If You're Not First, You're Last — The Quitter Response

The Quitter Response

The third type of response is expressed by quitters, the people who think there is nothing they can do and will wait out the economic downturn until things return to normal—at which time, they will get back to work again.

This group will be crushed both financially and emotionally. They will go through all their cash, only to find out that economic contractions can last much longer than expected—in some cases, 18 months or even longer. These people will find themselves emotionally damaged from being out of the workforce; even when things normalize, they will find it more difficult to get work because they haven’t actively participated for months. The quitters are basically scavengers who depend on “good” economies to provide enough cash to fund their lifestyles. They travel from region to region and work in industries that are doing well but never really advance and conquer for themselves. They are only good at picking low-hanging fruit—or easy business—and are unable or unwilling to dig for gold. They will never truly accumulate wealth because they never developed a work ethic necessary to acquire success. I would never have someone from this group of people work for me; they contaminate the rest of the organization. A quitter probably would not even pick up this book to read it, much less execute the actions in it. And if such people did buy the book, I would have offended them so much by this point that they probably would have thrown it in the trash!