If Restaurants Were Run As Badly As Airlines

Scenario One.

Man: The reservation is under the name O’Leary for 7:30.

Maître d: Your table is actually not going to be ready until 7:45.

Man: That’s fine.

Maître d: Actually, it’s going to be 8:00.

Man: 8:00?

Maître d: Actually, 9:30.

Man: What?

Maître d: I’m sorry, the 9:30 table is already booked, but there are two seats open in the restaurant next door at 2:00 in the morning.

Scenario Two.

Man: (handing over ticket) I’d like to pick up my coat.

Coat check girl: I’m sorry, sir, your coat isn’t here.

Man: Where is it?

Coat check girl: (tapping on iPad) Uh… It’s in Akron.

Scenario Three.

Man: Let me out of this restaurant.

Waitress: I’m sorry, sir, you can’t leave the restaurant until you’ve had your meal.

Man: I ordered my meal two hours ago and it still hasn’t arrived.

Waitress: Sir, it’s restaurant policy to keep diners on the premises until they’ve been served their meal.

Man: When is my meal coming?

Waitress: As soon as the chef gets clearance to serve it.

For All Of Us, Really

Dad: It’s been a while since we had a family meeting and I thought it would be helpful for us to talk about how things are going. If you ask me, things are going well. Really well. The raise I got in November has enabled us to purchase a new car, buy a small vacation home in Tahoe, and we’ve redone the bathroom in a grand style. Tony made honor roll again—good job, Tony. All of Sandy’s teachers say she’s doing really well, too. This might seem like an odd thing to bring up in front of everyone, but mom has lost eighteen pounds since Christmas. That’s just really amazing. Becky, I’m so proud of you. You’re my rock. Sniffy’s back surgery in February was a complete success and that meant we didn’t have to find a new dog, which is also amazing. We all love Sniffy. Sniffy, you’re my rock, too. Just a little joke. Seriously, though, we love you Sniffy. And in March we all went and saw the rerelease of Return of the Jedi and that was a good time. So from my perspective, things are just great in the family.

Tony: That’s it?

Dad: I know there’s more to say, but I don’t think it needs to be said in the family meeting.

Sandy: If not during the family meeting, then when? Mom hasn’t cooked dinner in four months. You’re sleeping in the basement. Tony’s honor roll status was revoked when he got caught cheating on a math exam.

Tony: Sandy is getting sued by State Farm.  

Dad: Yes, some of those things may be true. But Sandy was eighteen when the accident happened which was a mercy to our family, although it has been hard for Sandy. That’s true. Look, we’ve definitely had our challenges and our struggles, but everyone does, and I think it’s amazing we’ve come out so well.  

Sandy: You kicked me out of the house for three weeks in March because “my energy was off” and you needed to finish the paperwork on the Tahoe house. I had to stay with grandma.

Dad: You love your grandma, though, and it was a sweet time for you both.

Mom: The money for Sniffy’s back surgery came out of the family vacation fund.

Dad: But we had the money and that’s what counts.

Mom: It didn’t come out of your boat fund.

Dad: Well, I worked hard for that money.

Mom: You were also the one who broke Sniffy’s back.

Dad: Now, that was ruled an accident. I was carrying a very large, heavy object and I didn’t see Sniffy.

Sandy: You were carrying a case of Scotch to your mancave.

Dad: It’s not a mancave. We’ve discussed this. It’s an enclosed domestic professional liaison venue and I need it for work.

Tony: And what are you going to do in your enclosed domestic professional liaison venue? Make more money for your boat fund?

Sandy: If we had taken Sniffy to a better surgeon, he might not pee on the floor all the time.

Dad: Now, stop it. All of you, stop it. God has been very good to us. He’s blessed us immensely. Not everybody lives in a nice house like ours. Not everyone has the essentials of life. Sure, there have been some bumps along the way, but families have to stick together.

Sandy: Even when their “energy is off”?

Dad: That’s different. Look, I just want to make sure that everybody’s in a good mood when the news crew shows up later. The Gatlinburg NBC affiliate doesn’t give Father of the Year to just anybody. This could be huge for me. For all of us, really.

The Rise and Fall of (Ministry Name Here)

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill often missed the point, but it was occasionally compelling.

Anyone older than forty came of age in a time when Christian ministries fell because the charismatic leaders in charge slept with their secretaries or embezzled millions to fund luxury lifestyles.

