A Pair of Socks

One fine afternoon I was walking along Fifth Avenue, when I remembered that it was required to buy a pair of socks. I turned into the first sock shop that caught my eye, and a boy clerk who could not have been additional than seventeen years old came forward. "What can I do for you, sir?" "I wish to buy a pair of socks." His eyes glowed. There was a note of passion in his voice. "Did you know which you had come into the finest location in the world to purchase socks?" I had not been conscious of that, as my entrance had been accidental. "Come with me," stated the boy, ecstatically. I followed him to the rear of the shop, and he began to haul down from the shelves box immediately after box, displaying their contents for my delectation.

"Hold on, lad, I am going to purchase only one pair!" "I know that," stated he, "but I want you to see how marvelously beautiful these are. Aren't they amazing?" There was on his face an expression of solemn and holy rapture, as if he were revealing to me the mysteries of his religion. I became far more thinking about him than in the socks. I looked at him in amazement. "My friend," said I, "if you could maintain this up, if this isn't merely the enthusiasm that comes from novelty, from having a new job, in case you can maintain up this zeal and excitement day right after day, in ten years you will own every sock within the United States."

My amazement at his pride and joy in salesmanship is going to be very easily understood by all who read this post. In several shops the customer has to wait for a person to wait upon him. And when finally some clerk does deign to notice you, you might be created to really feel as in the event you were interrupting him. Either he is absorbed in profound thought in which he hates to be disturbed or he is skylarking having a girl clerk and you feel like apologizing for thrusting your self into such intimacy.

He displays no interest either in you or in the goods he is paid to sell. However possibly that quite clerk who is now so apathetic began his career with hope and enthusiasm. The every day grind was an excessive amount of for him; the novelty wore off; his only pleasures were discovered outside of working hours. He became a mechanical, not inspired, salesman. After being mechanical, he became incompetent; then he saw younger clerks who had extra zest in their function, promoted over him. He became sour. That was the last stage. His usefulness was over.

I have observed this melancholy decline within the lives of a lot of men in numerous occupations that I have come to the conclusion that the surest road to failure is to do items mechanically. There are several teachers in schools and colleges who seem duller than the dullest of their pupils; they go via the motions of teaching, but they're as impersonal as a telephone.