Innumerable examples of that sort of thing might be introduced. There is the story of the North Shore matron who had an expensive rug sent out, kept it three months and then decided she didn't like the color. In its place she wanted a certain oriental, but oh, dear, it was just a bit too big for her purpose.
Of course the rug was cut to fit. And when she decided a week later that it, too, wouldn't do and went and bought another rug somewhere else, the management thanked her kindly and credited her account with the full amount. It knew that the life of the business had to be protected, and every now and then found it distinctly worth while to take time out to LOOK AFTER THE WELFARE OF THE ENTERPRISE.
And here we face another question: "Must the manager occupy his time with every minor complaint, just because it happens to be one which comes from a good customer?"
To answer it, we must go back to our New York State manufacturer and strip the scenery from his particular enterprise.
His is a business of few customers. Except for a half-dozen famous retailers whose accounts cost more than they earn, but to whose stores he may point the finger of gesticulating pride as being among his outlets (it would be better for him if they were among his souvenirs), his business is handled through thirty or forty jobbers. Naturally each of his customers is a very important unit in the business.
The loss of one account is serious.
So a customer to him is an outlet for business greater than the trade a big department store gets from a hundred good customers. One customer to him is as a score of customers to the manufacturer who sells to the retail trade.
To him, then, a complaint from a San Antonio jobber that the buttons on his pants aren't right has all the importance that the same complaint, echoed by a hundred different customers, would have to the retail merchant. Looked at in this light, is it not logical that any complaint—no matter how trifling its nature—should have his prompt, personal attention? Had he but known it, the letters he turned over to Henry were danger signals. They warned of the need for GUARDING THE WELFARE OF THE BUSINESS—LOOKING AFTER ITS GENERAL GOOD HEALTH.
And that task, as we have said, overshadows in importance every other task which the successful manager, in his daily business of managing, may have to perform.
The maintenance foreman in a New England mill walked into the agent's office one day—why the manager of a mill is called an agent is just one of those things—and said: