After arguing with his boss Chuck Portnoy of Dynamic Systems, Dan Trunkman decides to start his own business in the metal swarf-selling field. Tim McWinters, who was fired for being too old, and Mike Pancake, who was there for an interview, follow Dan and join his new company. A year later, Dan's business, Apex Select, has barely gotten off the ground. In a Dunkin' Donuts, Dan gets a message to go on a business trip to Portland to meet with investors Jim Spinch and Bill Whilmsley, the latter being a friend of Dan's.
Dan later manages to score a meeting with Dirk, via Bill. First, the guys pass through a riot going on outside the building where Austerlitz is located. After evading police and getting pelted with paintballs, the guys make it inside with the aid of Bill. Austerlitz likes what he hears from Dan, then what he sees on their front page, and they close a deal, thereby saving Dan's business. He, Tim, and Mike celebrate by gloating in front of both Chuck and Jim.
Two years ago when people asked why I came to Crunchy Data I told them I had unfinished business. After the success at Citus tackling scalability problems where the average customer being 40TB in data, I attracted to the idea of returning to the vision we had back at the DoD of bringing a better Postgres experience to developers. Despite the rapid growth of successful DBaaS offerings, there was still something missing - that initial idea of DoD that we still wanted to create.
The opening scene, meant to call up memories of Jerry Maguire storming out of his office taking the brave little secretary with him, is a problem because as one watches it, one starts to wish that one were watching "Jerry Maguire" instead. Dan Trunkman (Vaughn) confronts his boss, the unfeeling and cutthroat Chuck Portnoy (Sienna Miller), about why he has to submit to a 5-percent pay cut. Employees implausibly gather around to watch the argument. When Trunkman storms out, declaring he will set up a business of his own, nobody follows him. Instead, he acquires his first "employees" in the parking lot on the way to his car: Timothy (Tom Wilkinson), fired because he was too old, and Mike Pancake (Dave Franco), who just interviewed for a job and didn't get it, maybe because he has only about 20 words in his vocabulary.
Elderly sad-dog Tim is unhappy in his marriage, wants a divorce, and his main desire in life is try the "wheelbarrow position." It's hard to invest in a "stake" such as that one, and the "wheelbarrow position," unfunny at its first mention, is brought up again ... and again ... and again ... in a tone-deaf repetition that almost reaches surreal levels. Trunkman has two unhappy kids at home, one who is being bullied, and one who is a bully, as well as a wife who cannot grasp that her husband is on an international business trip and she shouldn't call him three times a day. Mike Pancake is so naive that he doesn't know the difference between a square and a rectangle.
Context: Unfinished business often causes psychological issues after bereavement. Providing care for families of terminally ill patients with cancer to prevent unfinished business is important.
Objectives: To clarify the prevalence and types of unfinished business in families of end-of-life patients with cancer admitted to palliative care units (PCUs), explore depression and grief associated with unfinished business, and explore the factors affecting unfinished business.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional, anonymous, self-report questionnaire survey with 967 bereaved families of patients with cancer admitted to PCUs. The questionnaire assessed the presence or the absence of unfinished business, content of unfinished business, depression, grief, process of preparedness, condition of the family and patient, and the degree of involvement of health care professionals.
Results: Questionnaires were sent to 967 families, and 73.0% responded. In total, 26.0% of families had some unfinished business, with improvement of the patient-family relationship being a common type of unfinished business. Families with unfinished business had significantly higher depression and grief scores after bereavement compared with those without. Factors that influenced the presence or the absence of unfinished business were preparedness for the patient's death (P = 0.001), discussion between the patient and family about the disease trajectory and way to spend daily life (P < 0.001), good patient-family relationship (P = 0.011), and family and health care professionals considering together the appropriate timing to accomplish the family's wishes (P = 0.021).
Conclusion: Many families have unfinished business. Health care professionals should coordinate the appropriate timing for what the family wishes to do, with consideration of family dynamics, including the family's preparedness, communication pattern, and relationships.
Let us instead be grateful that the world is still to be created;
Let us give thanks that we can be more than we are;
Let us celebrate the power of the incomplete;
For life is always unfinished business.
At the beginning of each parliamentary term, the Conference of Presidents shall take a decision on reasoned requests from parliamentary committees and other institutions to resume or continue the consideration of such unfinished business.
Fan Works
- In Being Dead Ain't Easy, this is parodied. Joey haunts Kaiba because he has nothing better to do, and thinks he's too smug for his own good.
- Child of the Storm has this very trope as the title of the sequel's side-story, and the motive for both Nimue's very slow-burning plot (though she was never entirely dead to begin with) and the Green Lantern Ring involving Carol, its first wielder since the retirement of the now-dead Alan Scott: both of them have unfinished business with Project Pegasus. Nimue unleashed it as part of her plans and her more general unfinished business, getting rather more than she bargained for in the process, and the Ring was used by Alan Scott to seal up Pegasus.
