So, what to write about today.\u00a0 Today was a day to get back on the exercise track.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been playing around with switching up the lat-machine and barbell patterns and reintroducing the rower.\u00a0 The rower tends to aggravate my back so I dropped it about six months ago but I have a theory that if I improve my form then it won\u2019t tweak my back.\u00a0 Today my back\u2019s a little sore but I\u2019m telling myself that it\u2019s not bad enough to shut down the experiment.\u00a0 Well, we\u2019ll see.\u00a0 I\u2019m mixing high rep, low weight with high weight, low rep sets with the rower in between for aerobic balance.<\/p>\n
And I know nothing about exercise or how it should be done but after starting the weights a few years ago I haven\u2019t managed to injure myself so I\u2019m pretty satisfied that the benefits I\u2019ve seen justify the effort and that I should continue to do it by trial and error.<\/p>\n
Yesterday\u2019s red pill about the truth of the regime we\u2019re living under was a bit of a downer.\u00a0 So today I want something more upbeat.\u00a0 But what?<\/p>\n
I was thinking of reviewing the movie \u201cGlengarry Glen Ross\u201d that I was watching last night.\u00a0 It\u2019s a movie that I watch every few years because I once worked in a boiler room sales operation that was similar to the one in the movie and I can attest to the accuracy of the portrayal but it\u2019s such a bleak, black comedy that it would just continue the black mood I was in.\u00a0 But surprisingly, the movie and my real-life experience with the dark side of the marketplace ended up having the opposite effect on me.\u00a0 So instead of reviewing the movie I wanted to think about the basis of the movie.\u00a0 Selling.<\/p>\n
And this positive outlook appeared because I remembered what it was like dealing with an insane workplace reality and I remembered that the lesson I learned was that these dysfunctional places were fake. \u00a0They were diseased simulations of real things that functioned correctly.\u00a0 And so, the trick was to distinguish the differences and avoid the fake.\u00a0 In the film, the salesmen are selling worthless real estate to unsophisticated people.\u00a0 The various salesmen use slightly different variations on a hard sales pitch that attempts to get the buyers to believe that an incredible investment opportunity existed if they would buy this land immediately.\u00a0 Otherwise, the opportunity would disappear forever.<\/p>\n
The reality of course, is that the opportunity would exist indefinitely because the supply of worthless land was inexhaustible and the value of the property was completely imaginary.\u00a0 So, these salesmen had an impossible job.\u00a0 They were essentially robbing people of their hard-earned savings.\u00a0 And every day they had to start again from scratch because none of their buyers would ever be return customers or provide testimonials as satisfied customers.\u00a0 And that is the tension in the movie.\u00a0 There is a mandate to increase sales and the only difference between the successful and unsuccessful salesmen is their skill at lying.\u00a0 Al Pacino\u2019s character has an innate sense of the psychological tendencies of his \u201cmarks.\u201d\u00a0 He knows how to make buying his product an exciting experience.\u00a0 He is selling himself.\u00a0 The other salesmen are not as gifted.\u00a0 Their patter sounds hackneyed and unconvincing.\u00a0 Their appearance belies their claims that they are highly successful and providing a valuable service.\u00a0 The movie shows us the evil side of selling.<\/p>\n
But experience with the marketplace will show you that there are also people that provide the real thing.\u00a0 These are people who have products that have real value.\u00a0 If you need a manufactured product and must pay a large sum to have something custom made, you need to know that the manufacturer is competent and, just as important, honest.\u00a0 And truth be told, the only way to know the difference between the real and the fake is by long painful experience with the marketplace.<\/p>\n
You have to know who\u2019s out there.\u00a0 You have to have dealt with the whole gamut of vendors and manufacturers and know who now has the quality craftsmen working for him and who is no longer spending the money to keep up his quality either in terms of components or craftsmen.\u00a0 And the same goes for almost any product.\u00a0 There is real and fake.\u00a0 And the only way to learn the difference is by knowing your craft and sometimes by painful experience.\u00a0 But a part of it is knowing people.\u00a0 It\u2019s funny, but the stereotypes about the dishonest salesmen are actually true.\u00a0 Most of the time you can read the conman by his patter and his facial expression.\u00a0 But that\u2019s assuming you know enough about the product you\u2019re buying to force him to lie.<\/p>\n
And that raises another truth.\u00a0 Caveat emptor.\u00a0 Don\u2019t buy things that you can\u2019t rate.\u00a0 Understand the qualities that define the thing you\u2019re buying.\u00a0 Educate yourself.\u00a0 Don\u2019t tempt a merchant by your ignorance.<\/p>\n
But the encouraging thing is that there are still a lot of decent people selling their products and services.\u00a0 And if you do your homework, you\u2019ll find them.\u00a0 And if you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll get sold some underwater real estate in Florida by Al Pacino.\u00a0 And you\u2019ll deserve it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll save that review of the movie for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, what to write about today.\u00a0 Today was a day to get back on the exercise track.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been playing around with switching up the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,818],"tags":[4200,315,4201],"class_list":["post-25041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-ocf","tag-glengarry-glen-ross","tag-honesty","tag-marketplace"],"yoast_head":"\n