Felly mae'n flarchau credu cyd-dod o bobl, defnyddio gyda'r chael cyflawn. Fe'r teimlo arall ei bod gennym ni gennym llwyddiadau ar ein chael, ac mae'r teimlu yn roeddenі i ddiw'r llwyddiadau. Mae'n gwahanol am fwy, ac preafwn yn gweithio yn gwneud yn gweithio. Mae gallwch yn dasb fallenen i welwyddiadau a gwych chi i ddechrau o'r lle. Felly fe dros, os mae'n gwahanol i'r lle. Rhaid. Mae'r intydwledd ond i'w mor hwn. Mae'r ysgol yn y ffordd gan y rhain yng ngryffiliad. Mae'r gwaith yn ei ddod yn saltiaeth. Dyna'rgymellol yn yw mwylaidau. Rydyn ni'n ddod, ychwaneg am y gallwn gwiswyddiad. Mae'r intydwleddol yn eto mor hwn i ddweud i chi wneud o'u g marking y gael sy'n meddwl i chi i chi'n bloddugwy, ac mae'n gallu masgyn ar y program. Mae'r thamol yn 1981. Mae'n llunio ni cael o'r bod hyn yn amrywau. I will probably learn everything I need to know about programming on that machine. I'm not sure I've learned a great deal since, to be perfectly honest. That, if you're old enough to recognise it, was the logo of what was at the time one of the biggest employers in the UK. I joined ICI in 1990 as a young graduate engineer. Back in those days I was an electrical engineer, so the sort of projects I was running were building high-voltage substations, refurbishing power stations, so some really heavy-duty stuff. I stayed with them for about ten years in my career, did all sorts of engineering projects, but gradually moved over to software systems and IT systems, and eventually ended up doing the sort of stuff that I do today. My final employer, and my current employer, is this final-looking gentleman here. I started working for myself in 2001. As a freelance programmer, developer, basically, if anybody's willing to pay my day rate, I'll probably do it for them, within reason. And in that time I've worked for all sorts of organisations, from housing associations to hedge funds to hospitals and everything in between. But I want to tell you a couple of more things about myself. Firstly, for 15 years, and I've only just recently stopped, I was a manager within the Scout Association. So I wasn't the sort of leader that takes young people out camping. I was one of the managers that those adults report to. And I did various roles in that organisation at various levels of seniority. The last one I've just stepped down from, I had 1250 young people that I was responsible for, and a team of about 250 adult volunteers. And then more recently, and this is actually the reason I stepped down from it, this shiny new logo is the logo of the UK Python Association. And that was formed back in 2017, and I'm now one of its trustees. And we are gradually taking over the running of Pycon UK and looking to expand the sphere of what we do from within that charity as well. And I like that logo so much that I'm going to use it on here for when I don't want you to be looking at the screen. And I don't have any other better slides. But why do I want to tell you about the time I spent with Scouts and the time I'm going to be spending with the UK Python Association? And this brings me to my first point. I am a firm believer that leadership skills are just like any other skill. They can be learned, they can be developed and they can be improved. I've often heard it said that leaders are born, not made. And I fundamentally and absolutely disagree with that statement. These are skills like any other and they must be practised in order for them to improve. The reason I took those roles in Scouting was because when I started working for myself, I was a little bit nervous that I would be losing the opportunity to do quite so much leadership. And I went and looked for an organisation where I could do so voluntarily because I wanted to continue to develop those skills. And that means anything to you if you're interested. I thoroughly recommend this book. It's very readable, it's written a bit like a novel. The author was a world champion table tennis player and he slowly realised that if he looked at the top ten people in the world, I can't remember the figures, but a certain number of them came from the same town as him. And when he looked a bit more closely, he realised actually they came within three streets of where he grew up. And it was all to do with the level of coaching that was going on at the school and the club that he was a member of. And his book is all about examples of where he's found exactly the same thing going on. So this is all about the fact that any skill you care to mention can be developed, can be practised and can be improved. I thoroughly recommend you go and have a read of the book. And my suggestion for anybody that's interested in developing their leadership skills professionally is to find opportunities outside of work to go and try them out. At first, you'll be applying what you learn at work to what you're doing voluntarily, but you'll be amazed at how fast it turns round the other way. In a volunteer organisation, you're probably going to get promoted a lot more quickly, and you'll have the chance to be operating at a far more senior level. And I'm going to have to do a sneak peek at what my next slide is because I haven't got my speaker notes. Right, okay, what are we going to come and talk about next? What I want to talk about next, the next point I want to, let's say you are new into a leadership role of a team. There's lots of different ways in which that might have happened, you could have been promoted, you could have been voted in, depends on the organisation. But one of the things that I've seen in so many cases is that there is very often somebody or more than one person who doesn't like the fact that you're in charge. Now, it might be because they wanted the role, it might be just that they simply don't like you, they might disagree with the direction you want to take things, it can be all sorts of reasons. But it happens regularly, in fact my observation is it happens more often than it doesn't. And that resentment is poisonous, and it will kill a project if it's left unchecked. And so as a new leader, for me it has to be dealt with and dealt with early on. And there are three strategies that I've seen work. Firstly, show them the love. So find whoever this is, flatter them, ask them for help. Find some problem that you tell them, it might be true, it might not, that they are the only person that can fix for you. Find some problem that they have that you can fix for them. But show them the love, win them round, get them on your side. Second strategy, pick a fight with them. Find something where you know they're going to disagree, pick the fight and win it. Make sure they know you won it, make sure everybody else around them knows you won it. Make them very, very nervous of picking a fight with you ever again. It's a slightly more dangerous strategy because if you lose that fight, you're sunk and you're probably sunk for the term of your leadership. But it can be very effective if you prepare the ground properly, you pick your fight carefully and you make damn sure you win it. And the third one is, get rid of them. Now that's more difficult in some organisations done in others, in some cases it's not even viable. But in a lot of cases, it is actually the only way that's going to work. Now I call these three strategies shmwsum, bruwsum or lwsum. But the real point I want to make is most