If At First You Don’t Succeed, Perhaps Quitting Is the Best Option

By Jeremy Gulley

“If at first you don’t succeed,” people say, “try, try again.” Most of the time I have no problem with this advice. I think that we all need to look at failure as a way to make sure we’re taking enough chances, and if we fail at something that we really want, we should keep trying until we achieve the goal.

In other circumstances, however, I think that quitting is the best option.

For example, on Friday afternoon I heard a strange noise in the back of my house. It sounded like a Canadian hockey team was fighting against a herd of wild feral hogs. When I went to look, I found a semi-truck in the alley behind my house with its back tires stuck on ice and its right front tire buried in my yard.

There is only about 2 feet of space between my fence and the alley, so the truck was dangerously close to making it difficult to keep my dog in the yard. Offering my assistance seemed the best choice, but after trying hot water, shoveling, cardboard and concrete blocks under the tires, and even pushing (yeah, like I’m going to push a semi out of an ice rut) I decided they needed a tow truck.

“Naw, man, I can get this,” said the driver, “I don’t want no tow truck.”

Since trying to go backwards didn’t work, the driver and his partner thought perhaps they could go forward. The driver pushed on the gas then let off a few times, to get the truck to rock, then gave the truck more gas and was able to move forward out of the rut.

And onto a telephone pole and transformer box – the bumper of the truck actually pushing into the case of the box.

“I’m almost there,” yelled the driver, “just one more good push, huh!”

“No!” I screamed.

The driver climbed out of the truck to analyze the situation. He actually began to discuss with his partner how bad the damage would be if he just gunned the truck forward to straighten out.

I called 911.

The officer who responded told the men that he had already called a tow truck and that they couldn’t move the truck until then.

“I’m not paying for a tow truck,” said the driver.

“Well,” responded the officer, “it’s either that or pay for the pole, the transformer, potentially the fence and repairs to the yard, court costs and other fees associated with your negligence.”

Wisely they decided to wait for the tow truck, at which point the truck was easily lifted, straightened, and put back on track, all for the low, low cost of not driving through my yard. After nearly two hours of trying, the truck moved on to its next destination, free from harm and out of my yard.

As I said, I am all for perseverance in most cases. But in other cases, people have to know when they have failed, when to throw in the towel – when to quit. As I thought about this experience, I thought perhaps we should change the adage, “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again” to “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again but have the brains to know when trying again is only going to make things worse so that people don’t have to call 911 and you look like an idiot.”

It doesn’t roll of the tongue quite as well, but it could catch on.

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Posted by admin on Feb 16 2011. Filed under Jeremy Gulley, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry