In Grade 8, I was a superstar because I knew about a dozen “big” words. They made me seem smart and impressed my teachers, although much to my surprise very few girls noticed (or cared) that I knew how to use a word like vociferous or plethora. Of course, the bullies noticed and ensured that I was subjected to a plethora of vociferous mocking. [But wait! There is more!]

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I love the car buying process. It combines three of my favourite things- cars, debating, and acting indignant. Since Grade 3 I have been able to riddle off the MSRP and option packages for just about any vehicle on the road, and can prepare a fairly detailed treatise on the merits of any one particular vehicle over another. I also worked my way through part of law school at a Volkswagen dealership and got to see just how things work behind the scenes, and generally pride myself on being a calm and logical negotiator. When someone asks for help buying a new car I get just as excited as if Tiny Fey had asked me to rub sunscreen on her back. When my mother told me she wanted to buy a new Toyota Corolla, I had trouble wiping the big grin off my face.

As always, I did my research ahead of time, checking out the dealer invoice costs and researching the deals and incentives being offered by other dealers. I figured out my best price and the range of “acceptable” prices on the vehicle she wanted. Armed with a briefcase full of information and a bright yellow calculator, we sat down with the salesperson to try to close the deal. The initial offer from the dealer was fair, although a little higher than I would have liked. We went back and forth a bit and there was promising movement, but the salesperson soon insisted that there was no more room for negotiation, and that the price we had arrived at was firm. Now I don’t begrudge any salesperson or dealership from making a reasonable profit on a vehicle, and I can respect a dealer who takes the position that they’re not prepared to move any more. But at least be honest about it- man (or woman) up and tell it like it is.

What really bothered me was not that I thought that the price we were at was too high, but that I KNEW that the salesperson was being less than truthful in some of her statements. She didn’t try to tell me that the car was powered by unicorn blood or that it could morph into a boat and a minivan a la Inspector Gadget, but she was more than a little loose with some other facts. For example, she claimed that she “couldn’t keep these cars on the lot” when this particular model had been sitting on the lot since October 2008, but still denied this fact when I pointed to the date clearly printed on the key tag. Similarly, she tried to tell me that my invoice prices were inaccurate when I know from other experiences that they tend to be spot on, and then conveniently couldn’t find the invoice for the car in question when I asked her to substantiate her claim. Nothing huge, but a lot of little things that really grinded my gears. The air was filled with the distinct smell of seared polyester, as if someone’s pants were  very much on fire. Bluffing and posturing is part of any negotiation, but there’s a fine line between strategic negotiating and being a wiener in a plaid-jacket.

Even so, things were looking good and we were at a price that was within the “acceptable” range. However, things fell apart when she told me that there is generally no room whatsoever for negotiation on Toyotas, that they have a “take it or leave it” pricing structure. When I pointed out that there was room on the last Corolla my mother had bought, and on the Matrix I had been looking at a year earlier, and on the Tacoma I had helped a friend purchase just a few months prior, she flatly stated “I don’t believe that.”

Uh, did she just call me a liar? Did the woman who just spent the past 20 minutes telling fairytales about the invoice pricing system, profit margins, holdbacks and the new and used car markets as a whole just call ME a liar? Sweet merciful lamb in the holy manger! I almost had a mini-stroke. This was now personal. My goal was no longer to get a good deal on a new car, it was to obliterate her and her lineage. Which, in retrospect, was not a good approach.

We went back and forth for a few more minutes, my mother kicking my leg as if to say “You got your price, now take it!”, and nudging my side to say “You’ve made your point!”. Yet I was relentless. When things didn’t move any more, I thanked Ms. PantsOnFire for her time and walked out, mumbling nasty, nasty things to myself, mostly quotes from Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. The whole drive home I replayed each scene in my head, thinking of things I should have said and formulating scathing comebacks to her sales babble. I got home, opened a beer and realized I had broken my first rule of successful negotiating- I had let my emotions get in the way of focused logic. As a result, my mother didn’t get to drive home in a shiny new Corolla, I spent the night brooding, and my wife (and, after her departure, my cats) had to put up with my endless refrains of “What I SHOULD have said was…”.

It’s easy to get caught up while negotiating and to lose sight of the original objective- in this case, a final price within a certain range. Instead, I allowed myself to get too invested and to take a flippant (albeit unprofessional) comment as a personal insult. Far too often other negotiations can take the same course, with personalities and egos taking more prominence than the real issues. Of course, emotion in negotiation can have the opposite effect as well, keeping people in talks when it no longer makes sense rather than driving them apart. Especially in consumer negotiations, many buyers will fall in love with a car and allow themselves to get fleeced because of an emotional attachment. In either case, the end result is a negotiation that goes off the rails.

In theory, lawyers should be skilled at setting aside emotion and focusing on facts, but my experience has shown quite the opposite. If anything, many lawyers seem much more susceptible to ego and pride. Sadly, it is ultimately their clients who pay the price and in many cases such shows of bravado are even encouraged as a hallmark of good lawyering, despite the fact that they rarely advance negotiations.

My advice? Approach any negotiation strategically and with Vulcan-like coldness and logic. You’ll get better results and not spend your nights lying awake trying to think of witty rejoinders you could have used. Live long and prosper, folks.

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Last year, I proudly picked out a nice sweater to wear for St. Patrick’s Day. Normally my wardrobe selection involves grabbing whatever is relatively clean and relatively close as a rush about in the morning, so my proactive move of selecting a outfit the night before was unprecedented and admirable. Upon arrival at the office, I was quite pleased to see that others had gotten in the spirit and were decked out in every shade of green, forest, lime, mint, asparagus and emerald. As I happily exclaimed “Yay! We’re all wearing green!”, a co-worker looked at me sadly and said sympathetically “Oh, MGL… you’re not.”

