I felt that that night's work was well worth while, for I soon noticed a little different attitude in the men. Eighty cents, however, went the first day into our "swear box." I began to wonder whether their dimes or whether their bad language would hold out the longest. The idea seemed pretty simple, after it had been tried, and found to be a success, but it wasn't such a simple thing for me to think up. It had started when Betty read in a paper about how the inmates of a prison were given a voice in the running of it, and that had set me thinking about giving the employees a hand in running the business, and the plan grew out of that. I had been convinced from the start that it would work out well. A customer had come into the store one day and asked for an 8-in. aluminum saucepan. Jones had waited on her, and had replied: "Sorry, madam, but we are out of that size." The customer had turned and left, and I had watched her make a bee line for Stigler's. Then and there I began to consider whether it would not have been possible to have sold her something, instead of allowing her to turn away. I reasoned that, while she asked for an 8-in. saucepan, she might have been just as well satisfied with a 7-in. or a 9-in. or something else. Jones had not, however, made any attempt to see if something else would suit her. I reasoned that there were also many cases like this coming up every week, and that if we could only outline some standard method of handling such cases, it would mean quite a lot of sales saved--and, better still, in customers saved. That customer who went out, if she found what she asked for at Stigler's, would probably figure that we did not have a very complete stock, and, in any case, when we forced a customer to buy somewhere else it tended to cultivate the habit of trading there. I figured that here was a good subject to bring up for our meeting the following Monday, and I sat down to work out some general rule to cover such situations. It took a long time for my inexperienced mind to put in writing that I wanted to say, but finally, with the help of Betty, I evolved the following, and then, deciding that it was such an important matter that it ought not to be delayed until the next Monday, I had it typewritten, and gave a copy to each of the force. This is what I wrote: