What if you woke up tomorrow and every person had to switch over to a different job. What would happen? What jobs would still run relatively smoothly, which people would transfer well into other jobs, which ones would cause the entire day to crumble into ruin?
Where the idea came from
I thought of this earlier today as I was pulled over by an officer on a motorcycle. I was surprised to be pulled over. Not because I didn’t know what he pulled me over for but because I did know and it was rush hour traffic in downtown Austin on an already small packed road.
I’ve had a break light out for a couple of weeks and have neglected buying a new one and putting it in. I wasn’t speeding (that would be impossible in the downtown morning office traffic) and I had been using my turn signal every time, so I knew exactly why he pulled me over.
I had just turned onto 6th street, one of the main roads of the downtown area, and in the morning, the road is wildly crowded with cars on their way into the city. Wall to wall traffic. As I turned onto the street I see two motorcycles start driving behind me. At first I wondered if they were cops but couldn’t see well enough and assumed not because they were riding right next to each other (something I thought as illegal) and they didn’t seem to be switching lanes very safely.
Sure enough though, no sooner than I turned onto the street I see one of them flash on his lights right behind me. I honestly had no clue what to do for a second. I was in three lanes of wall to wall traffic. Where was I supposed to go? Should I just put it in park and do it right there and then?
I ended up getting my car over to the far left lane and pulling part way into a partial parking space, but the two motorcycles seemed not to care at all and easily took up an entire lane. Traffic came to even more of a standstill as traffic was now funneled into two lanes of traffic.
I have no qualms with them pulling me over. They saw something that wasn’t right and wanted to take care of it. But I was astonished that such a little offense would be what they choose to take care of at that moment in that location.
I digress.
The swap
As the officer pulled me over and approached my vehicle and spoke to me rather rudely, I wondered what it would be like if for a day, police officers and salesmen changed jobs? Who would have more success? Who would absolutely fail and who would manage?
There are many things about both jobs that take years of experience to learn and master. TO know how to perform well in certain situations and to know certain protocols.
But look at each one. How do you imagine the conversations going?
The salesman becomes a cop
A salesman pulls you over to give you a citation for breaking the law. If that salesman is good enough, do you think it’s possible that he could convince you to give the citation to yourself? The honest answer is probably not. Making yourself pay something that you don’t want to is nearly impossible to do.
However, he may be able to get you to the point where you understand and agree with his assessment that you deserve to receive the citation. All of it depends on the person and the specific situation. Some sales you never win, but the salesman understands that and always works for the yes but isn’t poorly affected by the many no’s. He survives off the no’s and lives for the yeses.
There are many other aspects to being a cop other than pulling people over for traffic violations, and no doubt there would be things that a salesman would thrive in and things that he’d die in or cause the rest of the world to die in, but what are those things?
The cop becomes a salesman
For some reason, this one is harder for me to imagine. Sales seems, even more so than other professions, to be a profession where the reps you do directly correlate to the savvy you have.
The first day a guy cold calls, no matter how talented he is, he’s probably going to fail miserably and be demoralized for the rest of the week. It takes time to really grow those skills. Though I’m sure just like the salesman, a cop would have some great transferable skills even hopping one day into sales.
The idea/analogy is doomed from the start
The place where the analogy or idea breaks down is that all cops are not the same person. All salesmen are not one kind of personality. The professions are filled with people with a wide range of personalities, interests, etc. Granted, the kind of people in these niche professions are probably going to have some similar qualities when it comes to who they are.
But when you move a cop to a sales role, you’re essentially doing the same thing as moving anyone with no experience into the role. Being a cop doesn’t make him that special really. He’s just another Joe that’s never done sales.
The wide-scale craziness
But imagine if everyone woke up tomorrow and had to work a different job for the day? What would that look like for you? How would that look for the world? What would fall apart as we know it? How many planes would crash?
The thoughts go on and on. Play and think about it. What might happen?