Category Archives: Life Lessons

HR Pros! How often are you going to court?

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There’s one thing we as HR pros are pretty consistent on. We never want to go to court! We do just about anything to mitigate risk for ourselves and our organizations.  The first rule of HR Club is don’t go to court!

Now, that’s how most HR pros feel.  I don’t.  I don’t believe it’s HR’s job to mitigate risk. I believe it’s HR’s job to advise our decision makers of risk. Of course, if you are a decision maker, in HR, then it’s your job to mitigate risk over what you’re responsible for. All that being said, I’m in the minority of that opinion.

So, why do I feel this way?  It’s all numbers to me. Check this out from FloridaOvertimeLawyer.com:

  • In 2014, there were 88,778 Employment Related Charges Filed in the U.S.
  • In 2014, from those charges, a total of $372,100,000 dollars was awarded to the winners of those cases.
  • That averages out to just: $4,191.35 per case.

Here’s the reality of employment related cases:

  • Most cases are won by the employer.
  • Employee and Past Employees believe their cases are worth millions.
  • Most end up settling for a few thousand dollars.

First, I’m not advising you to not be safe and just go all willy-nilly and go to court!  Don’t be stupid.  Also, don’t allow yourself and your organization to be held hostage by an employee or past employee threatening a lawsuit. Most you can settle for way less than you can ever believe!

When I first started in HR I was always shocked by how small of amount of money it would take to make ‘problems’ go away, from a legal standpoint. The numbers above say the same thing. Sure, there is always a risk of a big score.  Usually, the companies that get hit with those are truly doing something very bad.  If you’re doing good work and trying to follow the letter of the law, rarely do those cases turn into major scores for employees.

Do you want to go to court? Of course not.  You, also, don’t want to allow your organization to be bullied by an employee who is taking advantage of your fear of going to court.  Judges are really smart people. They see through most con-artists pretty quickly.  I’ve been to court on employment matters a number of times, and each time the judge was fair to my organization, and called out bullshit when they saw it.

Do good work. Do good by your employees. Don’t allow your organization to do bad stuff. Trust our legal system will do what’s right.  Don’t allow yourself to be held hostage!

3 Things HR Pros Should Never Apologize For!

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I think HR Pros apologize way too much, and I got the idea from the Fast Company article – “3 Things Professional Women Should Stop Apologizing For“, which are:

  1. Their Financial Expectations (I.E., pay us the same!)
  2. Their Physical Appearance (I.E., Sorry we aren’t club-ready – I was up with a sick kid all night!)
  3. Their Professional Accomplishments (I.E., Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t brag about what I do great!)

It’s a great article, check it out.  This got me thinking about all things we Apologize for in HR – that we should stop apologizing for – so here’s the Top 3 Things HR Pros should stop apologizing for:

1. You Getting Fired!  Oh, boy this could be #1, #2 and #3!  I can’t tell you how many HR folks I’ve trained over the past 20 years that I’ve specifically said: “When you let this person go, Don’t apologize!”  I mean truly, what are you saying! “I’m sorry you are terrible at your job or made the decision to sexually harass your co-worker,  you’re fired!”  When you really stop and think about it, it even sounds funny.

2. You Not Getting Promoted.  This is almost the same as apologizing for getting fired.  Instead of apologizing to someone for not getting promoted, how about you give them a great development plan so they can actually get promoted!  Organizations can be big hairy breathing things, and sometimes decisions are made and you won’t know the reasons.  HR Pros shouldn’t apologize for you not getting promoted, but they should help you navigate the political and organizational landscape.

3. You not liking your Boss, your Job, your Pay.  Ugh!  We tend to apologize for all these personal ‘happy’ choices a person makes.  The last time I checked, I never forced anyone to take a job, or forced them to accept the pay I was offering them, or forced them to work in the occupation or career they chose.  These are their own personal choices, if you don’t like it, LEAVE!  Go be happy somewhere else.  I hope that you’ll be happy here, but I can’t force you to be happy. I’ll try and give you a solid leader, with good pay and challenging work, but sometimes what I see as solid, good and challenging might not meet your expectations.  That’s when you need to make a happiness decision!

So, what should you apologize for a HR Pro?  I can think of two things that I apologize for on a regular basis:

1) Things I can Control (If I control it, and I screw it up, I need to offer you an apology);

2) Surprises!  (I might not be able to control a surprise, but they suck when it comes to business and your livelihood.  I apologize for surprises because in HR it’s my job to make sure those don’t happen to you as an employee).

