austinklee

I don’t remember what my brother Clayton and I were fighting about.  I was probably 10 which would have made Clayton 7.  We were riding with my mom in the car on our way to get our hair cut and we started arguing.  It was probably a typical argument about Clayton getting to ride in the front seat while I was forced to ride in the lowly back seat.  Normally we would have a little squabble and then order would be restored.  This time, however, I decided that I would escalate the situation and keep it up all the way there.

As we turned into the chipped parking lot of the fading metal building that housed the salon, my mom stopped the car just short of the parking space and began to speak in the “mom voice.”  We have all had that experience before: Mom starts talking to you and her words are enunciated more clearly than ever before.  She pauses briefly between each word to add emphasis as her eyes quickly dart between the two warring siblings.

I realized at that moment that I had crossed that line of acceptable complaining about a mile back as we passed the McDonald’s on Raeford Rd across the street from the Blockbuster and Food Lion.  I knew that I was in big trouble and that my mom was as mad as I have ever seen her.  The only saving grace in my situation was that we were about to walk into the salon and I wouldn’t get a spanking until we got home.  Little did I know that I was going to make a tremendous error in the next 15 seconds. Continue Reading…

I am going to say a pretty “un-Christian” thing: I struggle to have a regular devotional time.  I know that many of you are already praying for me right now.  So, let’s pause so you can finish.

One of the hallmark activities for Christians is a devotional time or “quiet-time” spent with God each day.  If you have known me for any length of time at all you know that I am not a person that can just sit still and be quiet, unless I am reading or writing.  The thought of me just sitting in one spot reflecting a praying for more than about 2 minutes is laughable.

I am not being glib about prayer, but I have to believe that God did not make a mistake when he created me.  I don’t know of any place in the Bible where it requires that I sit in one place to pray.  Prayer and reflection in the Bible happened all over the place.  David sang songs in the fields and Jesus prayed in the garden.

So, I kind of have a “pray as you go” kind of arrangement and I use my writing and reading as my devotional.  It works a little something like this:

• I pray for people when they come to mind.  This means that when you ask me to pray for you and I agree, that prayer will probably be sent up to heaven almost as soon as we part ways.  When you come to mind later in the day I will offer up another prayer.  This seems to work for me and I can avoid the awkwardness of telling you I will pray for you and then forgetting.
• I am an external processor and so I work out my faith issues and theological positions right out in the open for anyone and everyone to read.  I am not ashamed that I have struggles and I am not afraid that you won’t like me for being honest about my understanding of God and my relationship with Him.
• I am not a seminary trained theologian and so I read the bible with the aid of a commentary.  I feel that my reading is much more enriched through the eyes of an expert than just reading some verses on my own.  For me I approach it like I would a doctor.  I am not going to ask the doctor to let me look at my own x-ray.  I can see the bone and probably the break, but he has the understanding of what to do with it.  I will let him look at it with me and show me the context of what I am looking at.

So, that’s how I do devotion.  Tell me, how do you do it?

I have struggled with direction for this blog almost since its inception.  Originally it was called “The Deep Stuff”, because most people know me as a really fun and outgoing person and are later surprised to learn that I think very deeply and passionately about my faith and relationship with Christ.  Not because I am running around like a heathen, but because I am loud and outgoing people assume that I don’t spend anytime digging deep with introspection in my own life.

I then got my own website www.austinklee.com and branched out into a lot of different areas, none of which are really fit together well and I think I have just ended up confusing my very small, but loyal, audience.  The bottom line truth is that I wanted to get away from my real-life devotional and spiritual development posts.  I thought that I needed to do that kind of stuff on my own in the privacy of my home office and let the blog be more of a fun place.

Then I read a post from Margaret Feinberg about how she and her husband struggled with connecting during their joint devotional time.  The post talks about how they found something that works for them.  It reminded me that God created all of us differently.  There is no boiler plate solution for drawing close to God; alone or with your spouse.  God created me to communicate and work out my salvation in front of God and everyone. (Pun most definitely intended.)

So, the blog now has direction.  And I will be living in harmony with God the way he intended I should.

I would encourage those of you on Facebook to please leave your comments on the blog itself.  I have installed a very user friendly commenting system and it would be fun to build a little community on my blog and see all the comments in one place.

I have mentioned before that I was able to attend this years Catalyst Conference in Atlanta because I lost my job.  (Which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.)  I keep thinking about one of the moments of that conference that impacted all 13,000 attendees at the same time.

Jimmy was a young man from Africa.  He was a Compassion International child in the early 1990′s.  According to their website, “Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults.”  Sponsors give a small donation each month to their child to provide basic necessities.  A sponsor is able to correspond with their child and really “watch” them grow up.

So, Jimmy was one of those kids from Africa.  His sponsor was a college kid named Mark from here in the United States.  Jimmy was invited to speak at Catalyst this year and as a part of his interview he read the first letter that Mark ever wrote him, way back in the early 1990′s.  The letter talked about Mark’s new found faith in Christ and how he hoped that one day Jimmy would experience the same joy of salvation that Mark had received.

