Author: Andrea Grassi

You get this all the time:
At work someone writes you an email with a question that’s not your field of competence.

Well, you might know that Pete is the person who’s gonna help him, or you might know that’s better to ask John, but either way you decide to just say
“Sorry, I’m not the one doing this, send an email to the -insert generic email- group”.

That’s none of your business afterall, why would you even care?

Another example

This morning at the hotel a man had a credit card that wasn’t accepted, the man behind the desk was clearly annoyed, but the man was so sincere and honest it was difficult to misunderstand his intentions.

He was also from outside this country.

In the end the man behind the desk harshly replied to the customer and the customer went in search of an ATM.
Afterall it was not the employee’s business to help people have a working credit card, right?

But we have also been on the other side of the fence, didn’t we?
We were the ones with a broken card, or in search of the right person to write to, because, you know… we have work to be done like everyone else.

This kind of ping pong just renders all of this worst.
Everyone (myself first) should note this, and think about it next time a person comes asking for help.

It is our business to make this world better.
It is our business to help the other people.

We can ignore this, but you’ll know what price you have paid only few years from now.
The price is your character, the price is your surroundings, the price is the way people will think of you and will help you again when you need it, the price is the world you’ll left to your children.

In fact, the price is the world itself.

I was coming back to the hotel today from work.

The road to the hotel here in Milan is a long street with 2 lines of trees in the center and many high building on the sides.
I was walking and I started watching the surroundings.

I remember a girl using a small wood stick to make noise while the mother covers her eyes with fatigue.
I remember a well dressed man walking in front of me, a small woman closing the car with something undefinable in her hand.

Then while I entered the hotel the two mens were talking about working, one tired and the other energetic.

All of this, in a small walk.

How many times have we ignored the world surrounding us?
Any time we time travel with our mind into the past or the future we lose the present.
It’s a common thing many people know already, but how many times do we actually make it right?

Trying it even once might change your day.

To create a good product you need to try.

First, try the product.
There’s no way you can build a good product without trying it first.
Be the user, use it, solve it your own problems until you are fully satisfied with the solution.
Keep it real, be honest with yourself.

Secondly, try harder, fail without fear.
You must test, you must try, you must sell without malice.
Be the owner you want to meet when you enter the shop, smiley, lovely, open to questions and critiques.

Then you must learn how to scale.

There always comes a time when we need to choose words. To wisely line them up in a meaningful way, something worth the way.

It might be the wedding of a friend, a job request, or a love declaration, in all these cases some of the best words are often our struggle, the story to vulnerability.

Even if our words aren’t ok everything might go just fine because words are not the only valuable thing. There’s also the emotion, the honesty, both of them are evident when talking.

Incidentally the right words are the one you might not even pronounce.

Even if you are paying for a service the human you pay to deserves respect.

No matter how much you pay, he or she deserve to be threated like a human being.

Using money to pay for a service doesn’t hide all the human interactions and although it’s easy to run away from them that’s not the way it should be.

When we are on the other side and people don’t threat us with respect we feel abandoned, soulless, superfluous. Why would you want to give the same feeling to others?

The hard part about this is that it’s easy to do this with lovable people, not so easy with the stubborns , the arrogants or the egoistic.

But they deserve a chance too.