My eldest son taught me an important lesson at the weekend.

J turned 19, and is recently-returned from university. He’s experienced some independence, but is back living in the family home. Already, that makes for an interesting dynamic.

He asked if he could have a barbecue with a few friends to celebrate his birthday.

His mother and I agreed, seeing it as a chance to meet the social circle that he had chosen, rather than the one forced on him at school.

(Even when your children are entering their 20th year, there’s still an obligation to worry. As a wise man told me many moons ago:

“The sleepless nights never go away – but the reason for not sleeping changes over the years.”

Only after we agreed, did J add: “By the way Dad; I’ll have to look after my guests – would you cook the barbecue?”

You can learn a lot about negotiation from your children.

His friends turned out to be a level-headed bunch; I was happy for all of them to be in the house / garden. Drink was consumed, music was played, jokes were told. And there was a lot of hugging.

It was an incident-free evening.

And for most of it, I was completely, utterly invisible. In my own home.

Usually at a dinner party or barbecue or supper, I’m at the centre of things (or so my wife lets me believe). My responsibility is to entertain and engage. It’s part of being a host.

But at J’s barbecue, I became a utility.

All the guests were polite, with appropriate “pleases” and “thank yous” – yet I might as well have been an outside caterer brought in for the function.

On a stage where I usually have  a speaking part, I was no more than the third spear carrier.

After I got over the ego-bruising realisation that none of them really wanted to speak to me, I watched my son look after his guests, enjoy their company, and sit at the centre of things.

And it was hugely rewarding.

* * *

I think that’s how it should be when we have the courage to let go of the people and projects in our teams. When we sublimate our egos and get the hell out of the way. If nothing else, it’s a healthy reminder that we are all dispensable.

It’s also a reminder that the best we can do is pass on whatever wisdom we may have gathered along the way, and let others build upon it.

Our children are on loan to us. So are our roles.

We’d better get used to letting go of them.

Every night as I lay in bed, I think of Brian.

And whenever I check the time, I think of my wife’s ears.

This all started about eight weeks ago. We decided that after 15 years on our Seally Posturepedic it was time for a new mattress. It had served us well – especially our three children when they aspired to Olympic-level trampoline. But the edges were beginning to fray, the surface was worn through in a couple of spots, and hard lumps had appeared in the most inappropriate places – rather like poolside widows at a Florida rest home.

So where else to go but BeddyBuys?

It’s a local independent we’ve been buying from since No. 1 child first stood in his cot and demanded the right to fall out of bed.  Singles, doubles, pull-outs, bunks, wardrobes, chests, chairs – we’ve completed two rounds of refurnishing, all sourced from the same small shop on the outskirts of town.

‘Shop’  overplays it; ‘light industrial unit’ is probably the technical description. It’s a 70m by 30m brick-glass building with a concrete car park opposite the paint works, off a small road, off the main road.

We don’t go to Beddy Buys for the glamour. We go to be sold to, well. By Brian.

Brian has been in the bed business for over 50 years. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about his product, his suppliers and the market. More importantly, there’s nothing he doesn’t know about customers.

LEAD AND WE SHALL FOLLOW

We arrive, shake hands, tell him that we’re looking for a new mattress. He invites us to try one that’s just near by. It’s quite firm, comfortable and 25% under our budget. Perfect.

“You might also want to test this one one too; this is really popular.” Brian catches my eye. I know the game, he knows I know the game, but I’m happy to play. Because he’s so good at it.

We walk along the showroom and try the next bed. It IS better, and bang on budget. I am emotionally engaged already. This is the one. J lays next to me. She’s not sure about it; too firm?

‘How about one with memory foam?’ asks Brian. ‘Best thing that’s happened to beds in the past ten years’.

Softly, softly, he’s reeling us in.

He guides us up to the end of the store, and we clamber onto a bed that’s almost waist high. And it’s fabulous. Brian explains the workings of the foam – and how it forms an additional layer, like a mattress on a mattress. Hence the height.

Then he tells me the price, which is double our budget. He can read that on my face.

‘It’s the most expensive in the shop, and to be honest we don’t sell that many. It’s the top of the range, and was the flagship product when the foam was first introduced, but now they have an intermediate model.’

I’m no longer in a furniture shop; it’s a BMW showroom.

