A High School Blunders Into Infamy

Blunder Backfire
Your neglect for other people’s needs and passions
backfires onto you as unforeseen blunders

On July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks shot an AR-style rifle at former President Donald Trump during a Trump rally in Pennsylvania. Trump survived. Crooks did not.

Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School.

Former classmate Jason Kohler described Crooks as:

“always bullied”

“An outcast” targeted for bullying

Kohler found the situation “sad.”

Teachers and administrators could not have been oblivious to the sad situation of continuous bullying, which means they allowed it to happen. They blundered with their failure to stop the bullying.

This blunder means Bethel Park High School now faces historical backfire. It will be named in history books as the high school where would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks endured continuous bullying.

Bethel Park High School staff neglected to protect
Thomas Crooks from bullying
backfiring the school into historic infamy.

 

“Trump Shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks was loner ‘relentlessly bullied in high school: classmate”
Olivia Land
New York Post
July 14, 2024

An Aircraft Carrier Crew Mate Knows How To Be Smart About Staying Alive

 
Smart Success
Seeing opportunities for serendipitous success
In people who are different from you because you understand
that your success is connected to their success
 
“You have to set aside dislikes and understand each other. Because you never do know, that maybe that person you don’t like, they may have to save your life.
Crew Mate
USS Nimitz
 
Carrier
Episode 2: “Controlled Chaos”
PBS
April 2008

One Wife’s Statement Created Serendipitous Success For Millions Of People

Serendipitous Success
Being in the right place at the right time
to just by chance benefit
from someone else’s success

When the television show M*A*S*H first went on the air in 1972, it aired on CBS. Bill Paley was the chairman of CBS, and his wife was Babe.

M*A*S*H fared badly during its first season. Critics panned it. The ratings weren’t good. M*A*S*H was headed for cancellation until Babe Paley had a small success with her husband Bill. Babe told Bill she liked M*A*S*H and wanted it to stay on the air. M*A*S*H stayed on the air and eventually moved up from its 40th ranking out of 84 television shows to the top 10 with 33 million viewers a week. One hundred six million watched the series finale in 1983. The finale for M*A*S*H became the “highest-rated TV episode in primetime history.”

Babe’s success with her CBS chairman husband Bill created serendipitous success for everyone who worked on the show, for all of the fans who found the show, and for the advertisers who made money from buying commercials during the show.

Thank you, Babe. I’m one of those millions.

“‘M*A*S*H’ finale 30th anniversary : The inside story behind the most-watched TV episode of all time”
Yahoo TV
kimp
February 28, 2013

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumph.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com 

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Thoughtful Friendliness Invites A Job Interview & Spectacular Success

Spectacular Success
The unimagined success other people intentionally create for you
because you intentionally create success for them

A woman looking for a teaching job could get hired only for substitute teaching because permanent jobs were scarce. She found lunchtimes on her substitute jobs lonely.

Walking into the staff lounge one day, she saw another woman eating alone. Sitting down at the table, the substitute teacher smiled at the other woman and made pleasant conversation. The other woman said she worked in the front office, and asked the substitute teacher about her education and career plan.

A week later, the substitute teacher received a call from that school, asking her to come in for an interview. The woman eating alone in the staff lounge was the principal of the school. During the interview the principal said, “I thought you’d be a great addition to our staff.” Having already seen how friendly the substitute teacher could be with other people, the principal decided to hire her for a permanent position.

The substitute teacher intentionally created a friendly lunch for the principal.
That thoughtful intention invited the principal to create unimagined success
for the substitute teacher.

Circle of Kindness Column
“A new friend offered me a job!”
Marsha Porter
Woman’s World
September 26, 2011, page 42

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumph.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com 

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Neglect For Customer Safety Backfired Into A Prison Sentence

Blunder Backfire
Your neglect for other people’s needs and passions
backfires onto you as unforeseen blunders

Peanut Corporation of America CEO Stewart Parnell knowingly had his company ship peanut butter that was not safe. He had peanut butter shipped:

Before it was tested for salmonella.

