A difference, to be a difference, must make a difference.

This came through as a forward in my email. I don’t know its original author/source. Some of these stories are classics, others simply good examples.. but the last one kills me.

TRUST

TRUST is a very important factor for all relationships. When trust is broken, it is the end of the relationship. Lack of trust leads to suspicion, suspicion generates anger, anger causes enmity and enmity may result in separation.

A telephone operator told me that one day she received a phone call. She answered, “Public Utilities Board.” There was silence. She repeated, “PUB.” There was still no answer. When she was going to cut off the line, she heard a lady’s voice, “Oh, so this is PUB. Sorry , I got the number from my husband’s pocket but I do not know whose number it is.”

Without mutual trust, just imagine what will happen to the couple if the telephone operator answered with just “hello” instead of “PUB”.

This one makes me a bit sad. The last line makes the point, but it’s not about how the telephone operator answers the phone. There’s an existing problem, and either she’s being unreasonably suspicious and not communicating with him, or he’s been selfish or careless and has given her reason to be concerned. Either way….

Poor 1haiku. Seems comments were broken so nothing’s been going through for ages and ages (months/years)…
I just upgraded and found that individual article pages broke — were returning 500 error… solved by Textdrive(it’s still Textdrive to me)/Joyent forum. So all should be better now.

Approximately one out of every five visitors (a lot) to my cube will ask/say the following:

Are you comfortable like that? / If I tried to do that, I’d break something. / Where are your shoes? / How do you do that?

Where’s your computer? / How can you see that? / Can you see that?