- From The Girl in the Pink Dress, we have Nui. The reason she haunts the Kiryuuins is that she just simply wants to go outside, something that, due to illness which caused her death, she couldn't do, leaving her ghost trapped in the house long after her death. When she is freed, she thanks the Kiryuuins before leaving and, later on, reincarnating.
- In the one-shot A Farm Girl's Promise, Malon died a century ago but is still waiting for her husband Link. She had promised him that they'd meet again after the war, but Lon Lon Ranch was pillaged beforehand. Malon's ghost reunites with Link's Twilight Princess reincarnation and helps him recover some Past-Life Memories.
- In the Harry Potter fanfic The Peace Not Promised, Dumbledore is able to use the Resurrection Stone to help a ghost speak with her estranged mother and find peace, allowing her to finally pass on after centuries of regret.
- Referenced in the Gravity Falls one-shot Mabel's Guide to Death; the ghost of Mabel Pines, having been killed during the events of the series finale, speculates on what's keeping her around.
Ghost!Mabel: "Most ghosts have unfinished business of some kind. You'll need to get them done so that you can go up to the great whatever-it-is in the sky. For me, I'm not quite sure. Maybe it was for getting Grunkle Stan's memory back, but he's mostly back to normal and I'm still here. Maybe it's to make sure everybody's gonna be alright without me. Maybe it's just to say goodbye to everybody. Now that I think about it, it might be all of that stuff, plus a couple other things."
Radio
- Parodied in the Storyteller sketch in John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme Season 8 Episode 1, with the ghost of a small business owner, whose unfinished business is his actual business. He therefore cannot pass over until either the company goes bankrupt or it amasses all the money in the world, which is the only win condition he can think of, and one that he acknowledges is impossible.Anderson: You know that tiresome saying that no-one on their deathbed ever wished they'd spent more time at the office? Well, I did, and so here I am.
Tabletop Games
- The ghost-based games of the New and Old World of Darkness systems take this trope and run with it:
- The wraiths of Wraith: The Oblivion have a number of ties that keep them connected to their old life, such as Passions (emotions and drives that defined them in life) and Fetters (emotional connections and objects of importance). Most wraiths seek to keep their Fetters protected so they can maintain their power, but quite a few attempt to "resolve" their Passions and Fetters so that they can Transcend and move on.
- Orpheus often has agents of the Orpheus Group attempt to resolve a ghost's Unfinished business to get rid of them, unless they become too violent or dangerous to deal with. In addition, there are a number of powerful, strong-willed ghosts who act as agents for the company, usually, because they too have something they need to accomplish before they can move on.
- In the New World of Darkness these traits are split between ghosts and Revenants. Ghosts (which appear to, for the most part, merely be psychic echoes left behind by departing souls, with little to no sentience) possess fetters (renamed "anchors") which represent things of significance to the dead person which their ghost is metaphorically attached to (basically things which would have held part of their minds back while their souls were moving on). While resolving a ghost's issues can be used to set it free (allowing it to move on), it is just as easy to simply destroy the anchor (particularly since some ghosts might not actually have issues which can be resolved). Revenants are corpses reanimated by souls that refuse to move on because they possess a Passion, from which they derive will and power. They also can be gotten rid of by simply destroying their bodies (or helping them resolve their Passion).
- Geist: The Sin-Eaters has clarified the role of Anchors for ghosts: as long as a ghost is tethered to the world by Anchors, they're unable to change. They may stagnate and spiral downwards, but they can't grow. Once their Anchors are broken or resolved, they migrate to the Underworld, where they're able to develop once more. As such, Sin-Eaters know rituals that allow a ghost to pass on to the Underworld instantly once its business is resolved, and there's an entire Archetype defined by aiding restless spirits to settle matters. Resolving the business of ghosts has a benefit to Sin-Eaters that goes beyond charity, however, as helping a ghost to pass on refills their pool of Plasm.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts recommends that Ravenloft monster hunters help non-malevolent ghosts to complete their Unfinished business in order to end a haunting. For Evil ghosts, a standard ass-kicking is the preferred means of disposal, but discovering what Unfinished business they'd left behind can provide clues to their vulnerabilities.
- Geists (harmless telepathic spirits) and haunts (possessing spirits) are also motivated by unfinished business. Specters, despite looking very similar, aren't; they just hate the living. A Dragon article about undead has a Wrong Genre Savvy Redgar think a specter will care that its murderer has been brought to justice, and is very wrong.
- Pathfinder ghosts cannot be truly lain to rest until their business is completed, and if slain will simply reform in a matter of days. While these goals aren't necessarily evil, ghosts tend to be warped by frustration and dark energy if their goals go unaccomplished too long. The most prominent ghost is King Geb, whose goal is to determine if his ancient nemesis Nex is truly dead (and presumably kill him if he's not), and manages to juggle ruling a kingdom of the dead while he works on it.
- Mysterium deals with the ghost of a murdered valet which clings to the old manor he was killed in to help people elucidating his assassination.
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