November 9; Make A Decision, Stand Up And Sign Up and Make A Commitment
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Eleven: Failure; 9 November

They show that the requirements of the law

are written on their hearts,

their consciences also bearing witness,

and their thoughts sometimes accusing them

and at other times even defending them.

Romans 2:15

Signature Achievement

Your Business Professor was practicing medicine without a license. We were delivering baby number three—that is, the royal ‘we.’ Charmaine was doing all the labor and I was doing all the watching.

This is management. Which I rather enjoy doing. It is much better than giving birth or doing actual work.

Anyway, the doc asks me if I would stop all that ‘plan, organize, lead and control’ nonsense and do some real work as an individual contributor.

He asked me if I would accept a package and take delivery of a baby girl.

“Sure,” I said. “Where do I sign?”

“Not so fast, cowboy,” the doctor said. And he mumbled something about getting between the stirrups.

Then he said, “First you need to pull some weight around here.” Now the doc was acting the manager.

I was scrubbed up and the next thing I knew I was pulling/guiding Helena’s head out (gently, gently) then rotating her shoulder and out she comes. There was some more cutting and some background screaming (but less than when I closed that office full of deadwood in Camden).

Daughter and dad did fine. Charmaine was OK too but I was thinking about the work I did, the service I performed and how this might be billable time.

The remainder of the hospital stay was uneventful. Until I had to clear up the paper work.

***

Your Business Professor requires students to sign in for every class. Facial recognition software is not yet perfected or maybe not even legal so only the analog solution of pen and paper remains. This is my Official Record of Class Attendance. If you didn’t sign-in, you weren’t sitting in class.

There is a reason John Hancock is famous.*

Signatures are important. They are necessary as a condition of employment for the (anti)personnel department or for cashing a check or marriage license or signing a ransom note to release a newborn.

***

The next day–Day One for Helena–everyone was happy and ready to car-seat the new bundle of joy home. I scrounged up a wheel chair (I know the drill) and loaded up kith and new kin and was making a hasty exit.

I got what I came for—a new baby girl—and had a very good hospital breakfast, loaded up Charmaine and half of some florist shop (I guess all those flowers were ours) and plotted an escape past the nurses’ station.

We were stopped by the Gestapo asking for our papers. I said they were in order and in the mail and who wants to know.

I am a child of the Sixties: I “Question Authority.”

The unsmiling Teutonic matron blocks our route and I consider making a run for it. But I reconsider: that Aryan might have the legal power to arrest and I decide to take no chances with my little girl. She’s a day old and already a fugitive from justice?

“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry, how can I help you?” I know how to handle these hospital bureaucrats.

“You vill need to sign some papers,” she says. The words are nice but there is menace in her voice. There may have been a trace of an Austrian accent. Or maybe from the Jersey shore. I can’t ever tell.

But I am never one to quit, into the breach once more and all that. “Sign papers, why?” I ask. “I was in on the delivery,” humbly I take no credit.

“I know the mother and the baby never left my sight.”

“That es…interesting,” said Nazi Nurse Himmler. “But you vill sign the papers before you leave.”

So I surrendered and signed and we were free to go. Yes, I knew in my heart what the rules were but I am at war with my Total Depravity.

Nothing good happened until I submitted and signed my name. The ink on the pink. Just like sales.

They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them. Romans 2:15

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* “John Hancock” means to sign one’s name. John Hancock was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and was one of the richest men in the Colonies at the time. His is the largest signature on the USA founding document—he was a practitioner of “Go Large and In Charge.” Hancock’s signature dare to King George III was, ‘Hang me first.’ Brave fellows those founders.