After it was tested for salmonella but before the results came back.

After it had tested positive for salmonella and been retested again.

In the outbreak of salmonella that followed, more than 700 people got sick and 9 people died. Parnell’s blunder backfired onto him as a 28 year sentence in prison.

“Peanut Exec Gets 28 Years In Prison For Deadly Salmonella Outbreak”
Dan Charles
National Public Radio
September 21, 2015

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumph.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com 

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Roman Roads Sparked Serendipitous Success For Early Christian Apostles

Serendipitous Success
Being in the right place at the right time
to just by chance benefit from
someone else’s success
For about 40 years after the death of Jesus Christ, Romans did not see any difference between the Jewish religion and the Christian religion. Jews and Christians worshiped the same God. Jews and Christians read the same religious texts. Jews and Christians used the same language. Because of the similarities, Romans did not stop Christians from traveling throughout the Roman world.
The Roman road system satisfied the Roman Empire’s need to move armies, officials, civilians, communications, and trade goods. Those same roads satisfied the early apostles’ desire to spread Christian beliefs throughout the Roman world. The apostles used Rome’s infrastructure success to create religious success.
Christian apostles were in the right place at the right time
to just by chance benefit from
Rome’s success in building roads.
Secret Lives of the Apostles
National Geographic Documentary
2012
~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumph.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com 

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

McDonald’s Went Back To Basics For Sustained Success

Sustained Success
Staying on the path of working with others and satisfying others
or returning to a path of working with others and satisfying others
after mistakenly leaving it

Fast food giant McDonald’s first restaurant started out featuring slow-cooked barbecued beef, ham, or pork sandwiches with French fries. The menu also offered “everything from tamales and chili to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to ham and baked beans” and an “aristocratic hamburger” (History Channel).

When it became obvious that hamburgers were their bestsellers, founders Maurice and Richard McDonald closed the restaurant for three months. They overhauled their business to a self-service restaurant with assembly line production based on specific tasks with many items preassembled. The menu offered only “hamburgers, cheeseburgers, three soft drink flavors in one 12-ounce size, milk, coffee, potato chips and pie.” The new restaurant focused on speed, lower prices, and volume. However, the real success for McDonald’s began only with the brothers replaced potato chips with French fries and added triple-thick milkshakes. Franchises followed in California and Arizona.

Ray Kroc bought the rights to franchise McDonald’s across the country. His first restaurant opened in 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois. He kept the assembly line, but added automation, standardization, and discipline. New franchisees owners attended Hamburger University in Elk Grove, Illinois. Frank Turner established Hamburger University and wrote the training manual. He succeeded Kroc as chairman.

McDonald’s sales began to fall with competition, nutritional concerns, labor violations, and concerns about cutting rain forests for beef production. In 2007, McDonald’s began expanding its menu. This expansion led to unhappy customers, unhappy franchise owners, and lower sales.

McDonald’s sustained its success “by simply reverting to being McDonald’s again.” Those values were value, quality, and simplicity.

McDonald’s returned to its spectacular success by driving costs so low it could introduce the dollar menu, focusing on food quality and cleanliness, then adding just a few new items to the menu, such as salads and coffee. McDonald’s began removing antibiotics and other ingredients and launched a program to advance sustainable beef production. McDonald’s also returned power to franchise owners. “By putting more restaurants in the hands of our best owner/operators, we’re getting closer to the communities and customers we serve,” CEO Steve Easterbrook.

“The result? From a low of about $12 a share and rampant fears that health-conscious consumers were abandoning the restaurant to a stock price of over $67 and acknowledged leadership in the global restaurant wars.”

McDonald’s returned to the path of working with and satisfying
customers, franchise owners, and investors
after mistakenly leaving it.