The Non-Smoker Smoke Break!

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Let’s break down some math on the amount of time smokers take, paid, in smoke breaks daily: 

An average smoker smokes 15 cigarettes per day. I’m going to assume that when awake the smoker smokes about 1 cigarette per hour, so that’s 40 cigarettes per week smoked at work.  It takes about 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette. 

I’m going to assume that it takes probably 5 minutes round trip to get to your designated smoking area, 5 minutes to smoke your cigarette, so 10 minutes per break. I’ll say a good worker only smokes 6 cigarettes on the clock, so 60 minutes per day, one hour, paid to smoke. 5 hours per week paid, to smoke, 255 hours per year to smoke.

Is everyone following me? 

255 hours of paid smoke breaks – or basically taking an in-office vacation for roughly 6 1/2 week per year, on top of their actual away-from-office vacation time. 

So, what I’m trying to get to is how can we/HR build in non-smoker smoke breaks!? We know HR won’t do that! Can you imagine an official policy to take breaks not to smoke!? Does anyone have an official Smoke Break policy in today’s world? 

Here’s my idea: 

  1. If you don’t smoke and you have a co-worker that does smoke, just go out with them every single time they smoke. In fact, get a group of people to go with them and build and strengthen relationships, just don’t try to breath too much! 
  2. Petition to get paid 12.5% more than someone who smokes, because that’s basically how much more your working than the average smoker. 
  3. Take a two-hour lunch break and when HR tells you that you can’t do that, take them into a conference room and run them through the math on a white board! 

I don’t understand smoke breaks. It’s kind of like sexual harassment. For the longest time we thought it was completely normal for a boss to sleep with his secretary and now we know it’s very wrong! 

I’ll be honest. I feel the same way about how it became the norm to offer free coffee at work. No one has every offered me free diet Mt. Dew at work! (I take that back, my friend Jim D’Amico did at Celenese when I went to visit!) 

So, we let people go take smoke breaks, paid, and it’s somehow completely fine. 5 hours per week, paid. Completely fine, to actually for real not do work. Just stand outside and slowly kill yourself and you get paid for it! How great is work!? 

Let’s face it, I’m not actually mad at smokers, I’m super jealous! I can’t tell you how hard it is for me not to start smoking knowing all the great benefits you get! I’ve actually tried hanging outside with smokers, but because I was in HR, and didn’t smoke, I think they thought I was trying to get them in trouble or spying on them. I wasn’t, I just wanted all that free time off! 

I’ve been thinking about starting that meditation, mindfulness crap. That might work. I could just randomly stop working, sit down in the middle of the hall all criss-cross-applesauce and just put on some headphones and close my eyes. Make people walk around me and my mindfulness break! 

I wonder what HR would do? “Hey, Tim, we’re not paying you to relax, get your butt back to work! Now, if you want to get all jacked up on nicotine, that’s fine, get off the floor and go light one up!” 

Can we talk about the Kevin Hart Academy Award thing!?

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If you haven’t seen or heard, comedian Kevin Hart was asked to host the Oscars. It’s a big deal for an entertainer to get that gig, 25-30 million viewers big! After it was announced, some news outlets ran some stories about some homophobic tweets that Kevin did in 2009, 2010, and 2012.

The tweets are definitely insensitive. If you had an employee sending out those tweets, you would have a problem on your hands. Kevin is a comedian, and he truly believes he was being funny. He hasn’t sent tweets like that for the last five+ years.

The Academy asked Kevin to apologize. Kevin said he already apologized for those tweets and that is old business. The Academy said apologize or step down. He stepped down. He then went on Instagram and explained himself and why he wasn’t apologizing –

“I chose to pass, I passed on the apology. The reason why I passed is that I’ve addressed this several times. This is not the first time this has come up, I’ve addressed it. I’ve spoken on it.”

Hollywood Reporter did a poll of over 2200 adults and asked what they thought and here were some of the results:

  • 42% of viewed Hart as favorable, 14% viewed the Academy as favorable. (the rest in the middle)
  • 56 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “An old social media post does not represent the person who posted it and has no influence on my opinion of someone.”
  •  44 percent agreed with the sentiment, “Social media posts are a form of expression and influence my opinion of someone regardless of how old the post is.”

GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said of Hart’s stepping down, “Hart’s apology to LGBTQ people is an important step forward, but he missed a real opportunity to use his platform and the Oscars stage to build unity and awareness.” I agree with Ellis, I would have loved to see Kevin come on and use his humor and influence to show people who he truly is and what he stands for.

This is some real life stuff.

We have employees. We have friends. We have family. We ourselves have said things and posted things for any number of reasons that we might probably don’t stand behind, but it catches up to us and now someone makes to make a big deal about it. There is a ton of learning here. I love comedy! I can put what a comedian says in the context that it’s a joke and it might be 100% the opposite of what they truly believe.

There’s a big part about Comedy is about pushing the line of what we feel is acceptable. We hear someone say something on a comedy stage that you would never hear in public and shock and awkwardness makes you laugh, not necessarily because you believe the statement, but because of how ludicrous it is.

What Kevin Hart does on Twitter is very different from what we see from other non-comedians on social media. That’s a huge difference, but Kevin doing it makes some feel they can do it. Again, it’s been a long while since he’s done this, and I think the Academy was wrong in not standing behind Kevin and saying, “Kevin has addressed these past tweets and apologized in the past, we won’t ask him to do that again, the Kevin we know and love is a man of…” That’s all that had to happen, and all of this would have gone away.

I think he and the Academy missed an opportunity to speak about this on one of the largest stages around. To bring awareness to a subject that hurts many people. 14 and 15-year-old boys still use “gay” as a negative when joking candidly with their friends because they don’t hear from people like Kevin Hart saying that it’s not a negative. Finding ways to make jokes using negative phrases and turning them into positive phrases, and yes it can be done and it can be funny.

I do not think something you posted on social media should follow you around for years if you’ve addressed and apologized for it, but it does, and it will. The cost of education at every age is super expensive. Kevin found out how expensive it can be at a very high level.

What do you think?

The 12 Steps of a Recovery Passionate A**hole!

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I wrote a post a while back titled, “The 5 Things HR Leaders Need to Know About Developing Employees“. In that post I had a paragraph:

When I was young in my career, I was very ‘passionate’. That’s what I liked calling it – passionate.  I think the leaders I worked with called it, “career derailer”.  It took a lot for me to understand what I thought was a strength, was really a major weakness.  Some people never will gain this insight.  They’ll continue to believe they’re just passionate when in reality they’re really just an asshole.

I then had a reader send me a message and basically said, “This is me!” And I was like, “That was me too!” And then we kissed. Okay, we didn’t kiss, but it’s great to find another like yourself in the wild!

The reality is, I’m a recovering Passionate Asshole.

What’s a “Passionate Asshole” who are asking yourself? Here’s my definition. A passionate asshole is a person who feels like they are more about the success of the company than anyone else. I mean everyone else. They care more than everyone! And because we care so much, we treat people poorly who we feel don’t care as much as us!

Passionate assholes truly believe in every part of their being they’re great employees. You will not be able to tell us any different. They are usually high performing in their jobs, which also justifies even more that they care more. But, in all of this, they leave a wake of bad feelings and come across like your everyday basic asshole.

You know at least one of these people. They’re usually younger in the 24-35-year-old range. Too early in their career to have had some major setbacks and high in confidence in their abilities.

Here are the 12 Steps of Recovery for Passionate Assholes:

Step 1: Realization that your an Asshole, not the best employee ever hired in the history of the universe. This realization doesn’t actually fix the passionate asshole, but without it, you have no chance.

Step 2: You understand that while being a passionate asshole feels great, this isn’t going to further your career and get you to your ultimate goal.

Step 3: Professionally they have knocked down in a major way. I was fired. Not because I was doing the job, but because I was leaving a wake of bodies and destruction in the path of doing my job. You don’t have to be fired, demotion might also work, but usually, it’s getting canned.

Step 4: Some you truly respect needs to tell you-you’re not a good employee, but an asshole, during a time you’re actually listening.

Step 5: Find a leader and organization that will embrace you for who you’re trying to become, knowing who you truly are. You don’t go from Passionate Asshole to model employee overnight! It’s not a light switch.

Step 6: Time. This is a progression. You begin to realize some of your passionate asshole triggers. You begin to use your powers for good and not to blow people up who you feel aren’t worthy of oxygen. Baby steps. One day at a time.

