24 FABRICARE continued from page 23 not even old enough to drive. His father owned a business across town called Henry’s Tire Service. Probably all of Henry’s friends at school patronized Henry’s Tire Service. It was cool to visit Henry at his father’s business, to see a classmate outside of the High School walls. Henry senior passed away a few years ago, well into his nineties. My friend Henry retired to Florida and his son Aaron runs the business now. I am still a customer. If I need tires or tire service, I go to Henry’s without a second thought. It’s as though he is the only game in town. He is not. Not at all. At a time, I was a big tuna to Henry. At that time I had many trucks on the road and they were all wearing out rubber and picking up road hazards, every single day. One day, during that time, one of my personal vehicles needed a couple of tires. I was leaving on a business trip that afternoon but I had the morning free to deal with this personal errand of buying a right rear tire. I headed to Henry’s Tire Service only to find it closed at 8:15 a.m. Very puzzling. I sat in their parking lot for several minutes, bewildered. Suddenly, I realized that it was one of those holidays when not all businesses close; it was President’s Day, if I recall. By 8:30 I was certain that Henry’s Tire Service was not going to open that day. I headed to one of Henry’s competitors. Unknown to them, they had the picture-perfect opportunity to impress a new customer that they otherwise would have had virtually no chance of ever attracting. Given a track-record of years of good service and quality, as well as patronizing a friend, I wasn’t going to drop Henry’s like a hot potato for a few bucks off on a tire. But today, through no fault of Henry’s Tire, I went to Sullivan Tire instead. Now, before I tell you this story, let me remind you: some new customers are easier to impress than others. If Joe Doe comes to your counter for the first time because he is fed up with his regular cleaner after numerous failures, you don’t have to do a whole lot to win him over. If he is used to poor, your mediocre may look great. This story is going to be the exception. So, I go to the new tire shop. I am the first customer of the day. There are two men at the counter. One is drinking coffee and the other is on the telephone. As I approach them, I greet them with, “Good Morning.” They do not reciprocate. Strike one. What, pray tell, is so hard about returning such a simple greeting? My guess is, if I had been a regular customer – someone they recognized – I would have received a cordial welcome. The guy with the coffee ignored me while I waited for the man on the phone to get through with what was obviously far more important than a customer. If you wish to defend them and argue that perhaps the coffee man wasn’t trained to wait on customers and the phone man was on some kind of high-level corporate, heavy-hitter tele-conference, I will counter with this: Every customer needs to be recognized at once, even if it’s just an upward- FE ATURE continued on page 34