Sunday, March 13, 2011

Seller Beware!

Yesterday evening I stepped into my neighbourhood bakery to pick up a loaf of wholemeal bread. As the sales assistant reached for one of the few loaves on the top shelf, I asked him, “Are they from today’s supplies?”  He said “yes” without any hesitation whatsoever and put a loaf on the counter. I squeezed it gently to check if it was soft and peered at the use-by-date label. Watching all this from another part of the small shop, the owner called out to the sales assistant, “Give him one from the lower shelf.” He knew that I always insisted on freshly baked bread.

The loaf that the sales assistant had picked up for me was not from yesterday’s supply. It had been baked the previous day. I felt angry at being lied to. I asked the owner why his assistant told me such a blatant lie.  He said the boy made a mistake because was new. The boy was indeed new (I had never seen him in the shop before), but I guess he did what he did because the owner had asked him to clear the previous day’s stock before starting the day’s stock, not because he didn’t know which stock was fresh and which the previous day’s.

Was my expectation unreasonable? Was I being unrealistic?

I tried hard to look at the event from the baker’s perspective. Just because freshly baked bread has arrived, he cannot afford to throw away the old loaves, which are good for two more days. How can he sell bread at reasonable, competitive rates if every customer insisted on freshly baked bread? It isn’t as though he is trying to palm off stale bread after the sell-by-date. And isn’t this what every food shop does?

All this is right, but it appears to me that what the shop did was foolish. Although the owner tried to hide behind the raw sales assistant, my trust has been broken. I will still go into the bakery, because it is conveniently located, and I get excellent wholemeal bread there. But from now on I will be checking the date label carefully before buying. I will not trust the shopkeeper. I would probably avoid the bakery if I had a reasonably convenient alternative.

Often we lie when we think that it doesn’t cause any one any major problem. We find lies useful to satisfy others who ask inconvenient questions. The ‘others’ often include members of our family and members of our team.

The trouble with lying, however, is that others will stop trusting us when they find out the truth. Once we spoil our record, they will not believe us even when we tell the truth. They will not accept the evidence we present; they may suspect foul play if they can’t point out exactly what is wrong with it.

One of the main reasons why many managers are unable to get the buy-in of their workers and workers’ unions is lack of credibility. The workers just don’t trust the management. The relationship becomes adversarial. They are not expected to trust their enemy. Everyone loses out in the process.

Being trustworthy is being persuasive.

Seller beware!

What would you have done if you were the owner of the bakery in my neighbourhood?





6 comments:

  1. That is so true. Most people who lie lose so much, whether it is a customer or a friend. I have a question though: Had the owner of the bakery told you that it was yesterday's bread, would you have bought it? If I were in your place, I would have bought it if it was still good.

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  2. I wouldn’t buy it because it would take me and my wife three days to use it up. The loaf would be stale by the time we came to the last slices. I would buy it if I knew that I would be able to use it up by the following day. My point is that even if he lost a particular sale because he told the truth, he would gain a loyal, satisfied customer.

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  3. [I am by no means trying to condone the behaviour of the shop owner, but just presenting a mirror image of the case.]

    Don’t you think this entire episode is also a reflection on our loss of collective credibility as discerning customers, barring perhaps you and my mother, who diligently reads the expiry dates printed on the foils and peers hard at every currency note because she once happened to bring home a counterfeit note of Rs.500/-?

    I’ll cite a small instance. I was accompanying my brother in buying a clothes closet. After meticulously gazing through the quality, the internal design, numbers of portions, sliding drawers and shelves, hanging spaces, locking system etc., we finally decided on one. Now just in time when he was about to swap his credit card to close the deal, he looked back in the direction of the wardrobe. Without batting an eyelid, he pointed out his finger saying, “deliver that one rather”. In a flick of a second, he had decided on another piece of storage! I looked agape at him. In a relaxing, assuring voice, he comforted me with, “Don’t you think this would go better with the colour and texture of my bed?”

    Once the wardrobe was delivered, guess what happened next? The key to the main locker won't turn. Well, you can imagine all the hassles that it ensued. I suppose when my brother decided to replace our previous selection with this one, he was heavily betting on the principals of congruency thinking that if the shape, size and price range were similar, there was no evident reason for any other feature / function to be any different. Needless to say, my closet houses many more of such stories ranging from unforgivably soggy ice-cream cones to a detachable keyboard which would never plug in to my laptop.

    The point here is as long as average buyers like me (and my brother) – impulsive, compulsive, wayward and irresponsible - don’t awaken and check their buying behavior, unconscientious sellers (as the one in the case above) would unabashedly enjoy our parentage and patronage. I guess it’s more for us to decide if we want to carry home fresh loaves of bread, then we have to build our credibility as astute and perceptive consumers. This alone would persuade the sellers to refrain from foisting us with mediocre or low quality stuff. We’ve seen in your case, when you demand quality, it is very likely that you’d get it.

    Anyway, the dictum remains the same from whichever side you look at it. Trust and credibility constitute essential elements in the persuasion mix.

    P.S. On a different track, I was wondering what the Prime Minister could do to persuade the opposition, media and public at large to reinstate our faith in the Government in the wake of the diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks alleging that the Congress paid cash to opposition MPs to win a crucial trust vote in 2008, especially when the Government’s credibility is at an all time low.

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  4. You are right, Divya. We are generally not as watchful consumers as we ought to be. As a result, we end up suffering. At times we sign documents without reading them. We assume, often foolishly, that the text should be all right.

    But sellers had better not exploit our weakness. Once they lose their credibility, we may not go back to them at all.

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  5. Interesting!

    Let me put forward a practical, simpler approach to it. I would have put across my need saying, that this loaf of bread for me would last for 3 days, give me a loaf that would remain fresh for these days and TRUST the baker, as I have been trusting him for so long.

    Post event: I would not think much, forget and forgive and put up the courage to trust him again, since I will have many more years of buying loaves from him.

    There is a need to be persuasive within, on oneself first, because the world might not adjust to you!

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  6. Very sensible advice, Priyadarshan. I’ll take it.

    If, however, I were the shopkeeper, this is what I think I would do. (All this hedging because I’ve never run a for-profit business. Certainly not a perishable goods business.)

    If a customer merely asks for bread, I’ll give him any unsold loaves from yesterday’s lot because I know they are good for today and tomorrow. If a customer – any customer – asks me specifically for today’s bread, I’ll give him today’s bread even if I have unsold loaves from yesterday’s lot. If I have assistants, I will ask them also to follow this policy.

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