[RKDinOKC]

The idea behind the Character Qualities was to help employees improve their interactions with other people both at work and away. My brother was the one that started the whole thing. Not just in the company, but world wide. He called it Character First!. It had training for businesses, government agencies, and both primary and secondary schools. After about 6 years it started becoming very popular and other companies offering character training popped up.

The idea was to show and promote good character. We only had one employee that spoke out against it. His argument was he learned good character in grade school and didn't like being treated like a kid. I showed my brother a book I made in 1st grade. It was my good citizen book. Each page featured a different character quality I had to print the meaning and draw an illustration. The teacher also had stickers she put on our desks for when we displayed both good and bad character. The stickers were animals that stood for different qualities. Mine was a monkey because talked all the time. My goal was to be as quiet as a deer.

Most people liked it until one fateful day. One of the machinists was a computer freak. He helped almost everyone at work setup the home computers and fix any problems they had. The price was dinner. There was an opening for help desk in the computer department. He applied. He was given three or four character qualities that were the reason why he wasn't hired. He was too abrasive with people. (The real reason was that he weighed over 350lbs.)

People thought that was stupid because he had been so nice and such a help with their home computers. So they decided the character thing was just another excuse management could use to keep them from getting promotions and raises.

The funniest thing was, the guy they ended up hiring really did not get along with people at all. When he would come in to work on your computer his attitude was that you were stupid and he griped and complained the whole time. After the first time he worked on one of the computers in my department for just about an hour, he was such a grump the guys in my department nick named him "Smiley".