Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1903 — A BOOK OF KICKS. [ARTICLE]

A BOOK OF KICKS.

How a Mercantile House Classifies It* , Vaf loins Com pi a ln|k Among the books in the, bookkeeping department of a wholesale house la one that Is labeled in geld letters “Kicks.” Here are entered the complaints that come in from day to day; "We started 'Kicks’ about two years " ago,” the manager of the house said recently. “I grew tired of finding a big proportion of my mail made up of such letters as this: " •That box of hats I bougbFTs ffot selling as well in Quog as I thought it would. Please tell me what is the matter with the hats and will It be ail right if I return them?’ “ ‘Yoqr consignment of wax dolls was -cheap and good,, but a New York man offers me a lot of rag dolls that . will answer my purpose very well and hence I return the wax ones as per invoice.’ “ ‘The shoes are bum. Those you sold me only lasted bne year. Any shoe ought to last two years. Therefore, I demand a credit of 23 per cent on each pair.’ "These kick letters are no longer laid on my desk with each morning's mail; they are entered now In ‘Kicks’ under their proper classification,’’ said the manager. "For the book has a number of heads—some sixty in all—and never a kick comes in that doesn’t fall under one or another of these classifications.

“By my present system,” continued the manager, according to the Philadelphia Record, “instead of frittering away a lot of time attending to kicks each day L give Friday morning only to them. On those mornings the book of ‘Kicks' is laid before me; I remedy the evils that are real evils and tha fakes I throw away. "Another advantage of this kick book Is that T have been able through It to discover a host of chronic kickers of unreasonable and even of dishonest complaints. These persons I have weeded out, telling them plainly that my house does not desire their trade.”