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November 18, 2011 || Volume 1, Number 19 || Free

Opinion and Commentary By Reggie Paulk

Growing up in Grand County, my experience with people wasshall I saylimited. One of my first jobs after graduating from college was as a manager at a big box retail store. That experience opened my eyes in ways I am still discovering. After two weeks of intensive training, I was placed at a store in the city. On the first day at my assigned store, I pulled into the parking lot and headed for the entrance. I was met at the door by the human resources manager and given the task of firing an employee. I hadn't been in the store for one minute and here I was, tasked with firing someone I'd never met. Apparently, the employee had an altercation with another employee the day before. This was grounds for immediate termination, and since I was his new manager, it was my job to fire him. I went over to the food avenue where the employee was working and asked that they follow me to my office. I sat down at the desk and proceeded to tell this person that their behavior the preceding day was grounds for termination, and I would have to let him go. I have to be honestit sucked. It was one of the most difficult things I'd ever done to that point in my life. As a manager, I had to know and enforce the rules. With this responsibility came the job of having to make decisions that would drastically affect real people with real lives. With over 150 employees and hundreds of customers at any given time, I was guaranteed to face difficult decisions. And face them I did. Before I arrived at my new store, I was told it would be smooth sailing. My head employee had been working in that location for over two decades many other employees had been working there for over a decade and, apparently, the store ran like a top. It looked like all I had to do was show up, help the customers and run a cash register when the lanes got backed up. Now there's a fantasy! When you're a new manager at a big box store, you earn a salary. That means you work 1416 hour days every single day. You don't take 15minute breaks and you're lucky to get a few minutes to get something into your stomach before you face your next crisis. And crisis is their goal. Crisis creates a sense of urgency in leadership. It focuses attention. It reduces necessary time for critical thinking or rational thought. Crisis is the

perfect inoculation against reform and stunts the ability of leadership in their decisionmaking. Crisis is an insideous cancer that slowly destroys an organization from within and, if not handled resolutely, will eventually bring about its downfall. It is within crisis you'll often find the laziest, most incompetent employees in an organization. And it is within crisis I discovered mine. She was so nice. All the customers just loved her. She'd been working for this company, at this store, for over two decades. If you could find her,

she always seemed to have a smile on her face... if you could find her. I began working at my store a few weeks before Thanksgiving. My family was never big on holiday shopping, so I'd heard about Black Friday, but never actually experienced it. In my naivety, I actually thought it was somewhat of a myth. A few people asked if I was prepared for the event, and I thought for sure I was. When I showed up at the store at my usual 5 am on that Friday morning, I was shocked to see a mob of people standing in line outside the store. My duties included overseeing the cashier lanes at the front of the store. I was told scheduling would be handled by my head employee, and thought staffing for the front lanes was adequate. It wasn't. When the doors opened and people began flooding into the store, the dark lights above many of the cash registers were an omen I was in for a long day. I was at the store for over 21 hours that day. When I finally locked the doors at 2 am on Saturday morning, I began to think what happened was no accident. There's no way, after 20 years, you could screw up scheduling that badly. My conclusion: it was on purpose. I started paying close attention to these longtime employees, and what I discovered made my skin crawl. Of the three people I had running the front end of the store, only one of them was actually doing her job. When she was on duty, I was free to deal with customer service issues and roam the store making sure things were ship shape in all departments. On the days she worked, scheduling was handled and backups were rare. It seemed I spent more time on the floor managing the store than putting out the constant fires that seemed to flare up with the other two. But before I had a chance to make changes or promote her, she quit. The reason? The other two employees had made it so difficult for her to do her job, she left. I was now left with the most incompetent and lazy employees I'd ever seen running the front of the store. Colorado is an atwill state. Supposedly that means you can walk away from a job or fire someone without cause, but that's not really the case. You can quit for sure, but an employer has to be able to document poor performance over a period of time before firing someone who's not doing egregious things like starting fist fights. I began the tedious task of documenting the sloth. It didn't take long to get that first writeup, and boy was she shocked. "Never," I was told, "In over twenty years with the company, have I ever been written up." My own shock in discovering this rather unbelievable fact mirrored hers. I wondered to myself how much lost revenue this company had experienced over the years. No one, I was told, ever had the guts to do what I did. There's nothing like a little accountability to bring about a change in behavior. That writeup didn't win me any friends among the troops on the floor,

