When Respect Became a Battlefield

You were born male or female. You were raised, hopefully with good values, and by your early twenties you became an independent adult.

Somewhere along the way, you’ve decided to identify with different pronouns and reject the gender you were born as. Yet the one thing that seems certain is the level of offense taken when someone respectfully says, “sir” or “ma’am.”

The people around you aren’t trying to insult you. They’re addressing you based on what they genuinely see. They’re not mind readers, and they’re not trying to make a political statement.

So give real life a try. When you’re out in public, be kind. Say hello. Smile. Treat people with the same respect you’d like to receive.

And remember this: “they/them” refers to more than one person. You’re one individual, standing in front of another human being. Sometimes a simple “hello” and a little grace go a lot further than taking offense over words that were never meant to hurt. Because no matter how you feel you should be addressed, the mirror in front will never lie… you are a girl or a boy.

Children in the Wild

Before anyone grabs their pitchforks and labels me “anti-child,” hear me out.

I completely understand why we have children. It’s literally how the human race survives. We carry on family names, continue bloodlines, build future generations, and hopefully leave the world in capable hands.

I get it. But… Good Lord, do children annoy the hell out of me.

Actually, let me correct that. It’s usually not the children.

It’s the adults.

Kids are exactly what they’re supposed to be. They’re learning every second of every day. They have no filters. They ask embarrassing questions. They cry because their chicken nuggets touched the ketchup. They laugh at absolutely nothing. They melt down because the blue cup wasn’t the blue enough blue cup.

They’re kids. The problem starts when the adults seem to think the rest of us signed up to participate in the experience.

We’ve all been there.

You’re sitting in a restaurant trying to enjoy dinner and a conversation, and a child is doing laps around the tables like they’re training for the Olympics. Someone is screaming at a volume usually reserved for tornado sirens. A grocery store aisle becomes a playground. Parents stare at their phones while everyone else silently wonders if this is a social experiment.

Here’s my question… Why?

If you choose to have children, that’s your decision. If you choose not to have children, that’s your decision. If you’ve already raised yours and survived those years, congratulations, you’ve earned your medal.

So why is everyone expected to tolerate someone else’s lack of parenting?

Notice I didn’t say “someone else’s children.”

I said “someone else’s lack of parenting.” There’s a massive difference.

Children need to experience restaurants, grocery stores, airports, and public places. That’s how they learn to become functioning adults.

But learning requires teaching not ignoring.

Sometimes teaching means saying no.

Sometimes teaching means taking them outside until they calm down.

Sometimes teaching means leaving altogether because today just isn’t the day.

That isn’t punishment. That’s parenting.

I don’t expect children to sit perfectly still and speak in whispers. That’s fantasy.

I expect adults to recognize when their child’s behavior has crossed the line from “kids being kids” into “everyone else is now part of this family outing whether they wanted to be or not.”

Public spaces belong to everyone.

Families. Couples. Older adults. People without children. People who just finished a twelve-hour shift and want one peaceful meal. Everyone.

Respect shouldn’t disappear the moment someone becomes a parent.

Maybe that’s the real issue. We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that asking parents to… well… parent… is offensive.

It isn’t. It’s respectful. Respectful to your child. Respectful to the people around you. And respectful to the idea that sharing public spaces means remembering they belong to all of us, not just the loudest person in the room.

Now, before the comments explode…

I’m not saying children shouldn’t be allowed in public.

I’m saying adults should.

What’s your take? Am I completely off base, or has “kids will be kids” become an excuse for “parents don’t have to parent?”

What Makes a Great Employee?

Since I was about fifteen years old, I’ve been an employee somewhere. Every job taught me something, but the biggest lesson wasn’t how to flip burgers, stock shelves, or answer calls.

It was how to work.

More importantly, it was how to be a teammate.

I was taught two simple rules early on:

Never let your boss catch you standing around.
Never let your boss do your work.

Those two lessons have stayed with me for decades.

To me, a great employee isn’t the loudest person in the room or the one constantly reminding everyone how hard they work. A great employee shows up on time. They don’t spend their shift complaining. They’re confident in their abilities but humble enough to keep learning. They finish the job correctly the first time because doing it right matters.

And when the shift is over?

They don’t sprint for the door while someone else is drowning.

They stay. They help.

Because they understand something that too many people have forgotten: when one teammate struggles, the whole team struggles.