The story of Mars Hill in Seattle, however, is a warning that there are other ways for a Christian ministry to tank: greed, subterfuge, covetousness, bullying, cruelty, arrogance, unchecked ambition, indifference, discreet power structures, secrets, dishonesty, or just a continued squeamish unwillingness to address relatively commonplace workplace sins. If you’ve listened to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, you know that these are the sort of faults and sins which people are willing to overlook until they’re not–and it can be hard to predict when anyone on the inside is going to say, “I’m not going along with this anymore.”

A High School Boy Explains Why He Keeps Untucking His Uniform Shirt

“No doubt, you people have wondered why it’s necessary to tell me eight or nine times a week, ‘Trent, tuck in your shirt.’ You must complain about it in the breakroom. One of you probably says something like, ‘I had to remind Trent to tuck in his shirt again today,’ and then someone else says, ‘So did I,’ and a third says, ‘Me, too!’ You probably stand around shaking your heads, wondering how anyone can need so many reminders to tuck in his shirt. It’s baffling, isn’t it? Well, I’d like to tell you why I need so many reminders. I probably shouldn’t do this, and it’s probably a betrayal of my own kind to do it, but I’m going to tell you why you have to keep reminding me to tuck in my shirt. It’s because you morons never really do anything about it.”

-from my latest for CiRCE

Ethics In Fiction

The standards we keep for fictional heroes are kept quite separate from the standards we hold for real people. For example, in The Two Towers, Gandalf refers to Grima as “Wormtongue,” even though “Wormtongue” is an abusive nickname assigned to Grima by all the people in Theoden’s court. While most Christian readers take deep satisfaction in the scene wherein Gandalf finally puts down Wormtongue and delivers Theoden from his evil influence, there’s no escaping the fact that Gandalf has no interest in conciliating words, his confrontation of Grima doesn’t satisfy Matthew 18 standards, and he speaks to Grima in a disrespectful and accusatory manner–because Grima’s actions warrant such treatment.

I’m not sure the modern Christian has a framework for defending Gandalf’s approach to conflict resolution.

Why Things Aren’t Very Good Right Now

Most Christians honestly believe that it is sinfully inappropriate, highly offensive, and worthy of full cancellation for one Christian man to say to another, “Grow a pair,” even if the man hearing these words is weak, cowardly, and his incompetence is bringing many, many other decent men to suffer.

Nonetheless, there has never been an age wherein this piece of advice was more necessary.

Against Servant Leadership

“While I am all in favor of serving others, the expression “servant leadership” is passive-aggressive virtue signaling which coyly suggests there’s something broken in the classic understanding of “leadership” that can be fixed with the help of egalitarian philosophy and LinkedIn business jargon. Imagine asking a fellow in his twenties if he was married and hearing, “I’m a servant husband to my wife.” Are you a father? “I’m a servant father.” What position do you play on the basketball team? “I’m a servant point guard.” Don’t you work at Subway? “I’m a servant sandwich artist.” Well! I’ll just assume you have a gripe against the point guard, the father, and the husband as these concepts have been historically known—though I don’t know that “sandwich artist” is old enough to have a history.

Of course, the term “leadership” isn’t that old either. As Clifford Humphrey noted last year in a brilliant and delightfully bristling piece for The American Mind, “Before the twentieth century, the word leadership almost never appeared in print. Before the 1990s, very few leadership development programs existed. Today… ‘leadership development’ is a $366 billion global industry.” I think it’s a fair rule of thumb that anything which alleges to be a) spiritually important and b) to have gone from 0 to $366b in less than a generation is c) a complete hoax destined to fail soon, but I don’t expect everyone to take a classical perspective on such matters. Humphrey argues that what is now called “leadership” was formerly known as “statesmanship,” but “statesmanship” is inherently rooted in hierarchies and modern people despise hierarchies.

The way Humphrey describes “leadership” in the corporate world and the way Christians describe “servant leadership” are basically interchangeable. Nearly everything else in contemporary Christian culture is modeled after the world, so why not our approach to the workplace? Both “leadership” and “servant leadership” are about community, diversity, equality/our equality in Christ, building others up/the growth of others, and so on. There’s absolutely nothing about “servant leadership” that’s going to intimidate the guy in a Patagonia vest doing a thoroughly secular “leadership development” session for the Whole Foods HQ.”

-from my latest for CiRCE