Today is Father's Day and as I often do during the year, I think of the times I spent with my father as I was growing up. My father owned a hardware store for almost 20 years, and during that time I had the opportunity to hang out, and then later, as I got older, work in his hardware store. I got to see how my father treated people that came to his hardware store seeking help with a hardware problem or just to hang out and talk with the other men that would gather in his store on a Saturday morning. The men and women that came to my father's hardware store seeking help in solving their problems came because my father treated their problem as if it was his problem too. After listening to them, he would pick out what they needed to fix their problem. People were not regarded as "marks" in my father's hardware store. He recognized that none of his customers had money to waste, and he did his best to save them money wherever he could. That is why people came back to his hardware store because they knew Si would give them the help they needed. I learned a lot more than hardware working in my father's hardware store.
Happy Father's Day.
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6 comments:
When I was in the throes of my first marriage I worked for a year for a man named Sidney Altschul, in a wholesale electrical supply house. It's one of the reasons I have an extensive vocabulary of colorful (and obscene) Yiddish expressions buried deep in my heart. My father and I never got to be really close, unfortunately. He never had much time to be a 'role model' for me. But in the year I worked for Sidney, I learned more about people, and how good business can be when you care about people, than I ever have since.
I am sure you took away more from that experience than you thought you would at the time. I enjoyed the times I got to spend with my father in the hardware, but if I had known how much I would learn from those experiences, I would have paid closer attention. But, as a teenager, I thought I knew everything. But, I did learn that I didn't know everything from hanging out in his hardware store.
Seems like our parents generation knew intuitively how to treat people to maintain and increase business. Now, one must learn about this in grad school.
A while back I was in a fast-food establishment and the worker at the counter was looking in the other direction and said "Welcome to ______, How can I help you".
Obviously, they were taught in training by the above MBA grad to greet the customer. Unfortunately, no one has the common sense to look at the person and mean what was said. The MBA now sits in the back room and counts the money...he doesn't have to deal with customers, does he?...that's why he went to business school!
Things keep moving faster and the teenager at the fast food place has dealt with many customers in an hour. Eye contact may not matter as much in a fast transaction. Vending machines could do the job almost as well.
More time and attention for each customer can mean less volume of transactions, but a richer experience, though maybe not counted in dollars. Volume and speed isn't everything.
When I was a teen, there were no fast food places. I guess I really did live in another century.
There is a movement called The Slow Food Movement. It's fairly large worldwide from what I understand.
Here in Bellingham, there is a bakery called Mount Bakery (named for Mount Baker near here). It has a sign for slow food in the window.
In the town of Skykomish, WA. on US Highway 2, I saw a sign in a cafe that said slow food. For fast food, Mc Donalds is several miles west.
It can be a trade off between time for friendlieness and speed, but many Americans and others want the best of both worlds. Basically wanting it all.
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