Communication

I heard a story this morning that was very funny...

Well, to be honest, Dickie boy heard the story and told me later.  I thought it was worth sharing.

Dick was at a BNI meeting this morning and one of the guys there runs a garage - or at least his son does; the fella at the meeting was a sub for the day.

His 60 second story was all about communication and what he thought was a fairly clear instruction.

This is how the story ran:

A guy came into the garage for four new tyres on his Mondeo.  'How long will it be?'  Asks he.

'Well,' I replied, 'Each tyre will take me about fifteen minutes and I know you're on time but I'm running about fifteen minutes late, so it will be an hour and a quarter all told.

And having said that I took the fellas car keys and laid them on the counter in the office.

'Would you like to you like to wait in reception, or come back?'

The customer looked thoughtful for a minute and then decided that he would come back.

Ten minutes later the boss of the garage (my son) fixes me with a steely stare and says, 'Where are the keys for the Mondeo... come to think of it, where'e the Mondeo?'

'Well, that was a bum clenching moment', says the tyre guy to the meeting... 'And I have to say the rest of the morning was a bit frosty in the garage.

'I thought I'd given a perfectly reasonable and straightforward instruction.  But no.  It turns out that I didn't.  I learned a valuable lesson that day... but I'm buggered if I can remember what it was!'

And with that he sat down.

Absolute genius and a brilliantly told story with just the right amount of drama and comedy.

Me well trained human

Renee, the more sensible of me two humans, remarked this morning about how well trained me other human is.

She was talking about how I'd done a fantastic training job on him and how obedient he is.  I think she was angling for some tips to make him more obedient (if that's possible) when she wanted something done.

You see I employed reverse psychology, yes, that's right, reverse psychology to make Dick think he was training me... but all the time it was the other way round.

Take this morning as an example.

I sits down and whacks him with me paw and he gives me a biscuit.  Just to prove it's not a fluke, I do it again and guess what, another biscuit.

I get up in the middle of the night and sit down by the door to me bedroom (which I let me humans share) and I guarantee that within 5 minutes Dickie Boy has got up and opened the door so I can go and lie down in the beautifully cool hall way.

It's amazing the things he does for me... picks up me crap, scratches behind me ears, feeds me a regular as clockwork... there's almost no end to what I can get him to do.

Renee looks at all this with a mixture of amused indulgence and exasperation on her face.  She can't quite work out if I'm very manipulative or that the Dickster is a complete muppet.

Actually, she can work it out; it's obvious to Blind Freddie... she's just too polite to say.

Now, to get technical with what's going on here, it's all about conditioning.  I've conditioned Dickie Boy to do what I want him to do and now he just does it... and sometimes customers do the same to whoever provides them with a service.

You know the sort of thing... you do something once and tell yourself it's just a one off and you won't do it again, a least not without charging the customer for it.

But now their expectation has been set and they ask you to do it again.  You try to argue that you should charge them but they, quite rightly, point out that you didn't last time, so you just do it for them again.

All of a sudden, it's just natural that you should do this thing and you do it without even thinking.  In other words you've been conditioned to do the thing... just like Dick is.

I'm not saying you should stop doing the thing that you've been conditioned to do (heaven forbid that Dickie should stop giving me biscuits when I hold up me paw) but it has to be better that you're aware of it and can choose to make a change if you want to or need to.

There you go, some real advice from your hairy friend.

I know I've been away for a while but it's all been a little busy... I'm back now though, and will be blogging more regularly again!

Any questions - send them to me via Facebook and I'll give you the benefit of me wisdom... https://www.facebook.com/AccountantsEdinburgh

And count yourselves lucky it's me, 'cos if it was Dick, the benefit of his wisdom wouldn't take long to put down on paper!

Cheers Mateys.