It was during
my last clothes shopping excursion that I happened upon what appeared to be a
good deal; it was an entire bag of white sweat socks for $4.00.
Like the
Raven I am drawn to small, shiny objects and somehow the blinding lure of
this $4.00 price tag triggered something in me and without even considering it
to be an ambush I reached out and tossed them into my shopping cart.
I’d like to
interrupt this story for a moment and tell you about the battery business. Some years ago Walter held the distinguished
position of Vice President at a company that marketed batteries. There was everything from jumbo RV batteries
to small motorcycle batteries. Over
years of hearing the office chatter I picked up on the battery jargon. One of the terms often bandied about was blem,
short for blemish.
A blem could
have been anything from a slight defect in the casing to a torn label. It was something that caused the battery
company to sell the product at a reduced price.
Obviously blems are not restricted to the world of batteries. All manufacturers everywhere produce their
share of blems. Now a torn label on an
automobile battery isn’t going to adversely affect that cars performance,
however, grab a bag of white sweat socks that have been sewn in such a way as
to produce 43 knots all wadded up at the toes and try and walk a straight line.
It was in
fact an ambush. Blem Socks Incorporated
has unloaded their misshapen and distorted footwear onto an unsuspecting
public.
The real
issue of course isn’t car batteries or socks.
The real challenge is how to identify, ahead of time, Corporate
Blems. How can we train ourselves to
know a bad Corporation when we see one?
Any conscious decision to go ahead and sell that which you know to be
wrong suggests that your mental capacity, and/ or social and moral compass is
somehow amiss.
The only
thing in our favor is that they all seem to have “Tells”; those little indicators that, if you stay
alert and watch for them, will flash at you just as brightly as that small,
shiny bobble that lured you in to begin with.
I’m thinking that perhaps I shouldn’t frequent clothing stores that
employ the use of shopping carts.
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