CHAPTER IX
TOMMY found, after his dinner with Mr. Thompson, that the responsibility of learning the business by doing his own studying in his own way did not weigh so heavily upon him. There were times, of course, when the slowness of his own progress was not comfortable, but he learned the most valuable of all lessons—to wit, that you cannot turn raw material into finished product by one operation in one second.
He now divided his time between the general business office in the Tecumseh Building and the office at the works. In the morning he was with the selling force, listening to the dictated replies to all sorts of correspondence or to the explanations and pointers of men who looked after the merchandising of the company's product. But his own interest in the psychology of selling was not personal enough. He couldn't bring himself to feel that in selling for the Tecumseh Company he was pleasing Thomas Francis Leigh quite as much as the company. Of course it would please him to succeed; but he acknowledged to himself that the pleasure would not be because of the selling, but because of the success. He could not project himself into his imaginary auditors, for the wonderful possession of another's ears with which to hear his own voice was not to him what it is to the bom pleader.
He began to think that selling did not come natural to him, but he kept on listening to the salesmen, grasping their point of view and at times even sympathizing with it, but always feeling like a buyer himself—an outsider. This gave him the buyer's point of view—an invaluable gift, though he not only did not know it, but felt sorry he had it. To conceal part of the truth, to be only technically veracious, to have a customer say, “You did not tell me thus and so when you sold me that car!” was an apprehension he could not quite shake off. All he could conceal was one thing, and in his introspective moments at home he almost convinced himself that his secret, by making it difficult for him to become an enthusiastically unscrupulous salesman, was interfering materially with the success of Thomas Francis Leigh.
His afternoons he spent in his information bureau, or wandering about the shop asking the various heads of the mechanical departments what they were doing to correct one or another of the parts of the motor that seemed to be regarded by customers as sources of trouble. When they told him the customers were to blame, and that no car is utterly fool-proof, he refused to abandon his buyer's point of view. He would argue, with the valor of ignorance, against the mechanical experts—and learned much without being aware of it.
At home evenings he did not talk, but kept from brooding on his own troubles by listening to Bill Byrnes. The young mechanic soon outgrew his feeling of pity for the New-Yorker's profound ignorance, and then developed a friendship that rose almost to enthusiasm—Tommy listened so gratefully to Bill's monologues.
On this evening Bill told Tommy that everything was wrong with the work. Tommy was dying to ask for details, that he might sympathize more intelligently, but Bill had not seen fit to enlighten him, and not for worlds would he ask point-blank. So Tommy contented himself with looking judicial and told Bill:
“This carburetor business is becoming an obsession with you. Give it a rest and then go back to it fresh. When you get a hobby and ride it to death—''
“Grandpop,” interrupted Bill, unimpressed by Tommy's octogenarian wisdom, “the moment I see a carburetor that suits me, no matter whose it is, I'll have no more interest in the problem than I have in the potatoes in the neighbors' cellars.”
Tommy was not sure that Bill was deceiving himself. He, therefore, observed, cynically, “All signs fail with inventors that don't invent.”