your Brand

Okay so where am I?

I just opened the mail and declared that sometimes the USPS delivers some pretty things! In today's mail was lovely letter from the 25th Annual Communicator Awards honoring excellence in Marketing and Communications. Whenever you get a letter from an awarding body that starts with "CONGRATULATIONS!" it's got to be good. In this case it was better. My recent work earned their Award of Excellence (top award) in the Marketing Effectiveness category. Needless to say, I am thrilled beyond belief.

This got me thinking about personal branding and branding in general. You know who has great branding? The Royal Family of England, that's who.

Did you know that the Royal Family has its own website? They do. The address is “royal.uk” (catchy, right?), and it’s not your typical government website. While “whitehouse.gov” has some character, in terms of charm and personality, it pales in comparison to our UK counterpart.

According to Business Inside the Royal Family was worth just under $90 billion—contributing roughly $2.4 billion to the UK economy each year—though after the birth of Prince Louis and after Prince Harry’s recent nuptials, the dynasty’s value has undoubtedly surged.

Even more staggering than the family’s monetary value is their soaring popularity. In an age when the word “monarchy” feels archaic and out-of-style, Elizabeth II and her heirs maintain a massive global audience, and that acclaimed Netflix series devoted to The Queen. You could say Nielsen data don’t lie: Meghan and Harry’s wedding was watched by more than 29 million viewers in the U.S. alone. The Super Bowl might have them beat (the most recent bowl amassed over 103 million), but most brands would kill for that many spectators spread across 15 separate networks.

Most of the fascination is due to the fairy tale nature of it all and the desperate need for escapist television in this highly political (see: contentious) era. But we can’t ignore the fact that the Royal Family has cultivated this business for decades, and their branding is intentional and strategic. So, while your company may not reap the benefits of being one of the most iconic families in modern day history, there are still some things to learn from the Royals.

The Media Guy might know a thing or two about the Royals.

Up Close and Personal —More than anything, the Royal Family website is unabashedly personal, rife with smiling close-ups of the principal cast of characters. The site depicts the Queen and the rest of the royal cast as outgoing, generally cheery people who happen to exist in this opulent setting. It reinforces the argument that businesses should not back away from personality; the more your customers learn about you and your team on a personal level, the more trust they’ll develop in your brand. Whether you write copy in the first person, offer up opinions in your tweets, or publish your personal excursions on Instagram, you’ll inadvertently give your brand some much-needed authenticity.

Media Matters —The Royal Family’s site is not elaborate by any means, but it is populated with rich, varied content. The photos are a blend of formal, casual and candid, while the videos depict major milestones, provide unique perspectives on televised events, and offer behind-the-scenes looks at the happenings around Buckingham and Windsor. Scrolling through, you’re reminded how much we rely on visuals to fully understand a brand.

Luxury Hasn't Died, It Has Evolved —When the Luxury Marketing Council Worldwide gathered at Manhattan’s Pierre Hotel in 2018, the powers that be determined, not surprisingly, that modern luxury is all about “experience.” Scanning their well-curated Instagram page, it’s no doubt that the marketing masters behind the Royal Family are intent on delivering precisely that. From YouTube videos of Kate’s charitable acts to shots of Prince Harry high-fiving crowds of fans on the street… with each post, the Royal Family proves that luxury is about delivering riveting, relevant experiences and convincing your customers that they’re living each one firsthand.

Infusing your brand with personality can feel like a major risk. Your instinct might be that “personal” and “business” don’t mix…or that your daily life is not relevant to the products or services you’re offering. Trust the Media Guy, research shows that modern consumers want to know the names and faces behind their jeans, their socks, their music streaming services, and, if the Queen herself can pose for the occasional publicity photo and share her experiences with millions of viewers around the globe, then we can all do the same.

ANCESTRY.COM: You Should Have Called The Media Guy!

Okay, so where am I?

Well, it's been a long wait. Over two weeks to be exact and I'm still waiting by the phone awaiting a call from either Margo Georgiadis, CEO of Ancestry, or senior VP of U.S. Marketing Caroline Sheu...or both. Perhaps it will be a conference call, who knows? So, why should these two industry leaders ring up the independent Media Guy consultant? Well, have you seen their tone-deaf phone “Inseparable” commercial that lit up the airwaves back in April?