Jimmy told his story of the horrible conditions surrounding his childhood and how his sponsor actually provided the money that saved his life through food, clothes, and education.  Then, Jimmy read his letter and was telling the crowd that he was now enrolled in seminary and wanted to graduate and go back to Africa to lead others to Christ.  At that point, Ken Coleman, the interview leader asked Jimmy if he had ever had a chance to talk with his sponsor apart from the letters they wrote.  Jimmy indicated that he had not had that opportunity and Ken then told Jimmy that Mark, his sponsor was at Catalyst.  Jimmy turned around and there was Mark walking across the stage. Continue Reading…

There is a scene in the movie, “Forrest Gump,” where Forrest is getting on the school bus for his first day of school.  As he makes his way down the aisle all of the children prevent him from being seated because he is different.  “Can’t sit here, seat’s taken,” one child says.  Eventually a cute little girl named Jenny allows Forrest to sit with her and then…well just watch the movie if you don’t know what happens next.

I was working for a company as a temporary employee at one time in the tax department.  Their on-boarding process was horrendous for temporary employees.  I didn’t get a phone or email access with my own log-in for almost a month.

One Monday morning my cell phone rang. “Austin, this is John,” my boss said.  It was odd that he would call me because he was on vacation that week. Over the next couple of minutes he explained that the cubicle I was assigned to was being reassigned to a new employee and that someone would be coming by to tell me where I was to go.

I waited two hours and no visitor arrived.  Finally around 2:00pm a tall woman arrived at my cube.

Have you ever had someone talk to you like you were mentally-handicapped?  Well, that is what it sounded like.  She used a lilting, high pitched, sing-song voice to explain that I needed to move and that she was “so sorry” that I was being inconvenienced.  I actually smiled at her because it was funny to me that her tone, body language, and short curt answers to my questions indicated that she wasn’t sorry at all.  It made me feel like I was just in her way.

It took more than a week to find me a place to sit.  I felt more and more like Forrest Gump each day.  They would tell me where I was to sit and someone would already be in that space.  “Can’t sit here, seat’s taken,” I could almost hear them saying.

The best part about the story:  After all the moving around I did that week, I discovered that the cubicle that needed immediate clearing was not used the entire week.

The thing that irritated me the most about the experience was not the moving around.  I was most irritated that the tall woman treated me so poorly.  It is interesting to note that she worked as a recruiter for the company.

As I listened to her talk to potential clients on the phone I noticed the same tone of voice: talking to the recruits as if they were mentally-handicapped.  She sounded like a corporate robot.  Only saying things approved by some attorney or HR representative.  She had no empathy for the people on the other end of the line.  She actually seemed bothered by their presence.  It was as if she was thinking, “Just shut up, answer my questions and leave me alone.  You are wasting my time.”

I am often reminded that sometimes the tone of your voice means much, much more than the actual words you say.  Thank you tall woman for a great reminder.

My wife and her family wanted to go shopping on Saturday at an outlet mall near their home in Palm Springs, CA.  We walked around for a while, stopping in several stores.  The place was jammed full of people. (On a side note, the people at outlet malls in California are the same as people in Georgia…rude, messy, and spending more money than they should.)

We ended up at PacSun.  We shopped for a few minutes and my wife found a shirt on sale for $7.00.  So, we braved the line to purchase the shirt.  This is where the train jumped off the tracks.  The infrared bar-code scanner would not scan the shirt.  The girl behind the counter scanned it for almost 2 minutes before she asked for a manager’s assistance.

It was at this point I assumed she was a new employee and had not been taught how to manually enter in the bar-code number.  When the manager arrived he, too began scanning the bar-code to no avail.  He instructed his young charge, “Just run it on this one here.”  He gestured to the register on the opposite side of the counter.

At no time during this exchange did either of the employees apologize for the delay.  They did not acknowledge our presence or even make eye-contact with us the entire time.  When it was indicated that the sale would take place at a different register, neither of them told us of this change.  Had we not been paying attention we would have just been standing there.

Two things immediately came to mind: PacSun did not train their employees on how to treat customers when there is a delay, and their system had no back-up in case the scanners were not functioning.

As technology improves and as processes become more automated, there is a real need to also increase the quality of person to person service.  This is not an option.  As a system failed the representative should have apologized and informed us of the reason for the delay and what she was doing to resolve it.

Likewise, there should be an alternate way to input data into the system.  From the action of the manager I could only suppose that their system did not have a process for manual entry of bar-code information.  This runs counter-intuitive to the goal of a business: make the sale.  The bottom line mission for a retail establishment is to move merchandise.

Does your organization design your systems around your core goals and objectives?  What kinds of changes in technology do you need to make in order to be able to function if your core system is not functioning?

Has your customer service quality increased at the same pace as your technology?

Just saw that John Saddington (aka. @human3rror) found a cool tool to build a tweet cloud of your tweets.  Check his out here.  So I went to the site and made mine:

Trackback to my post and let me see yours!

My wife brought to my attention that my personality makes a drastic shift when we go on vacation.  Anyone that has ever met me has probably picked up on my outgoing nature.  I like being the life of the party and meeting all kinds of new people.  I am the guy that at the end of a long day wants to surround myself with more and more people to recharge my batteries.

To my wife’s chagrin, I often sign us up for social activities 5 nights a week.  Simply put, I LOVE BEING WITH PEOPLE!

However, once I get into vacation mode, I want to avoid people at all costs.  I will go out of my way on vacation not to make friends with the people we meet.  I don’t know why this is.

She laughed at me on Wednesday as I got really excited about buying a Coke Zero from a vending machine with my credit card.  She asked, “Why are you so excited?”  My reply: “Because, this means I can get my snacks without having to talk to anyone.”

Am I the only one?  Does anyone else have a personality shift when they go on vacation?

In my normal life, I can’t sit still for more than about 10 minutes.  But get me on vacation and you couldn’t move me with a forklift.