You Can Mutually Respect My A$?!

So I've been out of college for a little while now. I've been in the working world pushing papers now since January of 2000. So I think this makes me an expert on interoffice relations. Or at least it does to me. I won't name any names or anything, but what is it about people not respecting each other in the office. Particularly managers disrespecting thier underlings. I don't really get it. Yeah, there are your run of the mill prick wannabe power mongers. But I have also seen this spring up as behavior from perfectly nice individuals. Obviously stress plays in tot his and how well these people deal with stress, but come on!. When it occurs time and time again and people feel like they are being reprimanded for things they didn't even do, then a line has to be drawn and I'd like to draw it.

Am I a hothead? No, I don't think so. Am I coarse or selfish? Well, that might be closer to the truth. But do I respect the people I work with? Absofuckinglutley! I learned a log time ago that respect given is respect gained. Not always from the same people that are dealing with each other but it's kind of karmic in a sense. At least that's how I see it.

But what makes truly disrespectful people this way? Do they really need people to feel subservient to them? Does it make them feel powerful? Because where is the power in not being respected by the people that work under you. I'm not sure there is any real power. There is certainly a fear factor as far as your job being stripped away from you, but is there real power? I think real power comes from respect and making people feel good about being lead by you. That doesn't happen in to many companies. Kinda sad, isn't it. I guess it really is true....that it's just way easier to be an asshole than to be a real leader.

This post kinda sucked. Man, am I losing my touch? :(

Well That Sucks!

So I've been in sales for pretty much all of my adult life. I've sold clothes, cars, computers, services and even gotten involved in the grand daddy multi-level marketing Amway Corporation. So what does that say about my sales skills what I am willing to endure in order to "Be Sold"? Well just the other day my wife informed me that a woman would be coming by the house in the evening in order to present us with some type of product that she was selling. I wasn't too big on it, but my wife really just wanted to have her over so that she could view someone other than myself do thier "sales tricks" since my wife is starting to get into sales herself. I wanted to be supportive even though I was not enthused about it, so I said fine.

So this lady shows up around 5:30 in the afternoon and she has a sales partner with her. Another woman, possibly one in training. I'm thinking, "Great, it's a tag team effort." They were in thier late 40's to early 50's and they seemed nice, so I went along with it. I have to admit I had a lot of curiosity since we had no clue as to what they were peddling. So the veteran sales lady starts into her song and dance. She has this plastic bowl that she wants me to fill with cold water. So I oblige and assist her in showing us what seems to be some type of portable air feshener system that basically looked like an oversized coffee pot with a blow dryer motor attached to it. She then shows us how quickly it can clean and scent the air in the room to mask odors or whatever else is stinking up your home. It was kind of neat, but it looked cheap and poorly engineered. This couldn't be what she had come to sell to us. If it was then I feel very sorry for her career path that she's taken. But then she asks us if we would like a free one of these little doohickey's and if so, then all we would need to do is provide her with the names and numbers of about 8 of our friends. I don't really like giving out people's contact info, but again, I was trying to roll with this just to see where it went. So we did, and while we had done this, the two ladies had gotten a larger item from thier car and brought it into our living room. Ahhh, now this is what they must really be selling.

So the lady starts talking about quality of air and all the dust and crap that builds up but never really can get cleaned inside your home since it doesn't rain in the house. And then she pulls out what appears to be a giant version of the coffee pot blow dryer and now I'm starting to see where this is going. I tell, her, "So you're selling home air purifiers." She agrees that she is, and the demo kept on from there. So she explains how this machine is filled with water and that it has this powerful motor that will cycle all your home's air through the water, removing all the dust and germs, and then blowing it all back out through a hepa-filter exhaust. Hey, it looked interesting and that motor sounded like a jet turbine when she cranked it to full speed. Scared the shit out of the cat. So now she's got my attention since I like gadgets and also have a pretty serious allergy to cat dander. But I also sense that this product does more then she's letting on. I wonder what it could be.

Well, I start to think about the next logical step, which is what does it matter to clean the air when the carpets, floor, and furniture are covered in the same filth. That's when she adds a base with castors, and enough vacuum attachments to clean any type of surface you can think of. Now she's really got my attention. I'm thinking, "So this thing is an air purifier and a fucking vacuum cleaner too?" It seemed strange at first, but then made quite a bit of sense. In fact, you could even hook these other attachments up to the exhaust port and use the machine as a leaf blower or raft inflator. It was pretty damn versatile. But now I'm thinking to myself, well I know there are some regular old vacuums that don't have all these other functions and they go for as much as $700. So I actually blurted out as a complete guess, "Now you're gonna tell me this thing is two grand." And guess what? She turns to the pricing page and I shit you not, the thing was two fucking thousand dollars. In fact, it was retail $2,500, but if we bought today, then we could get it for just under the $2,000 price tag.

