Sunday AM

A cloudy and humid Sunday morning in Norfolk. It looks like rain, but that's not in the forecast beyond the possibility of late afternoon and evening thunderstorms. I've long loved days like this: a dark and moody sky, the humidity, and an overall feeling of unpredictability in the air.

I am preparing to shake things up at the office over the next few weeks. One of my employees is clearly not working out so I'm going to make him go away this week once I get all the necessary documentation to human resouces. He's lazy, has significant problems with authority, and his attitude is as negative as a Bush campaign ad. He's young and this is his first real job, so he still has a lot of growing up to do. I've held counseling session with him, but to no avail. He simply won't listen. In my more sinister moments, I seriously consider buying him as a parting gift a box of disposable diapers.

Of course the additional advantage of terminating an employee is that everyone else will be incredibly productive little worker bees for a few months. There are two reasons for this. First, they know not when and if the axe will fall again. This is certainly the most irrational of the two, but such uncertainty in moderate doses can be a good thing. Second, bad attitudes can be infectious to the rest of the department so removal of the offending element can have positive results in morale and worker satisfaction.