Only Four Ways to Be Supported
There are just 4 ways to be supported that I know of:
1. Earn a Living from your own work-efforts, in which case you exchange what you have to contribute to the benefit of others in the world in exchange for an income; or
2. Exchange what you have to offer another person in some conjugal (or other) relationship in exchange for your support; or
3. Live on pre-acquired money like rents, life insurance proceeds or pension plans, the consumption of prior obtained capital, etc., or
4. Live on welfare or the charity of others and thus subject to the whims of government or continuing charitable feelings and/or financial means of family or friends.
Robert Jorrie,
1991
Chance of Birth may bring Wealth
a Trick of Fate, Honor
but Individual Success cannot be Endowed
it must be Earned.
Louis Porter, Sr.
a friend of Sam Jorrie’s
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a Good Deal on where you want to get to,”
“I don’t much care ‘where’ … ” said Alice
“Then it Doesn’t Matter which Way you go,” said the Cat.
Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME:
There is no way to know Which Path to take
until you know Where it is you Want to be.
Robert Jorrie
People seem to settle down with the type of people they run around with … both in careers and in marriage.
So don’t work for very long in a career that you don’t want to spend your life in.
Exception:
It is “OK” to work in a career you won’t do “always”
if it will teach you something very useful.
But if you don’t want to spend your life married to a blue collar worker
and get out of Life that which blue collar workers get from Life,
DON’T RUN AROUND WITH THEM IN THEIR RUT!
And if you don’t want to go through the Emotional Pain
of withdrawing from a relationship in a Rut
that will take you where you don’t want to go …
Then DON’T WASTE TIME
and go out with them EVEN ONCE
because you may fall in love with a perfectly lovely person who’s merely in the Wrong Type Rut …
and it’s very unlikely you’ll get that person out of that Rut.
RULE : ONLY operate in a Rut you find “OK” to spend perhaps the Rest of your Life in.
Robert Jorrie
The Jorrie Furniture Company’s very first Employees was a man named Ray Tumlinson, and he had gone to work for my Grandfather, Reuben Jorrie about 1935.
It was his first and only job in the workplace,
and he was a wonderfully loyal and faithful Employee …
but while he would try faithfully to do anything asked of him,
he just wasn’t much good at anything.
Between Sam Jorrie and I, we had “manufactured” jobs for him and “carried him” on the payroll, for13 years!
In an attempt to “Do Right” by him and not just discard him callously after the Company had outgrown him,
finally I went to my Dad and explained to him that we really had to find a way to make Ray “Productive” to the Company or fire him.
He told me, (then, I was the President of Jorrie Furniture Company) to take as long as I wanted to figure out how to find another job for Ray,
and failing that, that I was to discharge him in the kindest, most gentle way possible.
For 13 weeks, I agonized every day over what I could do to help find a way to make Ray productive and I just couldn’t think of anything that he could do useful for the Company.
So one Friday afternoon, I called him to my office and said:
“Ray, you’ve been the Company’s Loyal and Faithful Employee for 27 years,
and for the last 13 years, we’ve manufactured jobs for you to try to find some “niche”where you can be Productive to the Company …
We’ve let you load trucks,work in the office, be an outside collector, buy trade ins and 2nd hand furniture, we’ve let you run a 2nd hand store that we created for you especially to give you something useful to do,
we’ve let you be a salesman on the retail floor, we’ve let you be in charge of keeping the floors “straight”
we’ve let you work in Customer Service, but we just can’t seem to find a place where you can be “Productive to the Company,”…
So what we’d like to do is to ask you to tell me
if there is any job in the Company that you think you can do,
where the Company can earn a profit on you …and if you can,
and it’s within our power to do so, we’ll give you the job willingly …
because we will not forget your long years of Faithful Service to this Company,
and we will not just abandon you and “let you go” if there is any way out of it … but if we can’t, then we will have to ask you to find another job.
Do you know of anything that you can do for the Jorrie Furniture Company that will make you productive to it ?”
He answered “No, I’ll go find another job … but I do have a question to ask you …
What took you so long?”
WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME:
Sometimes it’s Harder to Think About Doing Something
than to Actually Do It!
Robert Jorrie
NOT TO DECIDE
IS
TO DECIDE.
Susan Jorrie
One day in 1986,
while Julie Jorrie and I were having a discussion on the problems we were having in marketing the Coliseum Rd Building,
She and I got into a discussion on some real estate related topic,
and Julie asked me jokingly:
“Daddy, How come you are so Arrogant?”
Realizing that she certainly was Correct,
I told her I needed a few days to think about that before I answered. In a few days, she came to my office again, and I replied:
“Julie, When I was 22 years old, I had 205 employees at Jorrie Furniture Company,
and all I did was Make Decisions all day long, … thousands and thousands of decisions,
and the only answer I can give you,
is that when you make thousands of decisions,
and most of them are correct,
then after a while,
you think you can’t make a mistake,
even when you make one!
Maybe that’s the source of my Arrogance.
Robert Jorrie,
1989
One day while complaining about a bad decision I had made in business, my Dad overheard me discussing it with someone and called me into his office.
When I explained that I had made a bad decision that had cost our Company money, he said :
“Son, what percentage of decisions that you make, do you think you make correct?”
I told him :
“About 85% correct.”
He said:
“Well, I think you make a whole lot more than 85% correct.
I think it’s more like 95 % correct,
but even if the lower figure were correct,
Just Make More Decisions,
the Statistics will Take Care of You.”
Robert Jorrie,
1989
If you want your Dreams to come True,
don’t Oversleep.
contributed by Melanie Colton
Be not the first by whom the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to cast the old aside.
Alexander Pope