When my kids were younger, we used to play a game when we left a store. We’d critique the way that the store employees greeted and treated us, whether or not we made a purchase.

During junior high school summers, my friend Steve Cunningham and I would ride our bikes across the San Fernando Valley to buy a root beer (and sometimes a chili cheese burger) at The Munch Box. The root beer was ice cold. The burger hot, it’s cheese melty. It was a special blend of distant, delicious, almost forbidden fruit.

As the old bumper sticker says, shit happens. Despite all you do to prevent it, all the systems and all the rules, when humans are involved, things can and will go wrong.

The reason why countries revolt simply to turn to another dictator, why the spouse of some politician is feted as savior, and why hospitals turn to national organizations to provide items and services as varied as toilet paper to neonatology, is the same: People — all of us, from Joe and Josie on the street to hospital administrators on the third floor — have an innate desire to be led.

We used to get bomb threats all the time.

Far too often, medical groups – in fact, closely held businesses of all kinds – have bombs, of sorts, within them, too.

Time travel.

A joke? Or can you do the equivalent right now?

Like it or not, the practice of medicine is also a business.

I was finally on the plane. The flight was already 3 hours late to take off. And then the flight attendant announced that one of the overhead luggage bins had a broken latch. The plane could not take off until it was fixed. A mechanic was called.

Extending a brand means to branch it out from one product or service line to another. Like Barbie dolls to Barbie bikes. Or, like Community Hospital to Community Hospital Medical Group.

If you’re selling medical services but collecting only peanuts (or even hot dogs) let me know. You need a better agent.