The Wilful Sunflower

There's this eating place nearby my office which I visit two or three times a week. I go there to buy breakfast, and I always ask for the same thing: fried meehoon with a fried egg, and a little sambal on the side. So I'm boring. And predictable. Who knew?

I've been doing this for more than a month now, and it's always the same person serving me -- the proprietor. How do I know he's the proprietor? Because at one time they were advertising for waitresses and I asked him how much was being offered. My conclusion was that I'd never survive as a waitress. (Malaysians generally don't tip; most eating places add a 5% or 10% "service charge" to the bill.)

This morning I traipsed down to the shop. The proprietor looks at me and asks what I would like. I request my usual meehoon, and he dishes the noodles into a styrofoam packet; I tell him I want a little chilli and he asks which kind of chilli I want.

I am a little incredulous that he still hasn't realised I have a pattern going on here. I never deviate from my order, I am a regular customer, and you haven't figured out yet what I want?!

So this makes me think that maybe he is not so hot at networking. See, you have to admit that business thrives on networking, which I concede I'm very bad at. For one thing, I have the deuce of a time trying to remember whom I'm talking to. I mean, there are people who remember names, and then there are people who remember faces. Me, I remember neither. It is a great trial, believe me.

For another thing, I don't chat with my hairdresser. Hairdressers are a fount of information. They know people who know people. They also know things about people that would help 'persuade' the right people to give you a leg up. Unfortunately, I just want to get my hair cut and get out of there pronto.

You can see that I routinely violate one of the most sacred rules of networking: cultivating contacts. I figure I should be very nice to my hairdresser because she is a contact and she'd be able to introduce me to more contacts, no sweat. Not that I'm not nice to her now, you understand, but I suppose I could be a lot nicer. The problem is, such thinking is alien to me. I do have lots of motivations for being nice to people, but getting ahead in business is rarely one of those.

This explains why I'm not in business. But most people who are in business -- especially those who routinely come face-to-face with customers and meet up with clients – are accomplished at networking. They ask you questions as if they dearly want to get to know you. They smile at you a lot. They're so friendly you feel guilty for even thinking of rebuffing them. In short, they're all out to build relationships with the customer, because they think that'll keep the customer loyal. Make him want to come back.

Well... the proprietor of this little breakfast place doesn't do any of that. Okay, he smiles at me. But he's never even asked me where my office is, given the fact that I visit his shop two or three times a week. And he still hasn't noticed that I always order the same thing! I may not be great at networking and I might be terrible at remembering people, but even I would recognise somebody who dropped by my office a few times a week and uttered the same few lines each time, I'm sure. Yay, I am not that bad after all!