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but it sure did change the way the front end was working. The other employees saw the writing on the wall and started pulling more of the load. Of course, since old habits are hard to break, it didn't take long for the sloth (and crisis) to return to the front end of the store. Writeup number two came down the pike, and retirement all of a sudden became the topic derigueur. Fortunately, I found a better opportunity and got the heck out of there before the axe finally fell. I don't know what happened in that store after I left, but the lessons I learned while working there have followed me ever since. Organizationsespecially government organizationshave a tendency to become infested at the very highest levels with people who will do whatever it takes to maintain the shade tree they've built for themselves over the years. This isn't to say there aren't wonderful, hardworking people doing their best every day because there are. The problem is that the incentive for doing a good job goes away once the top spots get taken by people with selfish ambitions. It may seem folksy to have a county commissioner, county attorney and county manager who've served over a combined 65 years in their respective posts. But in reality, how's that working out? Over that time, they've managed to more than double the size of government and taxes while providing little added benefit to the majority of citizens over what existed before. Oh sure, there's a fancy new justice center and the administration building has been renovated, but I still wait in line to register my car just like I did before. In less than a year, Grand County will get the opportunity to elect two new commissioners if it so chooses. Is it too much to ask for a couple of house cleaners willing to focus on drastically shrinking our county government? I'd like to see our commissioners reinstate term limits, so being on the board is no longer a career choice. Like Congress and the federal budget, the commissioners hold the power of the purse within the county. I'd like to see the endless procession of teatsucking piglets who come to feed at the county altar every Tuesday get weaned of their supply of tax dollars. The commissioners have the power to shrink the budget so they may once again live off of property tax dollars returning the one percent sales tax they enacted back to the citizens. Last year, the county spent 16 million dollars on salaries for its 250 employees. To put that into perspective, the county employs one person for every 48 of its 12,000 citizens (sorry, I don't believe we have 14,000 people in Grand County) that's $1330 in salaries from every man, woman and child in the county! That's the equivalent of $5320 for a family of four, and that's not even their total tax revenue! Our taxing authorities are way out of balance folks. I went to the Grand Lake Fire Protection District budget hearing a couple of weeks ago. They spent the equivalent of $4,500 on each of 200 calls they went on last year. This year, their budget has shrunk a bit, and they will 'only' spend $3,500 on each call this year. Of course, in addition to the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) you pay for through the county, you also get to fund EMS equipment and personnel through your respective fire districts. Last year, Grand Lake Fire missed three EMS calls (not fire!). The chief has suggested an incentive plan to entice volunteers to show up that would end up costing taxpayers anywhere from $6,000 to more than $11,000 per call to avoid that potentialeven though Grand County EMS is already an alternative. Adding to the insanity is the disasterous Middle Park Medical Center. Located in Granby, it is funded by the Kremmling Hospital District. The project has run nearly $30,000,000 so far, and has cost 50 people their jobs. The interest payments alone are probably going to bankrupt the project, but I'm sure Kremmling taxpayers are happy about their new Granby hospital. Don't get me started on the school districts... I hope it has become painfully clear we need people to go kicking and screaming into positions of leadership within the county next year. People who don't want to be there. People with only the desire to clean house and take out the rubbish that's been accumulating over the years. People who aren't afraid to be loathed. People willing to take a stand for what's right even though it's the tough choice. And we need regular citizens too. We need citizens willing to at least pick up a phone or send an email. Make your voice heard the ballot box is insufficient. If you're concerned and complaining about something to your friends and family, you need to complain about it to your representatives too. Otherwise, you're just another blowhard who deserves niether respect nor consideration. Our nation is in a precarious state of flux. It's no longer sufficient to wait on the sidelines hoping for rescue. If we don't begin a dialogue about what it is to become what we expect of our government and our representatives, than we're in for some rough times ahead. What is your vision for Grand County? Send me a letter and I'll print iteven if I don't agree with it.

A PHOTOGRAPHY PRIMER
Over the last five years, my photography has been printed in numerous publications across the country. Even though I've been paid for my work, I still
By Reggie Paulk

don't consider myself to be a professional photographer. My definition of a professional photographer is someone who gets the shot, no matter what. I consider wedding photographers to be professionals. Compared to them I'm a rank amateur, but I have learned a few things about taking compelling photographs. The first thing to understand about photography is that it's not about the equipment. I've seen truly aweinspiring photographs taken with cheap cell phone cameras. I've also seen really crappy photos taken with cameras that cost thier owners many thousands of dollars. Framing your subject and understaing your light sources are far more important than shutter speed or f stop. Below, I've taken a crappy photo with a $3,500 dollar Canon camera/lens combo: This photo is a great example of bad lighting combined with poor composition. Notice how the main light source is behind the subject in the middle of the photo. This causes over exposure in some elements of the photo, while underexposing others. Also notice that the subject takes up a very small portion of the very center of the frame. You can't really discern what it is I'm trying to draw your attention to. I took this photo from a standing position with the camera held at head heightanother technique for taking mediocre photos. We can remedy bad lighting and composition very easily with little effort.

I took the next photo with my cell phone. The only things I changed were the position of the light source, background and camera. The results speak for themselves:

I moved in front of the light source and placed the camera right next to the subject in order to fill the frame. This immediately draws the eye to the intended destination. I also made sure to take the photo with the angles offset from perpendicular through the scene. This makes for a more compelling photograph. When I first began taking pictures for magazines, I thought it was necessary to have the most expensive equipment in order to take the best photographs. Today, I routinely use photographs obtained with my phone for publication in those same magazines. The only difference between an amateur and an expert photographer is that the expert keeps taking pictures and constantly strives to improve their craft. It's not the equipment it's the composition!

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Contact the editor: reggie.paulk@gmail.com (303)5527963