Rule I Live By

I tell people all the time but for some reason no one ever listens to me. I don’t know why. Any one that knows me knows I’m not soft spoken. I know they can hear me so they choose to ignore me. But all I can say is “your loss”.

One of the rules I live by is “it doesn’t hurt to ask”. Prime example came up a couple weeks ago. A fellow employee from another office told me her father in law passed away. He lived in Mississippi (we are in California just in case you didn’t know) and her husband had a couple days to get down there for the funeral. They didn’t have enough money to fly him out so he was going to take the bus. Yes you heard that right. The bus! The trip was going to take two days. He was going to have to get off the bus and practically go straight to the funeral. So I told her my rule to live by “it doesn’t hurt to ask”. We have a General Manager at our old corporate office (we were recently bought out by a bigger company so they aren’t actually our corporate office anymore) that is really nice and he flies a lot for business. Several years ago he gave me a free round trip ticket when I needed one (all I had to do was ask). My coworker and this manager were on friendly terms, they had actually just had lunch the week before so I told her to call and ask him if he was will to sell her a ticket (which was free to him) after she explained the situation. I knew he would never charge her since it didn’t cost him anything but that way she didn’t feel bad asking. She was a bit embarrassed to approach him but after some pushing on my part she emailed him. The next morning I received a phone call from her bright and early. The manager said yes, she could have it for free. The ticket was already bought and her husband would be on his way the next morning to attend the funeral. Everyone was happy. And all it took was for her to ask.

I have received so many free or discounted things in my life just by asking. I can tell you I probably hear no about 75% of the time but I figure I’m no worse off then I was before I asked so what does it hurt. It’s just second nature for me now to ask and it comes out with little thought. Unfortunately this happened a couple of weekends ago. I asked with little thought. A friend had a very cute (and big) green M&M candy display. I asked her “can I have it?” and the next day she called to tell me it was in her driveway. I could go by and pick it up at any time. Now what am I going to do with a huge green M&M. She sells well on eBay but I can’t even imagine shipping it. I might just keep it until Halloween and use it to hold our candy on the front porch. Either that or I will stick her on Craigslist and hope someone bites.