Soft
Sawder and Human Natur’
Valley folks need to be savvy about the slick-talking city salesman. Such was the case when I was working in administration for a school board in northwestern Ontario and a young salesman parlayed his way through the front office telephone to my desk phone. He had something he was certain I needed to have.
Well first, he said he wanted to thank me for taking the call as he knew what a busy man I must be as head of the corporation, and all. I found it rather flattering for someone to think of me as one of such importance. There was a temptation to brush it off and assure him that I had effective office assistants and that, at times, my job was less stressful than when I was growing up and working in the bush but, I continued to listen.
He told me he had this Technical Resource Manual that was an absolute necessity for those in important positions such as mine. As a matter of fact, he had recently sent one to the head of a school board in Winnipeg and another to a Superintendent in Vancouver. Others he knew, like them, found it to be a most helpful resource. If executive officers in important places like Winnipeg and Vancouver found this to be so useful, he felt that, I too could use a little respite from the paper avalanche and daily blizzard of demands that must surely swamp my office life.
Then, of course, there is the library
of legislative acts and regulations, plus policy documents, with which I must be
familiar; the sight of which, he personally, could not even begin to imagine.
“And I understand”, he added, “they keep changing them every few
months.” How I ever managed to
keep abreast of it all, he could not even fathom.
I wanted to tell him that we hire lawyers to do it for us. That would sound flippant, of course, but I could explain that, at least we need to know our pronouns. Some parents and some union people would tell me the board is supposed to do this, or that, and I would have to know if the legal documents say we should do it, or they should, or all of us in partnership. It also helps to know your verbs; what the board shall do and what the board may do. Over the years I have met just a few persons who confuse their rights with their privileges. Yet, before I could interject, he leaped on to his absolute conviction that this technical resource manual would “almost replace the need for legal counsel.” It would guide me through the minefield of liabilities the board faces in an ever increasing litigious society as well as the complexities of employment law. “And Goodness knows”, he added, “what will be expected of you with this new PIPEDA that recently came into force.”
The young man’s art of sales was intriguing. Perhaps he was a recent graduate from a modern business course that grounded him in the newest and most effective sales techniques. I noted they were very similar to the ones described in 1836 by Canadian author Thomas Chandler Haliburton. His fictitious character, Sam Slick, was an American who travelled around the Maritimes selling clocks. Sam gained the ears of his customers by such means as praising the beauty of their farms, their lovely wives, the splendid behaviour of their children, or the youthful appearance of the settlers themselves. Of course, he never had a lot of clocks left; usually he was down to his last one. However, it was a beauty, one that the neighbour had his heart set upon but which Sam doubted he’d be able to afford. Sam was certain to mention that this particular clock was an exact replica of one in the mansion of the governor of Maine, though probably more highly varnished and gaudy. This “soft sawder” talk, as Sam called it, always enabled him to move along far enough in the relationship to get his clock into the house. I noticed this young graduate was using the same kind of strategy as a sequeway to get this manual to my office.
“We don’t need any money right now, Mr. Madigan. We can send you one of our manuals to examine. If you wish to keep it, you can pay for it later.” He told me it may be a couple of weeks before he could get one to my office though “because they are going like hotcakes and our publishers are doing their best to keep up with the demand.” He said he would have liked to leave it with me for a few weeks, but he explained that because of the huge interest at the present time, he would stretch it to fifteen days.
Sam Slick often left a clock at the house of a customer. “I’ll tell you what,” he’d say, “I’ll set the clock a-goin’ and leave it in your care ‘til I return on my way back.” This is what Sam called “human nature”. He noted, “once having indulged in the use of a superfluity, it is difficult to give it up.” Once, on his sales rounds, Sam confided this bit of philosophy to his companion; “We can do without any article of luxury we never had, but, when once obtained, it isn’t in ‘human natur’ to surrender it voluntarily.”
“Very well,” I told the young businessman, “send it along and I’ll examine it.” I promised myself, though, that there is no way that I will keep it. I’ll show this young whipper snapper that a wise and senior executive like me can’t be taken by sales gimmicks that are two centuries old. After all, I am fortified with a Day-Timer, a PDA, pop-up reminders on my computer, and an office of assistants to remind me to send it back on time.
Soft sawder and human nature don’t work today with old valley guys like me! No Siree, Bob! However, I can't be sure that somewhere in a back office in Fort Frances, there isn't a dusty Technical Resource Manual.