Step 7: You stop making bad career moves based on the passionate asshole beast inside of you, telling you moving to the ‘next’ role is really the solution to what you’re feeling.

Step 8: We make a list of people we’ve destroyed while being passionate assholes. Yes, even the people you don’t like!

Step 9: Reach out to the people you’ve destroyed and make amends. Many of these people have ended up being my best professional contacts now late in life. Turns out, adults are actually pretty good a forgiving and want to establish relationships with people who are honest and have self-insight.

Step 10: We are able to tell people we’re sorry for being a passionate asshole when find ourselves being a passionate asshole, and not also seeing the passion within them and what they also bring to the organization is a value to not only us but to the organization as a whole.

Step 11: You begin to reflect, instead of reacting as a first response. Passionate assholes love to react quickly! We’re passionate, we’re ready at all times, so our initial thought is not to think, but react decisively. You’ve reached step 11 when your first thought is to no longer react like a crazy person!

Step 12: You begin to reach out to other passionate assholes and help them realize how they’re destroying their careers and don’t even know it. You begin mentoring.

I know I’ll never stop being a Passionate Asshole. It’s a personality flaw, and even when you change, you never fully change. But, I now understand when I’m being that person, can usually stop myself mid-passionate asshole blow up, and realize there are better ways to communicate and act.

Hat tip to: Kyle Brown (a fellow Self-Identified Passionate Asshole)

Forced Hugs will Continue in 2019, and you’ll Like it!

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Let me make this perfectly clear, I never forced anyone to hug me!

I did for 30 straight days once make one of my sons give me a kiss goodnight, or he wasn’t allowed to buy an airsoft gun. That was different, I only did that because I felt, as his parent, he needed to feel comfortable kissing another man. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. He needed to know it was alright to give a kiss to his father. I mean, he kissed his mom good night, what’s wrong with me!?

I’m a hugger, you all know that I wrote the rules on hugging in the workplace, and clearly, the CEO of Ted Baker, an iconic British fashion company, Ray Kelvin, did not read my rules! (editor side note: I love me some Ted Baker shoes, without hugs from Ray!)

For those who didn’t see (I had about a dozen of my friends and readers send me a link!) Kelvin got himself in trouble for what has been perceived in his company of “Forced” hugs:

“Thousands of people have signed an online petition to end a practice of “forced ‘hugging'” and demand a better way of reporting alleged harassment at fashion chain Ted Baker.

More than 2,000 members of staff and customers of the UK retailer have called on the firm’s founder and CEO, Ray Kelvin, to alter his behavior, including “inappropriate touching,” which they say is “part of a culture that leaves harassment unchallenged.”
The call has come in an open letter to the company’s board of directors on the online platform Organise, which runs workplace-specific campaigns.”
Ray! Ray! Ray! All you had to do was follow the rules, Ray!
Look, I love giving a hug as much as the next person, but ‘forced hugs’ are super creepy!
I don’t want to let one creep stop the practice of hugging professionally. I mean, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, people! Hugging is fine if you follow the rules. Forcing someone to hug you is not fine. That’s pretty clear, right?
Now, this is the fashion industry and Ray is worth $660 million dollars, and if my career in HR has taught me anything, I’m fairly sure we’re about to see a lawsuit trying to make Ray worth less than $660 million. If Ray was worth $660 dollars he probably wouldn’t be able to force hugs on anyone, or if he did, he would be in jail!
It’s hard being a middle-aged white dude in 2018 with all the other middle-aged white dudes running around like they’re in an episode of Game of Thrones. Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can do whatever it is you want. Like you can’t just be the President and just say whatever is on your mind on social media and grab women by the, oh wait…
So, I’m a middle-aged white dude who likes to hug. The question is, should I stop?
That would all depend on whether or not my hugs are making you uncomfortable (don’t comment Kris Dunn, your words are irrelevant here, I know you like my hugs deep down in places you’re afraid to bring up at your therapist) and/or are unwanted. That’s why I put together the rules people! Over 1 million people have read the rules. Also the updated New & Improved Version! The Rules on Hugging in the Workplace, work, if you follow them!
Rules people! Let’s make HR great again!

You might decide, your job just isn’t worth it.

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Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer. Turns out Linds didn’t really like his old job and mad hours he spent creating a successful career. Here is what Linds wrote before he died:

“I think you’re all f—— mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f—— TV commercial. Nobody gives a s—.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn’t really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.”

