“Be a closer!
“Never guy a customer or ‘kid him along’ for the amusement of a by-stander or a fellow clerk. This is a common practice in some clothing stores. The offender is usually a self-satisfied clerk who has had just enough success as a salesman to make him egotistical.
“He thinks he is a regular dare-devil and that by making sport of his customer he may win a reputation as the village cut-up. His favorite victim is some half-witted fellow—tho’ a customer who is partly deaf may do and he is always ready for a yokel or a foreigner.
“There is no doubt,” said Sam Lambert, “that the medal for the longest ears and the loudest bray in the clothing business belongs to this Smart Aleck type of clerk known as a ‘kidder’.
“To say nothing of the respect he owes the customer, it is astonishing how he can presume to work his cheap little side-play on any human being, when even a dog is sensitive to ridicule and knows when he is being laughed at.”
CHAPTER II.
No one questioned Sam Lambert’s power as a business getter, nor the alertness of his store-keeping methods.
He was prodigal of his own energy—never spared himself. He looked after the important things and left details to others.
As with every man who is a constructive force in the world of affairs, Sam’s friends and relatives shook their heads—said that he needed a balance-wheel.
This was dinned into his ears so often that he finally came to believe it. So after many Sunday afternoon business discussions, it was arranged that he was to take into the business his wife’s cousin, one Lemuel Stucker, who had spent twenty years saving $9000 as general manager for a flour and feed concern.