Today has been a strange day. It all started yesterday, well actually today started this morning but my dilemmas started yesterday. My wife gave me a lesson on how to use the bread maker. This is a simple piece of equipment where one follows the instructions and out pops this most amazing loaf of steaming hot bread. If you know me, it would be an understatement to write that I eat a lot, and so do my two sons. A loaf of bread lasts a day in our house and so bread making has become an essential daily chore. Anyhow I observed the procedure well, listened intently and made copious mental notes. I thought that I was ready to be let loose on the brown flour and yeast.

Roll on today and there I am in front of the machine thinking this is so simple. I follow the recipe for a brown loaf like a good boy. Ok so I did not follow it exactly, I added the ingredients in the reverse order. They just felt better to me going in that way. I switched the machine on and confirmed that I had it right by shouting up the stairs to my wife. I had obviously missed a part of the tutorial the day before.

So why was I making the bread today after a year with the machine. Well the first reason is that my wife makes simply brilliant bread and I had no doubt my attempts would fall somewhat short of her high standard. I just did not know how far short it was possible to go. The other reason is that I was somewhat lazy in this department, why fix it if it ain’t broke, you know what I mean! Today though, I had invited somebody around for lunch. She had been having an atrocious time at work and I thought that lunch and some other company might just lift her spirits. Boy was I wrong about the lunch.

Fresh bread seemed to go well in my brain with a salad and a quiche. Not just any quiche, an old family recipe quiche. I hunted and found the old recipe and got busy. Obviously the family had been rather short on words as it was a full three lines long. It left a fair deal to interpretation. I thought that I interpreted well and my creation was soon in the oven.

Moving along, my guest arrives to be served a dripping quiche and some bread bought at the local store. My salad was brilliant, not sure if anyone could get a salad wrong though! My family recipe interpretation was a little off, mental note to self, throw away that recipe. The bread was the silly part. Remember how I wrote that I had put in the ingredients in the reverse order, well that was not the problem. I had forgotten to put the little mixing arm into the bread tin and guess what, nothing got mixed. I had to throw away a perfectly good flour brick...

More important was my guest. She choked back her meal admirably and earned herself ten bonus points. Obviously my cooking was not as bad as the conditions in her work place. It seems that she has found herself in a work environment that has forgotten she is a person. I was amazed to see this talented and extraverted young woman with her life in tatters and on the brink of depression as a result of an uncaring and arrogant work place. Even sadder, I know of so many more people who are in exactly the same predicament for very similar reasons. How unfair that a company can pay you a salary and shatter your life and justify the latter because they pay you a salary! What is the price you put on your time, your happiness and your life?

I have no idea how this woman was able to stick things out for so long and be so miserable inside. I suppose the question is how far can we push people before they break? How far should we be pushing people, if at all? Do we really know the people that work for us and understand their passions and fears, their frustrations and dreams? Are we even interested in them as people? If you answered no to the last question, then there is no doubt in my mind that you are not as worthy to be a leader as you think!

If you are a leader out in the world, get to really know the people that surround you. Don’t do it because I say so, but rather because people are the real joy in life! Another amazing truth is that people like to be treated like, well, real people!!!

To those of you suffering out there, I wish you well. The power to change your life is in your hands.