The best employees don’t need to be told what to do next. They always find something productive. They take pride in their work, no matter how small the task. They don’t participate in workplace gossip, and they certainly don’t become the source of the drama.

Work isn’t high school. It’s a team sport.

For years, I was the employee. Today, I’m the boss. Ironically, I still think I was a better employee than I am a boss.

When I watch everyone clock out and one employee is left buried with dishes, cleaning, or closing duties, I don’t stand back and supervise.

I grab a towel. I pick up a mop. I jump in.

Because that’s what teammates do.

Titles don’t make people leaders. Actions do.

Someday, every employee gets a reputation. Some become the person management worries about every time they’re scheduled. Others become the person everyone hopes is working because they know the job will get done.

Which one are you becoming?

The wake-up call may never come for some people. But if it does, don’t waste it. Be the employee your coworkers are thankful to work beside.

Be the employee your manager can count on without a second thought.

Be the kind of worker a company is proud to have. Because people may forget what job you had…

But they’ll never forget what kind of teammate you were.

Welcome to Common Sense University

If I had unlimited money, I wouldn’t build another sports stadium or luxury resort.

I’d build a school. Not a school for children. A school for adults.

I’d call it Common Sense University, or CSU for short!

The admissions requirements would be simple: be over eighteen years old and be willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, you don’t have everything figured out.

The curriculum would be unlike anything offered anywhere else.

The first course would be called Decision Making 101.

Students would learn how to gather information, think critically, and make reasonable decisions without immediately consulting social media, a conspiracy theory website, or that one cousin who somehow knows everything despite accomplishing nothing.

Next would be

Efficiency and Effectiveness.

This class would teach people how to complete tasks without turning a five-minute job into a three-hour production. Topics would include planning ahead, basic organization, and the revolutionary concept of putting things back where you found them.

Then we’d move into one of the most important courses in the entire program:

Helping Others Before Helping Yourself.

Students would discover that holding a door, returning a shopping cart, helping someone carry groceries, or simply asking, “Are you okay?” does not result in personal injury.

In fact, they might learn that communities function far better when people occasionally think about someone other than themselves.

Another required class would be Perspective 201.

Before judging someone for being rude, distracted, or having a bad day, students would be taught to consider a radical possibility:

Maybe that person is going through something you know nothing about.

Perhaps they just lost a loved one. Maybe they’re struggling financially. Maybe they’re carrying a burden that would bring most people to their knees.

The lesson is simple: you rarely know the entire story.

Which brings us to the capstone course:

Kindness Without Conditions.

Students would learn how to be friendly when it’s easy and how to remain respectful when it isn’t.

They would practice smiling, saying thank you, showing patience, and treating people with dignity even when disagreements arise.

Graduation requirements would be strict.

Students must successfully navigate a grocery store without blocking an entire aisle for a 20 minute chat with a fellow shopper.

They must merge into traffic without causing a regional crisis.

They must survive a restaurant visit without treating the staff like personal servants.

And they must return at least ten shopping carts to their proper location.

Only then would they receive their diploma.

Of course, none of this school will ever exist. But maybe it should.

Because somewhere along the way, we’ve become highly educated in many subjects while remaining surprisingly uneducated in the simple skills that make society function.

A little more common sense. A little more patience. A little more kindness.

If enough people enrolled in those classes, the world might become a much better place.

The Roofing Crew

The other day, I looked out the window and noticed a roofing crew pulling into my neighbor’s driveway. The job wasn’t small either, a house and a detached garage. What happened over the next few hours was something most people would barely notice, but it ended up being a lesson in business, teamwork, and work ethic.

The first thing that stood out was how organized the crew was. This wasn’t a group of guys randomly swinging hammers and hoping for the best. This was a well-oiled machine.

Two men worked on the roof tearing off the old shingles. Supporting them were two additional workers whose sole responsibility was keeping the debris moving and making sure nothing piled up or slowed the process. On the ground, three more crew members stayed busy. Two gathered and stacked old shingles while a third operated some type of powered wagon, constantly moving around the property collecting debris as fast as it was generated.

Then another crew member stepped in, operating a lift that delivered bundles of new shingles directly to the roof.

As soon as the old roof was stripped away, the operation shifted gears. The two roofers immediately began installing the new shingles while the support crew opened bundles, staged materials, and ensured the installers never had to stop working. There was no standing around. No confusion. No wasted movement. Every person knew exactly what needed done.

