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Sad tales neither die nor fade awayCopyright © 1983 by Stuart Daw (Originally appeared in Tea & Coffee Trade Journal) My branch manager opened the conversation rather sheepishly. He had just lost 500 dollars. He had succumbed to the old con game that is one of the easiest things a young manager can fall prey to. That is employees with a crying need for financial help in a circumstance for which they have made no provision. It seems a saleslady had come to him with the classic sob story that her furniture was on the lawn about to be removed by the finance company, the bailiff was going to foreclose on her house tomorrow if she didn't catch up on her mortgage payments tonight. Her husband had abandoned her some time ago and was behind in alimony payments. Her two children were going to be taken into the custody of the Children's Aid Society, etc., etc. Portia's appeal to Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice had nothing on her pitch to the poor branch manager. He personally wrote her a check for 500 dollars. It was Friday afternoon. She did not show up for work on Monday. Someone once said that managers vary from one end of the spectrum to the other. At one end you have the fighter, at the other end you have the lover. In my management style, I guess I am a lover, for, instead of verbally hitting the manager on the head over the telephone, I merely suggested he go in for therapy, for no one in his right mind would have buckled as he did before such an obvious and well worn ploy. I made the speech from the safety and security of my own far-away office. Within not more than 10 working days, a young woman I was training for a staff position, but who would require extensive travel, entered my office in an agitated state. Flustered and having obvious difficulty in maintaining her composure, she blurted out excitedly that she had just received word that her 21 year old son had been shot in a bar the night before. It seems he had been sitting quietly with his fiancee when a person entered the bar, spraying bullets right and left. A 22 caliber bullet entered his head just under the jawbone and lodged itself on the edge of his larynx. The picture she painted of her son lying desperately near death on a far off hospital bed was heartrending. I quickly said, "Then why aren't you there by his side where he needs you?", She moved in quickly for the close. "But Stuart, I have no money." I had clearly been out-maneuvered. Suddenly everything I had ever learned about salesmanship swam before my eyes. As renowned sales trainer Douglas Edwards once said, "In such a confrontation, the first one who speaks, loses." By some inner strength I kept my mouth shut and stared intently at her. What I saw staring back at me were two of the biggest, most limpid, moistest, most heartfelt, pleading, imploring eyes that I had ever seen. We were "eyeball to eyeball." At least 20 seconds must have passed. Then, in one of the most triumphant moments I had ever experienced in the field of human relations, she blinked. She jumped up and pranced out of my office as I murmured a guilty goodbye. The next morning she breezed past my door on the way to her office with a cheery "hello." Surprised, I quickly inquired after her son, and she informed me that the doctor had changed his mind, the bullet had been safely removed, and the son was to be discharged from the hospital in a couple of days. WOW! I had finally won one of those confrontations. But there have been those times since then that I have succumbed. I wonder why? Perhaps it is because I remember the story of the young coffee salesman on the fifth day of his first real job. He was earning 40 dollars per week, one cent per pound commission on new business, and ‘‘all the coffee he could drink.’’ His company paid all employees in cash weekly, every Friday. He had just received his first envelope containing 40 dollars less the minor deductions prevalent in 1950. He was in a restaurant, making a telephone call to the office. He placed what was required in those days, a nickel, in the telephone on a pedestal at the front door of the restaurant. Having removed the nickel from his wallet, he placed that wallet on a ledge beside the phone. There were only three people in the restaurant besides himself - the owner and two young boys. When the salesman hung up the receiver he reached for his wallet, but it was gone and so were the two boys. In shock, the young salesman drove his 12 year old Dodge back to the office and threw himself on the mercy of his new boss. Embarrassedly, he asked the boss if it might be possible to get a small advance against next week's pay. The old boss in his wisdom, made a split second appraisal of the young man. He made his choice quickly, for he knew that to hesitate would destroy the effect. The old man smoothly drew a check from the drawer, and put the young man at ease. And I never forgot it. © 1983 by Stuart Daw
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