Set in the Antebellum South, a foggy pre-dawn scene shows an out-of-breath white man offering a wedding ring and a promise to flee to the North to his love interest, a (presumably enslaved) black woman:

“Abigail,” he says. “We can escape, to the North. There’s a place we can be together, across the border. Will you leave with me?”

But, before I prattle on about how the advertising vision of the Media Guy would have saved the genealogy company millions of dollars in bad will and publicity, let's watch the spot together:

I understand at the ad was most likely intended to be a romantic adaptation of how someone taking a DNA test ends up with muddle of geographic origins in their heritage. But it wound up as an discomforting blunder when critics correctly pointed out that the “forbidden love” plot was a story gone wrong because the pre-Civil War Deep South was largely defined by the ruthless sexual exploitation of black slave women by white slave owners. All of this brought disdain from the community at large.

What the hell is this @Ancestry?
Why do white people insist on romanticizing my Black female ancestors experiences with white men during slavery?

They were raped, abused, treated like animals, beaten, and murdered by white men. Stop with  the revisions.pic.twitter.com/cDEWdkzJPm

— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) April 18, 2019

With an IPO looming for the genealogical website, this mistake could have been costly. Ancestry quickly pulled the spot and apologized profusely. In a statement, the company told WIRED,  “Ancestry is committed to telling important stories from history,” the company said. “This ad was intended to represent one of those stories. We very much appreciate the feedback we have received and apologize for any offense that the ad may have caused.”

I have to say that this tightly worded apology—mostly likely crafted by Sheu—is a ton better than I would have written. Her experience at GAP, Inc. and her B.A. in Political Science and in East Asian Studies from UCLA, an M.A. in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley, and a J.D./M.B.A. from University of Chicago pales my degrees from UCLA for sure. But with "20 years of experience transforming marketing organizations to adapt to rapidly changing consumer and technology trends" you would figure that Ancestry would have never gotten into this mess to begin with.

A little vision (and a one-hour consulting session with the Media Guy) would have revealed so much just by me looking at the storyboards.

Oh, where to start?

Let's start with this litany of historical and cultural offenses shoehorned into the 30-second commercial:

• The notion that a white male protector could only liberate a black woman from slavery…
• That most mixed-race people in America today descend from tender, consenting relationships when the biggest historical reason is actually rape…
• Prior to 1861, it was legally impossible for slave women to file rape charges against a white man in Southern U.S. states, 
• That interracial relationship was even possible in this time and this place given the extreme power irregularities of the institution. And finally…
• That there was a promised land of equal opportunity in the “North.” (Breaking News: it wasn’t even close.)

Wow, that's a lot of errors in thirty seconds. I mean, clearly there were no history books allowed at these final planning sessions prior to their commercial shoot. But, hey, Ancestry was spinning some fairy tale that by filling up a small vial with your saliva that they can miraculously fill in the family tree branches that were severed by the transatlantic slave trade. Oh jeez.

They say when you are so close to a project or a situation, you can't see the forest among the trees and in this case, that idiom definitely applies. Some extra eyes from the outside would have identified all of this troubling content before filming began. What a waste of filming days and post production and that's not to mention the damage that could have leveled at their impending IPO.

As a descendant of Russian immigrants from the 1880's due to the state-sanctioned policies of Alexander III, trust me when I say that tracing family ties aren't so straightforward. Names were often changed to escape persecution and in the pre-Civil War Era, names of slaves were altered when they were sold to new owners. When you are doing a deep dive on your family history, the process of doing so unearths up painful truths you weren't expecting.

Reaching out to a diverse audience is important for Ancestry because their DNA database are overwhelmingly white. They tell a much hazier origin story for African Americans. I'm told that Ancestry can divide the 32,000-square-mile island of Ireland into 85 distinct genetic populations. For all of Africa, the company can only carve out nine. Recruiting a more diverse customer base would certainly help lift some of those limitations, and that's how this commercial came into play however it came off.

So here's my message to Margo Georgiadis and Caroline Sheu. I called you both and left messages. Two weeks have passed and I'm beginning to think you won't call me back, but you should and I'll answer 24/7, 365 days a year. My fees are small and a few hours along with a business class airline ticket will get you and in-person meeting and I'll save you the hassles of another misfire in the advertising arena. I have the midas touch wherever I go. Once upon a time I made falling in your home a cottage industry and convinced the New York Times that Syria was a top 10 destination.

Do yourselves a favor, don't say for a second time, "We should have called the Media Guy!" I'll be waiting with my out special set of media skills. This latest commercial shows that companies like Ancestry still need to prove they can be trusted with their media buys.

Previous "You Should Have Called the Media Guy" Columns:

Hong Kong Tourism Board
Burger King
H&M
The American Red Cross
Pepsi
Kellogg's
Anaheim Ducks
T-Mobile, Dove, McDonald's

Traveling Will Change Your Life

Okay, so where am I?

What am I always doing? Looking for that big idea. The ever elusive big idea. I get about two a two and one of them usually works out. I find those big ideas typically when I'm getting ready for a trip or actually on a trip. Traveling is my happy spot. My creative spot. The place where the juices flow and the ideas are crystalized.

Why is that you wonder?

It's as simple as traveling will change your life. It's as simple as when you're traveling, you experienced that tingle...that sensation of being reconciled with life itself. That tingle is is because when you when you travel, you open your mind. You become more tolerant. You're able to understand your prejudices and give yourself time to unravel it slowly as you live through your new vision of the world around you.

View Gallery in Flickr

Travel is the most authentic way to get to know the world, but also to really get to know the prejudices we carry around with us, without blinding ourselves to them . We automatically assume that our way of understanding life, our day to day living, is the correct one. And when we travel we discover “how strange” the other people are, and how “strange” we can be too.

“What strange customs these “foreigners” have!”, “Why do they do that?”, “He’s making a fool of himself…” These are phrases you’ve probably heard a number of times, or they might even be phrases that you yourself have pronounced.

View Gallery in Flickr

The biggest prejudice: “mine is right, yours is wrong.” We tend to have a kind of bias when we interpret the information we receive all around us. Whatever is our own, whatever is familiar to us, whatever we are used to seeing and doing…that is what we consider to be “normal”. Whatever doesn’t fit in with our own customs is “strange”. It’s as if there’s a dividing line between what is right and what is wrong. Between the proper way of doing and understanding things, and the strange, bizarre way of doing them.

To understand this better, let’s give an example. If you are a calm and composed person, think about how you felt at some point in your life when a sudden burst of anger challenged your powers of self-control. You probably felt strange and awkward at the same time, because people who don’t often get angry, often do not know how to get angry.

The truth is that even if we are normally calm and composed, anger is still a part of us, ready to explode. Our different nuances form and shape us. We shouldn’t try to deny or cover up essential parts of our being simply because they aren’t what we normally express.

View Gallery in Flickr

Whatever is our own, whatever is familiar to us, whatever we are used to seeing and doing, that is what is “normal”

Our culture shapes us, but it does not define us. Something similar happens when we travel. We shouldn’t claim that only our understanding of things comes from common sense, and that of others’ comes from a meaningless stroke of luck. People and their customs are shaped from their cultural heritage, social environment and surroundings.

Our surroundings shape and mould us from childhood. And so the experiences in which we relate to people who are different to us, when we leave our usual environment, travel and try out different routines – they are the ones that start to break our genetic mould. When we are able to look at what is “foreign” with the eyes of curiosity and not of prejudice, then we are taking a big step on the road to tolerance.

Claiming that our way of understanding life is the only correct and meaningful one is a very limited way of thinking and one that, rather than enriching us, will bring us poverty, poverty in our soul. We should understand that true wealth comes from the lessons we learn day by day in our lives. Lessons that make us more open and tolerant.

View Gallery on Flickr

Look at life with curiosity and with prejudice. If only we could stop contemplating our navel and take a look beyond – a look of generosity and healthy curiosity. A look that is a ticket to other souls, other ways of thinking, other ways of living. I rid myself of my prejudice and look at you, stranger, with open arms. With my soul ready to learn.

