is it new old shit or old new shit?

I've posted some stuff that I haven't finished yet. See if you can find it.- ARS

Where have I been & What have I learned

It's been a while and a lot has happened so here's an update in my world,

Work: 2kool4skool quit, Mouthpiece got promoted, quit, came back and is kicking ass in finance. B Gizzle has been promoted to floor manager and we have developed this wierd Ferris Bueller/Principal Dewey relationship at work. Squirt moved down to service. Painky quit. I got fired and rehired again for the second time in a month. Other than that, aint been a whole lot going on. Got a few new co-workers: Destro, Light-skinned Jermaine, The Train Chief and New Guy. Kicked a lotta ass in May. June is unnh but it's not over yet.

Home: Goo moved out and is starting seminary in the fall. Pops is Pops and Moms is Moms and they're in love and the church is growing. So they're happy.

Me: I'm happy 85% of the time and when I'm not it's generally because I don't feel like being happy, which is a good place to be. I've been meditating which is interesting. I was celibate for all of ... 6 hours, before that crashed and burned. I have quantified a set of laws for dealing with women which I call Total Dominion, which I have refined to version 3.0 Quantum Dominion.

I have learned some things that are interesting to me and have affected my life greatly as I live by them. I'll share them if you want just drop a comment and I'll write you back - ARS

Showtime!!! (Unfinished)

For Fred

Preface

This blog has been glaringly absent of entries as of late. This has been for a number of reasons. Minus the bullshit, Life's Great!!! is a sliver of how I process reality. Reflecting upon it, I see that I deal with my toughest & darkest of situations by finding the humor in them. The saying that comes to mind is, "Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying." As of late that's been tougher to do. I typically work 60 to 70 hrs a week in a work enviroment that is filled with rejection. The end of 2005 were 2 of the worst months Used Cars had seen in a loooooooong time. It got so bad that our GM, notorious for his "frugality", cut off our cable. Morale was low. We were frustrated because to spend the amount of time we do at work for the wages we were earning seemed absurd. Comissioned sales people don't eat unless they sell and with the exception of 1 or 2 people nobody was eating. The last week of the year we had a decent amount of traffic and because over half of the floor quit because of the slump the remainder of us, Nigga 5 (CA, FC III, B Gizzle, The Mouthpiece and Yours Truly), got pretty busy towards the end of the month. '06 looked like it was gonna turn around. I had & still have a gut feeling that this is going to be not only MY year but a great year for all of us. Shit, after winter spring ALWAYS comes. And January popped. I sold 2 and a half cars in the first 5 days and it felt like I was back in the groove. 2 of these rolled back though (meaning the bank wouldn't fund them) and soon it seemed as if I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. To make matters worse, everyone around me was having record breaking sales. In short, I was blacked out. As a salesman, being blacked out is one of the worst things you can let happen to yourself. It's the equivalent to a boxer being dizzied in the ring. For the next 2 or 3 weeks, My mind was completely gone. I had no interest of even being at work let alone upping and selling. I felt like I was swimming in molasses. Even the most ordinary of tasks seemed to require extraordinary energy. Most of the last few weeks has been spent trying how to figure out how to manage to be successful in such a fucked up mental state. I just wanted it to end but faced with the prospect of it not ending, I had to figure out how to cope with it and still be productive. More than once, I thought about quitting and going some where else but I stayed partially because "whereever you go, there you are." I realized that the problem was within me and not in my enviroment. The other reason I stayed is because I honestly believed The Big Homie wasn't ready for me to leave yet. He usually signals this to me by having some authority figure firing my ass & on top of that I had a gut feeling I was supposed to stay. I was at the point of going to try another lot, when the Big Homie sent me a sign that made me hold tight. That sign was the arrival of Showtime.

THE CASE FOR TRUTH BEING STRANGER THAN FICTION.
EXHIBIT C: The Ultimate Motivational Technique

Our store is owned by a publicly traded corporation. Which means that people spend their money to buy shares of our company because they believe we will turn a profit and make them money. Which also means that when you have 2 of your worst months ever and you losing money those shareholders are less likely to buy our stock. This puts pressure on the board who pressures the CEO, who in turn pressures numerous other corporate suits, who in turn must produce a blood offering to be sacrificed upon the altar of corporate bureaucratic politics to appease the ruthless twin gods of balance sheets & profit margins.

This sacrifice was to be our own beloved Chainsaw.

