Yesterday I went into my local, family-owned, print shop to buy some office supplies. I didn’t have any cash on me, and I paid by debit card. As I was walking out of the store I saw something else I wanted which sold for $2. I turned around and went back to the cashier, but was told there was a $5 minimum on debit purchases. I turned around to look for something else I might need, so I could pad out my bill, but he stopped me and just said “it’s ok, pay next time”.

I was floored. It’s a small thing, yes, but it was the sort of human gesture which made all the difference and made me all the more loyal to their store. It cost them nothing in the end, since I went back the next day to pay them back (and do some printing I needed to do anyhow).

I contrast that with experiences I’ve had at national chains, where the clerk has zero autonomy and can’t make any decisions. It can range anywhere from “I can’t make change for you unless you make a purchase” to the blatant apathy shown by too many retail clerks these days.

I don’t mean to pick on large chains - some of them have good service. Conversely, many family-owned businesses have awful service. If you take the time to find the good ones though, it really pays off.

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On the theme of being nice - I was downtown this morning, and happened to be looking at some ugly cigarette butts someone had thrown on the sidewalk. Just then a city maintenance worker just happened to come by to sweep them up. I know this sounds cheesy, but I said “thank you.”

His smile made me realize it’s probably not the sort of thing he hears often enough, even though it is important work.

I recently took part in a study for McGill University, where among other things they had to do an MRI of my brain. Seeing as this doesn’t happen too often for me, I politely asked me if they could email me a copy of some of the images when they were done. I thought they had forgotten, but a week or so later some amazing images popped into my email inbox - portraits of my brain.

A slice of my brain as taken horizontally straight through my eyeballs.

One of my heroes, the late, great animator Norman McLaren, once decided to turn an x-ray of his head into an art project by drawing on it. McLaren was an animator, and much of his work was stream of consciousness doodles, so this made a lot of sense. I put my images through photoshop, my tool of choice as a designer, in an effort to make the various structures pop out a bit more and add a little colour.

Here is McLaren’s head compared with mine:

Small snippets of an interview I did made their way into an article in the Globe and Mail today. The topic - personal finances, of all things. Predictions I had made a few months ago regarding the economy, and my investing, are suddenly looking pretty spot-on.

There’s a big difference between personal and private, but I’m sure you knew that already