One Day
When I first got out of the military, one job I was able to get was working for a furniture store as a maintenance man.
One thing I noticed early on the job was that as a retail store with large storefront windows in the middle of town and busy sidewalk traffic, the windows were peculiarly dinghy inside and out.
So one Monday morning, I got a mop bucket, window washing soap, and found some squeegees, and proceeded to wash and clean the showroom windows inside and out. It made a big difference.
While doing this, the salesmen in white shirts inside the store were watching me and drinking their coffee.
I did this every morning and it felt good to see the clean windows. This went on for a couple weeks or so, when one day this disheveled older lady with a homeless look about her and holding a shopping bag was slowly going from window to window looking at the storefront displays of furniture.
All the salesmen were inside watching her and making joking remarks about her looks and clothing, all except this one salesman who happened to be the top salesman for the company. This salesman saw her looking in the windows, and immediately went outside to greet her and offer his assistance to her.
After quite a long conversation with her slowly going from window to window, they came inside and went over to his desk to fill out the paperwork. At this point she took the shopping bag she had been carrying and turned it upside down, dumping a pile of cash in bank wrappers onto his desk.
As it turns out, this “bag lady” had recently bought a chain of apartment buildings and was in the process of refurbishing and refurnishing all the units. She didn’t believe in banks and all of her transactions for everything were in cash. The purchases she made this day was over $40,000. plus a contract for additional purchases later on. A handsome commission for that salesman in one day.
This salesman told me later that the woman said she was very impressed with the clean windows so she could see what she wanted in the displays without having to go inside the store, and no other places she had been to in town were this clean.
Apparently the owner of the store had overheard all of the salesmen’s remarks about her, and what she had said to her attending salesman, because the next morning all the white shirted salesmen were helping me wash the windows with not enough squeegees to go around.
Lessons Learned that day:
- Take initiative; don’t wait for a boss to tell you to do something that obviously needs to be done.
- Don’t worry about peer pressure, or ridicule from coworkers.
- Always treat everyone with kindness and courtesy.
- Don’t prejudge or make remarks about someone’s looks or supposed character.