June 7th, 2019 •
Comments Off on DC Pied Piper Redux
Yesterday, a rather unexpected and amazing thing occurred. My office received a call from a gentleman who lives in Albuquerque, NM. He had searched for me online and somehow found the current office number. He wanted to reach out because he had been going through some old papers and found a copy of a column of mine that was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican paper in 2004 with the headline “Understand Boundaries When Dealing with Power.” He said he was stunned how current the piece was in reflecting the state of affairs in this country today and just [ Read More ]
January 14th, 2016 •
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Dear Olive, I started to write out my New Year resolutions right after I read one of your earlier column on just this topic and realized I’ve been making the same ones for years. I always start out feeling real jazzed up, ready to lose ten pounds, go to the gym, make quiet time for myself, even cut my hair. But by March it falls apart. I remember something you wrote about “if you start to see yourself coming in the rear view mirror” but I can’t remember the rest. So I’m asking for help. Why does this always happen? What’s [ Read More ]
July 23rd, 2015 •
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Dear Olive, I work for photography person who’s very successful at providing images for realtors and staging professionals. I love my work and appreciate working for my boss, who treats me with great respect. I’m writing to you, however, because I’m consistently pressed by clients to do “outside” jobs for them, sometimes with offers of “under the table” bonuses. Not only do these offers make me uncomfortable, but they put me in an impossible position. I don’t understand why some professionals don’t seem to understand how wrong these requests are or how compromised they make me feel. Am I overreacting [ Read More ]
July 7th, 2015 •
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Dear Olive, I’m so glad we had the chance to meet and discuss this issue. As you know, being on the mortgage side of real estate focused on sales and marketing requires me to call on people I don’t know in the hopes I’ll be able to help them see the value of our services. That can often lead to situations where I am confronted by rude people. I also send out a lot of emails and at times I’m asked to remove people from my list. That can be both surprising and hurtful, too. But when these things happy, [ Read More ]
May 13th, 2015 •
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Dear Olive, I like the columns you write, especially the recent one about how hard it is to get rid of stuff when selling a house. I’ve got the reverse problem. I’ve never been married and have been independent since college. I don’t collect stuff. I’ve done without a lot of things my friends take for granted, focused instead on saving my money with one goal in mind: to own my own place. A place just for me, on my own, door shut, away from the noisy world. I admit I missed a lot of fun including trips to Mexico [ Read More ]