A Couple of Things ...

A couple of things while they're on my mind ... 

[1]

Spent the past few hours helping a co-worker move. Shall I tell you about the giant cluster-F it was?

First, we we're supposed to start at 10AM. At 8:30ish I get a text message to change it to noon. At 11:50 I'm walking up to her place and I get a other text message asking to move it to 2PM.

But, I am there ...

She told me everything would be packed and all I had to do was help load and unload. Apparently some things were packed, but a vast majority of it was not. They had friends over last night to help but they decided to drink and get high instead.

Her house smelled like an ash tray and I was tempted to leave but literally stood out on the balcony so I wouldn't have to smell it while they were "getting ready".

We take some stuff down to the UHaul to deliver to a friend's house and go to leave but the boyfriend decides to run through McD's and take her some breakfast so she has food in her system.

It is now almost 1300. I think he's just going to drop it off with her and we'd drive, but he decides he needs to eat with her too. So, we stop to eat.

We go over to the friend's house drop off the goods (up three flights, with no elevator) and head back to her place.

There are more people there, some smoking pot and others drinking Crown Royal and a handful actively packing.

Now there are far too many people in her tiny apartment, nothing had been arranged neatly and everyone is arguing over what should go where for the easiest access on the UHaul, in storage or over at her boyfriend's house where she is moving to.

I told them this already lasted longer than I was scheduled for (I was thinking 10-2/3) and left. I have my own moving to do today.

I've been staying with a guy on a trial run to see if I wanted to move in with him and I don't. He, too, smokes far too much (MJ) and I don't want my clothes smelling like it all the time. He's in his 40s and yet still lives and acts like a 20 with his first apartment. He doesn't know how to use a shower curtain, cook or do anything that doesn't involve pot.

So, I'm off to get my few meager belongings out of his place while he's working today. Because I'm actually afraid he's going to have an emotional breakdown. He already told me how pissed he was when his last roommate left him. The mutual connection who said it might be a good fit, but I don't think she knew how co-dependent he is.

[2]

I stopped at a place where I could get a frozen yogurt sundae and was sitting there eating it while typing out the above portion of this post when I see my co-worker walk in with his kids in a shopping cart.

This guy is a couple of years younger than me, but still in his forties, divorced and only has his kids on the weekends - to which he's always looking forward to. I'd met his kids once before on a chance encounter, just like this one and while I wouldn't say they were the best behaved children, they weren't doing anything other than being kids.

I do recall his kids did not listen to him at all. That when he said "stop it" or "don't" they just went on ahead and did what they were doing, but I chalked it up to them being with Dad and Dad was cooler than Mom, letting them get away with anything they wanted.

Today, though, his kids were out of control. The older one is perhaps 5 or six, while the younger is maybe four. I think the both of them took the opportunity of me to be as obnoxious as possible as they kept looking at me, smiling and then doing something any kids their age would know was wrong.

For example, at the table next to me was a father with his two kids of approximately the same ages. Both of them were calm in demeanor, they listened to their father and he had no problem walking away from the table for a moment to get napkins or straws or whatever it was he went to get. His kids were fine.

And then there were my friend's kids. His daughter was in the seating area of the cart and his son was in the basket. The son kept kicking his father, the daughter kept slapping him. As we're trying to talk she's literally slapping his face or punching his chest while his son is kicking the cart or the back of his sister's head.

My friend suffered through most of it, only telling his daughter to stop hitting him when she got a good slap on his face, nearly hitting his eye. She laughed. The her brother laughed and started climbing out of the cart and onto the table I was sitting at.

Their father not saying a word. His kids looking to me to see if they were being entertaining enough. I kept telling them I didn't appreciate their behavior and they kept acting up. I asked him if he'd just hopped them up on 5 Hour Energy or espressos or something and he said they had been at the Museum of Nature and Science all day and should be tired.

He finally managed to convince his son to crawl back into the cart so they could go order their to-go meal, he and I continued to talk about work. His daughter still hitting him, his son still kicking the cart or the back of his sister all the while smiling.

Their father kept telling them to stop - to behave. I'll give him that, but I could clearly see the kids didn't respect their father. There was no threat of repercussions. In the thirty minutes or so we talked he threatened to put them in "time-out" multiple times, threatened to not let them eat, threatened to take away their toys (tablet) and even threatened to call their mom.

None of this deterred the children. The daughter even tried to reach out and slap me and I said, "no." She tried again and I snatched her hand out of the air and said "no" again, this time in my command tone. She instantly stopped. The son thought it was funny.

I looked at him and said, "Try me." Then to their father and said, "Sorry. I thought it might have more effect coming from a stranger," having remembered strangers correcting my behavior when I was a kid.

It takes a village, after all.

He didn't seem to mind and I think he enjoyed the reprieve as his daughter tried to suss out what had just happened.

Then both kids were at it again. This time the son had figured out how to move the part of the cart that flips up so other carts can park "inside" it. He started slamming that repeatedly. The daughter had a crushed penny that she'd obviously made at the natural history museum in one of those tourist things that take fifty cents to flatten and stamp a penny.

My friend kept telling his son to stop and his daughter to take the penny out of her mouth.

The son kept slamming the cart's moving part and the daughter kept the penny in her mouth. The father took the penny out of her mouth and put it in her hand and she put it back in her mouth while telling his son he'd take away his tablet, for the fiftieth time.

The daughter put the penny back in her mouth and the son kept slamming the cart.

I finally told the daughter, "If that penny goes in your mouth one more time I'm taking it and you're never getting it back." Then I looked at the son, "One more time."

Their dad sat idly by. I kept expecting him to say something about correcting his children, but he never did. It lasted a few minutes before the penny was back in her mouth and the son was kicking the back of her head again. My friend took the penny before I could and dragged his son to the other end of the cart, "I'm trying to have a conversation with my friend and you're being out of control!"

They stopped for a moment then fired right back up. He looked at me, "Kids, right?"

Um, no. Your kids.

Don't get me wrong, I get it: kids can be a pain in the butt. Their job is to try your patience, but the job of a parent is also to teach their kids. Just earlier in the day I told a woman her kid doing something didn't bother me because it didn't. He was trying something he'd obviously never done before but it wasn't as though he was trying to be annoying he was just being a kid. My friend's kids were obviously trying to push things as far as they could go and he was letting them.

Which brings up to a the crux of all this reading. I've known this guy for about four months. He's extremely mild-mannered in his speech and actions. In fact, I asked him at one point if his mild-manner behavior was a result of conditioning or had he already been such a personality. He said it might be a bit of both.

He's in the same role I am: light sales. Nothing large or expensive, but something where you're expected to make at least 16 sales a day. He's sitting at 5-10 a day while I'm up at about 18 (which still considered low. Remember, at least 16 sales a day).

He's way too soft and too passive when it comes to just about everything I've seen him do, including correcting his children. I"m an over-thinker, but he dives so far down the rabbit hole I don't think he often comes up for a dose of reality. He's one of those people who believes he's always right, even when he's not - especially when he's not.

For example, I showed him a business idea I had. He thought it was a good idea and then said he'd "consult" on my business with all these grand ideas he had. I said I wasn't interested, I just wanted to do one thing and do it well. After a while, if I found a way to branch out I'd consider it, but I wanted a strong foundation to start on. He pushed that aside and within a ten minute conversation he had my business so spread out I barely knew what was going on with it. He also had his own idea to be an affiliate marketer but decided to drop it to sell insurance in a pyramid scheme. Because, you know, out of the hundreds of people who sign up to do that every year, a handful were successful.

Now, he can't get people to buy anything at our day job, how is he supposed to sell insurance and make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year?

He's a nice guy. Extremely nice. Mr. Rogers nice. But there's that ability to pull a trigger, to stand up straight and draw a line in the sand that he's missing and it bothers me knowing a good guy might never succeed because he's unwilling to step on a toe or make anyone upset with him.

Not that I"m saying one has to be an a-hole to have success, but if you spend all your time hoping someone likes you, then you're not going to be able to make decisions that have an actual affect on people.

Take his kids, for example. For some reason he could't or wouldn't correct his kids in a manner they knew they had crossed a line. Every time he tried to calm them down or get them to stop he just gave them another warning. After a couple of minutes I would have said: "okay, you just lost pizza". After a few more: "well, you just lost your tablet for the rest of the weekend." A few more: "well, that's a time out when we get to grandma and grandpa's."

And the trick is, you have to follow through or else your threats are empty and they know they can ignore them. This applies everywhere in life, not just with kids. People have to know you're true to your word, even if that means taking the hit yourself.

For example, I have to move out of this guy's place and let him know I'm not interested in living with him even though it means I'll be sleeping in my truck again. I could try to ride it out, be nice, live in a situation I don't want to for the sake of having a roof over my head, but I have to stand by my convictions and those are that I don't want to live in a place filled with marijuana smoke all the time or even more often than not.

I'm fully aware that ego and pride can get in the way sometimes (okay, often), but we are who we're meant to be and it's the struggles in life that define our character, not the successes. You want people to respect you, be the person who deserves respect. But know that means not everyone will like you. Want to be the person that everyone likes? That's great, but that means not everyone will respect you.