Let's talk about it

I have just returned from a meeting with old friends. We were four  three women and a man who met for either a late lunch or an early merienda just to talk. We talked about everything  our youth, our good times, our latest diseases, our latest ventures, our children  and we had a wonderful time. We said goodbye with no regrets. It was a wonderful time.

Earlier I was out with young people I work with to look at a store. I challenged them to figure out what we would sell if we sold there. You may not know it but for two years now I have worked for a jewelry company. I am in charge of designing costume jewelry.

I have been trying to sell in this store. In the beginning of this year I was very enthusiastic and came up with 42 styles of rather good-looking pieces. I know they were good-looking and having just visited the store to review, I think they would have held up. But the young girl who screened the samples sent them back and asked what I thought were fairly useless questions. It told me she did not like my work.

I appealed but it took a lot of time. So I decided: I know, I will sell these on the Net. That’s what I have been busy doing  setting up a web page where we can sell my costume jewelry.

Suddenly last week my brand manager reported that he had run into the girl who rejected my jewelry. She asked him to apologize to me, please, and to tell me that she wanted to sell my jewelry in her store that was going to open this week. In other words, I had one week to come up with the stocks required. I blew my top. Someone beyond her (to whom I appealed my case) must have scolded her. That’s what made her decide to talk to the brand manager.

“Why doesn’t she talk to me?” I asked. 

“Ma’am, she’s probably afraid,” my brand manager said.

“Tell her no, I have no stocks because she turned them down. But I might make it to her next sampling day.”

That’s why we were at the store today. My brand manager over lunch said, “What about the samples you made? Can we not put them back?”

“No, they are already going on the Net. She didn’t want them. She isn’t getting them. We have to make new samples. Let’s have lunch and talk about it,” I said. 

We talked about it, came up with broad-stroke designs. We need more color. We need designs that are different. We can use the charms that are in the box. We can dream through the weekend and start work on Monday. We had ideas because the five of us sat down and talked about it. 

“How are you guys doing at the home office?” I asked.

“Okay, ma’am, but I think we’re going to lose weight. Our office is on the second floor but we always have to go up to the third to fix things with other departments. But we sit down together, talk and things get straightened out. It’s a good thing to be there because we can talk things out. We have fewer problems.”

“Because you talk in a group with the people concerned and you get the solutions,” I said. Everybody nodded vigorously. “That’s it,” I said. “Every problem has a solution but the people involved have to sit down and talk openly about it.”

That’s one of the problems in the Philippines. We don’t seem to know how to talk so creative solutions come to the fore. One of my friends told me they had closed down two stores but when she got back to the office, people were whispering that next year only two stores would remain open. “I wonder where they got that information?” she asked. “In fact, the truth is we closed down two stores and have about 10 more open.”

“Gossip,” I said. “That’s the way we communicate in this country.”

I think to solve things we have to learn how to sit together and talk, exchange views, even disagree but in a friendly manner. I used to think when I was president of an advertising agency that I would keep a basket outside the conference room and ask people to please leave their attitudes in it and come to the meeting with open minds because there are solutions and they can be arrived at pleasantly and with friendship. But not too many people around here are ready for talking, so we keep whispering behind each other’s backs, go on demonstrating and not being understood, and in the end nothing is ever solved.

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