Every week I am going to share ideas and thoughts on a campaign to spread kindness. I do this as a validation that you don't have to believe in a god to be 'nice' and 'friendly' not to mention make a positive impact in peoples lives. Beyond sharing ideas, I will be following each weeks focus through journal entries and sharing a recap of my experience at the weeks end.

Here is the focus for the week of 5-12-2008:

Be Kind to all You Associate With this week.

First lets look at a few definitions of 'Kind'

American Heritage:

1. Of a friendly, generous, or warm-hearted nature.
2. Showing sympathy or understanding; charitable: a kind word.
3. Humane; considerate: kind to animals.
4. Forbearing; tolerant: Our neighbor was very kind about the window we broke.
5. Generous; liberal: kind words of praise.
6. Agreeable; beneficial: a dry climate kind to asthmatics

Dictionary.com unabridged

I recently posted a blog regarding Atheist comaraderie and how within the atheist community there are many different personalities, walks of life and viewpoints. With that said I must admit a moment of hypocricy as my patience ran thin recently with a newcomer to the Stickam chatroom.

The man came in and after immediately jumping on cam, began to talk over a few others in the room. Now of course, that is just bad 'netiquette' so I asked him what brought him into an atheist chatroom. The conversation continued, it was a bit hard to understand him but English is not his native tongue so I went with it.

As the chatroom participants began other conversations within the room the newbie tried to demand attention through text regarding his story of being kicked out of a major atheist forum. I engaged him and he PM'd me the story. As hard as the story was to follow, I got the point which was, he was banned from the forum due to innappropriate behavior. The inappropriate behavior involved a 14 year old girl (a hot button for me...again, diverse thought processes and opinions) I asked him what he said and he told me. I found it to be quite inappropriate myself ,especially since the inappropriate conduct was via a private message to the girl. He ended his PM with me, saying something about my physical appearance...which at that point, I felt was a bit odd and made me angry.

I recently sent out a bulletin through RRSChicago refering to a funny skit by atheist comedian Jamie Kilstein the skit, and Jamies Blog containing the video, used the words: "little angry, pinch-faced Christian" in the description so I used it in the bulletin. I received the e-mail below from an atheist in response and had to shake my head as the past few months of discussions of how diverse atheist thought-processes are came rushing at me:

Her E-mail:

"As Atheists we have to work harder to fit into society. Fanatical Christians are accepted easier.... I want to be part of a positive group.. not one in a pissing contest with Christians. "little angry, pinch-faced Christian"

My E-mail response:

"Actually we aren't in a pissing match , we are searching for a way to communicate our views with theists that push their faith / belief into society; Schools, government, neighborhoods... Chamber of commerce meetings.

I manage a coffee shop.

Some people would say that managing a coffee shop is an easy job, and it probably would be if I didn’t care so much about keeping my employees and customers happy. It is a balancing act that can knock you off your feet if you let it. Making the customers happy is actually pretty easy‡give them what they order, be friendly and offer a clean and safe environment in which to consume their product. Sounds simple, right? However, the first step in ensuring this is done is to hire the right people and keep them happy as they are the ones on the front line interacting with the customer.  

Keeping customer happy—pretty easy with happy employees
Keeping employees happy—not so easy.

When you work for me you get 2 things; great training and direct feedback.
The 2 should work fairly well together. I train you in the way you will learn best, changing my approach and style to fit you as well as re-directing where necessary. In return I expect you to listen, absorb and achieve some sort of higher understanding of your role. I take the job very seriously and enjoy being the leader of my group. In addition to constant feedback, both from my leadership team, and myself, every month I sit down with you so that we can talk about things that went well and any things that need to be improved. I strive to keep my finger on the pulse of my employees to enhance the health of the team.