The winter months being lean as they were made all mistakes much more apparent. They say nothing hurts when you're winning. Well, the converse of that is everything hurts when you're losing. Chainsaw was the director of Used Cars. It was his show. On top of that he had bought quite a few cars for more money than they were worth at the auction. Which means we have to sell them for more money than they're worth to make a profit. He was also buying cars that noone wanted. We still have 4 2006 Ford Tauruses that we can't GIVE away. One bogue told me in absolute horror "NO!!! NO!!! NO!!! I'd rather walk than drive THAT!!!" Having cars over book (over book refers having paid more for cars than the suggested market value) makes it harder on everyone. They're harder for us to sell because they're priced out of wack with the current market. Often times when you do sell it you have to trim the margin or sell it at a loss. This means your store isn't making a lot of money, which means your salespeople aren't eating.

Bottom line: Everybody's pissed.

So when Chainsaw's boss and his boss's boss and his boss's boss's boss (who none of us had even SEEN before because he lives in Florida) showed up @ 811 Thornton Rd for a meeting with Chainsaw, noone was too shocked when he was fired a few days later.
Everyone was sad to see Chainsaw go. Working so many hours together you become a family and while we didn't always agree with his decisions or his methods, we all love Chainsaw. Besides nobody wants to see a man lose his means of providing for his family. We didn't have long to mourn though. About an hour later we were introduced to our new manager.... SHOWTIME.

I got into the car biz because I got fired from my last job and needed work. My father had been suggesting I sell cars for a while because he felt it would be a good experience to butress my entrepeneurial foundation. When I got fired from my last gig (which is a story in and of itself) I figured I'd go see LG, a friend of my father's, and give it a shot. When by what has to be the closest thing to a miracle I've personally experienced, I passed the drug test, I figured, "Okay this is where the Big Homie wants to be."

Pops is a car fanatic. He loves everything that has to do with cars. Since we have come to Atlanta, he has mentioned 2 names more than any other in the car business. The 1st,of course, is LG. The 2nd is that of Showtime.

I'm a firm believer that accidents don't happen. I figured if The Big Homie had brought Showtime and LG together then it was for a reason and I should stay and sees what develops.
The initial introduction filled me with hope. He introduced himself and while most of the floor was skeptical and/or still reeling from the loss of Chainsaw, based upon what he had to say I saw his arrival as a positive, much needed change,

First of all, he was enthusiastic which is definitely something you need when dealing customers. The fact is that human beings are animals and we pick up, feed off of, & reflect off each other's energy. If I'm slow and dragging then that's gonna bring me my customer down. If I'm up, energetic & enthusiastic then my customer reflects the same And in turn there more likely to open up and leave as satisfied customers. This isn't theory, by the way this is fact. If you wanna run a quick experiment try greeting people as enthusiastically as you can and watch there reactions. This can be done in conversation as well with acknowledgements. When you're listening to people and you're giving them the little unh-hunhs and yeahs as acknowledgements, try varying the tone of a few of them in succession and watch the results. Just as easier to dissolve sugar in hot water than cold water; it's easier to sell in high energy enviroments than low ones and after the 3 months we just had, the lot felt like a morgue. An infusion of energy is what we needed.

Secondly, his purported specialty was in sales & sales training. Our previous training had amounted to a 4 day class called Customer 1st. In my case, I was trained under the school of "Jump in the Ocean and Don't Drown." I felt like consistent structured training would do us all a lotta good.

I am at heart a trusting person willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. So a lot of Showtimes "idiosyncracies" I just wrote off as part of his management style. I should've known better. First of all, Showtime was from Chicago. Every nigga I've ever met from Chicago was fuckin nut's and 90% of them were shady. It didn't take long to notice that I initially dismissed as idiosyncracies were just a glimpse into the psychological make up of a seriously disturbed (read: fucked up) individual.

1) The muthafucka lies a lot.
He has a story for everything and it always changes. At first, the most money he had ever made in a month was 19 grand, then it was 14, then it was 16. Showtime is big on self-promotion. Bottom line dude talks a LOOOOT of shit but very rarely delivers.

2) He talks to people like shit.
As much as an uplifter as he claims to be, he seems to constantly tear people down. He said some shit to me one day so greasy that I could seriously see myself coming into work the next day and shooting him in the face. He's had closed door shouting matches with several of the employees in his short tenure their.

3) The constant, almost daily, references to either homosexuality and/or anal rape.