wearmanyhats

There’s a family story from the late 1800s about an ancestor who ran a general store in a small town iin the middle of Nowhere, Iowa  The store is probably gone abandoned now, but at the time, did a fairly brisk business with all of the new settlers, and the Indians who passed through.  The story contains certain details that make it sound untrue, but it’s a good story anyway.

The store’s owner was also a miller, and ground his own flour and cornmeal.  One afternoon an Indian came through the door and asked him for a five pound sack of cornmeal.  The miller carefully poured out cornmeal on the scale, and when he thought the Indian couldn’t see him, put his thumb on the back of the scale and pushed the scale’s cup a bit to fully make the five pounds.

The Indian looked steadily at the store keeper, pulled out a large plug of tobacco from his pouch, then a very large buck knife, and said, “I’ll take what you got there and the thumb, too.”

As the story goes, the embarrassed, albeit dishonest, store keeper hurried to make the sale more equitable and get the customer out the door.

Ah, how times have changed.  Now there is a store within a short drive, and local businesses know that unless they can compete, their customers can almost always head to a Walmart or a bigger city to get what they need.  Nonetheless, it’s remarkable how many business owners try to cheat their way to profitability instead of playing the game straight.   Once a customer knows he/she’s been cheated,however, they never come back and tell everyone of their experience.  It’s so crazy then that people don’t conduct business honestly.

If you run a small business, keep this story in mind when you have to make decisions about how to measure your honesty over making a buck.  If you have to thank your stars that you aren’t facing a savvy Indian with a large knife, then maybe you want to reconsider what you are doing.  It’s a good scale to weigh your actions.

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