Why newspaper vendors make amazing salesmen

The more you think about it, the more you’ll conclude that much of what determines the difference between success and failure is attitude.

Your attitude to yourself, and your attitude to others.

We all like to be around cheerful, willing people, who are interested in us and our needs.

Admittedly we live in stressful times, with tight money and heavy competition, with quarrelsome politicians and terrible traffic.

But are the delightful young men on Uhuru Highway protected from all of this? Of course not.

The difference is in how they react to it, how they cope with it. We have so much to learn from them.

It’s nice also to mention their counterparts who, with equal lightness and joy, sell us bunches of flowers as we head home or out for dinner.

The phrase “say it with flowers” is wonderfully appropriate for them.

And again, how often don’t we allow ourselves to buy from them not because we had been intending to, not because of some immediate purpose, but simply because their very presence has made us happy, and because we want to thank them for being as they are.

My last word is for Joseph, who sells me my Business Daily at the end of James Gichuru Road, just before I plough into the morning jam on Waiyaki Way.

He’s as delighted to see me as I am to greet him.

So Joseph, thanks for your service and for your lovely open smile.

I really appreciate you, for how you launch my day.

(I’ll be buying him a copy of this paper today!)

meldon@symphony.co.ke