Finance Fridays – Don’t Be Hasty And Rush To Judgement

I have learned one thing through the years, things are not always as they seem. Human beings tend to make judgements based on very little information. Don’t let the nasty voice in the back of your head influence you before you have more information. Let me give you an example.

Back in the eighties I got a call from one of my temp agencies. I had been out of work for two weeks (which was a long time back then) and they had an assignment they wanted me for. Their great pitch started out with “We really hope you can do this because the woman you’ll work for is a real bitch. She’s gone though six people already and we’re stuck.” Immediately I think “Great. I don’t want to work for some psychotic bitch but I need to pay the bills so I’ll take the assignment and see how it goes.”

Guess what? That temp job turned into a permanent position. My boss wasn’t a bitch at all. The agency just send incompetent people. She was one of my best bosses ever! Now if I had made my decision based on the impression my recruiter had, I would have missed out on one of the best opportunities ever.

When I went to interview for my current job I was thinking “hmmm, it’s a bit far from mass transit to this office. Do I really want to hike all that way?” Well, I went on the interview, really liked the people and that hike wasn’t as bad as I thought. Heck, it’s only 10 minutes and good exercise to boot!

Now if people yell at you, throw things at you or threaten to hold your head under water until no more bubbles come up (seen and hear them all), run but give things a chance first. You never know what opportunities will present themselves. Remember you can’t move forward if you are standing still.