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He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had
followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the
waiters
followed Jerry was because of his attitude.
He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day,
Jerry
was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side
of the
situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one
day I went up
to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive
person
all of the time. How do you do it?"
Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry,
you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood
or you can
choose to be in a bad mood.' I choose to be in a good mood. Each
time
something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose
to learn
from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to
me
complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point
out
the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life."
"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.
Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut
away
all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how your react
to
situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose
to be
in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how
you live
life."
I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant
industry
to start my own business. We lost touch, but often thought
about him when I
made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several
years later, I
heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a
restaurant
business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up
at gunpoint by
three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking
from
nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and
shot him.
Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local
trauma
center.
After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was
released
from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.
I saw
Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how
he was, he
replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through
his mind as
the robbery took place. "The first thing that went through my mind
was that I
should have locked the back door," Jerry replied.
"Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices:
I could
choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.
"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.
Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me
I was going
to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and
I saw the
expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really
scared. In
their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man. " I knew I needed to take
action."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry.
"She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied.
The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply.
I took a
deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!'
Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate
on me as if
I am alive, not dead."
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because
of his amazing
attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to
live fully.
Attitude, after all, is everything.