“Biggest Corporate Comebacks”
Stephen Simpson
Forbes
June 22, 2010

“McDonald’s Is Cutting A Ton Of Menu Items”
Ashley Lutz
Business Insider
December 10, 2014

“7 mistakes that led to McDonald’s downfall”
Hayley Peterson
Business Insider
May 4, 2015,

“Greenpeace: McDonald’s Fueling Rainforest Destruction”
Associated Press
April 07, 2006

“McDonald’s slide continues as it finalizes plans for turnaround”
Jessica Wohl
April 22, 2015
Chicago Tribune

“McDonald’s Surprising Start, 75 Years Ago”
Xheiarophwe Klein
History Channel
May 15, 2015

“Why McDonald’s Is Banking On Sustainable Beef”
Steve Banker
Forbes
October 16, 2015

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumph.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Website Failure Provides A Fruitful Seed For Investing Success

Fruitful Failure
Failure that plants a seed for future success

While working for Time, Inc., Fran Hauser and her team launched a site called StyleFind. It was a shopping website that InStyle editors managed. After two years of floundering, Hauser realized StyleFind would never be a success and shut it down

Hauser recognized that her team launched StyleFind without a consumer value proposition, “a statement that describes why a customer should buy a product or use a service.”

Hauser eventually left Time, Inc. and moved into investing. StyleFind’s failure planted a seed Fran used as an investor. She listened for a founder’s ability to communicate the consumer value proposition for their business. The most promising companies have the clearest consumer value propositions.

StyleFind’s fruitful failure gave Fran Hauser the seed
She needed to be a successful investor.

The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate
Fran Hauser, pages 87 and 97.

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumphcom

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Success Sours When Arrogance Replaces Humility

Soured Success
Leaving a path of working with others and satisfying others
to focus on satisfying your desire to feel special

The African National Congress (ANC) began in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress. It was renamed in 1923. South Africa began creating laws to segregate blacks in 1856. After the all white government of the National Party took power in 1948, it began enforcing apartheid laws. The ANC took the lead in fighting apartheid. The white government banned the ANC from 1960 to 1990. Nelson Mandela was one of the ANC’s leaders. Under pressure from within South Africa and from around the world, apartheid ended and Mandela became a free man again. Nelson Mandela won the election for the presidency of South Africa in 1994.

Nelson Mandela was a man who intentionally lived humility. He worked for human rights and human dignity. He did not work for his own power. The ANC continued its hold on power with Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as president. His own party asked Mbeki to resign in 2008. His administration was incompetent because of nepotism and corruption.

Jacob Zuma succeeded Mbeki. His administration was “disastrous”. Infighting and corruption led to Zuma’s resignation.

Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa followed Zuma as president of South Africa. He enjoys more trust with South Africans after Mbeki and Zuma. The anti-corruption watchdog has accused Ramaphosa of corruption, which he denies.

The ANC has apparently decided to ramp up its arrogance.

“So true is the fact, that we see this even today in the
ruling party. There is growing anti-intellectualism
within the ANC. It’s wanting that the ruling party
responded so negatively to a book they had not read –
labelling it fake news. The ANC is following the
growing trend where those in power fail to engage
by “othering” those who show their underbelly.“

So much for the human rights and human dignity that humble Nelson Mandela worked for.

In reality, only Nelson Mandela was humble. ANC leaders seem to have been frequently if not always arrogant. While banned, ANC leaders had formed alliances with leader of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and leader of Libya Muammar Gaddafi. ANC training camps included “a lot of corruption, a lot of thuggery.”

The humility of Nelson Mandela contributed to the ANC’s greatest success. The before and after arrogance of its other leaders, however, soured that success.

ANC leaders left Nelson Mandela’s path of
working with others and satisfying others
to focus on satisfyng their own desires to feel powerful.

