Bartering

Hey,

Well, football season if officially underway.

There comes a time in a season when the coach understands that his team is not as good as he thought and his coaching ability is not good enough to change the above.

I am at this point. One game and I am at this point.

I love these kids, I mean my son is one of these kids, but what we lack in skill we can easily make up in slowness.

We were, however, competitive this Saturday. We lost 18-6. They went up on us 12-0. We scored to make it 12-6. Then we moved the ball to the 2 yard line and were about to tie this thing up and we threw an interception.

But we still felt good about this game.

We were stopping them. We got them into a 4th and goal situation from the 12 yard line. All they did was hand the ball off. I figured they were giving up on this set of downs. But this little running back somehow went by about 5 of our 6 guys and was never tackled.

He scored. This was the back breaker.

Next game tomorrow. I will let you know.

Noah said a Noahism on Monday that I thought I would just pee my pants.

My kids watch this show Phineas and Ferb. It is a great show.

We are sitting around relaxing and cuddling on the coach and watching a kid show.

This show is on and the mother in the show is at a multicultural fiesta and (and don't ask me where they were going with this) she singing and dancing to a Jewish and Mexican song...something about a Matzah ball burrito (I am not kidding) and he said out of nowhere, "She must be French."

I don't know why it was so funny to me, but I am still laughing as I am writing this. I think it was because he had no idea what he was talking about and he just said something that just came to him.

Out of the mouth of babes.

I'll tell you this kid keeps me rolling. He turned 6 on Sunday.

We got him this Razor SPARK scooter. Have you see these things?

Well they have taken this Razor scooter and added this doo hickey on the back. It is something you press down with your back foot. It is not a brake but what it does is comes in contact with the ground. The cool thing is this doo hickey is made of flint. When you push it against the ground sparks fly out the back. Now I am not talking about little sparks. I am talking about it looks like a lit sparkler coming out the back of this thing. It is wild.

Last item of useless trivia...

OUR BLOG HAS FINALLY BEEN RANKED

http://dentalassistingschool.org/top-100-dental-industry-blogs/

I don't know who these people are but they sure do have taste.

I go to the blogger.com rating system a couple of times a year, and we are still ranked at the bottom part of the first page.

Last time I checked we were 17th on dental blogs rankings, but I think we have gone down since. Some of the ones ranked higher than ours haven't posted anything in over a month. So I don't know how they rank them.

Okay

Topic du jour...bartering.

I remember when I was growing up my father was always involved in bartering in one way or another.

At one point he was in something I want to say was called Bartering of America or something like this. You got a service from someone and you were accumulate points and could use those points at another business that was also in Bartering of America.

Problem with all my dad's bartering was he was always getting screwed.

I guess what would happen was that he would do work for someone, now the work was not half-ass work it was the best he could do (this is the way we do things, if you do it do it well), and then he would always expect the other person to follow through.

You know, give us a call. And do the best work he could do. Yeah...right.

The second part was always the shakey part. It would be my dad running through hoops to make this guy live up to his end of the bargain.

He/she wouldn't show up. Sometimes the job would not be done to average standards because the person is trying to get out of spending any money on this job. And my father would always be disappointed or feeling he got the raw end of the deal.

Here is the way I do it.

I go into something with zero expectations.

I only barter with people I know or that have been referred to the practice.

I might have my lab man call with, "I have a friend with a retail shop that is really in a pinch...will you do this for him?"

Sure.

One.

My role as a dentist is to help people. I would basically do this for free if I could. I love teeth and I love most people, so if things don't work out and they decide they want to be punks, well then fine.

Knowing this, I kind of expect either people not following through or trying to get the best of me.

So the first thing I always try to do is get the people to do their work first.

This is sometimes hard to do but this will put all problems behind you.

I don't really have a system, but I just try to be smart about it.

Last thing about bartering. I can do something in about 90 minutes that may cost in the $900 range.

I start to feel bad when someone comes to my house and paints the whole inside of the house, you know it is like a 4 day job, to pay me back.

I kind of feel like a heel when I work for 90 minutes and they are working for 4 days.

We trade with our lawn service. He has a family of 5. They come in for their twice a year recare, and I get our yard done for THE WHOLE YEAR (at the office and my home).

Crazy.

Does anyone have any crazy barter stories to tell?

Does anyone have a system?

Has anyone been on the wrong end of a barter deal that you want to mention?

I would like to know. If we get some good stories then I will post them.

Hope you are having a good week,

Just think two more days until Friday.

john

ps Marathon in 11 days.

Today is my 14th year anniversary. We are going to try to get away for a couple of hours tonight. Our poor neighbor has agreed to watch the baby.

Wish us luck.