I want to high five all the professionals out there who do a great job and take pride in what they were hired to do. I feel like I have been bombarded with unprofessionalism lately, and it seems to be completely acceptable. It’s especially surprising because I wasn’t even dealing with insurance companies or airlines.

I want to highlight the positive about this past week, and to everyone who actually did their job, and did it well. I salute you!

First, you must know that I am linking up with a woman who brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan…Angela from Happy Fit Mama.

1. Positive Shaming on Social Media

Is there such a thing? Why yes, there is and this is how it’s done!

About eight months ago I was asked to write a post about my experiences at Go Ape adventure park in exchange for a blog post. They also offered to give one of my readers free passes to a Go Ape location near them.

I went. I wrote. Someone won.

A few months later the winner told me no one ever contacted her from Go Ape and she therefore never received the passes, even though I did an introductory email between the two parties. I was pissed, embarrassed and confused, in that order. I reached out several times to my contact via email, as I had done though out the process, but received zero response.

Two days ago, someone else tweeted about a company doing the same and Go Ape immediately came to mind:

Within two hours Go Ape sent me a message via Twitter, I emailed them the correspondence that was never responded too, and miraculously the tickets were sent to the winner! They even offered me a pair of free passes.

Behold – the power of social media!

Thank you Go Ape for paying attention to your Twitter feed and correcting the situation. I love you again!

And here’s an article you really must read about company shaming, far worse then what I expereinced:

Shamed On Twiiter, Corporations do About-Face | ars technica | Joe Silver

2. No Shame In Their Game – NFL Players

It’s Super Bowl week! I’m only semi-excited because I don’t really care about the Broncos or Panthers (sorry!) but what group of people are more professional then NFL players?

Exactly, which is why I love when other professionals make fun of them:

3. Dentists

I officially survived my first root canal. Part of the awesomeness of a root canal is the most vial tasting crap they shoot into the nerve(s) about 1 million times though out the procedure. If the assistant isn’t swift with the suckage, it goes down your throat and is vomit inducing.

My dentist was extremely professional, except when she said this, right in the middle of my torture session:

“I gave my mom a root canal with no assistant once and made her throw-up. Now she calls me Dr. Kavorkian.”

I forgive her because she is a runner.

4. Obvious Things You Should Already Know…But Clearly Need Sarah Spain to Tell You!

Sarah Spain is a very opinionated writer for ESPN. I love almost everything she writes including her recent article titled “Obvious Things You Should Already Know but Clearly Need Me to Tell You!” It’s about things like how you shouldn’t take pictures of racial slurs written across your chest like these Phoenix High School girls.

Here is one of Sarah’s general rules for life I wish everyone could get on board with:

• First things first, before we get to anything else: Don’t be a racist. Or a homophobe. Or sexist. Or a bigot of any kind. That’ll make the rest of these a whole lot easier.

The article only gets better from there and I especially enjoyed the link to all those Facebook posts where people don’t check the background before posting! Caution: there is a lot of nudity, drugs and just plain ridiculousness. #Shame #Unprofessional

5. Being Done with “After You” by JoJo Moyes

I had avoided reading “After You” because I didn’t hear a lot of positive feedback and, I absolutely loved JoJo Moyes’ first book “Before You” so much, I didn’t want to ruin it. But, when this was chosen as my next book club assignment I was kind of glad to have an excuse to read it.

The excitement was short lived because it was horrible. I mean, page skipping, eye-rolling, is-it-over-yet awful. How can an author be so brilliant with one book and then so astonishingly dreadful with the next?

Luckily, my spirits were raised when I saw that “Before You” is being made into a movie!

I’m pretty certain this will not have a sequel and that is something we can all be happy about.

[Tweet “5 things to high 5 this Friday with @happyfitmama #handsup”]

What are you high-fiving this Friday?

Have you experienced unexpected unprofessionalism lately?

Have you read “Before You” and/or “After You?” Thoughts?