The remarkable part?

The entire project was completed in less than four hours.

Watching them, it became obvious that the speed wasn’t the impressive part. The teamwork was.

Every employee had a specific role. Every employee understood that role. And every employee executed it with confidence. Nobody was trying to do someone else’s job. Nobody was waiting to be told what to do next. There was no horseplay, no distractions, and no wasted energy. From the moment they arrived until the last piece of debris was hauled away, it was all business.

As a business owner, that observation hit home.

Success isn’t always about having the most talented individual employees. It’s about having a team that works together toward a common goal. When everyone understands their responsibilities and trusts the people around them to do theirs, incredible things can happen. Productivity increases. Stress decreases. Customers are happier. The entire operation runs smoother.

The opposite is also true.

When employees don’t know their responsibilities, lack confidence in their abilities, or require constant supervision, business owners find themselves stepping in to finish tasks, solve preventable problems, and carry burdens they shouldn’t have to carry. Instead of leading the business forward, they’re stuck dragging it along.

The roofing crew reminded me of something simple but powerful: great teams aren’t built by accident. They’re built through training, accountability, experience, and a shared commitment to doing the job right.

Maybe that’s why it’s worth occasionally stopping to watch people work.

Whether it’s a roofing crew, a construction site, a restaurant kitchen, a mechanic’s shop, or a landscaping company, there is something to be learned from people who take pride in their craft. Sometimes the lesson isn’t even about the job they’re doing.

Sometimes the lesson is about discipline. Sometimes it’s about teamwork.

And sometimes it’s a reminder to take a hard look at ourselves and ask a simple question:

Am I helping my team move the job forward… or am I the reason it slows down?

That’s a lesson worth learning from a roofing crew!

Rent or Contribution: One or the Other

I came across an article this week asking a simple question:

Should adult children pay rent if they’re still living at home?

Like most parenting questions, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Every family is different, every situation is different, and every parent will have their own opinion.

I can only speak from experience.

I was one of those adult children who lived with my parents longer than I probably should have. My parents never charged me rent. Not once.

But that doesn’t mean I got a free ride.

The grass was always cut. During the winter, the driveway was always shoveled. I did my own laundry, cleaned up after myself, helped around the house, and contributed where I could. I wasn’t paying with a check every month, but I was paying with effort, responsibility, and respect.

That’s why I think the real question isn’t whether your adult children should pay rent.

The real question is whether they’re contributing.

Every adult living under your roof should be helping carry the load in some way. Maybe that’s paying rent. Maybe it’s helping with utilities. Maybe it’s grocery shopping, household chores, yard work, maintenance, or caring for younger siblings.

What matters isn’t the method.

What matters is teaching responsibility.

As parents, our job isn’t just to provide a roof over our children’s heads. Our job is to prepare them for the day they have to provide one for themselves.

Teach them how to pay bills.

Teach them how to budget.

Teach them how to grocery shop.

Teach them how to clean a house, maintain a vehicle, mow a lawn, and solve problems without someone doing it for them.

Teach them the value of work and the importance of integrity.

Because one day you’ll be gone, and the world won’t care that they never learned how to stand on their own.

If you raise them the right way, they’ll eventually leave the nest with confidence and succeed on their own.

If you don’t?

Go ahead and skip the rent.

You may be preparing for something much more expensive:

A lifetime roommate.

Waiting in Queue of Life

You ever sit on hold during a phone call or stuck in a drive-thru line and start thinking, this is taking way longer than it should?

You check the clock. You shift in your seat. You start debating… Do I hang up? Do I pull away? Or do I just keep waiting?

Lately, that’s exactly what my life feels like.

Like I’m in a queue. Waiting.

Waiting on answers about my health. Waiting on doctors to decide what comes next. Waiting on someone else to come up with a plan for my life.

I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to do… and I’m still here.bStill waiting.

And then there’s the bigger question that creeps in when things get quiet…

Where am I actually going? How long is it going to take to get there?

And the one that hits the hardest… Do I ever get there at all?

Because I don’t mind working. I never have. I love cooking. I love creating. I love giving people something they enjoy.

But right now? I don’t get to do that.

And maybe one day I will again. Maybe I’ll get back to doing what I’m good at, what I love.

