The good news is that I have just accepted a sales position with Myer’s Volkswagen.  For those of you that know me (or see me ranting and complaining on my Facebook page), this is a good thing.  I’ve always been a big fan of vee dubs–my first car was a ’91 VW Fox two door–and I’ve been a big fan of the Myers automotive group since moving to Ottawa.  And by “fan of Myers” I mean “frustrated competitor.”  Either way, I could never beat’em, so I did the sensible thing: joined’em.

The great news is that I’m scared.  Really scared.  Why is this great?  Because it means I still care.  It’s easy in today’s workplace to fall into a rut of not giving a sh** about your work, and some organizations even encourage it.  On the other hand, being scared in your job (fear of harrasment and/or layoffs notwithstanding) is great.  It gives you the impetus to work harder, create better results, and achieve your goals.  And according to Seth Godin, it also means that something is going to happen.  Hopefully something big.  Real big.  I could also screw this up completely and turn this into a complete clusterf**** (hence most of the fear).  But, I’d like to think this fear is caused by a fear of wasting the potential of this opportunity right in front of me.

But, I digress.  Work starts at 9 am tomorrow, let’s find out what happens!

According to teh intrawebs, it’s a bad idea to send your dog mixed messages.  For example, a person who scolds their dog for begging at the table but still feeds it table scraps isn’t teaching the dog to stop begging.

Most people who have been around dogs (read: everybody) should know this already.  I mean, I’m sure some people really are that dumb.  However, I like to imagine the world as a place where stupid people are in the minority.  After all, 60.4% of us didn’t vote for the harper government.

So what’s up with the mixed messages at work?  Why is it that bosses will give you one job description and then expect you to drop everything to fill in another role?  Case in point:  I had to blow off a customer today so I could drop a car off for a minor repair (I’m a used car salesman, in case you didn’t know).

Did I want to blow off the customer?  Hell no.  My job, or so I’m told, is to sell cars and make customers happy.  At least, that’s what I was told in the sales meeting less than an hour before that.  Yet somehow, a manager re-defined my job as being the lot-runner-around-guy.  Now I’m out one sale, and the customer is probably writing in his own blog about what a jerk I am.

Moral of the story:  If you’re going to tell your staff something, stick to it.  Just because it’s convenient to give them one task and force them into doing another task instead, doesn’t mean either task will be done well.