May 18, 2024
I once had a Sales Manager who was famous for saying this to creativity-blocked salespeople, or on the other end of the corporate spectrum, to those executives in leadership who were demonstrating impotence. “Do something, even if it’s wrong,” he would coach.
Well, that is potentially wild and reckless advice. But in context, it made perfect sense. In the world of sales, closing the deal with a hesitant customer can leave the salesperson without any more tricks up the proverbial sleeve. Sometimes they are stonewalling for better pricing, sometimes they are overwhelmed with their internal profit and loss situation and/or are paralyzed by the rigors of the business. I was selling for a wholesale food distribution company that targeted fine dining operations mostly, but needed the BBQ joints, the hotels, the esoteric sole proprietor to keep the fish, cases of romaine, frozen chicken breasts and bottles of bleach moving.
My short stint there, an independent house trying to compete with the likes of the Syscos, Roma Foods, Kraft corporate powerhouses, gave me huge lessons in sales, interpersonal relationships, resilience, and closure. Long story short, the company wanted to expand into an area and hired five people, knowing only two were ultimately needed. I was in BFE West of Richmond trying to sell high quality restaurant provisions to friggin’ country stores and diners. I did not make the cut. I was “fired” by this same manager. I chewed on this failure for several years, though had quickly pivoted to keep my own provisions still coming in.
Several years passed and I ran into that Manager at a gym. He decided to casually tell me that Alan was the salesperson he wanted fired, mostly because he was a drunk and his customers hated him, but that his “numbers” were more promising. (Even one of my Mexican restaurant customers called HQ to complain about my removal.) But let’s go back to the manager. In one small, inadvertent conversation, (that one where you are terminated and asked to hand in the computer), he had eroded my self-esteem to two degrees on a scale of one hundred. If he knew how much I fretted about that, it might have been a longer conversation, but I guess he never thought I would take it personally. Really? Losing a job, or anything will smack of “personally” feeling the feelings of loss because we humans are wired that way. However, in hindsight, I wished I hadn’t wasted energy on all that fretting.
I went on to several management positions myself and I wish to thank that jack-ass manager for helping me develop ways to separate an employee in much better ways so that the fretting was minimal, and as I was helping someone out of my door, I was laying down bricks for them to walk another path. It is what good human managers do, IMHO.
But I did adopt his flippant phrase. When I have been stuck in the tornado of indecision, I will frequently coach myself to “do something, even if it’s wrong.” It’s the “doing” that has been my way of dealing with impasses or severe anxieties in my world. When my gut decides to flood me with Cortisol for no reason whatsoever, I have learned to do anything that derails the chemical attack. Walk, pump dumbbells, weed, get on the Yoga mat and Plank, march, weed-eat, chop wood. All it takes is some non-cerebral, repetitive activity that requires a bit of brain coordination, so that one doesn’t chop their foot off – but enough so that the naggy little raccoon of an issue calms the heck down.
I have found that many of us, again I include myself, fret over “closure” in a terminated relationship. My experiences have taught me to save my energy fretting on closure and just close the damn door. Rumination over a past, wrong decision is another energy-waster. It also comes to my attention that we frequently “do” things or become things to erase or mitigate or repress feelings and thoughts and general ickiness that comes from agonizing over an experience. I know that I chose to become a mediator because of my own icky divorce mediation experience. I wanted to be much better than the clown who was trying to mediate us.
We all know the zealots who preach down hard on others after THEY decide to stop smoking, drinking, drugging, gambling, squandering or become born-again Christians. There is a fine line between blatant self-destruction with no self-awareness, and troubled, damaged souls trying to see clear to something else. Eventually, they will “do”. Or not. Their journey, their monkeys. I must remind myself that I have my own dirty monkey cage to clean up. Hope he doesn’t throw any feces at me today! Not today, monkey, Not Today.
That’s my armchair evaluation of people “doing” and how it affects others. We all can improve. And if you wreck someone’s self-esteem during an employment termination, please don’t wait 6 years to say it wasn’t personal and by the way your customers loved you. Geez.
By the way, Dear Reader like our Bridgerton narrator likes to say, you know I like to tie all these entries together. The Universe seems to almost write those pieces for me. As I am drafting this, I am annoying myself with LiveNow from Fox (ROKU news digest). They are describing in detail a story about the F-16’s gearing up to come out of the Netherlands, Norway, etc. to go into Ukraine in the very near future. Hope they TopGun the potatoes out of the Ruskies!
ZenVeg Updates…. Updates or Obituaries?
I have never had this little produce at this time of the year since I started “farming” this joint back in 2010ish. We bought the place in 2008 and it took a few years to even visualize what could be the nano-farm.
True, the last 2 years were rough with an augmented “real work” schedule and my prep schedule delayed by days of long COVID nonsense, but all the same, planting snap peas the same way at the same time each year has resulted in vastly different results. The climate is not just warming, but springs in Virginia are staying cooler and damper making seed germination difficult. Huh. That’s all I have. Huh. Pondering to continue.
And again, in late March, early April we had near 90-degree days. That sends evil messages to the likes of arugula, radish, turnip, kale, Chinese Broccoli. Huh.
Tomatoes and peppers and Rattlesnake beans are taking hold so I will hold my breath for my precious little farm to cough up something, anything, soon.
Stay cozy, dear readers, till we meet again. And take care of that monkey.
P.S. I listen to this on a loop when I am pondering.