Never promise anything

I don't know everything. I know, I know, this will come as a shock to you... but every now and again something comes along and kicks me in the nads just hard enough to remind me that for every one thing I know, there are a couple hundred things that I don't.  Admittedly, most of my major Lessons In Life moments come from things that I probably should have known already, like Fire Bad and Don't Touch Bears, but...

The sense.  She's not so common as you would think or hope.  Especially where the Roxi is concerned.

Anyway, the short and sweet lesson for today is "Never promise anyone anything if you're not certain you can deliver."  I mean this specifically in a recruiting sense, but it's one of those lessons from MMOs that carries over well into other spheres of Real Life as a Real Girl.  Or boy, if you happen to have that unfortunate disability.

I've caught myself falling into the "say anything to get them tagged" trap.  People looking for social environments with a potential for raiding I'll upsell the various close friendships that we've formed to.  (Terrible sentence construction ftw.)  I push our desire to see and clear everything to folks looking for progression.  Someone mentions drama, and I tell them about our "if you have a problem, you handle your shit or you leave" rule.  And what's worse, I find myself trying to spin my prospies' concerns and observations into good things, or cover them up like it's some kind of political shell game.

I used to pride myself on my frankness and honesty as a recruiter.  As a rule, I only recruit for guilds that I would want to come into as a recruit, and I only pick up people that I don't mind spending half or more of my free time with.  (Again with the sentence construction.)  But any more...  It feels like I'm campaigning, and I've lost my captain awesome mojo.

Anyway.  Back to my roots, I think.  Honesty, frankness, openness...  And no promises.