Salt & Battery Comics

I bought a new bed today… Well, to be accurate my fianceé and I bought a bed today. It was one of those situations where we weren’t exactly intending to buy one, but there was a killer deal and we both had some extra cash set aside for home stuff. “Why the hell not?”, right?

Overall it was a pleasant experience – If there’s one good thing this slump in the economy has done, it’s been to bring people together against a common evil. Everybody knows that times are tough, not only for businesses but for your everyday types as well. I’ve been noticing in the last couple months how salespeople are tending to be less pushy for the sale and more… what’s the word… interactive? chatty? For example – I now know that our salesperson, nice guy by the way, moved here from the northern part of India over a decade ago. He and his wife are expecting their second child, of which they find out the sex on Monday.

Now, these types of intimate details aren’t usually what one would think to be appropriate when conducting business. However the recent economic downturn and the consumer frugality that accompanies it has caused many of us to cut back on purchases and services. On the flip side, as folks are cast into increasingly difficult times, we are becoming increasingly more aware of the plight of those around us. A few weeks ago in the school staff lounge I was reading a newspaper article (for the life of me I can’t remember the paper, or I would link you to the article,) which was talking about exactly this: People who are hard hit by the economy are ramping up the personal touches to keep their customers.

Think about it; you’d have little problem cutting some faceless business out of your budget if you needed to, but could you do the same to someone you knew personally? Someone whose kids go to school with yours? I’m not saying we just bought a bed out of pity – we got a hell of a deal, and we needed the bed – but that it makes sense for salespeople to tone down the push and shove and take out the family photos.

Hopefully once the economy recovers we will still remember that there are other people in the world with their own lives too.