You will learn to examine your experiences. You will have time to continue to build yourself as a person, keeping what you want and getting rid of what you don’t want in your life. But if you relate to the world with your eyes closed, you will not be able to see anything. Only darkness. And sometimes a terrifying darkness at that. If you open them, you will see the light.

The light that opens you up to life … the light that will take you on the road to tolerance.

These Dopes Can Kill You!

Okay, so where am I?

Have you ever dealt with someone so thick you wanted to actually cry or just leave the room without a word?

This is where I am...dealing with an obstinate, uniformed workforce will make you ill. As a matter of fact, idiots in the office are just as harmful to your well-being as cigarettes, caffeine, or greasy food. I thought it was me who was being unreasonable but then I ran across an eye-opening study by Dr. Dagmar Andersson. She confirms that those dopes can kill you!

Dr. Andersson, says her team studied 500 heart attack patients, and was puzzled to find 62 percent had relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly blamed for heart attacks. “Then we questioned them about lifestyle habits, and almost all of these low-risk patients told us they worked with people so stupid they can barely find their way from the parking lot to their office. And their heart attack came less than 12 hours after having a major confrontation with one of these oafs.

“One woman had to be rushed to the hospital after her assistant shredded important company tax documents instead of copying them. A man told us he collapsed right at his desk because the woman at the next cubicle kept asking him for correction fluid — for her computer monitor.

“You can cut back on smoking or improve your diet,” Dr. Andersson says, “but most people have very poor coping skills when it comes to stupidity — they feel there’s nothing they can do about it, so they just internalize their frustration until they finally explode.”

Stupid co-workers can also double or triple someone’s work load, she explains.

“Many of our subjects feel sorry for the drooling idiots they work with, so they try to cover for them by fixing their mistakes. One poor woman spent a week rebuilding client records because a clerk put them all in the ‘recycle bin’ of her computer and then emptied it — she thought it meant the records would be recycled and used again.”

You can’t always choose the people you work with, but if a hire makes work harder for you and others you certainly have cause to complain. Of course, by taking action you might put this dumb coworker out of a job which is a tough thing to put on your shoulders, regardless of how incapable one may be. So, before taking action, you need to see the full picture. When you’re truly sure you’re dealing with a coworker you just can’t work with, here are different possible actions:

Find the root of the problem – they might just be dumb, poor learners, or don’t understand what you keep telling them and fear your reaction if they tell you. Give them a chance to offer an explanation. Maybe you are a terrible teacher and you just don’t realize it. Maybe they just struggle with certain tasks and don’t know what to do. In this case, you can ask how to teach them and work with them a little more closely. Of course, it is not your responsibility to spend a lot of your time educating a coworker. They should come in mostly knowledgeable about how to do their job. You shouldn’t spend hours training them in basic tasks they should know how to do, unless you have the time and the desire to help someone else improve. Most of us have our actual work, however, and can’t devote this kind of time—especially when we’re not sure we’ll actually get anywhere. But if you can spare some moments each day, you can help someone struggling who will, in turn, remember what you did and want to help you in return some day.

Ask another coworker to try – ask someone on your level or above you to work with this problematic coworker for a little while and assess the situation. Your smarter coworkers may not find a problem. If they don’t, you have to consider that you have some sort of issue with this “dumb” coworker and need to resolve it.

Talk to a Manager, Boss, or Human Resources – human resources operates, to some extent, to help solve issues between employees. If someone doesn’t carry their weight, employers want to know. They, presumably, don’t want to waste their money on an underperforming member of the team. If you decide to report the problem to the company, follow this two-step plan:

Schedule an appointment with HR –  explain the issue in as unbiased of a manner as you can. Suggest a few options that don’t include termination.

Find humor in their stupidity – sometimes dumb coworkers are here to stay despite their lack of intelligence. Sometimes you’re the only one who thinks they’re dumb. Regardless of the situation, if you fail to resolve it through the above means you should stop fighting the battle and relax. Try to find the humor in their stupidity. Replace the frustration with a laugh. If you didn’t have to work with them, you’d probably find a lot of their actions funny.

If you don’t try some of these things, trust me (and Dr. Andersson), those dopes will kill you!