Being the office supervisor, I had to have a word with a new employee who never arrived at work on time. I explained that her tardiness was unacceptable and that other employees had noticed that she was walking in late every day. After listening to my complaints, she agreed that this was a problem and even offered a solution. "Is there another door I could use?"

It was a typically busy day at the bank. After a glance at the line of waiting customers, a harried-looking man came up to the side counter and demanded, "What do I have to do to change the address on my account?" Without missing a beat, the clerk replied, "Move."

Everyone has priorities. When a guest at my hotel suffered a massive heart attack in our restaurant, I immediately initiated CPR, keeping him alive until medics arrived. As they rushed the man to the hospital, his lunch partner approached me and stuck out her hand. I gripped it firmly, only to find a parking ticket clasped inside it. "Do you folks validate?" she asked.

I work in a computer support center for a large auto-parts distributor. When I came back from lunch one day, I had a message to call a customer named Bubba at a parts store in Texas. A man answered, "Auto Parts. This is Dave."

"May I speak to Bubba?" I asked.

"That's me," he replied. "Dave's my nickname."

Having grown up just outside New York City, I barely knew a cow from an ear of corn. Until, that is, I married a small-town Ohio girl. While I was in seminary school, I had a temporary assignment at a church in a rural community. The day of my first sermon, I tried very hard to fit in. Maybe too hard. With my wife sitting in the first pew, I began my discourse: "I never saw a cow until I met my wife."

My wife and I were watching the gorillas at the zoo when several of them charged at the enclosure fence, scattering the crowd, except for one elderly man. Later, my wife asked him how he had kept his composure. "I used to drive a school bus," he explained.