Be All That You Can Be!

But wear too many hats and sooner or later, it's all gonna fall apart. Working my security job I have a lot of time to read, and write, but you already know that. My brother sends alot of books my way and a good number of them are military related. The book I'm just finishing up is Making The Corps by Thomas E Ricks. It is about the life of a Marine Corps Recruit and his time spent at Parris Island. It also tells a good deal about the history of The Corps. One line really brought back alot of memories for me of my time at Beltri. "Concentrate on doing a single task as simply as you can, execute it flawlessly, TAKE CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE, and go home." This is a one line assessment of how The Marine Corps does it's business. This one line made me reflect back to the many conversations I had with Bruce, Ray, and Donna about how muddled the real estate transaction had become at Beltri. First it was the mortgage company we were forced to promote, then the title company, then the once a month Open House extravaganza we were shoving down our agents throats, onto the guaranteed advertising plans that were really no guarantee at all, the 3 week circus of meetings and phone calls to round up all of YHD's listings and agents that amounted to nothing, and then the luxury home division fiasco that has done nothing but create controversy and bad will all around.
When I joined the company The Bloated One stated "I will never forget those who believed in me and helped me grow, we're all gonna get rich with this. " Well, of the 3 people in the room that day, only one of us lives in a $900,000 house on the busiest street in Brielle. In my 4.5 yrs as a manager with the company I never received a pay raise on my base salary of $600 a month, the rest of my monthly check was earned on the hard work of the agents in my office. Lets see, he demanded I be in the office 40-50 hrs a week, accused my assistants (including his stepdaughter) and myself of covering up for each other, yet I was only guaranteed a $600 paycheck a month. Would someone please e-mail me the number for the Labor Dept!!! What's the statute of limitations?
It really is a shame, I once accused one of our mortgage reps of monopolizing all of The Bloated Ones time, I complained he hadn't spoken to me in 3 weeks. She smiled and said he hadn't returned one of her calls in over a month! Talk about spreading yourself thin, if it wasn't the mortgage company, and it wasn't the real estate company taking up his time, what could it have been that kept him so disconnected from the companies he so loved? If his wife was correct and he was out chasing skirts all day, I think he would've been alot thinner!
He speaks often of his dream of operating his own real estate company. When his dream came true and things started clicking, his inbred greed kicked in. He should've studied the Marine's credo and stuck with the one thing he did well, he should've taken care of his people, and he should've been home taking care of his disfunctional family when they needed him most. Woulda' Coulda' Shoulda'...Oh well.