The Salesman

Hope Ira Hayes will excuse me for borrowing her title.

One of the most irritating issues for me, is the telecaller of illegal status, mumbling in Hindi!

The absolute height was the oriflame office from Bangalore, the customer care person talks to me in hindi and demands that I reply since it is rajyabhasha, of course me being me, I fired him in kannada, and told him to find someone who can speak to me in either English or kannada.

Since that day I am reluctant to interact with oriflame.

Now that I am calm  I introspect what makes a leader,?

Small experiences like the one I had with Flipkart, along ago when they were just hatching, I ordered a book called Angelology, there was a call from the customer care, asking me if I was sure that I wanted the book, have I read the review, I was taken aback I had not read the review. The executive told me she was concerned as it was not the kind of book I normally bought. Guess what she was right it was the wrong buy for me, but flipkart has a loyal customer despite Homeshop18 having discounts I bought Flipkart!

the only conclusion that I can come to is the understanding, listening and communication skills.

• My flipkart customer care person, made me feel she was on my team.
• She was listening to my story through the orders that I placed.

During my conversation with her, I  found it a little amusing that she had no first person singular. It was We, us all the way but I appreciated the sense of involvement her pronouns threw.

But now Flipkart has taken on Amazon proportions, so they no more care about their customers, while Amazon does the flipping, that is being concerned about their customer

In a personal or social interaction, we figured, simpler the language healthier the communication,  there is no reason to go

Sparkle, sparkle ,Oh! Celestial being

When twinkle,twinkle little star suits fine enough.

Another interesting interaction between my mother-in-law and me, she was narrating the pest salesman woe’s I replied”don’t tell me” to me it was saying I agree with you, but to my MIL it was “don’t tell me~I don’t  care” this simply meant slangs go right out of the window they mean something totally different.

Imagine saying

..and the child thats born on the Sabbath day

Is fair and wise and good and gay

It would mean something totally different in today’s environment. It was then I realized the importance of learning the vocabulary of the environment.

We take our relationships also pretty casually  I learnt this from Asma D’souza there is no lets meet us sometime, there is always lets me up on so and so time at so and so place. This is a way of honouring ourselves and our commitment   to the interaction. This kind of commitment makes people takes us seriously.

Integrity of words if you promise something then carry it through no matter what the cost it. This would mean in every walk of our life. Unless we honour our words why on earth would the next person do it?

This event happened at a restaurant, where were dining, the next table was very noisy and boisterous, I was all set to tell them that their conversation was boring us, at that moment, a kid all of maybe five years walked upto them hands on her waist she looked at them, they started the usual talk to the kid –

She looked them square in the eye and retorted

“How rude you are, didn’t you learn manners you are not suppose to disturb others in a public place.” She stomped right back to her lunch.

The crowd was quiet after that.