When faced with death, I wonder how many of us will look back on all the time and effort we put into our career and will feel the same?

That all being said, sometimes I think a job might be worth it as well.  Here’s the other side of the coin.  I frequently see articles and blog posts, recently, written by people who have given up their careers to travel the world.  It all seems so glamorous and adventurous. Until you realize you had a career and job to pay for all those glamorous adventures! From Adweek, “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing ToiletsThe uglier side of a year-long creative journey”:

 “You remember Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, the South African couple who quit their agency jobs this year to travel the world and document the experience. It sounded like a dream, and the lovely Instagram photos have made it look like one.

But halfway through their year-long odyssey, they posted a reality check on their blog—a post titled “Why We Quit Our Jobs In Advertising To Scrub Toilets”—in which they share “the uglier side of our trip.” It turns out that following one’s dream—while working odd jobs in exchange for room and board—involves a lot of dirty work, and more than a few tears.

“The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity (and small pep talks) to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits),” Cartell writes. “Don’t let the bank of gorgeous photography fool you. Nuh uh. So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished.

“You see, to come from the luxuries we left behind in Johannesburg … we are now on the opposite end of the scale. We’re toilet cleaners, dog poop scoopers, grocery store merchandisers and rock shovelers.”

We work for a reason. Your reasons might be vastly different than my reasons, but we all have reasons. I hope if I look death in the face I won’t regret my choices to work and create a successful career. I’ve missed my fair share of school events and sporting events that my kids have participated in. I’ve missed many of their most joyful and sad moments. Those I already regret. What I won’t regret is that I work to allow my family to have so many of these moments.

I’ve lived poor.  I lived with a single mother who wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pay for dinner that night. I work because I never wanted my family to feel this anxiety.  Sometimes a job is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  It’s all up to you to decide, though.

GM Closing Plants is Just a Good Business Decision!

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I’m in the heart of GM country! My company, HRU Technical Resources (technical staffing), has worked with GM for 38 years! I have multiple family members that have worked at and retired from GM. GM is important to me, personally!

GM closing a few plants is the right decision. This decision might cost my company business and that will hurt.

President Trump can get really worked up over it and try to shame the GM executive team into changing their mind. The UAW can get all worked up and claim it’s the worst thing ever, but the reality is GM has to make the right business decision for the health of all GM employees for the future, not just for today.

In the past, GM wouldn’t have made this decision. They would have kept plants open and kept building cars that weren’t selling. The President would be happy. The UAW would be happy. And ultimately the U.S. Taxpayers bailed them out of bankruptcy. This time around GM, and their CEO Mary Barra, is making the sound financial, and very difficult, decision to close plants that aren’t making it.

Bravo, Mary Barra!

I feel for the UAW members who will be affected. I feel for the GM salaried employees who will be affected. It’s a horrible thing to lose a job and I don’t wish that upon anyone, ever.

This is still the right decision, as it will make the company stronger long-term and protect those jobs of the thousands of other UAW and GM salaried employees. You can’t keep building cars and trying to sell products that no one wants. GM doens’t do small cars as well as some of their competitors. Maybe never have. If you want a small/mid-sized car in the U.S. you buy a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, or maybe even a Hyundai. The numbers don’t lie.

Every organization has to make unpopular and painful decisions to protect their business and help it thrive.

“Well, GM is going to profit $5 Billion in 2018, smarty pants, what about that!?!?!”

Yep, they are. That’s what a strong business is supposed to do, make a profit. All the stakeholders of a business demand it! Those stakeholders of GM are: UAW members, salaried GM employees, GM shareholders, GM supplier base, GM retirees, etc.  We’re talking hundreds of millions of lives that rely on GM being successful.

Healthy organizations go through times of growth and times of contraction. You have a product that is taking off, you add employees to meet market demand. Those products go out of favor and you reduce your employees base to meet that lack of demand. If you don’t, you go out of business and ALL employees and stakeholders suffer.

Mary Barra is making the tough decisions that her male predecessors were unwilling to make. Let that sink in a minute. Sure GM has closed plants in the past, but that was usually the last thing that happened, and only after they spent years burning cash and pushing forward no matter what the market was telling them.