But until then… I’m stuck in the queue.

And the longer I stand here, the more I start thinking about everything I’m missing.

Not just retirement, that fantasy we all chase like it’s guaranteed, but the simple things: Travel. Time with people who matter. Sitting in a chair with a book and no interruptions.

I see people my age doing those things… and yeah, there’s a little jealousy there. I won’t pretend there isn’t.

Because while they’re moving forward… I’m still waiting for my number to be called.

They say timing is everything. That everyone’s opportunity comes at a different moments.

Maybe that’s true. But waiting has a way of messing with your head.

It makes you compare timelines. It makes you question your path.

And if you sit there long enough… it starts to break your faith in the whole process.

People love to say, “Be patient. Trust the process.” But what if the process never calls your name?

So then you start asking different questions…

Is this time supposed to be preparation? Am I building something while I’m stuck here?

Because if I’m being honest… I don’t feel prepared for some peaceful, easy life down the road.

And that’s when the hardest truth shows up. We love to blame external factors, bad timing, bad luck, things outside our control.

And sure, some of that is real. But not all of it. Some of the reasons I’m still in this line?

They’re mine. Bad decisions. Wasted money. Choices that felt small at the time but stacked up over years.

Nothing intentional. But real, nonetheless. And those things? They don’t just disappear.

They stand right in front of you… holding your place in line.

So for now… I stay on hold. In the queue.

Not because I love it. Not because I believe in it.

But because I don’t know what happens if I step out of it. And maybe that’s the real question… How long do you stay in line before you finally decide… to hang up?

Growth Over Ego

The moment you stop defending… is the moment you start improving

“I used to think being right meant I was winning. Turns out, it just meant I wasn’t learning.”

Back in the 90’s, my family owned a small dive bar in Follansbee, West Virginia. Behind the bar hung a simple sign:

“Politics, religion, and high school football are prohibited.”

Not because those topics weren’t important, but because they were guaranteed to turn a conversation into an argument, and an argument into something worse. Everyone had an opinion. More importantly, everyone believed theirs was the right one.

Looking back now, that sign wasn’t really about avoiding conflict.
It was about managing ego.

And ego shows up everywhere.

It shows up in business.
It shows up in leadership.
It definitely shows up when you’re dealing with people.

I’ve seen it firsthand with staff over the years. You can explain exactly how you want something done… clearly, repeatedly, and still watch people default back to their own way. It’s easy in those moments to think, “They’re not listening.”

But growth forces you to ask a harder question:
“Am I communicating this in a way that actually connects?”

Because leadership isn’t about being right. It’s about being understood.

Before owning a business, I spent time in law enforcement. And like a lot of people in that field, confidence comes with the territory. You have to trust your instincts and make decisions quickly.

But there’s a fine line between confidence and ego.

If I’m being honest, there were times I didn’t think I was wrong, often enough to cost me opportunities to learn. And I saw others take it even further, where being right wasn’t just a belief… it was their identity. And that’s a dangerous place to live.

Because the moment your identity is tied to being right, you stop being open to being better.

One of the best reminders I’ve come across didn’t come from business or law enforcement… it came from the mats.

At my jiu-jitsu gym, there’s a decal on the front door:

“Leave Your Ego At The Door.”

And inside one of my gis, it says:

“Flow without ego.”

You can’t learn if you’re trying to prove something. You can’t improve if you’re too busy defending yourself.

The mat has a way of humbling you real quick. It doesn’t care about your opinions, your past, or your excuses. It just shows you where you stand and where you need to grow.

That lesson applies everywhere.

In conversations.
In leadership.
In life.

There’s a quote from Charlie Kirk that fits this idea well:

“You should be constantly testing your beliefs against others. If your ideas are strong, they’ll hold up. If they’re not, you’ve just learned something.”

That’s the shift. Ego wants to win the argument. Growth wants to understand why it was wrong.

And the truth is, most of us walk around thinking we’re open-minded… until we’re challenged. That’s when ego shows up. That’s when we defend instead of listen. Someone once told me, “it’s hard to listen when your mouth is always open” They weren’t wrong.

But if you can pause in that moment, just long enough to ask, “What if I’m missing something?” That’s where real growth starts.

Not in proving a point. But in being willing to reconsider it. Because at the end of the day, being right doesn’t make you better.

Getting better does.

