Do not let the fear of doing a little bookkeeping work prevent you from keeping these records. They should go a long way toward solving the problems which the average proprietor faces today:
1. Selling his goods and services without a profit.
2. Failure to show sufficient net profit at the end of the year.
3. Constantly increasing cost of doing business.
You may think at first glance that it will require a great deal of extra work to keep these records, but in this you are mistaken. They are very simple and easy to operate. The American Bureau of Engineering, Inc., will advise you where to obtain these forms.
CHAPTER 14.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE BATTERY?
When a man does not feel well, he visits a doctor. When he has trouble on his car, he takes the car to a service station. What connection is there between these two cases? None whatever, you may say. And yet in each instance the man is seeking service. The term "Service Station" generally suggests a place where automobile troubles are taken care of. That does not mean, however, that the term may not be used in other lines of business. The doctor's office is just as much a "Service Station" as the automobile repair shop. The one is a "Health Service Station" and the other is an "Automobile Service Station." The business of each is to eliminate trouble.
The battery repairman may think that he cannot learn anything from a doctor which will be of any use to his battery business, but, as a matter of fact, the battery man can learn much that is valuable from the doctor's methods of handling trouble. The doctor greets a patient courteously and always waits for him to tell what his symptoms are. He then examines the patient, asking questions based on what the patient tells him, to bring out certain points which will help in making an accurate diagnosis. Very often such questioning will enable the doctor to determine just what the nature of the illness is. But he does not then proceed to write out a prescription without making an examination. If he did, the whole case might just as well have been handled over the telephone. No competent physician will treat patients from a distance. Neither will he write out a prescription without making a physical examination of the patient. The questioning of the patient and the physical examination always go together, some questions being asked before an examination is made to give an approximate idea of what is wrong and some during the examination to aid the doctor in making an accurate diagnosis.
The patient expects a doctor to listen to his description of the symptoms and to be guided by them in the subsequent examination, but not to arrive at a conclusion entirely by the description of the symptoms. A patient very often misinterprets his pains and aches, and tells the doctor that he has a certain ailment. Yet the doctor makes his examination and determines what the trouble is, and frequently find a condition which is entirely different from what the patient suspected. He then prescribes a treatment based on his own conclusions and not on what the patient believes to be wrong.