of us will naturally have a tendency to one end or the other. Some people really don't like conflict and they would want to show them the love. Other people relish the chance of a fight and that's where they'll go first. The problem there is it can take a long time to deal with this problem if you've picked the wrong strategy to start with. So my advice is think these three through and consider which is actually going to be the most effective, which isn't necessarily the one that you're most comfortable with. Again, I'm going to have to do a sneak peek. Right, here we go. Next thing I want to talk about is priorities. How on earth do you go about deciding what your priorities are? Often when you take over a team from somebody else, you'll suddenly get hit with all the things that you didn't know about. You probably walked in knowing some of the things that needed to be solved. You'll find out the rest of them 30 minutes after you take the role on. How do you go about sifting all this through? Well, I obviously can't answer the specifics for your team and your problem that you're dealing with today, but what I can do is over the years I found that most problems fall into one of those bubbles. So this little diagram is something that I carry around in a little laminated A5 card in my bag. I will regularly daily scan that diagram. What I'm asking myself is do I know what's going on in that bubble? Do I trust the process by which that information is coming to me? If the answer to those two is no, that is immediately a top priority. As a leader, I must know what's going on in each of those bubbles, because if I don't, there could be problems that I don't even know about. First and foremost, do I know what's going on? Do I trust the process by which I find out what's going on? Is only then can I run round there and work out what are all the problems I've got and how do I deal with them? I can't put them in priority for you, but what I can do is to give you a little tool that I've found helps me and one or two others, because I'm not the person that first came up with this, to decide how to go about that. Now, one of the questions that often comes up at this point is in the sorts of work that most of us in this room do, I suspect, should we carry on coding if we are the leader of a technical team? Now, you'll have heard me say previously, I'm a great believer in if you don't practice, your skills won't improve. So I'm going to say, well, yes, if you want to continue to be able to code, then you need to practice it, and that means you need to keep on doing it. But if you're the person in charge of a team, when a problem comes along from one of those bubbles, who do you think it is that's going to have to drop everything and deal with it? Well, it's you. So if the code that you're working on is so vital to the delivery of your project, then you're stuck when whatever this problem is hits. And so my advice here is always, if you have the ability to do so, make sure your coding as the leader is something in the corner that can be dropped. It doesn't have to be delivered tomorrow, it isn't vital for the next release, it can be dropped, it can take a back seat and you can come back to it later. Right. I'm trying to rattle through it because I'm conscious we're a bit short of time. I want to talk a little bit about leadership styles. Now, again, this isn't my material. You can look online and you'll find lists that look very similar to this. But what they're trying to say is that there are various ways in which you can go about making decisions in your team. So at the top you've got dictatorial, that is, you're the leader, you make the decisions and nobody else even gets a say. On down the list, paternalistic is where, yeah, you're in charge, you'll listen to what everybody else has got to say, but you're the one that's going to make the decision in the end. Consensual is where you will attempt to take consensus and get everybody with you, but it's your call and you will make a call if you need to. A democratic is where you have a voice and it's equal to everybody else's. You have no more and no less voice on the team. And then finally, hands off is where you don't even give yourself a vote. So your team makes the decisions. You just oversee the process by which that's done. Now you'll see things written where they suggest that you should find your leadership style and learn to work with it. Absolute nonsense. Absolute utter nonsense. Let me try to show you why I might think that. Here's what I think is a far more useful tool. So we've taken those styles and put them on the y-access. So you've got the dictator at the top and the hands-off observer down the bottom. But let's plot something else. Let's plot the level of expertise. Now this is a relative measure. This is how expert are you as the leader compared with the people that you are leading. So on the left hand side we're saying you are a complete rookie. You know virtually nothing compared to the experts around you. And on the other side, you're the expert. They know virtually nothing and you are the one that holds all the knowledge. That's right, doesn't show up on this screen. So the sweet spot of where we should be operating as leaders is somewhere in that green area. The more you know relative to the people around you, the more you should be dictating those decisions. The less you know relative to the people around you, the more you should be handing those decisions off to them. And so for me it is not your personal style that you need to find. It is what is appropriate for the team that I'm in. I can't remember which order I was going to do this in, so the slides might go a bit awry here. However my observation from the sorts of technical work that we do is that even that's not good enough. It's not enough to say what is my level of expertise versus my team because actually I found that this changes day by day depending on the topic that's being discussed. I've even had examples where this has changed during the course of a conversation with one individual. As we move topic our relative expertise shifts like the wind. So you might have been able to pick a sweet spot in here on the sorts of projects I was doing as an electrical engineer and you could live with that sweet spot for the whole duration of the project. Not in the kind of work that we do. You're moving up and down in here daily, hourly, even within the course of a few minutes. My piece of advice is if you find that you're doing that just be very careful hopping from one extreme to the other in one hit. The people around you will likely find that very confusing and they'll wonder what on earth your behaviour is and what's driving it. So if you find you do need to shift try to do it gradually one notch at a time. Quickly I want to look at so what does the behaviour that's not in that sweet spot look like?  If we're down in the other corner you're failing to provide your level of expertise and you're leaving people adrift so perhaps we could call that subversion. Very, very quickly I want to talk about process. I know this slide is a bit wordy but the copyright says I have to put it up like this but what I actually want to draw your attention to is the very first thing on that list and that is the authors of that agile manifesto said that they value individuals in interactions over processes and tools and they chose to put that first on the list and I think they were spot on right. My observation on process and you as the leader will be in charge of process is that too many people think they know all about it. They think they're a grand master in some agile technique or other and all projects should be running that way. Complete rubbish. Let's go back to that style and expertise diagram. You're operating here unless you know all about Scrum, extreme programming, Prince 2 and all the other ones that have existed over the years and unless you've had experience of being in projects that are using it you are not an expert on process and if you're not an expert on process what are you doing trying to dictate what everybody else does?  Instead you should be finding what works for you and for your team by all means get yourself more educated so that you can steal ideas from these various processes but I would suggest that very few of us in this room are really expert enough in the business and the process of developing software to be operating anywhere near the top of that Y axis. So to sum up, practice makes perfect.  If you find you have to deal with a resentful member of your team then it's schmoozum, bruzum or loozum. Choose one carefully, don't just go with the one that you naturally fit with most easily. Priorities, you've got to deal with the fact that the unexpected will come along and you're the person that will have to pick it up so don't make yourself so indispensable somewhere else that that is itself a problem. Style, one notch at a time be aware of the fact that your behaviour will have to change over time sometimes very rapidly. Try and keep the swings from one extreme to another to a minimum.  Thank you very much for coming to listen to me. It's always very nerve wracking when you stand up and you've had a talk submitted and accepted and you wonder whether anybody wants to bother listening to what you have to say. So it's great to see you all here. My contact details are there and I'm around for the rest of the conference. I'll have a chat. Thank you, Robin. So we have plenty of time for the questions. Thanks, Owen. That was really interesting. There's a real danger when you're deciding which strategy to use with someone who is the potential problem as you indicated. How does one judge which strategy to take because if you make the wrong one it's going to backfire on you and would leave you in a worse position than before potentially. That is definitely the case for each one of those because the danger with getting rid of someone is obviously you've just shipped a load of skills straight out of the door that possibly you didn't even know you were losing. As I said in the talk, if you pick a fight with someone and lose it, you're in real trouble. That's very difficult to recover. What's perhaps not so well-noticed, people often think that what that means is shmooson. We should always try to show them the love. The danger with that one is that that can just fail to work for a long period of time and that resentment just festers and festers and festers. In some cases, some people will attempt to spread that poison. They'll recruit allies and you've got a bigger and growing problem on your hands and the project will just fail. For me, getting rid of them out of the door isn't driven by whether or not the organisation will allow you to do that. In a lot of organisations, that is just so difficult to do that it's not even worth thinking about. Actually, in a lot of cases, you may well have had to have picked a fight with them and recorded every last detail of it before you're even allowed to do that. In other organisations, it's a lot simpler. And so, whether or not to pick the lose them strategy is organisation driven for me. The lose them strategy really comes down to whether there is a fight that you can very definitely win and be seen to win. And if there isn't, you're stuck with showing them the love, hoping that it works, and possibly kicking them out of the door later on when you've proven to the entire world that it won't. Probably by having three or four fights along the way. Here, wonderful talk. I wanted to ask, and I kind of wonder, whether you explain this to the team that you are leading. Then they kind of understand, for example, once you are going from Git to Subversion, hopefully not, but on this axis that you are actually flexible within your leadership style. As long as the resentment issue has been dealt with, then yes, absolutely. I would tend to keep this sort of stuff to myself if I've got that sort of issue to deal with when I first take a team on, because all too often, if somebody's already got a problem with you, they'll use anything to try and attack you. By showing that you want to do this sort of stuff, it's almost invariably new and it's different, and there are certain individuals that will just take that and use it as part of their ammunition and just make your life more difficult. Yes, I would, absolutely, as soon as I can, and that means any resentment issues have been dealt with and cleared out of the way. But yes, absolutely. Hi, Owen. I've only been a leader temporarily in my life, and I always have this problem multiple times that you have people who are longer in the company or just more experienced, and you have rookies themselves, and sometimes rookies have very flexible attitudes to some rules and so on, but the general pattern for me is not that they dislike you as a leader, but they dislike each other because they have different attitudes to code style, for example. This actually happened to me. What do you do if they start fighting? If you don't step in, obviously, soon enough, they both hate you as well because you don't do your job, right? So how do you solve the problem of people not hating you but hating each other, right? You don't want to fire both of them, right? Yes, I've unfortunately dealt with more than one team where there were collapses of marriages within the team, let's say, for all sorts of reasons. You eventually become a mediator, a councillor, and I can only suggest, and it's what I've done myself, is that if that's what you find yourself doing repeatedly and I have done it myself, is you go and learn those counselling skills, and you can do it, and again, you can volunteer to do it, you can read books on the subject, you can go and practice it, but they're vital, and you really are acting as a councillor and a mediator in a fight between two people, often nothing to do with the project that you're working on, but actually even when it is, it doesn't matter because the fight has become more important. But those counselling and mediation and arbitration skills are things that you can read about, you can learn, and you can practice, and my suggestion is to do precisely that. Yeah, question. What's your favourite strategy when the size of a team exceeds what one single person can actually handle? Of course, you can always do the standard way of forming a pyramid where you just have like three sub-leaders, and once a week you call them in, you smack them for what they've done, and then you're basically done. So I think it's the easy path, but you lose connection to the team, and if you divide your team in sub-departments, then maybe one sub-department will be good because it has a good sub-head, and the other ones will just fail and they lack sharing knowledge and so on. So what's your take on that? I take us back to those leadership styles. It really depends on what my level of expertise is versus the people around me. I've seen it go very, very wrong when a leader has walked in and decided this is how we're organising ourselves. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, three department heads or three sub-teams or whatever it might be, without bothering to find out first whether the people who were doing the work thought that that was a good idea. And guess what? It wasn't failed spectacularly. So it really, but on the other hand, if you've been with that organisation for 20 years, and you're the person who really knows how this place works, then, yeah, put yourself right at the top of that axis and you decide. So it's really one of those decisions that is, well, where are you versus the people on your team? How much do you know about how this organisation works versus the people that you're leading? So how long have they been in this organisation and how long have you been there? And I have seen it work very, very well indeed where somebody says, well, I'm fresh into this company. I've never been here before. All of you have been here exact 10 years or more. You tell me how it should be organised. I'll hold you to it. We will decide the process and the organisation between us and I will hold you to it, but you tell me how we should do it. So it really is a case of where are you on that plot? And the knowledge that we're talking about in this case and your relative expertise is the knowledge of the organisation that you're working within. OK, so let's have one more question.  So how do you push that decision making down so that other people can develop that skill? Excellent question. This is a cracking example for me of where shifting too far along that sweet spot won't work. If you've got people who are used to being told what to do by somebody who is more expert than them, and that's the way in which they've always worked, they suddenly move to the other end of the scale and you say, right, from now on I'm doing nothing, it's all up to you, it will collapse, it will be so far from what they're used to that they won't very rarely are they going to be able to cope. And so this for me is an example of where you move down that scale one notch at a time. So if you're starting from a point where you've got a team who is used to just being told what to do, you move them to a point where you're asking them what they would like to do, but you're still making the call. And once you've got them comfortable with that, you move to the next one down. So as long as you move gradually down that scale, I've seen it work, I've seen it fail spectacularly when you try and leapfrog from one end to the other. And do more questions I think. So going back to the fights amongst the teams, what if it's more passive? So I manage a team where my developers are, I myself as a software engineer, but some of the engineers on my team, they have had 25 years of experience, and they're very, very good, and they get job done quickly, efficiently.  How do you manage that? Like, how do you, you know, you want to follow the standards, right? But not also so much that you're losing time. The code should be readable. It's Python, it's mostly always readable anyway. So how do you come to that medium, and how do you convince your team to work in that medium? Well, I think there are two separate issues there. Firstly, how do you deal with the fact that you have some people that are far more experienced than others and slightly less tolerant of those with less experience? And that's one problem to deal with. The second one is where that's reached a point where they are fighting against one another, and you've got to fight to deal with it. Not yet. So always best to get it sorted before we reach the fight. I often come back to this diagram, because one of the questions I, when I say I go round this diagram, and one of the questions I want answered is, how well do I trust the process by which I'm getting information? So am I, for example, only hearing one side of this argument because this individual takes the time to come and bother me every hour on the hour, and I am absolutely fully versed in everything that they think about every subject on the face of the planet, but actually I don't know anything about the other side of the argument. So the very first thing for me when I hear this sort of thing going on is I must be confident that I understand both sides of this argument or fight before I make a single move, and then you really into dealing with them in the same way as dealing with the resentment. Can you take some of the more experienced people and persuade them that with that hard-won experience that's so well-valued, they would be of even more value if they could spread that experience to their less experienced colleagues, and if you can find ways of rewarding them each time they do it, rather than rewarding them for the quality of their code, reward them every time they manage to impart a piece of knowledge that improves the code of someone else. And that can simply be by calling them out on it in a meeting. I'm not talking about bonuses here, it can simply be giving someone a verbal pat on the head, a thank you, a very simple reward. But all too often we reward the wrong things. It's like dealing with a small child.  So lots of questions means that you have to really rate the talk in the application and it's still on Friday, looking for Friday at 2 o'clock, I think, in the same room. One more question. So, by the way, just to answer yours as well, but the bad behaviour people are complaining about that sort of thing in code reviews, I used yep for code formatting, no more. The question for you, one-to-ones, what's your style? How's it going, the status of the project? Do you do more personal level? It really depends on the organisation that I'm in to be perfectly honest, because some organisations will insist that these things are done in a certain way, at a certain frequency, and if that's the case there's no point fighting it, you've just got to go with it. Personally, I think these things are far better done. The slide that said we value interactions between people over processes. I think this is a cracking example. If there is a process that says you will sit down at 9.30 on a Friday morning and have a discussion and here is the agenda that we use every week, well, I think there's a better way of doing that and the better way of doing that is to make sure that you are speaking to your team regularly. Different people will have a different idea of what sufficiently regularly means to them and you can get it wrong in both directions, but it's only by trying it. You'll very quickly realise if you're irritating someone because you're making them speak to you too often and you'll very quickly realise that you're irritating someone because they're not getting as much attention as this person over here. I think for me you have to find that level, that correct level with each individual member of your team and try to hit it. I think that works far better if you're able to do that within the organisation that you're in. I think it's time to thank our speaker. I think we should do it twice.


