A teacher's winsome approach

When a new person starts working at the dealership there is always the usual amount of territorialism and headbutting as the existing pecking order re-establishes itself. The teacher that was hired as an "efficiency instructor" was no exception. Everyone needed to be at their best or else have a ready excuse for who else was to blame for their inadequacy. 

I fell in the latter category, but found no one to blame but myself for my unproductive approach to things. So I felt a certain antagonism toward the teacher, though I couldn't really find any fault with her method.

One thing she was responsible for was the weighing of everything. This included our toolboxes and a tiger, who happened to be there, perhaps in a mascot capacity. Whatever the case, everything must get placed on the scale for measurement. I wasn't thrilled about it because my toolbox was as unwieldy as a tiger at getting itself up on the the scale. 

I protested and complained, as was customary for me, because of the amount of work involved. Disassembly, unloading and reloading, where to place the jack in order to get the damn thing in position over the scale--it was definitely a two person job at least.

So, I found myself at the door of her classroom, where she was teaching a preschool level room full of students. Perhaps it was a daycare situation, but it had the air of a science class because she wasn't going to let the opportunity to educate go to waste. 

Anyway, I show up there with my partially disassembled toolbox, griping. She offered to help me and things start going remarkably smoothly. She seemed to know way more about the physics involved in getting the job done than I did. 

We got the toolbox on the scale posthaste and at some point the toolbox and the tiger were both on the scale. The need to weigh the tiger was as important as the toolbox, so she was keeping the tiger in place while I positioned the jack under the tool box. I began to change my opinion about the job she was doing, and started to compliment her.

Unfortunately, in all the confusion of jack positioning and tiger wrangling and complimenting, I'd forgotten to read the scale. We were going to need to re-do the entire thing. She took it step by step and we recreated our precarious pile atop the scale. I decided to complete my compliment then and there before something else happened and the opportunity got away from me.

"You have a very positive approach to problems," I said beginning to break the ice awkwardly. "I wasn't too thrilled at first at the notion of having to weigh the toolbox. But you made it quite a bit easier with your straightforward, no-nonsense method. You are a 'get the job done' type of person. You've won me over."

She smiled a toothy grin and said deferentially, "I give credit to the tequila."

I laughed. I was sure we were going to get along well after that. We engaged in small talk as we unpacked the pile of toolbox and tiger from the scale.