Year’s end is drawing closer, southeast Washington State is facing its first Artic storm in several years, it’s late and I’m feeling silly.

So I dug into my digital clippings and found some fun stuff that made me smile and thought it would be good to share it with you.

• OK, OK, I’ll include one that has corporate culture relevance—at least to those bosses who can see past their short-term nose and embrace productivity-raisers that aren’t mainstream—such as napping.

• Hmm, I suppose I can actually justify including this one in the name of innovation. Anyone who has watched Unwrapped on the Food Channel knows how fascinating it is to see how different foods are made. But did you ever stop to wonder how many of the foods you love were invented accidentally as opposed to on purpose?

But the next two are strictly in the name of whimsy, silliness, and off the wall weirdness.

• From my old stamping grounds comes weird news at SFGate.com, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle. It offers up links to all kinds of strange, often funny, news items. The original post I read was dated February 16, 2007, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to access, so enjoy the current ones.

• Finally, a link to The Darwin Awards, one of my all time favorite sites, along with information on it from About.com. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the awards, here’s a brief overview (paraphrased).

“A chronicle dedicated to individuals who have given their all in an effort to improve our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of killing themselves by the most extraordinarily stupid means.”

Great for a laugh and especially great for the ego when you think that you’ve done something stupid; read a few of the posted winners and no matter what you’ve done it will shrink to manageable levels.

That’s it for another Saturday. There’s enough here to keep you warm with laughter no matter what your weather is today.

Image credit: flickr

Image credit: sejlor CC license

Oh what fun. I do love a good scandal, preferable in business, because usually the players more interesting to me, but now and then a political one blows that tickles my fancy.

And it just happened.

Here’s the deal. The Interior Department spent two years and $5.3 million to discover that for four years “nearly a third of the Denver office staff — received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, including Chevron Corp., Shell, Hess Corp. and Denver-based Gary-Williams Energy Corp.”

That’s the Minerals Management Service office—the folks who collect royalties from the oil companies, in case you didn’t know.

The investigation found a “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” where “employees frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and natural gas company representatives” who referred to some of the government workers as the “MMS Chicks.”

Whoo hoo, hot stuff. Oh, and don’t forget “the director of the royalty program had a consulting job on the side for a company that paid him $30,000 for marketing its services to various oil and gas companies.”

In a gross understatement, Inspector General Earl E. Devaney called it “a culture of ethical failure.” No kidding, makes you wonder what was taught in the ethics class all but one took.

But what really makes this hilariously ironic is the timing.

Because these are also the people who approve offshore drilling permits and some in “Congress are starting debates pressing to expand oil and gas development off America’s beaches while trying to stave off an election-year rush by Democrats to impose new taxes and royalties on the oil industry.”

So besides a juicy scandal we have a giant load of political…hay.

Make no mistake, this is a rant.

Last year I wrote Being “special” can ruin your children’s lives; yesterday at Small Business Boomers Jean ranted about Millennials’ atrocious writing skills, a subject I’ve bemoaned here multiple times—and not just Millennials!.

Today, at Leadership Turn, CandidProf, a regular on Thursday, talks about education now and what he foresees as a result of additional schools adopting rules similar to those enacted by the Dallas School System.

Previous complaining about the results of today’s education pales to insignificant when considering the long-term results of what Dallas has done.

Consider,

• “…the new rules require teachers to accept late work and prevent them from penalizing students for missed deadlines. Homework grades that would drag down a student’s overall average will be thrown out.
• District records state that the changes are part of a switch to “effort-based” grading and are designed to give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate that they’ve mastered class material.
• Requiring teachers to contact parents instead of awarding zeros is designed to increase home-school communications…
• Retests and deadline extensions are meant to motivate students to do better after initial failure.”

In other words there are no penalties for not doing the work and the tests don’t count since students can take the exact same test over and over until they get a good grade and their previous efforts are deleted from their records.

As to the over-worked/under-paid teachers, do you think that many will take the time to call every parent whose child’s homework isn’t turned in on time. 20+ kids in the class times an average 15 minute call talking to a parent who is more likely to heap abuse on the teacher while defending their perfect child.

It’s not worth it, so the kids will pass.

Pass on to college not only unable, but also unwilling to learn—forcing colleges to dumb down their classes, too.

According to Denise Collier, the district’s chief academic officer “The purpose behind it is to ensure fair and credible evaluation of learning – from grade to grade and school to school.”

Fair to whom?

The students who work hard or the ones who consider teachers lucky that their classroom is graced with their presence.

Fair to the teachers who get those students the following year, and the year after and the year after that…

Even previous graduates think it’s stupid, “Babying the rules so that [students] have almost unlimited chances to pass, that’s unreal,” said Joshua Perry, a 2007 graduate of Skyline High School. “In the real world, you don’t get a whole lot of chances or other ways to make something up.”

But it’s after college that you, my dear readers, come into play.

Because these are the same kids you will be forced to hire and rely on to move your company forward.

And if that doesn’t scare the hell out of you let me know what drugs you’re on and I’ll get some, because it sure scares it out of me.