It depends on what you name a crisis I think if you yes we have we have had several crisis big ones and smaller ones if I look at how things are normally going and then things are changing due to something so there's a structure and the structure structure is changing then we you can name it already a crisis I think and yes we have many of those but also one or two big crisis where we needed to change the whole application or something like that so yes we have many many small and a few bigger ones one of the bigger crisis that we had is that we needed to change a partner in our partnership due to lack of understanding together and we didn't see a good qualitative partnership running when this partner stayed included in the partnership and so we needed to stop the collaboration with this partner and we talked with this partner beforehand to to discuss several times the issues that were going on but then didn't find the solution so as lead partner together with the partners the other partners in the partnership we made a decision to stop the collaboration with this one partner then informed also the national agency and asked them what do we need to do how to solve this can we do something else that that we still forgot so do you have some recommendations about how to because I expect that say they have the NA know more about different solutions than we do because they have faced more partnerships already with probably some crisis so that's what one of the things that we have done and then the whole procedure starts with finalizing the partnership with one partner and starting with a new partner so two streams of communication are starting so one finishing part and one starting part and also that didn't combine really because it took quite a while before we could start with a new partner so we lost there I think for four months of having no partner doing the work so it infects the partnership and the quality of the things that we wanted to succeed with all the other organizations in Europe who are working with strategic or cooperative partnerships we also faced the COVID situation where in projects in partnerships where we planned a lot of traveling and meeting with each other to grow the partnership couldn't happen including one training that we would have had physically in in in a country we changed that to an online training which we were not used to do yet as much as the physical trainings so that had a lot of extra work time budget in it that we needed to to solve fine solutions for but the the very positive thing that came out is that we saw how beneficiary the online trainings can be and that we still one of the things that we still have from that crisis is that due to the online training that we created we have now also a lot of videos produced that we still can use during in the next projects that we still have to inform other partners people we work with and so we gained also a lot about this crisis so that is one of the things because of the crisis you need to think out of the box and that's helpful so we always try to see the opportunities that it also bringing always before we start with an application we also talk about what are the risks that we can face in this partnership and how can we solve them is there kind of management structure to to proceed to have an overview of the risks that that are happening talking about so in our projects we all always have online monthly meetings with the partners so talking or checking in these monthly meetings what the the risks are and that is one thing find a way to evaluate the risks that are happening so to see the things that we have been doing to solve were they the right things and what can we learn from it for next situations and then sharing that with partners so you can also in next application rounds or next situations learn from it and do it in a better way what I realize for me personally is that for me the relationship is important and the openness is in communication I always try to think about is this a situation that I need to share with partners already do I bother partners already with the crisis situation and when do I share the crisis at which moment but then when you share the crisis it is very helpful when the partners are also responding in a way that is helpful and so coming with solutions for me it's also good to hear that I have approached the situation in the right way or did my best that's really a personal thing probably but yeah for me the communication and the relationship is the transparency the finding the balance hearing from partners how they would solve the crisis and then doing it together so in an agreed circumstance is helpful so that you all agree about this is how we're going to solve it these are the solutions these are the things that will not happen due to the due to the crisis and we all agree with that because it will influence situations in a bad way and in a positive way the communication is open and effective so not blaming but but helping each other to find the solutions and also say for this case in this situation for our organization it will work out in situation ABCD and for the other organization in a different way so creating understanding what the effect will be for different organizations and then probably each organization can also find their own solution but then if you know it from each other that's helpful when you understand you can also find this this common this common solution that is that can be a win-win or a synergy for all our partners involved


