Give a Little Whistle
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Today, it seems, has brought with it a severe case of writer's block. I finally settled on writing about "Whistle-blowing" but have struggled to come of with a timely article topic.
A few ideas emerged, but none of them seemed to stick. Mostly they seemed pretty crappy. I mean, who wants to read about my thoughts on the intro to the Andy Griffith show, or for me to offer my list of top songs which include whistling (1 Otis Redding - Dock of the Bay; 2. Paul Simon - Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard; 3. Ennio Morricone - Theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, 4. The Beatles - Two of Us; 5 Andrew Bird - Danse Caribe) or to expound on the best types of whistle (penny whistle vs. slide whistle, dog whistle vs. pea whistle, etc.), or to complain about how I've never been able to do that whistle where you put your pointer finger and pinkie at the corners of your mouth and wail at your kid or dog like a banshee.
I thought I was on to to something when i vaguely remember that Bob Dylan had some songs that involved whistling but it turns out that he just played the harmonica and didn't whistle. I was hoping to relate his incessant whistling with his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 in a convoluted argument that "whistle-blowing" leads to peace...but, since he didn't actually whistle all that much that unraveled pretty quickly.
I also thought about sharing how my older brother did an experiment on me when we were children in which he would give me an m&m every 5 - 13 minutes when he blew a whistle. He eventually would just blow the whistle and not give me an m&m and I would subsequently cry. To this day, my mouth starts watering every time I go to a basketball game, especially one with a lot of fouls.
But since I've been accused of "long-windedness" by certain co-workers, perhaps I'll just get to the point. United's mission is to provide the highest levels of services to our customers and we strive to do this with certain core values to guide us - one of those values is integrity. At United we believe in honesty and truth, without which we cannot win the respect of others. And while it is an honorable ideal, in practice, as we all can acknowledge, our core values are not always lived out perfectly in our daily work and lives. But that does not excuse us from striving towards them. To assist us in our in this pursuit, we've put in place certain controls including two different suggestion boxes. One is a suggestion box that you can use to communicate to company leaders those ideas that you think may help us in achieving our goals or work more in line with our values. The other is an anonymous suggestion box in which any associate may raise concerns to management about any issue - even a lapse in the way we work towards or mission or our guiding values. You should know that we take the anonymity of our associates very seriously, and we encourage all associates to report any problematic or practical issues.
If you decide to implement suggestion boxes in your business I personally want to encourage you not to use the suggestion boxes for playing practical jokes. I mean, it is pretty funny that so many of you guys have put in suggestions stating stuff like "the compliance news sux" and "compliance is for losers" and "if i have to read one more compliance article i may poke my eyes out" but let's keep the inbox clear for real concerns - LOL.
