by Daniel Taverne

Created on: May 09, 2008

Have you ever done anything you wish you could take back? What if life were a sporting event, and the spectators could judge your actions by indicating a vocal, "Good Call" or "Bad Call" based on the usefulness, the appropriateness and maturity of your actions? Well, I intend to help you out by distinguishing between some good calls, and some bad calls in a few familiar circumstances or places. Maybe after reading this, you'll be able to tell a bad call before it happens and avoid unpleasantness.

One such circumstance is a job interview. Okay, let's say you're going to one, and you are really nervous. The morning of your interview, a good call might be to arrive at the appointed interview location at least 15 minutes early. In contrast, a bad call would be arriving 45 minutes late, then explaining your tardiness was because you couldn't find the detonator you needed before the mail was picked up that morning.
If you arrive on time, an obvious good-call would be to sit quietly in the waiting room for your turn. A bad-call would be that pot of chili you ate the night before making sitting quietly impossible.

During the interview, when asked by the interviewer for references, a good call would be to have a list of favorable references prepared to hand over. A bad call here would be to hand the interviewer a list of famous serial killers. Another good-call here would be to quickly scan the office for personal items to brown-nose the interviewer with. For example, you could see a photo of a young girl and ask, is that your daughter?" If yes, you could say, "She's very pretty." A bad call, in this case, would be to spot the picture and blurt out, "Yum! Who's the hot chick in the picture? You got her phone number?"

Once the interview is complete, a good call would include a good strong hand shake, and a warm thanks, while in this case, a bad call (prior to shaking hands) would be to wipe off the back of your hand on your pants saying, "Don't worry. My doctor said this form of the flesh eating disease is not contagious.

Speaking of doctors, a physical examination is another situation where good and bad calls can be made. For instance, if you are a guy being checked for hernias, a good call would be to turn your head and cough; while a bad call might be saying something like, "A little to the left. Okay, down a little, a tad to the right. Okay, right there; now scratch!?" At physicals, men also have their prostates checked. Here a good call would be to bend over quietly

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