This woman refused to tip her waiter what happened next taught her a big lesson. While it might seem easy, waiting tables is a very demanding job, which is why we tip them. Not only do they need to manage multiple tables orders at once, but they must also always wear a smile, even if they receive no tip at all. However, 27-year-old Armando Markidge didn't mind the challenges of waiting tables while he worked at Patsy's Pizza to put himself through college. While working at Patsy's, Markidge always tried his best to put on a bright smile and serve his customers the best he could. Sure, he had some bad customers, but he adopted a thick skin while working at Patsy's, so they didn't affect him. Well, until a mean-spirited customer accidentally forgot something incredibly valuable behind after leaving no tip. Markidge needed to make a choice, do the right thing, or give the woman some instant karma. Armando Markidge was another 27-year-old young man trying to make his dreams come true in the Big Apple. However, New York City is expensive. So, in order to help his parents pay for his college education, Markidge began waiting tables at the popular Patsy's Pizzeria in Harlem. Before long, Markidge started to love waiting tables and providing the best service he could. And not only did he provide accurate and quick service, he always did it with a bright smile on his face. Then, one day, everything changed. On that fateful day, Markidge's shift started just like any other. When a woman and her daughter came into Patsy's, he had no idea she would test his patience, unlike any patron before her. Patsy's Pizzeria's current owner, Frank Brinja, is incredibly proud of the establishment's heritage. Believe it or not, Patsy's has been around for almost a century. It first opened its doors back in 1933 and remains one of the most popular restaurants in Harlem, for both tourists and locals alike. To immortalize Patsy's legacy, Brinja has decorated the walls of the restaurant with pictures of several famous faces who have dined at the Pizzeria, as well as many accolades it has won. The photos and awards have been painstakingly collected over the course of 86 years. That day, Markidge noticed that the two women, who had just entered, were angrily scrutinizing every single detail of the wall as he approached. No one had ever had a problem with the wall before. As Markidge spotted the two women looking at Patsy's wall of memories and their unhappy faces, he knew that the table could become a problem. So, to try and start things off on the right foot, the waiter quickly approached the table and greeted the women with a warm smile. Then, he proceeded to take their order, a small New York style pizza for two. At this point, everything seemed fine. Markidge thought that he had perhaps judged the women too quickly. However, just as the waiter turned to walk away, the older woman stopped him. Then she asked Markidge a strange question, one he had never heard before. The waiter was at a loss of words. At first, when the woman stopped Markidge, he thought he must have forgotten to add something to their order, messed up their drinks or something along those lines. However, that was not the case. The older looked at him sternly and asked, why are there so few pictures of women on the wall? It was clear that the woman felt furious about this perceived problem. When Markidge opened his mouth to speak, no words came out. Was this a real question? When the woman started him, clearly waiting for a response, the waiter realized this was no joke. The woman expected an answer. Markidge laughed nervously and foolishly tried to answer the question with a joke.  Unfortunately for the waiter, his joke completely bombed. After his response, the woman's eyes narrowed while her mouth turned downward into a mean sneer. The waiter realized that this woman already had her mind up about him and pats his pizza. He knew that he would pay for his flip and answer when it came time to earn his tip. So, Markidge gave them space while making sure their food came out and on time. It wasn't hard at all, as the server had plenty of other customers to attend to. After the awkward incident, Markidge did his best to ensure the older woman and her daughter had a pleasant experience at pasties pizza. He made sure their pizza came out on time and checked in to make sure it tasted great as well. Then, when they asked for the check, Markidge made sure to deliver it promptly. Meanwhile, the server gave them space, tending to the busy restaurant. After taking a few orders, Markidge returned to collect the check. Surprisingly, he found the table empty and the check oddly light. At first, the waiter prayed that the woman hadn't left the place without playing the check. However, when he looked inside the bill, he found something far more hurtful. When Markidge picked up the light bill, he figured that the two women had rushed out while he was busy attending other customers. However, as Markidge opened the leather folder, he breathed a sing of relief as the women had paid their bill. However, that's when he noticed something terrible, the women had paid but had left no tip. Unfortunately, this wasn't a mistake either. On occasion, a customer had paid the bill and forgotten to leave a cash tip. It happens from time to time, when people are in a rush. But that wasn't the case this time. Not only had the older woman put a line through the tip area, but she had also left Markidge a rude and hurtful note. The handwritten message Markidge found on the bottom of the bill is one he'll never forget, maybe women don't tip either. The waiter could barely believe what he saw. He had not been awful to this woman, it had been a simple misunderstanding. However, Markidge knew he would likely never seen the woman again. So, with a heavy heart, the waiter ignored the obnoxious note and continued doing his job. But while clearing plates, Markidge discovered a white envelope underneath the napkins. While many would have thrown away the envelope, due to the woman's behavior, the server decided not to. It could be important to her, so he decided to save it. Even though the woman had been awful to Markidge, he knew better than to judge her. Furthermore, the waiter is a good person, and he didn't want to accidentally hurt this woman by throwing away something valuable. For all he knew, she was just having a bad day. Still, a naturally curious person, Markidge decided to open up the envelope and have a peek inside. Looking inside, Markidge saw what looked like a check in the Citibank logo. Knowing the importance of a check, he immediately ran out the door to chase the woman down. Markidge hoped he could find the woman quickly and return her valuable property. Unfortunately, outside of Patsy's pizza, Markidge had no luck finding the woman. By the time he had returned to the table, comprehended the no tip, and opened the envelope, the woman had been able to enter a cab and leave the area. I just pulled up the flap, and I saw Citibank and thought it was important, so I ran out to the street to look for her, but she was gone, the waiter recalled. With the woman nowhere to be found, Markidge had no idea what to do next. On the one hand, he could simply throw it on the garbage. The woman had been incredibly rude to him, after all. On the other hand, Markidge could try finding more information on the older woman, which would be the right thing to do. Would he try to help the woman that