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Discover Mid-America — July 2005

Common courtesies, Part II: It works both ways

Our parents and grandparents had an expression for adults they found particularly rude or uncouth; they'd say, "They act like they been dragged up." The expression implies that (of course!) parents really do teach their offspring better who only act as if they'd been “dragged up” instead of raised.

Last month's Part 1 of this column was about dealing with customers who "act like they been dragged up." But courtesy works both ways. Some dealers are so fed up, put out and just plain disgusted by the disrespectful behavior of many collectors and other non-dealer shoppers that they'd just as soon sell to the trade — or to others only in arm's length transactions (e.g., online or in multi-dealer shops). Such attitudes can readily manifest in behavior that, if not overtly abrasive to customers, is at least passively rude.

Our parents and grandparents use an old expression for rude folk: "They act like they been dragged up." I guess you'd have to be raised, rather than dragged up, to want to learn the art of fine cooking on an antique wood stove! This Fortress Crawford wood stove made by Walker Pratt, Boston, 1907, is just a scant two years away from being a bona fide antique even by purist standards. Nevertheless, my father, who loves to cook but hates cooking on a modern gas range, still makes my mom's breakfast every winter morning on this fine old cast iron behemoth. (photo by the author.)

"Don't Bother Me"

If somebody walked into your yard or up the front steps of your house right in front of you, would you just ignore them and continue raking the lawn or sweeping the porch? Well, then, when the customer walks in the door, look up from the trade paper or the computer or the paperwork and acknowledge the shopper's presence.

A warm and simple greeting and an offer to assist if the customer needs anything is a common courtesy frequently enough overlooked in the trade. Readers will remember their own particular occasions on which shop owners and show booth dealers were buried so deep in a book or paper or humping furniture that it almost felt as if they were deliberately hiding from customers.

Of course, it's unfair: The dealer may be simply busy. But, again, too busy for the customer is probably too busy by half.

"I'm Desperate to Talk"

This is the opposite of the shop or show host who ignores the customer. Some dealers and shop owners talk nearly nonstop to shoppers the whole time they're in the venue, as if the shopkeepers were starved for human companionship. (And let's face it; the trade can sometimes feel like a pretty solitary business.)

Sometimes, motor mouthing in the trade seems meant as a kind of sales strategy — sort of the trade's version of the stereotypic car salesman. If the customer picks up anything at all, the salesperson roosts upon her, asking if she collects that item and offering to show her other examples. At that point, we're into the "isn't this one fantastic and wouldn't you care to buy it" spiel that makes a thoughtful customer want to head for the door.

Okay, so this approach isn't impolite, exactly; it's just hard for people on the receiving end of it to see anything this heavy-handed as courteous.

"I Just Know You're Up to No Good"

Customers hate to feel that staff is following them around or breathing down their necks. It can be an attitude that says every customer is under suspicion. Staff unaccustomed to the fine art of unobtrusive surveillance may communicate this suspicion to legitimate customers by hovering over them in a manner that’s accusatory.

Small Shaker covered firkin with alternating maple and ash panels and bail handle and characteristic Shaker diamond bale plates, 19th century. The Shakers produced common items of uncommon beauty — and, in their unusual communal life, knew a few things about common courtesy, too! (Photo by the author from a family collection)

Staff at a shop or dealers at a show or owners of auction houses are entirely justified in asking poorly supervised children not to run and roughhouse through the aisles and not to paw the merchandise no matter what clueless parents might think of such efforts to enforce minimal standards for public behavior given parental failure to do so. On the hand, I once saw a young father watching over his very young son, who was gently handling some toys that had been placed at floor level beneath one of the booths in a multi-dealer shop. I smiled - until I saw a staff member swoop down upon the two and upbraid them publicly for playing with the toys: "I'm sure the dealer would be very upset if he saw you playing with his toys."

Huh?

In the first place, these toys were neither vintage in age nor pristine in condition. In the second place, it seemed obvious that a dealer with some savoir-faire in merchandising had deliberately placed these items at floor level to invite the interest of small children.

So was this father-son pair killing time waiting for mom or grandmom or whoever else was in the store with them to finish doing what they were doing? Probably. Had they, nonetheless, the potential to be paying customers? Well, it's a rare young parent who can resist buying a toy in which his toddler expresses a particular interest.

Yes, there could have been extenuating circumstances for the staffer's behavior to which an observer wasn't privy. Nevertheless, the behavior failed to meet the test of common, garden-variety courtesy, which would dictate that, at a minimum, we don't dress people down in public for so minor an "infraction" as touching a toy deliberately placed by the seller within reach of a child.

Aside from that, let's stop and think about this interaction in light of one of the most frequently voiced complaints in the trade: the lack of younger shoppers and buyers. This much is certain: young people, whether they're adolescents in their teens or young parents in their 20s, won't spend five minutes of their time nor a nickel of their money in places they feel they're not welcome.

Courtesies are called "common" because they're usual - neither rare nor extraordinary. But they're also called "common" in the sense of "belonging to the commons" - belonging to us all. That means we're all entitled to courtesy, whether we're on the supply side or the demand side of the sales transaction.

Peggy Whiteneck is a writer and collector living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a topic she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.

> Good Eye Archive — past columns