Teachers do not know all that much. If they did, they wouldn’t be teachers. Behind the scenes, all they do is complain about how crap the job is, and how little they get paid.
The company does not care about you. The company exists to increase the wealth of whoever owns it. You are there because you fit this plan. All that stuff about ‘The company is loyal to you and we expect you to be loyal to the company’ and ‘We realise our people are our most valuable asset, and we want to look after them’… it’s all utter, total, mendacious brainwashing crap. As soon as there’s the first whiff of recession, they’ll happily kick you out the door if it will save a few bucks. And even without a recession, if they honestly thought they could get by without someone performing your function, they’d drop you like a hot brick.
Being nice is not enough. Not if you want someone to like you or love you or want to be with you. You could go up to a complete stranger and give them $10 for nothing and I’m sure they’d think you were pretty nice (and possibly crazy), but that doesn’t mean they’d want to hang out with you or be your friend. There are lots of good reasons to be a nice, kind person. But thinking it will make someone like you isn’t one of them.
You do not really know what you want. Sometimes we get what we want in life and it’s great, or we don’t get what we want and it’s bad. But equally often in life, we get what we want and it turns out not to be so good, or we don’t and things turn out surprisingly well. You never know.
There is no message so simple, so clear and easy to understand, and so well and clearly conveyed, that someone somewhere won’t totally misunderstand it.
It is never anyone’s fault. Time spent trying to allocate blame is time wasted. Just focus on what you can do to fix the thing that someone has screwed up.
Those with the worst taste in music will have the loudest and most powerful music systems, in their homes or their cars or around their necks.
When people try and sell you things, they tell lies.
Special cut-price deals never are. If they can’t shift the stuff at the normal price, there’s a reason. The only reason is: people don’t want it. The only reason is: it’s no good.
Visiting a place and living there all the time are two different experiences. Lots of places are great to visit, but it sucks to actually be there a long time.
‘Looks sexy’ and ‘is sexy’ have no fixed correlation.
If you want to learn how to do something, find someone who already does it, and learn from them.
Keep the receipt.