“ANC shows remarkable ignorance and arrogance in stance on Ace”
Palesa Lebitse
Sowetan Live
April 9, 2019

“Apartheid”
History.com
October 7, 2010

“Apartheid Legislation 1850s-1970s”
South African History Online

“The disastrous legacy of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma”
Economist
February 15, 2018

“How the ANC Lost Its Way”
Alex Perry/Bloemfontein
Time Magazine
January 16, 2012

Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela Foundation

“Mandela Remembered For His Great Humility”
David Lazarus
The Canadian Jewish News
SDecember 6, 2013

“Mbeki’s Legacy”
Marian L. Tupy
Cato Institute
September 22, 2008

“Political legacy of scandal-hit South African leader Jacob Zuma”
Joseph Cotterill
Financial Times
February 14, 2018

“South Africa: Relief for President Ramaphosa in corruption case”
AlJazeera
August 12, 2019

“Walking hard, getting nowhere – but Ramaphosa still enjoys a 62% approval level”
Ferial Haffajee
MSN News
February 10, 2020

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumph.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com 

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com

Vicious Finding Fault Failure For LeAnn Rimes

Finding Fault Failure
Other people responding negatively to you
because you create a failure they detest

County singer LeAnn Rimes had an affair with actor Eddie Cibrian. Both were married at the time, plus Cibrian and his wife had two children.

People found fault with Rimes for taking Cibrian away from his wife Brandi Glanville (with his permission, of course).

Talk show host Wendy Williams called  Rimes a “homewrecker” and said Rimes should stop calling Cibrian’s sons with his former wife her “boys”.

After Shape magazine put Rimes on their cover, subscribers complained. Editor Valerie Latona sent an email to subscribers apologizing about her ”terrible mistake” for putting a “husband-stealer” on the magazine’s cover. A small number of angry subscribers had used the word “husband-stealer”.

Celebdirtylaundry.com wrote several finding fault articles about LeAnn Rimes.

Rimes quit Twitter after fans objected to her kissing Cibrian while wearing a skimpy bikini. The photograph shows Rimes kissing Cibrian while his young son sat right next to him.

Blogger Ilana Angel described Rimes in the following ways:

“ridiculous”

“sociopathic”

“mentally deranged

“disconnected from reality”

“makes a point of publicly humiliating herself”

“not very bright”

“fakes a lot of things”

“mean”

“rude”

“disrespectful”

“pathetic”

“stupid, spiteful, idiotic, whore”

Julie Zelko wrote a post that pointed out even more reasons to find fault with LeAnn Rimes.

Multiple people responded negatively to LeAnn Rimes
because she created a failure they detested.

Note

Reporting on the way people found fault with LeAnn Rimes does not mean I agree with the words fault finders used. Rimes is yet another example of women being treated as more deviant than men who are deviant. Eddie Cibrian cheated on wife Brandi Glanville.

“The Delusional LeAnn Rimes”
Ilana Angel
Jewish Journal
February 16, 2014

“Homewrecking LeAnn Rimes Whines About Wendy Williams!”
Perez Hilton
perezhilton.com
September 17, 2010

“LeAnn Rimes fires back at Wendy Williams’ ‘sloppy’ remark about her affair with actor Eddie Cibrian”
Cristina Everett
New York Daily News
September 17, 2010

“LeAnn Rimes Quits Twitter After Fan Backlash”
I’m Not Obsessed
July 8, 2010

“LeAnn Rimes: Rsponse To LeAnn’s Twitter Bullying and Name Calling of a CDL Writer”
Julie Zelko
October 30, 2013
Celebrity Dirty Laundry

~~~~~

Paula M. Kramer
© 2015 to the present
All rights reserved.

Posts on this blog alternate with posts at the link below. Posts for both blogs are published on Wednesdays as they are ready to be published. Time between posts could be weeks or months.

blog.speakingfromtriumph.com

Keep reading this blog for examples of 8 success choices and 8 failure choices. Use the examples to spark success and fight failure.

Standards For Success Posters

Success & Failure Choices

Resource Websites

smilessparksuccess.com

speakingfromtriumph.com

Business Directory

betterplanetbusiness.com 

Positive Identity Directory For People With Mugshots

myrecordnow.com