So, yeah, this hurts. Closing plants and terminating people hurts. This is a strong business move, and it’s the right call for GM. Mary will be unpopular, but she’s doing what is needed for the whole, not the few.

I had a wise mentor once ask me a question. “Tim, do you want your team to throw you a party?” I didn’t understand. “Well, if you do want every employee wants, they’ll love you, and when you get fired, they’ll throw you a big party down at the local pub for your going away! If you do what’s right, they won’t like you as much, and they won’t throw you a party, because you won’t get fired. So, do you want a party or not?”

Mary doesn’t want a party, she just wants to do what’s best for everyone.

Snow Days and Employees!

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Look I get it.  I have 3 sons and Snow Days are a big deal…if you’re 10!   So, if you’re an HR Pro, right about this time tomorrow, you’re going to feel like you have an entire organization full of 10-year-olds,  as we begin to see the first signs of Snowmageddon!

I understand people freaking out, that is, if you live in someplace south of the Mason-Dixon line, and you’ve never seen snow before. But, I live in Michigan and it snows here. The snow starts around Halloween and ends around Easter.  What I don’t understand is anyone that lives north of, let’s say, Chicago is even blinking an eye at a snow storm coming.  Let it snow, clear your driveway and get your butt to work.

It’s not a difficult concept! No, I don’t want you to drive to a client if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to drive to work if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to run around the office with scissors and your shoes untied!  But I do expect, we’ll all be adults.

If it looks like there’s going to be a lot of snow tomorrow, you need to make a plan. How about packing some work to do from home, or just plan on watching Lifetime all day, because I completely understand you missing the 3 days’ of warning that the snow was coming! (he screamed to himself in a mocking voice…)

Snow Days are the kind of crap that drives HR and Leadership completely insane!

Why is it, the CEO finds his way into the office, driving his Lexus sedan, but Perry in IT just can’t seem to get his 4X4Chevy Tahoe out of the garage?   If you want a day off that damn bad, take a day off,  but don’t insult the intelligence of all those who found a way to come in.

Be sensible, give your local snow plows some time to clear roads, give yourself extra time to get to work, but at the very least give it a shot. Then, when you get stuck, take a picture with your phone and send it to your boss, they’ll appreciate the effort!

What is your most prized possession?

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I’m heartbroken watching the California fires. The stories coming out of California are just gut-wrenching. I’m struck by how people find the strength to stand up when they’ve lost everything but the clothes on their back.

I was listening to the podcast, Broken Record, with Malcolm Gladwell and, world-renowned music producer, Rick Rubin, who literally just lost his famous house in a fire. Now, I know, Rick is super-wealthy, but he also is a person who probably has a ton of irreplaceable things he’s gotten in his life. Awards, artifacts of his industry, etc.

He said he didn’t really care about the ‘things’ the fire took, but he was brought to tears by losing the hundred-year-old trees on his property. The trees, the land, was what made his home special and a sanctuary for his peace. While he could replant trees, he would never live long enough to see them as they were.

It made me think about my own possessions. What do I have that if lost I would be crushed? Not people or pets, but inanimate object-type of possessions. If I could only grab one possession before getting out with my life and my families lives, what possession would I grab?

It definitely wasn’t anything like of a material nature. I could replace clothes, furniture, and electronics. At first, I thought I knew, oh, for sure it would be pictures. Pictures of my boys as babies, but most of these have been converted to digital and they are in the cloud, so while there would be a few pictures lost, I would still have many that were probably similar.

Maybe it was something someone gave me to me, but I’ve already lost my most valued possession. After my grandfather died, I was twelve, my grandmother handed me a tattered brown envelop, aged by the years. Inside it was a few pictures of my grandfather in the Navy, along with his medals. I had them for years, but somewhere along the way they got misplaced and I’ve never been able to find them. I still think about that loss. It was the only thing I had of my grandfathers.

I came to the realization, while it would be painful to lose everything, there wasn’t one thing I would have to keep for myself. There was one thing I know my wife, though, would want. She keeps a box with letters and notes I’ve given her over the years. I’m sure there are letters and notes from the boys as well. She would definitely want those, so my one thing would be that box. I know those momentoes are important to her.

So, as you get ready for Thanksgiving I’ll ask you the same question, what one possession would you grab if you could only grab one and everything else would be lost? Hit me in the comments with what you came up with, and if you’re struggling for great conversation at your Thanksgiving table, ask your friends and loved ones this question.