My wife has tiny feet. Two pregnancies and a lifetime of walking have not made a bit of difference: Her feet are still small. Not only are they small - size six-and-a-half - they are narrow. In fact, her feet are so small they would probably have been considered very attractive in turn-of-the-century China.
Unfortunately, we don't live in turn-of-the-century China, and they aren't considered very attractive at most shoe stores around here. In fact, clerks and salespeople scatter the minute my wife heads for the shoe department.
I don't really know where they go. They could be hiding in the stockroom, under a desk or in a restroom for all I know. All I can tell you is that there is never anyone to help us in a shoe department that my wife has tried to patronize in the past. The whole department empties as soon as she walks through the door.
She isn't the problem. It's her feet. While most people have normal size feet, my wife has razor blades. Consequently, no one wants to help her because they know they're going to have to really work hard to find a pair of shoes that fit and that will mean missing other, more profitable opportunities.
It's gotten to the point she's starting to take it personally ...
The sad part is it isn't really her fault. She isn't difficult or demanding. She's just hard to fit. In fact, she's generally so desperate to find a pair of shoes that when she does, she'll buy them in just about every color they come in.
My wife was in the midst of another such quest for shoes that fit when she encountered a young sales associate at a newly opened Nordstrom in Los Angeles. Nordstrom is a department store, and if you've never experienced the quality of service that is "normal" there, you've really missed something special. Business writers have written volumes about Nordstrom's legendary service quality. There are stories of dresses or suits that have been sold, altered and then delivered the same day regardless of where they needed to be delivered. There is the tale of a tire warranty that was honored despite the fact Nordstrom doesn't sell tires. And, an attempt to actually provoke a service incident by the TV program "48 Hours" a couple of years ago for a special segment on "Service in America." The producers attempted to secure a refund at each of three different high-end department stores, Nordstrom being one of them, for a private-labeled, man's dress shirt purchased at a local retail store.
At one of the stores, the person returning the shirt received a lecture from the store manager for trying to secure a refund on merchandise that was obviously not purchased at their store. At another, he was summarily dismissed without ever getting to see the manager. While at Nordstrom he found himself face-to-face with the store manager in just a few minutes and was given a full refund without incident a few minutes later.
My father taught me the Nordstrom credo when I first entered this industry, only he didn't know it as such. To him it was just common sense; the way things ought to be. The Nordstrom philosophy is simple. The Employee "Manual" has just one page. One page with just one rule: "Use good judgment at all times." The message: Serve the customer. My Dad's philosophy was equally as simple: "Ya gotta wanna fix the car... ." It assumed that if you took care of the customer and the customer's automotive service needs because you wanted to, everything else would follow. The message is the same: Serve the customer.
My wife experienced this fierce desire to serve firsthand the other day. Most people would have given up, but this young sales associate wouldn't. She went through the store's computerized inventory system until she finally found a pair of shoes that might work in Dallas. She called and had the Dallas sales staff look for the shoes while both she and my wife waited. Ultimately, when the search proved unsuccessful, she sent my wife home with the assurance that she would "take it from there." My wife was convinced that was the end of the story, but it wasn't.
Last night, Summer, the sales professional who wouldn't quit working for my wife, called to let her know she should be receiving a package from the Dallas Nordstrom in a couple of days. It seems a subsequent check of the inventory system still showed that one pair of shoes in Dallas. She called the store and had them take a second look. They found the one pair of shoes and confirmed they would be shipped out the following day.
"Ya gotta wanna ..."
About a week ago, one of our customers burned up the rear differential of her Toyota Previa. She lives and works 30 miles from here. When we realized the extent of the damage and determined how long it would take to repair the vehicle, it became apparent she would need a rental car. Like most of you, we have first-, second- and third-call choices for just about all the outside services we require. We called our first-call rental car company and were finalizing arrangements for the car when our customer realized that she had left her driver's license at home in another purse. I really didn't think much of it at the time because she had rented from this company before and they had all of her information on file. When I mentioned that our customer didn't have her driver's license here there was a pregnant pause and then... "Well, she'll just have to go home and get it. We can't rent her a car without her driver's license." That was it. Case closed.