behaved so obnoxiously towards him? Still considering what road to go down, Markidge opened the envelope to get a better idea of the situation. Inside was the most significant check that he had ever seen in his entire life. Believe it or not, the rude woman had left behind a check for a whopping $424,000. Nearly half a million dollars lay in Markidge's hands. He could not believe what was happening. Markidge wondered how anyone could forget a check for $424,000 just lying around on the table. Plus, how could she leave no tip, with all the money she clearly had? After seeing the check, Markidge realized he had a major decision to make. Armando Markidge was facing one of the biggest decisions of his life. If he wanted to, he could teach this mean-spirited woman an incredibly valuable lesson in instant karma. Markidge also felt confident no one would know it was him either. If they came back looking for the check, he would just say he hadn't seen it. The waiter could even attempt to cash it, making all his financial problems disappear. Of course, Markidge knew this wouldn't be right. After all, these choices would make him just as mean as the woman who had ruined his day. So, Markidge called someone to get their opinion on the matter. Markidge continued to think about the serious moral dilemma for the rest of his shift. Afterward, he decided to call Frank Brinja, the owner of Patsy's Pizza. In the end, Markidge figured the owner should have the final say in the check's fate. Like most of us, Brinja could not believe what he was hearing over the phone. He called me immediately and hands me this check, and I was like, oh my, I didn't want to put it in my pocket it was so much money, Brinja explains. We thought for sure it was a billionaire or something who came in here, because who walks around with a check like that? Patsy's Pizza had never dealt with this sort of situation before, so they had no idea how to proceed. Normally we just put things left behind in the lost and found box in the back, but I wasn't going to do that with almost half a million dollars, Markidge explained. In the end, Brinja and Markidge decided to track the rude woman down and return her check. Fortunately, the check gave them her name, Karen Venakur, and her bank, so they had a place to start. We decided we would hold on to the check for a couple of days to see if she would drop by, or if we could find her ourselves, he said. However, despite these clues, Brinja and Markidge could not find the woman. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, Karen Venakur could not believe she had lost her check. While Brinja and Markidge tried to find her, 79-year-old Karen Venakur felt like she would lose her mind. After she had realized that she'd lost the check, she didn't know what to do. First, she frantically called her daughter hoping that she had it. Unfortunately, Venakur's daughter told her that she hadn't seen it. Afterward, the two of them looked everywhere, even digging through their trash bins. But no matter where they looked, Venakur did not find the check. She had no idea what to do next. The woman wasn't even sure when she had lost it. Venakur just prayed she found it before someone with bad intentions did. Little did the waiter who she had so severely mistreated know, the check was even more important than he thought. As it turns out, Venakur was not an incredibly wealthy woman. The $424,000 check was actually Karen Venakur's entire life savings. The morning before she ate at Patsy's Pizza, Venakur had sold her house, and planned to put the $400,000 towards the home she would retire in. In one afternoon, Venakur had lost all the money she had spent her entire life working for. As anyone would, she felt like her whole world was collapsing around her, and there was nothing she could do about it. Desperate and hopeless, Venakur began looking in every last place she had been in the past few days. After tearing through her home and trash, Venakur began retracing her steps to find the check. First, she called the coffee house across the street from Patsy's where she had stopped for coffee before pizza, but had no luck. Then she called Patsy's only to receive quite a strange answer, she said she had called Patsy's, and nobody knew anything about a check, Venakur's real estate broker said in an interview. However, Venakur had no idea she had called another, unrelated Patsy's Pizza. I didn't stop to think that maybe she called the wrong one, the broker commented. Desperate to find her money, Venakur tried one last move. Desperate and convinced she had looked everywhere, Venakur reached out to her bank, in an attempt to cancel the check. Unfortunately, she was met with even more bad news at the bank. They said they couldn't immediately cancel it because it was a cashier's check. I would have to wait at least three months before they could even start the process, and only if someone didn't cash it in the meantime, then Kur explained. Without the check, Venakur would have to move in with her daughter, a senior home, or end up on the streets. With nowhere to go, she had been staying with friends and family, sleeping on a different couch each night.  Meanwhile, at the real Patsy's Pizza, waiter Armando Markage and owner Frank Brinja had still not heard from Karen Venakur. After a few days, Brinja knew he had to do something about the situation. However, while most people would reach out to the authorities, Brinja had a totally different idea in mind. Instead, the owner of Patsy's Pizza decided to call a local newspaper to see if they could help track her down. Believe it or not, they managed to track her down within a matter of minutes. When the restaurant called and told Venakur they had her check, she could not believe it. She wouldn't end up on the streets after all. A relieved Karen Venakur arrived at Patsy's Pizza within an hour of receiving their call. There, Armando Markage greeted her at the front door. She got here within 10, 15 minutes, and she was here actually crying, she was like nervous, Brinja said. Of course, it is not every day that someone returns a $400,000 check. As Venakur approached, everyone at Patsy's Pizza had one question on their mind, would she apologize to Markage? After all, the last time she had been there, Venakur had left without even leaving Markage a dollar for his hard work. Did she feel sorry that she had stiffed him, given everything that had taken place? As Venakur entered the restaurant, everyone could tell that she felt more than a little uncomfortable when she saw Markage waiting for her. She was so happy, and she was in tears, said Brinja. But the second she saw Armando, you could see she got a little shy.  