The Going Rate

... Greg checking out a fallen apple tree ...

I have written this post so many times in my head, that I thought maybe I had already got it onto the blog.

To check that presumption out, I went to the search engine of this blog to see if I had already put it up. No, the last time I wrote a putting Greg Bates’s name in the labels was in 2010.

I suppose it's alright to do one post every decade so here goes the one that has been turning around in my head.

In the past few months, I needed to go to Calgary, for a doctor's appointment. Usually I can just ride along with someone who is coming from or going to Calgary, , but in this instance there was no designated driver in a designated car. Greg Bates said he would drive me. Rebecca offered her new electric van. On the road, Greg and I were pretty enthralled with its pick up and the way it almost drives itself down the road, leaving plenty of room between us sent the car ahead. We watched how it would, run on all of that electric energy,eEtc. The ride that doesn't seem that long when there's an interesting conversationalist in the car. As Greg was talking I was thinking to myself, too bad I don't have a tape recorder and could record some of these stories he is telling me, because they're truly interesting. But then that thought slipped away as many thoughts do.

Along the way, Greg told me that when his grandchildren go for interviews, he wished they knew the phrase “the going rate” when an employer asks them what pay scale they would like to be on.

... may I have this dance? ...

I have never heard that phrase. 

 I asked Greg how he had learned that phrase. 

He said doesn't everyone know that? 

Then he said, “I learned it from Les Bates, my stepfather. I was going for my first job interview and as I was going out the door Les said to me, when they ask you how much you want to be paid for your work, tell them the going rate. If they tell you no, you will have to be on a pay scale under that figure, then that job is not for you.”

I wouldn't have known to have told any of my children or my grandchildren that phrase, the going rate. 

Then I asked Greg if I could tell this story, he laughed and said yes and any others you can remember.