Personal Branding: Be Careful What You Wish For

Branding is for cows. A "Personal brand" is your perception in society. It's a hot topic on this site. I have no brand. Some who like me brand me as a nice person. Some who hate me brand me a jerk.

I have made many friends who were perceived as difficult. Tread lightly. Some who have the perception of being nice are rude to me. Mileage may vary. Some of the most beloved accounts on this site have been muted because those people either treated me like a jerk or deceived me.

Broken trust is hard to mend. There are may who create one illusion in public and do dastardly things in private. The Cosby Show remains one of my all time favorite programs. It was the top rated show when that meant something and gave Black actresses untold opportunities when there were not many.

It doesn't change the M.O. of adultery. Simple adultery would have been comparatively acceptable. Tom Jones remained married until his wife passed and took advantage of the ones who threw panties and hotel keys on stage.

A man is as faithful as his options. Fat Albert was a long running cartoon and there were lessons to be learned. They never did an episode on why you shouldn't give a willing participant drugs and take advantage of her while she is unconscious.

So much good was negated by a strange pattern of behavior. Harvey Weinstein was a movie producer who brought many smaller films to the masses. Distributing Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting does not justify blacklisting women who wouldn't have sex with him and taking what was not his in the first place.

I did not watch Seinfeld. When someone does I ask if this is the episode where Kramer is heckled and calls two audience members the N word.That happened at a Michael Richards standup performance.

Stand up comedy is the most personal of the arts. You cannot "Steal" like the ones who talk about taking their LinkedIn process suggest. I do not trust anyone who suggests stealing. As for Mr. Richards- couldn't he have called those hecklers "jerks"?

Some see Subway as a serviceable chain with many locations. When chains close many locations and still have too many around they are ubiquitous. The branding for Subway, regardless of what sports figures appear in current advertising is 'Middle school girls are hot."

A customer lost weight eating these sandwiches and became a spokesmen for years, giving him access to countless underage women. While he is serving time (as is Harvey Weinstein) the fact he was allowed to have a forum for many years and access to groom many who merely attended an assembly at school- local sub shops are always better.

No matter what I do on my job; no matter how much I control the uncontrollable and keep the ship righted as best as I can- management resents us and sees us as a liability. They can hide behind the smaller raise we received than what was originally proposed.

They treated me the exact same way when I made eleven dollars per hour. No matter how I "Personally brand" myself this agenda remains unchanged. I'll end with Sean Salisbury. He was on ESPN when I watched a lot of this network. I never minded him.

Some were bothered by him. When he was let go by the network; his reply was "I'm a brand." I have no idea what he has done for the past seventeen years and he never popped up anywhere else. Maybe he went local, maybe the "Brand" he claimed to have sent him into long term unemployment.