I'm not unreasonable. I understand there are rules, regulations, policies and procedures that must be followed. But, for whatever reason, that frustrated the hell out of me, especially because she had just rented a car from the same company, that same individual, a month or so earlier. I called our second-call and the assistant manager answered the phone. I explained the situation and heard exactly what I wanted to hear - what we all want to hear: "No, problem... We can't rent her a car without a license either. But, we can pick her up, take her to the Department of Motor Vehicles and wait while she gets a duplicate ..." and that's exactly what they did.
"Ya gotta wanna ..."
My sign painter was here today touching up and repainting the sign that took 18 years of constant combat with the city of Simi Valley to get. Like most people who don't bring their cars or trucks to you, he had a 'story' to tell and questions to ask about what was "right" in a recent automotive service situation. Conversations that involve words like 'right' and don't involve a change of direction should be avoided at all cost. But, that didn't stop the sign painter from telling his story. His radiator failed a year ago, and he had it replaced with a new radiator that carried a 'limited lifetime' warranty. It failed again a few weeks ago, presumably because of a bad thermostat. While the radiator was replaced at no charge by the facility that had originally installed it, they charged the motorist double labor for the removal and installation. The difference in the two invoices was less than seventy dollars, far more than the painter expected to pay. In the painter's mind this constituted an unforgivable breach of trust and resulted in a bitterness and cynicism that will impact every other automotive service professional who ever touches one of his vehicles again.
"Ya gotta wanna ..."
"Ya gotta wanna ..." is a phenomenon I am not unfamiliar with. My father immersed me in it as I was growing up. It was the primary mantra at "The Jerry Schneider School of Zen Automotive Service and Repair." We may as well as have been sitting cross-legged on the ground instead of fixing cars: eyes closed, palms up, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, muttering over and over again... "Ya gotta wanna fix the car ... Ya gotta wanna fix the car ..." in a soft, unending, monosyllabic drone.
"Ya gotta wanna fix the car ... It's hard enough when you want to. It's almost impossible when you don't." The Gospel according to Jerry.
It was something I heard just about every day when I was a rookie: something I found myself repeating to those who followed, as I became a Master on my own. By the time I was finally allowed to actually work on cars, "Ya gotta wanna ..." was permanently engraved in my consciousness. I couldn't work on a car or truck without "wanting" desperately to fix it because that's all my subconscious knew; all my father wanted me to know. You see in his mind, our profession was divided very clearly into two groups: those who wanted to fix the vehicle and those who didn't care much one way or the other. As far as he was concerned, those who wanted to fix the vehicle could always find a way to do just that, while those who didn't really care very much ... Well, they didn't really care very much.
I can't tell you how much that helped me over the years. Nor can I tell you how close it came to driving me insane. In the end, however, that mantra allowed me to become a pretty fair mechanic and then a pretty fair technician while I watched others with perhaps more talent, skill or ability stumble, fall and ultimately fail. But, there was something about "Ya gotta wanna ..." my father never taught me, something I had to discover on my own. And that is, not everyone you encounter in life feels they "gotta wanna" at all. In fact, some people don't "gotta wanna" do anything.
You see "Ya gotta wanna..." implies caring. "Ya gotta wanna" fix the industry, a personal relationship or anything else important to you. Now, if the industry, or the car you're working on, or the relationship with your wife or your kids or your parents or your customers isn't a priority, well, that's a different story.
"Ya gotta wanna ..." honor the warranty, help a local businessman solve a problem with a sign, come to the aide of a woman with a difficult shoe size who desperately needs to find a pair of shoes, rent the car, take care of a customer, and perhaps most important for our discussion here, "Ya gotta wanna fix the car ..."
"Ya gotta care ..." And, if you don't? Well, then maybe ya just gotta find something else to do and someplace else to do it.