Image credit: adienache CC license

Image credit: dbking

Does one really have to be an accountant, lawyer, minister or whatever expert in order to recognize when something is likely illegal or, at the least, unethical?

“That’s not my area of expertise” is the excuse du jour on most of the financial games being played—especially option backdating.

I find it very amusing when I hear high-powered corporate CEOs explaining that they don’t have the financial or legal savvy to understand that backdating is a no-no.

In one high profile case dating back to 2006 involves Dr. William McGuire, former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, who “…relied on others to assess the legality and appropriateness of backdated stock options granted to top executives and new hires. As such, all allegations against him in a shareholder’s lawsuit should be dropped.”

I love this part, “Dr. McGuire has no formal training or degrees in finance, accounting or law,” the brief states. “His only professional training is as a medical doctor with a specialty in pulmonology.”

Maybe no formal training, but please! There’s no way he was hired to run one of the largest health-care companies in the country without good business knowledge and skills.

No formal training, but didn’t he read or listen to the news? The backdating went on for 12 years and there certainly were news stories of other companies that got in trouble doing it during that time. The cost? $1.56 billion downward restatement of earnings.

But it’s the Cablevision case that really cracks me up.

“Cablevision had awarded 400,000 stock options to a deceased vice chairman, while making it appear as though the options had been granted prior to his 1999 death.”

Cablevision just settled, “…terms of the settlement agreement, certain present and former Cablevision directors and execs will pay Cablevision $24.4 million, while Cablevision’s liability insurer will kick in another $10 million. Cablevision has also agreed to adopt a number of corporate governance changes relating to stock-based compensation awards.”

Who said that greed ends with death?

(To learn why I chose this picture just click it and read.)

Heard any good corporate greed stories lately?

Fools that we are (including me) we write and rarely read before hitting send. Sometimes we read during the sending, see the error and watch in horror as it winks into the ether.

During a discussion on the LinkedInBloggers egroup last week Steve Collins said, “I am *absolutely* no the side of having the message archives searchable and open to the public. I see no reason they should be anything else.”

I kidded Steve about writing ‘no’ for ‘on’ since it completely reversed what he meant.

Steve wrote back, “I noticed it as soon as it was posted and cursed under my breath. You’ll see I also posted a clarification. Spellcheck is great but until someone builds a spellcheck that can read and understand what you’ve written, we’re doomed to making these mistakes.”

But that’s just a little thing.

But what happens when the error is in a multi-billion buy out contract?

“JPMorgan and Bear were prompted to renegotiate after shareholders began threatening to block the deal and it emerged that several “mistakes” were included in the original, hastily written contract.”

One sentence was “inadvertently included,” which requires JPMorgan to guarantee Bear’s trades even if shareholders voted down the deal. That provision could allow Bear’s shareholders to seek a higher bid while still forcing JPMorgan to honor its guarantee.

When the error was discovered, James Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, who was described by one participant as “apoplectic,” began calling his lawyers at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to seek a way to have the sentence modified. Finger pointing over the mistakes in the contracts began as bankers blamed the lawyers and vice versa.”

As JayReding.com says, “…one attorney probably shouldn’t be drafting a contract without at least one other attorney taking a look at it. That sort of socialization is even more important when something as small as one sentence, one word or even one punctuation mark can make a difference in the billions.”

Looking ignorant by not spellchecking is one thing, altering the actual meaning, especially in a contract is what makes a fool for all seasons.

(photo credit: Matt Foster)

A few days ago, I was talking about lying over at Leadership Turn.

A couple of weeks prior Robert Irvine, who starred in ‘Dinner Impossible’ on the Food Network was fired for lying on his resume.

OK, lying isn’t unusual, the stats show that more than half do it and I’ve seen that estimate as high as 89%. But it’s still stupid.

It’s even stupider to use a lie that is so glaringly obvious or that can be so quickly checked on the Net that to accept it makes the hiring party into the idiot.

Irvine lied, I mean ’embellished,’ his resume by ‘fabricating some of the more fantastic parts of his resume, including having cooked for Britain’s Royal Family.’

He goes on to say, ‘I am truly sorry for misleading people and misstating the facts.’

Still lying.

If he told the truth he would have said, ‘I am truly sorry for getting caught misleading people and misstating the facts.’

Have you ever lied or used spin to improve your work experience?

I’m inaugurating a new category today called ‘how stupid can you get’ and I hope that you’ll enjoy it. Along with the big stupid stories that come along I want to highlight the small stupid ones—frequently local. These are often the folks who would qualify for a Darwin Award—except that they’re still alive.

First up is Daniel Kuch who had just two small wishes. One was to avoid a mandatory drug test at Wal-Mart where he worked and the second was to know what it was like to be shot—a strange desire coming from an Iraq war vet.

So he enlisted the help of Kurtis Johnson, also an Iraq vet, to do the deed.

‘The 24-year-old Pasco man and his friend first told police Kuch was the victim of a drive-by shooting. But authorities say their stories were suspicious from the beginning. When they dug deeper, they say the men came clean and confessed…’

Kuch was charged with false reporting and Johnson with assault.

At least Kuch doesn’t have to worry about the drug test anymore, since he’s unlikely to get his job back when all this is over.

Do you have a stupid story to share?

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