Barlow chuckled at that: "It is amusing," he said, "that Stigler hasn't yet realized that you are not cutting your own prices but merely making him cut his!"
"But, really," I said, "so much is always happening that I've forgotten almost everything but business."
"I'm very glad to hear it, Dawson," he replied, "and you'll find that, as long as you are going on the right track, that same spirit will continue. I find business so crowded with interesting things that I can hardly tear myself away from it at night."
"I notice, though," I said, with a sly smile, "that you still take your half hour's constitutional every morning."
"Surely you know what I do that for?"
"What is it, if it isn't to keep yourself in trim or something of that kind?"
"I'll tell you, Dawson: A man can't be in the same surroundings long without becoming blind to their physical aspects. If I were to stay in the store all the time, I would soon become blind to poor window displays, to disorderliness and neglect about the store—to those hundred and one defects which creep up in a store and which react unfavorably on customers. So I make a point every day of putting on my hat and walking around a few blocks, looking at the other stores, familiarizing myself with the window trims, keeping a line on new ideas, and the like. And by the way, Dawson, I have obtained some of my best ideas of window trimming from displays in other stores—not hardware stores, I mean. I had a splendid idea for a trim one time from a display at Middal's." Middal ran a stationery store. "Tony once had an arrangement of fruit in his window that gave me a good idea for a tool display.
"I tell you, Dawson, there are good ideas lying around everywhere, and it only requires a little imagination to adapt them to your own uses. It's a poor sort of merchant who cannot use the good ideas from other lines of business and adapt them to his own requirements."
"So that's why you take your morning constitutional?" I asked. "To see what good ideas you can pick up!"
"Yes, I see what good ideas I can pick up, but that's only one part of it. My main idea is to let my eyes see something other than what they are in the habit of seeing. I want them to get away from looking at the environment of the store, so that when I return from my 'constitutional,' as you call it, I can look at my store as if I were a casual visitor. Every time I approach it I say to myself, 'What would I, as a stranger, think of that store?' And I find that, by looking at it in this way, I keep my viewpoint fresh. I quickly notice any flaws in the store management."