On Topic: Small Business

The cute 20-something server behind the counter at Coffee Emporium, just down Third Avenue SE from The Gazette offices, slipped the two desserts into a small paper bag.

Then, as she handed them to me, she looked me right in the eye, smirked and said, “Loading up on the sweets, huh?”

My first thought wasn't how cheeky that was from someone I didn't know. It clearly was meant as nothing more than a friendly how-do-you-do.

Instead, my first thought was, you'd never get that kind of banter from a clerk in Michigan or, well, in most of the places I've lived. There, the best sort of acknowledgment of your existence you might receive from someone taking your money would be a grunt.

On occasion back in Michigan, where I lived for about 14 years, I would try a bit of reverse psychology and say “you're welcome” to a silent clerk. The response, if any, generally would be “Yup.”

Or my favorite, “No problem.” As if accepting my payment that helped give them employment would be in any way a problem.

On rare occasion, and apparently they were required to ask, a checkout clerk would mumble, “Did you find everything you were lookin' for?” It didn't matter if I replied that actually, no, I hadn't, because the follow-up would be the same - complete indifference.

Yikes.

I admit, I've long held the conviction that anyone in a client-facing business in today's economy who doesn't say thank you to every single customer should seek a different line of work. Now.

This notion comes, I imagine, from having grown up in a retail family. One of my earliest memories is my father, after opening his store in the morning, going in with a broom to chase out the bats.

He - my father, and I suppose the bat, too, though I can't be as certain of that - was in retail his entire professional life, managing small stores in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

The store he ran when I was a child was called Wilson's. Wilson's was referred to as my father's store.

So until I got to elementary school, I thought our name was Wilson. Imagine my surprise that first day during roll call ….

My mother worked retail for many years. My brother manages a crafts-supply store in Florida.

Through high school and part of college I worked a couple different stores, in sales and on the freight dock.

That's probably where I picked up the habit of saying, “yes, ma'am” and “yes, sir,” and only occasionally meaning it in a post-modern-ish, ironic sort of way.

The service industry is the kind of small business most of us come into contact with, in some form or another, almost every day - at the bank and in restaurants, at the bookstore and pet shops, when we call our doctor's office or insurance agent.

And I have to say, a lot of small businesses here in Eastern Iowa get it right. Maybe it's the sunshine, or the uncluttered horizon.

Or, as my wife said, “It's as if people here always wake up on the right side of the bed.”

Need some examples? Lisa recalls that not long after we moved here, she was asking a grocery clerk about parsley, and he took the greenery from her hand and put in a bag for her.

They seem to lie in wait at the hardware stores, eager to help. At the garden centers, every single employee greets customers, even first-timers, as if they're old friends.

“I believe,” Lisa noted, “they used to call it hailing.”

There's the clerk I met at the financial institution with whom we now have an email relationship. When our ATM cards wouldn't work, he shot me a message saying he'd look into it. And he did.

(At our former bank in Michigan, we'd be lucky to get someone to answer the phone, let alone take on responsibility to resolve anything.)

I admit it's taken me a while to not reflexively check for my wallet each time I'm greeted with a cheery “How are you today?”

And people here smile. They actually smile.

When they ask if they can help you locate something, when they take your payment, when they offer directions.

They seem to comprehend the cause-and-effect relationship between buyer and seller. That there's a better chance of repeat business - continued business - if there's some human interaction.

Management expert Peter Drucker wrote, “No organization can do better than the people it has.” That includes the teenager at the fast-food drive-through, the clerk at the hardware store and the wisecracking 20-something at the coffee shop.

It's good to know a lot of them in the Corridor understand that, too.