Kicking The Cat

The master motivator, author, and speaker Zig Ziglar came up with this wonderful analogy years ago. Here’s a paraphrased version of his great work.

Mr. C was the top dog.  He could come and go as he wanted. He enjoyed lunches at the club almost every day.  One day he simply lost track of time.   He looked at his watch and realized he was going really late in getting back to work. He left the restaurant and jumped in his car. He burned rubber leaving the parking lot. As he got on the freeway he put the pedal to the metal.  As he sped down the highway, his heart skipped a beat when he heard the siren. He’d been clocked doing 96 mph.

As he stopped the officer simply asked, “Where’re you going in such a hurry?” “I’m needed at work,” he replied abruptly, “I’m a very important man!”  “Well, you’re not above the law.”  “I didn’t say I was … but shouldn’t you be chasing real criminals and leave me alone?”  “I’ll leave you alone in a few minutes. Let’s see your driver’s license, registration, and insurance card.”

Mr. C handed him the requested information. Then he sat there and stewed. As the minutes passed by, he got more and more angry.  The officer came back and handed him a ticket, along with the rest of his documents. He grabbed them out of the officer’s hand, rolled up his window, and took off down the road.

He finally arrived at work. He was really late now. When he finally got to the office, the first person he saw was his sales manager.

“How’s it going, Mr. C” said the sales manager with a smile.  “I want to see you in my office NOW!”, was Mr. C’s response.  The sales manager followed him into his office.

As Mr. C  threw his coat down on the couch, he yelled at the sales manager, “You fell short of your goal last week for the second week in a row. I want to know what you’re going to do to get back on track and I want to know now.”  “Mr. C, we talked about this yesterday. We have four big deals. Any one of them will put us over the top and I’m sure we’ll get at least one of them.”  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Mr. C blurted out while looking at some papers on his desk. “You’re dismissed.”

The bewildered sales manager walked back to his office. When he got there, the first person he saw was his assistant. He screamed at her. She screamed at someone who screamed at someone else.

And so it went for the rest of the day.

Eventually the receptionist got yelled at. When she got home, the first person she saw was her twelve-year old boy. She yelled at him and sent him to his room.

On the way to his room, the family cat walked in front of him. He kicked the cat!

So here’s the question –
Wouldn’t it have been much better, for everyone involved, if Mr. C had just gone directly to the receptionist’s house and kicked the cat?

I love this story, there are rough days almost every week and I really hope that I do not spend my day kicking other people, or as far as that goes even kicking my cat!