Managers hear questions every day.  Some serious; some trivial.  “Are the merger rumors true?” “How much is our budget being cut?”  “Can we extend our deadline a couple of days?”  “Is our team going to have to work over the weekend?”

But the ONE question that you have to answer correctly every single time is this:  “What are you working on?”

It’s particularly crucial that you give the answer right when responding to your own boss. But your reputation can also suffer when you blow that question with your colleagues.

The first day I sauntered into Miss Amos’s English class, I was scared. Not because of the subject or because this was my first day in a big city school—I was startled by her face. My first thought: Did some terrible disease do this to her?