Can't be that busy

I remember me Pops would frequently ask, to no one in particular and everyone in general, "You ever notice that the guys who claim they're the busiest always have the time to tell you how busy they are?" It sure seems that way.

I had a customer at the Shop yesterday who came in (without his machine for some reason) and wanted to know how much and how long to put a chuck on his Eel. I told the man twenty five bucks and we could do it while he waits. "Cool. Let me go get my machine Cosgriff and I'll be right back. I got a lotta jobs waiting."

He left to get his machine an hour later. Several times in the interim as he was supposedly about to leave he would stop before reaching the door and ask about a cutter, or the turnaround time on rewiring his unit, or simply to tell me about how much he loves his Model C Eel. I ended up fibbing to him and said I had to close at three, just to expedite things. Well, to move him on anyway. "Okay, Cosgriff. Let me go get it 'cause I'm really busy. Got a lotta jobs lined up."

I hope he was very busy, because he was really selling me on the point. Yet he did not return by three. Or by my actual closing for that matter.

People is People

I don't always know what to think of people. Okay, I typically know what to think of people. But as I'm trying to keep this blog G rated, or no worse than PG, I'll let that thought hang.

A man came into the old barn yesterday to buy a machine. I got it out, plugged it up, hit the on/off switch, and it ran. I let off the switch, put the unit into reverse, and hit the button again to show that it worked in both directions. You know, standard salesman procedure.

"Let me have that," he says, as he literally muscles me out of the way and tries the machine in forward and then reverse. All the while I stood and stared at him thinking, 'I just did that. Right in front of you. Why are you double checking me?'

Of course, maybe he knows people too.

30 10

A customer yesterday came into the old barn and purchased a $30 part. "Here's twenty," he said, handing me a Jackson. "And here's thirty," he finished, giving me a ten.

"No, that's only ten," I replied.

He stopped, confused, then sighed. "Don't be messing with me, Marty," he responded. Yet he was smiling as he said it.

Life is short. Have some fun with it. Even he did, judging by the evidence.

Just Jivin'

It is truly nice, very neat indeed, when you can joke with customers. It's one of the best job perks which sales can offer.

One guy, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, began giving me playful grief a few years back over my trips to da UP. "So that's how it works, Marty? You make enough money to go up north and leave the rest of us working class grunts slaving away?"

"Pretty much, yeah, Cloyce," I answered.

So now when be calls me with an order he starts with, "Hey Marty, I hear through the grapevine that you want to go up north, so I'll help you." Similarly, I might contact him and say, "Cloyce, I want to go to the Upper Peninsula and I need a few bucks." 

"Okay, Marty, bring me blah, blah, blah, because I don't want you to miss any days off while we're at the grindstone down here."

We have fun. And it makes work fun too.

The confused customer conundrum

A customer called yesterday telling me he needed a reversing switch. I said come on down, I have them in stock. He came on down. But his reversing switch was not the problem.
My first clue, as I started to do the job, was the badly damaged cord which ran to the on/off switch which also had no on/off switch at the end. There were only exposed wires. "Where's your switch?" I naively asked.
"It's gone, Cosgriff."
Sighing heavily, I responded, "I see. Pray, where hath it gone? Towards what destination didst thou last spy it goeth?" Okay, I didn't say that. I said something like, what happened to it?
"It fell out of my hand when I was using it Sunday and hit the handle of the machine, breaking it and shorting my reverse switch."
Uh-huh. So that switch, a switch completely separate and distinct from the forward-reverse switch, broke, and that broke your reverse switch. Yes, Cosgriff.
I set to work opening the reverse switch box, thence finding my second clue. The clamp which secures the cord to the missing on/off switch was bent upwards; the cord itself ran through an open hole unsecured. "Nobody touched this?" I asked, knowing somebody touched it.
"Nope, Cosgriff."
"Because I would not have left this like that," I explained dryly. "Neither would my brother Phil. It would not have come from the factory like this. So we didn't do it."
Ignoring my unassailable logic he replied with a straight face, "Nobody touched it Cosgriff."
I took the cover from the box, removed the reverse switch, and took all the wires off of it. I wired the switch directly to the power cord so that the machine would start as soon as I plugged it in, if the reverse switch was okay. The machine ran. Both directions. "So I don't need a reverse switch, Cosgriff?" the customer asked, with a wide grin and the delight of a child at Christmas.
"Well, no," I kind of sort of chuckled. "But you need a cord for your on/off switch and an on/off switch. You're looking at 90 bucks installed."
"Aw, Cosgriff, you told me 40 bucks on the phone!" he protested.
Calmly yet pointedly I responded, "I told you 40 for a reverse switch installed. That wasn't the problem. You stood right here as I showed you that."
"So I need 90 dollars to fix it?" he queried. Yes, I answered, even though we had just established the fact. I fixed it, he paid me, he left.
I guess my question is, was I the idiot there?

Pops and the ducks

There were a few things he said which I try to live by. I was reminded of one such phrase recently.

I was quoting a repair to customer A as customer B walked in. 'A' feigned a heart attack when I told him the price. He then turned to B and said that I was killing him. I jokingly told B that he could leave, that I wouldn't need his business after I was through extorting A.

Anyways, A leaves and I began to deal with B. To my delight, B being familiar with what A wanted, he first remarked, "I don't know what his problem is. That was a very good price you gave him." I thanked him. It's always nice to hear that you're actually an honest businessman. He continued, "How do you put up with that?" referring to customer's A's gyrations.

"Water off a duck's back, Pops used to say," I told him. You can't let obnoxious stuff like that bother you. Let it seep away.

I try to remember that, because customers, hell, people in general, can be hard to deal with. Myself included, quite frankly. You just have to strive not to let it bother you. That whole incident was over in about 40 seconds. Why should it bug me? Okay, arguably I am doing that, but to a purpose. I'm using the incident as an illustration. Don't let those things trouble you. Let them flow off like water from a duck's back.

I don't think it a bad way to conduct yourself at all.

The toenail trimming consumer

Customers, they are the most important part of any sales business. They can be (they ordinarily are) the best thing about sales, and at times the worst. At other times they can be downright odd and unusual, and even slightly disgusting. Disturbing, really.

I remember one guy who sat down while I was welding an end on his drain snake cable. He asked for a pair of wire cutters. So I gave him one, and commenced upon the repair.

He began unlacing his boots. I didn't think much about that; I really only barely noticed it and dismissed it immediately, almost without thought. He was probably just tightening or adjusting the boots, right?

Pulling enough steel cable out of his machine so as to be able to work with, I ground the end flat and secured it in my bench vice. After screwing in a fitting and tacking a weld to ensure it would stay, I shut off my torch and turned to tell him his repair was done. But my voice caught in my throat. He had his boots off and was trimming his toenails with my wire cutters. Talk about being a little too comfortable in your surroundings.

I said nothing. I turned back to my workbench and began tinkering with another repair. Eventually the man said, "Well, what do I owe you?"

'A new set of wire cutters', I should have said. Instead I just stammered something like, uh, ten bucks.

It was surely overreaction, for they were only wire cutters and had been used to cut far dirtier things than someone's toenails. In fact, that idea by itself added to my disgust at what he had done. But after the man left I picked the tool up with a pair of pliers and threw it away. I replaced them with a new pair that afternoon. I simply didn't want to use them after that incident, and boiling work tools (if you're not a surgeon) seems stupid.

To this day I cringe at the idea of someone arbitrarily trimming his toenails with my tools in my workshop. I mean, really? Why would it even occur to anyone to do that?