I couldn't beleive it, but at the same time, I was rationalizing it. I could tell my wife wanted it, and I did really like it, but $2,000? That seemed crazy. Then comes the worksheet to make it make sense. She starts having me guessitmate what I will payout in cost for new vacuums, bags, cleaners, and full on carpet cleanings in 20 years. We came up with about $10,500. Hard to beleive, but the numbers did seem right. She then said these machines are built to last 15-20 years. And since there are no bags used, then really the cost over the same time period is more like 25-40% that of the normal vacuums. And this vacuum actually cleans as opposed to vacuums that end up just spitting the small stuff back out thier exhausts because the paper bags are permeable. And I shit you not, this lady vacuumed a small 3x4ft swath on our 7 month old rug and then showed us the water after that 20 seconds of usage. It looked like there was a dead animal in the bucket.

So guess what, we bought the fuckin thing. The ladies left and there it was in our living room. The $2,000 vacuum cleaner, if there is such a thing. But here's the strange thing. We were using the new vacuum as an air purifier inthe bedroom and there was a small cat mess to clean up in the guest bathroom. So I wanted to use our old vacuum to clean it up just because it seemed more convenient then getting the new uber-vac out of the bedroom. I openned the closet door and it wasn't there. I looked in the guest bedroom. It wasn't there. So now I'm thinking, "Where in the hell is the old vacuum?" I mean, our house isn't that big and we only have like two closets that it can even fit in and it wasn't in either of them. So where was it? My wife was looking with me, and she said, "Did they take our old vacuum with them? I thought about it and even though it seemed rediculous, it was the only explanation. I mean, vacuum's don't spontaneously combust into thin air.

Needless to say, this made me a little uneasy about the whole purchase. I mean, they just sold me a $2,000 vacuum. So why would they need to take my old one? I might want to sell that on EBay to recoup some of the expense of the new unit. After all, the new vac is about 15 times more cost than the current vac were using. So now I'm thinking, I'm not sure this vac is worth $2,000 and I want my old vac back too. Not because it was better, but because it was mine for crying out loud. It had been stolen from my homeas far asl I was concerned.

So anyway, with anything that is sold by direct marketing in your home, you have 3 days to rescind the contract. So that's what we did. I mailed in the form and the lady is supposed to pick up the unit tonight or tomorrow and give us back our old vac.

But let me add this. We did really like the vac and the house does seem much cleaner since we have used it as both the vac and air purifier. So I looked on Ebay and guess what? There are wholesale vacuum stores that have bought unsold new remaining inventory of these from out of business sales people. And they are selling them for $999-$1,199 which is about 45-50% less then buying it from the actual companies own salespeople. We'll be buying ours as soon as the current one is picked up in the next few days.

Check out the Rexair Rainbow Air Purifier and Wet-Vacuum system at...
Rexair Vacuum's

Actually Becoming Handy

So I haven't posted in a while. What a lazy shit I must be. But I guess nobody is probably reading my blog, so in the end, it really doesn't matter. I've actually been trying to think of things to blog about and nothing has really taken me by storm. Doesn't that suck when life is so utterly content? I mean, the struggle really is the interesting part of it all and my struggle seems to be ever fading away. I better not say that too loud, somebody might hear me and then start to make my life difficult just out of spite.

I did do a couple of home improvement projects which I must say turned out rather well. Me and the wife painted the master bathroom, and although the color is a little brighter than we wanted, we were very pleased with our taping and painting skills. I also completed my first ever tiling project. I tiled the front porch of my house with natural slate tiles. I must say it turned out really nicely. Wasn't that hard either, only time consuming since I did it all by my lonesome.

But with the combination of these two tasks, I now have the confidence I need to attack just about any home project i can probably think of. Next will be applying those same tiling skills on the two bathrooms. This will be a little more difficult as I will be doing the tile in more of a pattern as opposed to a straight grid. Also, I'll need to mount backer board which is something I didn't have to do on the front porch since that was concrete already.

But regardless, I'm actually impressed with myself and I look forward to these projects. It's very true what they say about doing these things yourself as opposed to hiring the job out. You take much more pride in it and you enjoy it in ways you never thought possible. I suppose this could spellthe end of the Hart family tradition of never doing anything yourself when there is someone you can pay to do it for you. Oh well, time for a change in family direction.


Click here for more of my porch pics