So the next time you feel the need to defend your position… ask yourself—are you protecting your ego, or pursuing growth?

If A Friend Asks For Help, You Help Them

Anyone who has watched the TV series Letterkenny knows the show is full of great one-liners. The kind that make you laugh, rewind, and repeat them for weeks, maybe even years.

But one line from the show has always stuck with me more than the others:

“When a friend asks for help, you help them.”

It sounds simple. Almost too simple. But the older I get, the more I realize how rare that mindset actually is.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I take certain things in life a little more seriously than most people. But when it comes to helping friends, acquaintances, or even complete strangers, if someone needs help, I get up and go.

I wasn’t always like this. Somewhere along the road of life, something changed in me.

I think a big part of that shift came after my best friend took his own life. Losing someone like that forces you to look at the world differently. It makes you pay attention to the quiet struggles people carry. It makes you realize how important it is to show up for people.

I know one thing without a doubt, Mikey was always there. No matter what, if anyone needed help, he showed up.

I just wish we all could have been there for him when he needed us the most.

That’s when I started my Acknowledge. Care. Tell. page and got my QPR certification so I could help others who might be struggling. Most of that work focuses on mental health, but the truth is helping people doesn’t stop there.

If someone needs help, physical, emotional, whatever…. I try to be there.

A best friend bought a new house and needed a massive stair chair lift removed. The kind of job that makes you question your life decisions halfway through it. Heavy, awkward, and absolutely miserable to move.

But he asked for help. So I showed up.

Another time a friend got his truck buried deep in a mud hole in the woods in Fernwood Forest. His call for help came at 2 a.m. Most people would roll over and let that phone go to voicemail.

Instead, I grabbed the keys to my old Toyota 4×4 and headed out into the forest to pull him out.

I even helped my brother-in-law shovel his deck after a snowstorm while I was still in a sling after surgery. Mostly so my sister wouldn’t be mad.

Because that’s the rule. When a friend asks for help, you help them.

Now here’s the part I’ve noticed over the years. Not everyone lives by that rule.

Some people won’t get off the couch. Some people suddenly become “busy.” Some people are great at accepting help but mysteriously unavailable when the roles reverse.

And I’m not saying that to complain. It’s just something you start to notice if you pay attention. You quietly keep a mental note of who shows up… and who doesn’t when the bat signal goes out.

But here’s the thing. You shouldn’t help people because you expect something in return. You help because it’s the right way to live.

And if there’s one piece of advice I can give anyone reading this, it’s this:

If a friend asks for help… you help them.

It might be inconvenient. It might be heavy. It might be 2 a.m. in the woods.

But showing up for people is one of the simplest and most powerful things we can do in this life.

Pride in the Small Things

I was watching a scene from A Memory of a Killer recently that stuck with me.

In the scene, a young guy finishes washing dishes and thinks he’s done. The boss checks them and tells him to do them again because they aren’t clean enough. The kid protests, saying someone else doesn’t even do dishes. The boss responds with something simple but powerful: when his own son had that job at the same age, the dishes were spotless because he had pride in his work.

When the kid shrugs and says, “It’s just dishes,” the boss gives the real lesson.

It’s not about the dishes.

It’s about being given a task and doing it right.

That scene resonated with me because it reminded me of something I learned long before I ever ran a business.

My first job started at midnight.

I worked for the city park and pool from midnight until eight in the morning. While most people were sleeping, I was cleaning bathhouses and helping with pool maintenance. It wasn’t glamorous work. Nobody was applauding the guy scrubbing floors in the middle of the night.

But looking back, those hours taught me something important: the size of the job doesn’t determine its importance. The pride you take in doing it does.

Later on, when I worked for a tree service, I learned the same lesson again. After the cutting was done, I was told to rake and sweep the yard and the street. Nothing fancy about that job either. But I made sure that place was spotless when I finished. The yard looked better than when we arrived.

That’s when it really clicked for me.

Small tasks aren’t meaningless. They’re where character is created.

Anyone can step up when the moment is big and everyone is watching. But the people who take pride in the small jobs, the unnoticed ones, the ones nobody brags about, those are the people you can trust with bigger responsibilities.

Great responsibility isn’t handed out randomly. It’s earned in the smallest tasks.

Because the way someone handles a simple job tells you exactly how they’ll handle a complicated one.

The task may be small, but the character it reveals never is.