Ten Percent

In any group setting you can make friends with some people as if you’ve known each other forever. You just immediately click and can finish each other’s sentences and laugh at the same situations with just a look. And then there are those in the very same group you avoid like the plague because they’re needy, dramatic, fussy--you know the type.

Vacations, picnics, parties, extended family gatherings, any tour you take—you find those folks who just want to make everything about them while the rest of everyone is trying to enjoy themselves.

At a restaurant where I worked in Minnesota, the owner put a sign on the office door one summer that read: 90% of your problems come from 10% of your staff.  I remember reading it and wondering if the owner meant me. And every time I saw the sign, I mentally willed myself not to be her 10%. But then--

Sometimes it’s just your day.

Sometimes it’s your day to have a full-blown meltdown because Sam’s Club won’t let you buy two cream cheeses. [No, this wasn’t me. You know me better than that. First of all, a wailing, “Two cream chee-zaz!” has been burned into my brain forever, I’m afraid. And it shows up randomly to make me laugh, to annoy me, and today, to be written about. Second, if I ever need more than one cream cheese package—because they’re packages, not cream chee-zaz—you better believe that I’m going to find a way to make it happen, rules be damned.]

One day, it will be your turn. I promise, you’ll take all you can and you’ll fall apart over something dumb. We’re only humans, after all.

But today is not the day. No, today is the day you dust yourself off and soldier on. There’s some work to be done here. And you’re very much needed at the helm.