The Coach
Secretly, I had always thought of Coach as my second father. My real father was pleased with everything I did, and in a way it was too easy. Coach was never satisfied, and somehow that felt more honest, better able to expand my thinking and try new things. This was particularly useful when I was collecting “dues”, as we called the them.
When I started, my dad would always try to tell me that “honey worked better than vinegar,” so I worked on my empathy and learned how to manipulate people with what I said. That worked, at least with some types of people, usually the ones who were in over their heads. For most, however, it typically resulted in excuses and delay after delay.
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As Coach explained, the most dangerous drawback to “being nice” is that it sets a precedence, one that our customers would exploit at any opportunity. Now, Coach couldn’t contradict my dad, that wasn’t part of the org chart, per se, but he could, in his usual, passive aggressive way, message to me with his facial expressions or the way he rubbed his large, stubbly chin with his thick, calloused fingers, when I returned to the warehouse empty handed with only an excuse about rent, or day care, or baby formula.
Coach was a gentle giant, like a large momma bear, the type of person you knew could and would snap to protect me. He was family even if he wasn’t blood. He wouldn’t direct me how to overcome objections, but rather explain how it was when he was my age. Even if things were different now, people weren’t he’d remind me. People were, by nature, self motivated.
So, as he would explain, you just had to “help” them be more “self motivated.” And oh boy, did we have ideas about that.
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