“Whaddya mean?!” I protested, pointing to my carefully chosen frock. “This is my green sweater!”. A small crowd gathered, and heads appeared likeWhac-a-Moles from office doors. I heard hushed comments and subdued snickers.

“No, it’s not,” my colourful co-worker replied, trying to be discreet as though she was telling me that I had left my pants at home. “Your sweater is brown…” I stammered and looked around as snickers rolled into robust laughter. Thankfully, the brown sweater that stuck out like a dog turd in the fresh green grass was soon dwarfed by the bright red of my face. I skulked back into my office to drown my pain in an early morning green beer.

For the 5-8% of men afflicted by colour blindness, holidays like Paddy’s Day are a nightmare. While others frolic and play like leprechauns, we cautiously tiptoe our way through social situations hoping that we haven’t made a fashionfaux pas, pretending that we notice that the beer and cupcakes are now green instead of whatever colour they normally are. And the awkwardness doesn’t end on March 18th, either- a plethora of other holidays are intertwined with the colours we can’t see, whether it’s red for Valentine’s Day, the red, white and blue for the Fourth of July, orange and black for Halloween, red and green for Christmas, or blue and white for Hanukkah, not to mention the all important green forEid-al-Fitr.

For my chromatically challenged peeps, don’t despair! I offer you hope and promise for a better tomorrow. Coping with poor colour recognition skills in a rainbow world isn’t easy, but these tips can help you make it through:

1. Buy the mannequin - Those ensembles on store displays were put together with care and attention to detail, so you know that the outfit matches and looks good. If you see a display that you like, buy the whole thing and keep the items together.
2. Label your clothes - When you find items that you know match (or, at the very least, don’t clash) label and tag your clothes so you know what items can work together and what ones can’t. It might take a bit of time up front and you’ll almost certainly need to enlist some help from a friend (see #3), but it will help keep you looking good and embarrassment-free.
3. Keep it simple - Offices tend to be cesspools of colour-based organizational systems. TPS reports go in blue folders, service requests are to be written in red ink, and all letterhead should be ivory with burnt sienna text.Screw it- those are their rules, not yours. Stick to those colours that you can identify, or use text labels rather than colours to help you organize. If your boss criticizes your approach, remind him that it’s a disability and muse about how you plan to spend the huge cash settlement you’ll get if he doesn’t reasonablyaccommodate you.
4. Get trusted advice - Find someone you trust and rely on their judgments and edicts with respect to colours. This may be a friend, your wife, or even a wardrobe consultant. For me, my wife fills this role nicely, but I’ve also got some peeps at work who know my predicament and will let me know if I’m about to go into a client meeting wearing hot pink socks.
5. Don’t set yourself up for failure - Actually, maybe those hot pink socks shouldn’t be in my sock pile at all. Avoid items that you know are going to be difficult to match or cause you trouble. For me, this meant throwing out the lovely purple pens that my wife keeps around the house, although only after unknowingly signing numerous important documents (including my Bar Admission forms) in purple ink. There’s no shame in admitting a weakness- Superman hadKryptonite , the Death Star had that thermal exhaust port, and I’ve got magenta.The secret is recognizing it and taking steps to reduce the likelihood of things going terribly wrong.

A happy and colourful St. Patrick’s Day to each and every one of you!

Photo by Diamondduste

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Apparently, some of my readers have a sense of humour almost as twisted as mine. Over the past couple of weeks, I have taken a break from regular posting and was quite amused to receive several emails from loyal readers asking if I had actually died and failed to set my dead man’s switch or let my executor know how to post a notice on my blog. The short answer is no- I’m still alive, and now back to regular posting.

So what happened? Well, I left on vacation about two weeks ago and had a number of articles lined up to automatically post- or at least I thought I did. But I didn’t. I found myself in the middle of a great vacation getting ready to hit the slopes, but worrying about my blog and trying to figure out why my scheduled posts weren’t appearing. That’s not cool. My blog was eating into valuable vacation time that could have been spent humiliating myself on the bunny slope.

When I started this blog, I had just left a large law firm that I felt demanded too much in exchange for too little. Yet ironically, the blog that was to chronicle my journey away from such silliness began to consume almost as much time as the job that inspired it. Instead of spending my nights reviewing documents and drafting agreements, I was spending my evenings writing and researching new posts and trying to develop and market my blog. I had not given myself more free time, I had just exchanged one mistress for another.

There are many reasons why people blog- for many, it’s a way to share thoughts and passion on a given subject. For others, it is a profit-motivated endeavour. My intention was never just to generate income with my blog, but as ad revenue and daily views increased this aspect came to prominence, and with it came the drive to expand further. I was a blog sell-out. The more I thought about how to increase profitability, the less I enjoyed blogging. I felt compelled to churn out daily posts not because I had something to say, but because that’s what you need to do to grow readership and climb up the Google ladder. When my hobby was becoming a source of stress rather than joy, I knew it was time to step back and reevaluate my motivations, and hence the brief sabbatical.

“Balance” isn’t something that you can achieve once and then forget about. It’s an ongoing goal that requires diligence and constant attention. I’m now back from my Trudeau-esque walk in the snow, passions renewed and vision focused. I enjoy blogging too much to abandon it, and I want to keep it that way by writing about subjects that interest me and at times when I’m inspired, not by being mired in blogging best practices from the experts. Thanks to my readers for hanging in there!

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