In the end, she did realize that she had made an error and wanted to make it up to the waiter. So, Venakur offered Markage a finder's fee. However, he rejected the offer. She offered to tip me, but it was. You know what, I did it for the sake of myself, so I'm not taking the tip now, Markage said. So, Venakur offered something else. When Markage did not take Karen Venakur's tip, she offered something else, a sincere apology for her behavior. She apologized. The apology was accepted, said Markage. I'm happy for her, really, he confessed. Saturdays are pretty busy, and I was very close to taking everything left on the table, and throwing it out when I saw an envelope. Venakur and Markage sealed the deal over some hot, delicious pizza. While Markage returned the check to make peace with himself, he sure taught Venakur a valuable lesson. It's safe to say that she will think twice about leaving no tip from now on. After Venakur and Markage finished their pizza, owner Frank Brinja gave her a tour of the Wall of Memories. To prove a point, he pointed out all the women's faces that Venakur had missed that Saturday. Among them were TV host Barbara Walters, first lady Cherlaine McCrae, former city council speakers, Christine Quinn, and Melissa Mark Veverito. Afterward, to drive the point home, Frank Brinja offered to do something else too. We joked with her and said we'd add her picture up on the wall, he said, laughing. While the woman declined the offer, one thing's for sure, Patsy's is Venakur's new favorite restaurant. What had started off as one of the best days of her life became one of Karen Venakur's worst. When she lost her check and had nowhere to go, her life turned into a waking nightmare. While eating at Patsy's pizza, she had no idea that her decision to leave no tip would ultimately teach her a lesson in humility and giving others a break. Now of course, Venakur feels exceptionally grateful to young Markage for doing the right thing despite her nasty behavior. In an interview with local news PIX11, the woman plainly stated that she will forever regret leaving no tip on the receipt. As you might imagine, the story of waiter Armando Markage and Karen Venakur quickly became quite the local legend. After all, the newspaper that Patsy's pizza owner Frank Brinjakold was none other than the iconic New York Daily News. Before long, the story was picked up by plenty of other websites, television shows, and newspapers that love the story of two people once at odds turning over a new leaf. Now, many locals come in just to see Markage and talk to him about his tale. However, the waiter earns something far more useful than a little bit of local fame. Believe it or not, through all this, he made a new friend.  After all, she seemed not to be having a good day. After she left, Markage was kind enough to save the mean-spirited woman her check for half a million dollars. Now that Venakur has learned a life lesson, she knows better than to treat servers poorly. In fact, Venakur said that, in a twist of fate, she thinks she'll be now best friends with Markage for life. I believe in karma too, she said. I guess that's what helped get me back to you. However, believe it or not, as crazy as Markage and Venakur's story is, it's not the only case of a waiter becoming best friends with a grumpy customer. Molina Salazar, a wonderful woman from Texas, has worked as a waitress for most of her adult life. While she initially jumped around, for the past decade she's worked at the same restaurant in the city of Brownsville. Like Armando Markage, Salazar learned over the years how to deal with difficult situations and customers.  In fact, soon after he started coming to Salazar's restaurant, the waitress became the only employee who would wait on Buck. While he was often a curmudgeon, Buck would change Salazar's life forever. Molina Salazar worked as a waitress at Lubies, a cafeteria-style restaurant in Texas. While most don't consider waitress a dream job, Salazar felt differently. Over 17 years as a waitress and six at Lubies, Salazar learned to love her job and became incredibly good at it. Without a doubt, she was one of the, if not the, best waitress in the place. Salazar always focused on excellent customer service, treating every single customer with respect and sympathy, no matter how difficult the customer behaved. According to her coworkers, she's always smiling and trying to cheer everyone up. But by setting herself apart from the rest of the staff, Salazar also opened herself up to her most difficult challenge yet. Because of her great attitude towards every single customer and swift service, especially those who were demanding, a manager assigned Salazar to a unique position, she would deal with the pickiest customers at Lubies. Most of us would hate this job. But of course, Salazar had no problem fulfilling her duties, wanting to treat everyone with respect.


Britain gives Ukraine Martlet missiles for fight against Shahad drones. The armed forces of Ukraine have received Martlet missiles from Britain which will help more effectively counter Russian drone attacks in forms of the times. The agency states that the United Kingdom has provided Ukraine with some of its advanced weapons to combat Russian Shahad drones. These are Martlet missiles. However, there is no official statement on this type of military aid supply yet. Martlet is a lightweight multi-role guided missile developed for the needs of the UK military by the FAILS Air Defence. The Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom ordered 1,000 missiles with deliveries scheduled to start in 2013. However, the initial operational capability was acquired in 2021 and full operational capability is expected in 2024. After entering service in the United Kingdom, the missile was named Martlet. It is designed to provide a unified family of weapons that can be used in various modes maritime, surface to air, air launched, ground to air. In April of last year, a video was published showing the use of manpads against the Russian Orlan-10 drone. The media managed to identify Martlet missiles by the distinctive features of the transport launch container of the anti-aircraft guided missile. Also in June 2022, a Russian Ka-52 helicopter was successfully shot down with the help of Martlet.