Who taught : Andrew

One of the TV shows I really like is Sunday Morning of CBS. I strongly recommend you to watch it to learn English because it is not only very informative and fun but also easy to understand. One of the stories in today’s show is about company called Zapppos, an online shoe retailer, which was acquired by Amazon.com last fall. Amazon.com paid $1.2 billion. The most amazing thing about this company’s success story is its philosophy. Tony Hsieh, its CEO, said,

It’s actually possible to make employees happy, make customers happy, and still make investors happy … and you know, still have profits.

Basically, if a company can make its employees happy, then they will be very happy to come to work and enjoy their work and, as a result, they will make customers happy and eventually company will make profits. Well, almost all of the Zappos employees CBS interviewed said the same thing, “I feel the company really cares about me.” Well, do you feel that your company cares about you? I guest the management team of any company should ask this question to themselves, “What can company do to make the employees feel they are taken care well?” Or, “Do I even know how employees feel about the company?”

I few weeks ago, I organized to play basketball with my friends at work. Andrew was going to play but then he realized that he had some other things to do so that he was not able to come to the game. Two weeks later, I sent out an email to some of the friends, trying to organize another game. This time, Andrew checked his schedule and he knew that nothing was going to be a problem for him to join the game. And he responded to the email and, in his email, he said, “I am down like a clown Charlie Brown.”

Do you know what does it mean? Well, let’s make it simple. Usually, if someone asks you that whether you are interested in doing something together and you know you will do it together, what would you say to him/her? What? Do you want me to be more specific? OK…. So, your friend asks you to go to the movies together with many of other friends at Friday night and you decide to join. What would you say? Maybe something like, “I am in!” or “That sounds like a plan. I will be there!” Right?

Well, one of the expressions you can use is “I am down.” or “I am down for it.”

And I think the expression Andrew used has the same meaning. I was trying to figure out its origin but not successful. Does anybody know its origin? Why there is Charlie Brown in the expression?