Whats the price? – Rant

I have been looking all day for a promotional pen manufacturer that will ship to me for a reasonable price, I find tons of pens, but no pricing.  I have wasted about three hours on this and am just giving up for now. So I thought I would rant a bit about having price tags on stuff.

In my career in sales, I have sold inexpensive items such as $5 portable radios, and $3 headphones,  I have also sold $100,000 Cadillac , and top end home theatre systems sometimes costing more than $60 000,

I have seen all kinds of sleaze and greed in my time, and the worst of it is when you put a high commission salesperson with a product with no price tag.

Often a $70 item suddenly becomes $300, or a $500 suddenly becomes $2000, and believe it or not people don’t know any better and actually buy these things.  Sure they usually know the price of the main item, but not all the little extras they try and sell you after. The guy ripping them off will lower the price until they buy anyhow, or “switch products” to get in their price range,  and judge how much they will sell it for by how much trust they feel they have from the customer.

Anyhow, here I am trying to buy pens online, and there are no prices, whats the secret? Do you expect me to draw you a bank cheque? I’m sorry I cant buy for “secret prices” how do you even put a secret price on the pay slip for me to sign?

If everything has price tags my days and everyone else’s will just be that more efficient, and the guys that rip you off not only wont be able to rip people off anymore, but when they go shopping themselves they wont get ripped off either.

There should be a law that all items without a price tags  are free.

Mercenary for the Man

Although almost two decades have past,  my time employed with a  large North American electronics company, still deeply effects my perspective on corporate  life. I started out as a simple salesman, but over time  moved myself up through the various positions the company offered, and by the age of twenty two I had a hundred and fifty people below me on the corporate ladder, and only two above. I was making myself quite a decent income.

During my last two years with this company, I found that my boss had started to ask me to take over more and more responsibility. I was told that if I did the work now, great wealth would follow, as time went on, I gave more and more of my time and energy to the company, sixty plus hours a week was pretty normal, often with business trips thrown in, where I was basically “at work” 24 hours a day.

After a couple of years,  I began to go beyond asking, and demanded the raise they had promised me, there were various long winded “reasons” why it could not be given to me, but the truth was, that the pay of my non-owner boss above me, would have had to be slashed to pay me for all his work I was doing for him.

The incredible work hours of the last two years, had taken a huge toll on my social life without helping my financial status at all. They had me working my ass off for nothing. I was “chasing carrots” I would never be given.  I cant believe I let them do this for me for almost two years.  I had been given much more responsibility, and many more headaches,  but no reward. My corporate slavery had distanced me from my close friends,  and ended up losing me my girlfriend. My work had become the unhealthy centre of my life.

Disgusted at how the company had strung me along for two years, and heartbroken over my lost love, I quit the job, though they tried tossing money at me to get me back, I had already lost my faith in them, so off I went. I took the money I had  saved from working there for so long, bought myself a backpack, and began to travel around the world.

Sixteen months later, while hanging out on a beach in Thailand I ended up meeting five English teachers on vacation from their work in Korea. We spent a few very fun days together, since I was starting to run out of travel money, but didn’t really want to go home, I began asking them about their work in Korea. They all agreed with one another that they didn’t like the job, and even went on to say they didn’t like the country, the people the boss or anything.

I was a bit taken aback by their unanimous dislike for their job, and asked them “Why on earth do you work there then?”

One guy said something that has stuck with me to this day, and I have often considered just how much I agree with this, he said: “I don’t work for companies, I work for myself, I do it for money, I am a mercenary.”

Obviously he wasn’t a real “mercenary”, he was an English teacher, but I liked his idea. He didn’t do what he did for his company, or his boss, he just did it for the money.

Since that time I have always approached work this way. I don’t care what a jerk my boss is, or if I like the company, and I don’t do things to help my boss or the company for free, because in the end, the company and the boss only care about the money, they don’t care about you. They only want you to do things for free, because it saves them money.

Of course I still do my work as well as I can, you need to do a very good job to be a demanding employee, but if people ask me to take another responsibility, I will ask if there is an immediate raise involved before i agree to do it. My loyalty now has a price.

I also became a mercenary for the man.

Losing the Rat Race? Switch lanes.

I used to run pretty hard in the rat race. at the age of 18, back in 1992 I was making sixty thousand United States Dollars a year, and that went up a little bit over the next 4 years, but I never reached $70 000. I was working 70 hours a week, most of my friends at the time were in University, making nothing, or almost nothing.

I was making more money than the people I worked with, and all my friends. I had won the Rat Race that was in my lane (Place and Time).

I used to teach English privately in Japan back in 1999 for $120 US Dollars per hour, tax free. That was my highest hourly wage ever.

Now I am not sure what you have made before or are making now, that is irrelevant. I have a brother that would not be able to live on a measly $70 000 a year, he has friends that spend that in a month, believe it or not. He is not winning his current rat race and is still driven to make more money.

The Rat Race

Happiness Is Just Around The Corner

The rat race is all relative to the people around you and your surroundings. I am currently living in third world Asia, and my measly income of approximately $1000 US a month, puts me in good standings with my neighbors, and friends here. Most of them make similar or less.

With my thousand dollar a month income, I have enough money to rent a decent sized two bedroom, two bathroom house, pay for my son’s private school, run the air conditioners 24 hours a day if I wish, surf the Internet, watch satellite television, take air conditioned taxis to see movies in the cinema at least once a week, eat out 2 times a day and every second day get a two hour traditional massage.

Back home the massages alone would be over $1500 dollars a month in Canada, and I dare say they likely wouldn’t be as good.

Life is pretty good here on a thousand dollars a month. Wouldn’t you say?

Back home making $70 000 a year I was unable to do all that. So if you look at me back home making $70 000 a year or look at me now making just under $12 000 a year. I am actually living a much better life now on the $12 000.

Which would you choose, the making more than your friends scenario where you are still forced to budget to make ends meet? Or the lesser income in a country where you get a lot more for your money?

Basically, if you are sick of the rat race, consider switching lanes. What are you really after in life anyhow?

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