Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1917 — USING DIVISORS IN TRADE [ARTICLE]

USING DIVISORS IN TRADE

Why the Efficiency Expert and the * Fourfl usher Got Two Weeks’ - Notice. The efficiency expert had reported in favor of firing Binks and promoting Jinks to The head of a department of the great-store. -As he was a renowned efficiency expert, paid a great price for a few weeks’ work, the director of the store listened very attentively indeed to the recommendations. - —-“lfs this way," explained the expert, according to the New York Sun. “Binks never sends down more items for advertising .than he knows we can give space to. He is modest in. his statements of fact, and very exact. There are hardly any complaints, but his stuff sells very slowly. “Jinks, on the other hand, is always down on the mat fighting for advertising space. He sends down three times as many items as there is room to feature, and he knows it. He is enthusiastic and his enthusiasm makes him overstate things occasionally. So he is up on the carpet when he isn’t down on the mat But he has great punch and sells stuff enormously. Dividing his sales by the number of complaints, I find that the quotient of Ms efficiency is much higher than Binks’. That is one of our little methods you may not know about.- In other words, Jinks is a good man. He fourflushes a lot, but he is a hustler.” The director of the store was a man who had started as an errand bqy. In all the years of his patient upward progress he had never known what it was to have "punch,” but he had known many men whose painstaking attention to business,and whose modest conformity to the needs of their fellows had enabled them to build up institutions as huge and solid as this store. He could not remember that he Mmself had ever fourflushed anybody or sacrificed the truth for the sake of attracting attention. Bo he drew a check for the efficiency expert and gave Jinks two weeks’ notice of dismissal.