Attitude is everything

I’ve never worked in retail in my life.? Try­ing to be a sales­per­son in Junior Achieve­ment was a night­mare.? I was even ter­ri­ble at sell­ing Girl Scout cook­ies.? How­ever, if you’re going to do bead shows and try to sell your cre­ations, you’re going to have to try your best to be a salesperson.

If this weekend’s show proved one thing to me, it showed that atti­tude makes a huge dif­fer­ence both in how you do at a show finan­cially and whether or not you enjoy it.? Min­cot and I are both dread­fully intro­verted, but we both made a con­certed effort to be out­go­ing, friendly, and cheery non-​stop from 10 a.m. until close both days. We smiled until our faces hurt; we greeted every cus­tomer that even came close to mak­ing eye con­tact with us; we com­pli­mented cus­tomers on their jew­elry, their cloth­ing, their taste in beads and pets and any­thing else we could find. By keep­ing an unre­lent­ingly upbeat atti­tude, I really think we improved our sales and the dona­tions we received for Good Mews.

Cer­tainly we enjoyed the show much more than if we had just sat there and bitched and moaned about the lack of atten­dance, the slow sales, the bad light­ing, the uncom­fort­able chairs, and so on.

I over­heard the lam­p­worker at the next table snap “NO!” at another ven­dor who asked at the end of the day Sun­day if she’d had a good show.? No sur­prise — I had over­heard her com­plain­ing about the show, about us and our “Wonkies for the Kit­ties,” about her lack of sales both to cus­tomers and other ven­dors.? It was clear from her behav­ior that she was not enjoy­ing her­self at all, either.

Good atti­tude, good expe­ri­ence.? Poor atti­tude, poor expe­ri­ence.? It’s all about what you choose to make of it.