In the halcyon days of a misspent youth, I spent one glorious winter tending goal for a championship college hockey team. Okay, it was floor hockey; okay, it was intramural floor hockey; okay, it was co-ed intramural floor hockey. Nonetheless, that triumph bestrides my memory like the great Colossus it never was.

Now granted, all I have to show for my time between the pipes is a ratty black "Intramural Champs" t-shirt, but in light of our championship game victory over a team that had dubbed themselves "Just Give Us the Shirts," that t-shirt wore like Olympic gold.

On that note, I'm typing this entry while wearing a spiffy new Catchlight polo. It's always been interesting to me, this notion of a company's branded apparel: on one level, a shirt (or hat, or jacket) acts an effective customercentric device, allowing the customer to (hopefully!) associate the quality of work and service with the identifying logo.

To wit, that a Catchlight paint job looks like this, or this, but also this:

On a deeper, perhaps more intriguing level, the branded apparel acts as a gentle reminder to the conscientious employee that he or she is representing something that is, by its very essence, the greater sum of its parts. It's a great self-check and I'll use myself as an example: in a rush at the coffee place this morning, I briefly considered sighing, coming down hard on my right foot, raising my eyebrow--something cloddy and blunt to demonstrate frustration with the slowness of the two jamokes in front of me who were fumbling with their change while loudly planning their morning break. But to what end? Would my two seconds of self-involved discontent be worth the lasting impression that Catchlight hires and employs (very dashing but) impatient, officious muckety mucks who can't process a slight delay to their morning routine? Not at all, of course.

It should be noted that neither baristas nor consumers were harmed in the filming of this blog.