In business some people will treat you unfairly. Always trying to settle to score and retaliate will just cause you to lose even more. By Gary Shotton #000398

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Justice

By Gary Shotton

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton and today I’m going to talk about the word “Justice”. You know, we’re humans and I’m a human and when I’m wronged, or something is unfair to me I really can reach out and think, and sometimes act in a way that says, hey, we need to take things into our own hands and get justice out of this situation. And I’m telling you if you create a mindset like that, where you’re always trying to get even somebody takes advantage of you; somebody didn’t pay you or somebody ripped you off in business that I’m going to get even with that person. You’re going to set a mindset that’s not good. You’re going to set a mindset that will affect you.

So many things have happened. I had a situation where I was very tight on money. I was almost making my payroll and barely paying my bills and then I get a problem with the air conditioner in our office; oh, my goodness I don’t have time for that. And I called who I thought would be a good Heating, Air Conditioning person and was professing Christian, and I think they’re probably good people, and they came out and sure enough they said you need a new air conditioner unit. $10,000. Oh there’s no way I have money for $10,000. And I get into it, and I reluctantly tell them, I guess I’ll go ahead and have to do it because it’s hot in the summer we can’t just sweat inside the office I have to have a climate that we can work in with seven or eight of us working in the office.

And in the process, though I discovered an issue that the air conditioning wasn’t wrong. Now maybe the supplier was trying to give me something more efficient, but they didn’t explain it that way. They said my air conditioner would have broken that it would not work. But that wasn’t true. All that was wrong air conditioners in the middle of summer when it’s humidity, they can have condensation and that condensation needs to be caught in a pan at the bottom, and the pan in the bottom needs to be drained into a drain. And I discovered that the only thing that was wrong was that pan in the bottom had some holes in it and wasn’t draining it was running out on the floor in the warehouse, but it wasn’t guided down into the proper drainage, I could fix this for 15 or $20.

Oh, my goodness, I was not happy. I was not happy at this individual because I thought they were trying to take advantage of me, and I thought they were looking at. And I was going to get justice with them. I was going to consider reporting them to other people. Hold it. Think about it; if I’m the one that’s going to get revenge on this person and make it difficult for them. That can happen all the time in business. Another one was, you might hear this in several of my reports because they fit, but I had my wife and I and another couple were the prime the management of my company, the Moving and Storage company. And at one point, I turn more of this company over to this other individual and his wife was the key person helping there. And my wife and I, we weren’t like doing something else I was interested in mini storage as I was developing a new line of business while he took care of what we had there in the moving business.

And suddenly, I out having a little fun on a Saturday afternoon, and I get a call from a friend that notified me that maybe this person that was working for me was doing something quite inappropriate. And what I found out on Monday that on Saturday, or Friday afternoon he took checks out of order in my check stack, and he had privileges to write checks in our behalf and went to the bank and cashed $17,000 worth of cash money out of my checking account, put it in his pocket and then paid my workers and use my trucks to move him to the next state over. The state that was to the north of us.

Well, this really complicates it because there’s no way for me physically to go after this person, and very costly. And I had given them privileges, they hadn’t in a technical term stolen from me. They had misuse of the privileges I had given them, and they’re in another state. I wanted to wring his neck. And it took me probably six weeks before I finally swallowed and said this is just eating me up. I’m not going to live this way. I’m going to just go ahead and forget about it. You see, I didn’t ever reunite with any of these situations and continue my business relationship with him, but I didn’t hold it against him in a way that I’m the one that’s going to get the justice.

You see, I learned that if I let it go, that in due time these people that are acting inappropriate against me and others, they kind of like have a dangling rope. And we have a saying that if you let the rope dangle for a while and long enough, it’ll finally catch them, and cause them great destruction. Note I didn’t cause that destruction and I don’t even think God causes the destruction. I believe that the wages of sin are death and destruction. So, the payback not God not me. But if we turn things over and not hold them against us and again, I don’t say we turn it over to God and ask God to zap them like you would on a fly, but I’m saying that in somehow the system says it will take care of itself.

There’s somebody else in the process of time that I do not have to tie myself up in trying to gain justice. Here’s the problem. What I work hard at getting justice, I take away the energies, the drive, the advancement of my company and my business. I tie my mind up and I missed the opportunities. Now, each time something happened of course I learned the lesson, and I put in place some systems and processes so that it wouldn’t get hit repeatedly. I mean we had claims in our business, and I continually modified my agreement as things happen to improve. So, something happened, I learned a lesson. But then I changed something in the contract with the customer, so that if that came up again I was standing on more legal ground honestly in moving some 33,000 people.

I had several times that I could have taken somebody to small claims court, and that I could have worked through that process at all depend on the amount of money involved, but I never took anybody to small claims court. I’m not proud of that necessarily I’m just saying it would have tied me up time and energy that took me away from doing what I needed to do to have a successful company. And I don’t know what happened to all those people and to be honest with me I really wish them the best. I wish that they would repent and change their ways and avert problems but if you keep playing too close, we say if you get too close to the creek you’re always playing right on the edge, you’re going to fall and slip into the water.

Well, if you keep doing those things, they’re going to come back and get you. It’s just a matter of time, and I don’t have to be the one that serves out the justice. Well, hope this makes sense. I hope it didn’t disclose something that was irritating to you, and I just believe that God is a God of justice. Let’s just say that justice is going to play its way out, Just in this world when we allow God and His system and wisdom to defend us. That’s the main thing. Thanks for being a part of inspiring better business.