Best foot forward

Do you enjoy going to work each day? For those of you that are retired change that to, did you enjoy it?

For a lot of people it is a challenge to go to work and be on your best behavior and get a lot of work done.

How about those days when you traveled to Spokane to take in a late night concert and ended up getting a handful of hours of sleep and since you were still excited about the fun you had that night the quality of sleep sure wasn’t there.

Does that sound familiar?

Maybe you had to travel an hour or two away from town to take in your kid’s Tuesday night basketball game that went into two overtimes and the refereeing was questionable at best. Of yeah, work is going to be a welcome relief tomorrow!

Life isn’t easy we all know that. But you might be able to slug down a couple of coffees, maybe one of those high tech energy drinks and skate by until you go home and crash.

We are fortunate to not have people come in each day and watch us work and then critic every mistake that we make.

Will they say something good when we make the big sale, or put a smile on that really grouchy guy’s face? Or will they wonder how the guy became grouchy in the first place. I think that would bother me.

How do we treat our coworkers on a daily basis? Do we help when we can or ignore and make excuses as to why we don’t have the time to work with them?

What would we say if we were interviewed after a very difficult day? Would we blame our coworkers for the things that went wrong, without mentioning any names of course?

Or would we say, “You know the problems we had today are on me. I came in tired and unprepared and by golly I plan on making that up tomorrow. I’ll be ready to lead and things will definitely be much better as soon as the doors open!”

Of course we don’t have to deal with those distractions. But I’m sure that more than one person may have gone home to their spouse and said that they weren’t happy with the way I answered their question that day.

Hopefully they eventually will understand that I did the best I could. After all sometimes the answer is going to be no.

In the sports world we’ve all seen issues with athletes having bad nights. We don’t know the reasons why but as fans we can only see how much the athlete makes and not the fact that they are humans and humans have flaws.

If we are at the game it is even more difficult when we think about how much the ticket cost.

A couple of years ago, Mariners’ second baseman Robinson Cano was battling some ailments that affected how he swung the bat and his ability to make defensive plays.

But the Seattle All-Star never made excuses and he insisted that he stay in the lineup as much as possible because the Mariners were paying him.

I believe a lesser man would have asked to be put on the disabled list and sit out the rest of the season.

I know that I may have made a disparaging remark about his lack of power and ability to make his normal defensive plays.

But after finding out what he went through and the operation he had postseason I can appreciate the type of effort he made and the pain he went through with the aches and injuries.

I can also appreciate when a guy praises teammates and sticks up for them when they have an off-night. There have been enough guys that made some disparaging remarks about the team they were leaving only to have those remarks can back to bite them a season or two later.

Nothing is guaranteed in life and some players do really well for one team and not so well with another team. Maybe the reason they did so well for the previous team was how they played together. I know the money can be really amazing but why leave when things are going so good?

I can understand when an athlete leaves for a chance to play for a winner or to get more playing time.

But too many just leave for so called greener pastures and find out it was a mistake. But it is usually a mistake they don’t want to admit because of the paycheck they receive.

I admire the guy that is willing to stay at a place because it is where they want to play. They have a tendency to put their best foot forward on a daily basis and the fans appreciate it as well.

I would hope those types of decisions wouldn’t be that difficult but they are.