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Ray Skillman Mitsubishi is Incompetent

Some people at Ray Skillman Mitsubishi are incompetent. I realize there are some people that work at that location that more than likely do their job very well. However, you’d think in this day-and-age of these fandangled personal computers, someone at Ray Skillman would understand that I’ve already turned in my 2000 Mitsubishi Galant lease, in fact I turned it in over two years ago if not longer!

What’s even more fun is when I turned it in and Joe Nolan started to sell me another upgrade car, I advised him that if he didn’t stop talking he’d be finding my car keys somewhere else besides his desk.

Now, why might you ask would I have these opinions of Ray Skillman? Specifically Chuck DeWitt and Joe? The story is that back when my wife and I were first married, we were driving a 1996 Eclipse that she had purchased from there. The fine people at Ray Skillman had sent us a letter and called us to let us know the lease was about to expire and that they were very interested in getting us into another lease with them.

To make a long story short, I said I was open to whatever deal they wanted to work up as long as I wouldn’t owe any money (wear & tear) on the Eclipse, could keep my payments below $300, and I wouldn’t need to put any money down. Well, good ‘ol Joe eventually worked it out that Skillman would buy the Eclipse out of the lease and we wouldn’t have any wear and tear costs and I would get into a new lease, of the aforementioned 2000 Galant, for a payment of $279/mnth. Everyone was happy!

That is until we tried to buy a house and found out that Eclipse had hit our credit record as a repo! Turns out Skillman took our Eclipse and sold it off again without advising Mitsubishi Motors Credit of America that all this had taken place. MMCA never got their payment for the residual amount on the car and therefore reported it as repo’d. What’s also amazing is that for almost 2 years, we hadn’t heard of any problems and never received notification from MMCA that there were problems.

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Award Winning Kamikaze Pilot

Was involved in a discussion yesterday with my new boss and we were talking about business processes and working with the personality side of “human resources”. The discussion started around the culture of a company and the evolved culture of those that work at the company.

He shared about a company he used to work for that awarded hard work by identifying busy-ness. They had presented an award to an employee who showed such devotion and dedication to his work that he had actually slept in his office instead of leaving each night and being with his family. Now that’s obviously not the type of work/life imbalance I’m looking for in a position. My boss changed that mentality in his department and organized their efforts and established processes for making sure his staff wasn’t just “busy” but were efficient and productive. This “awarded” employee was killing himself and damaging the relationship with his family because he was just seen as busy and not necessarily productive. What message does that send to other employees?
We jumped to the illustration of? Japanese kamikaze pilots. How many boats can a 100% quality, top-notch, Grade A kamikaze pilot sink? Just one! Just once! How about that reluctant, lazy kamikaze pilot that’s sitting on his plane wing one afternoon and thinks, “Why can’t I just drop something else that would explode on the boat instead of my plane with myself strapped inside?” But that wouldn’t be honorable would it? AND! He would be taking away more opportunities for kamikaze pilots to drop on themselves.

Now we’ve got this lazy, reluctant kamikaze pilot flying above all the anti-aircraft fire and flak, dropping bombs from far above the turmoil of the battle below. Taking out 5-10-15 boats in a single run, while all the while saving his life.

Why would we reward an employee for burning themselves out, taking out one problem, and in effect then losing all the resources that were spent in developing that person to a great worker for the company. Of course we could also expand this mode of thinking to the church and it’s staff as well. Let’s take care of our pilots (pastors and employees) and make sure they’re not hurling themselves at problems in an ultimate sacrifice of themselves and their families.