We move from the premium to the intermediate. It’s as comfortable and certainly better than the first two. J and I lay on our backs, then one our sides. Brian delivers his coup de grace.

“These memory foam beds are especially popular with women.” We both look at him, question marks on our foreheads. Brian pats himself on the hips. “Takes up your shape, but still gives support.” And in that moment, J has decided that this is the one.

It’s 20% more than our budget, but at that moment, it’s the best value in the shop. And it continues to be so, every time I climb (almost literally) into bed and think of Brian.

ALL THAT GLISTERS

A few weeks later, I’m in the town centre itself,  to buy J an anniversary gift. It’ll be earrings this year – can never go wrong with earrings. And being blessed with a wife who has modest tastes, ‘everyday earrings’ are as gratefully received as those suitable for State occasions. So a pair of everyday earrings it’ll be. White gold, probably hoops? Possibly stud thingies? Maybe with a coloured stone. (What’s the blue one called?)

There are three jewellers to choose from. I go into Branch A, where the quality of product always seems to be a little higher than elsewhere. I am the only customer. Two women stand behind the counter, one polishing, the other arranging things.

“Can I help you?” the second says, a tad frostily. For a microsecond I want to ask her why else she thinks I’ve come in, but I resist the retort, and explain what I’m looking for. From the lack of response, I may well have been speaking in tongues.

Look – I’m a chap; we do our best, but really jewellery is beyond our comfort zone. We sort of know what we want (in that we think we know what she’ll like), but really we need help. Some hand holding, some suggestions, some examples, some explanation.

In short, we need selling to.

Arranging woman looks at  Polishing woman. “I don’t think we’ve got anything like that, do we?” (Nor are you particularly interested in finding out, I say to her, in my head).

“Might be something over there,” says Polishing woman, waving her cloth towards a display across the shop. I pause a moment, waiting for Arranging woman to exhibit signs of motion, but management must have spot welded her feet to the floor.

I walk to the display cabinet, wconcerned about my breath and choice of deodorant.

“On the left” says Polishing woman, pointing again, like a football manager unable to leave the technical area.

Sure enough, there are earrings, but they’re yellow gold. And while I don’t know much, I know that J wears white. I say so to Polishing woman.

She actually tuts, before saying “Well, it’s still gold.”

With all the willpower I can possibly summon, I stretch a smile onto my face to match Jack Nicholson’s Joker, thank them for their help and leave.

MR GRIFFIN GOES SHOPPING

Branch B is busier. Two young men behind the counters this time, each one serving a couple of customers. The younger pair are buying a ring for her, the older two a Christening gift. It’s not clear where they are in the transaction, but I’ll wait. It can’t be worse than the previous shop.

I wait. I wait some more. And then some more. The first couple can’t decide on rubies or garnets, while the second are torn between a silver money box, a bracelet or a Talking Teddy from Argos.

And I realise that an amazing physical transformation has happened during the stroll from Branch A to Branch B: I have become invisible.

I stand as close a socially acceptable to the second couple, hoping to catch the eye of the sales assistant, just for a “sorry to keep you”.

Nope. Nothing.

I sidle over to the first couple, and stand with my hands in pockets, bobbing up and down on my toes, expecting a “be with you in a minute, sir”.

To no avail. Zip.

At this point, I consider robbing the shop. My new found form surely gives me an advantage – but then I remember the film version of HG Wells’ story seemed full of artefacts that floated. A string of pearls and an Omega display stand flying down the High Street would be a bit of a give away.

I walk up and down the shop, almost doing physical exercises as if to keep warm. I consider knocking over the watch strap display or blowing gently down an assistant’s neck.

I reach the doorway when one of the voices behind me says “Alright mate. Gissus a couple of minutes. Won’t be long.”

Mate?

Alright mate??

I spin round, a shopper caught between the rock of long-sought service and the hard place of over-familiarity.

But the boy wonder selling the ring isn’t talking to me: He’s on his mobile.

SORRY TO BE SO MUCH TROUBLE

Branch C had a make-over about a year ago. It’s on the corner of two thoroughfares, so shop-fitters have removed the two external walls:  Customers must have been struggling with complex architectural concepts like ‘window’ and ‘door’.

The two internal walls are now floor-to-ceiling display cabinets, with the sales counters arranged as  two square in the middle of the shop.

There are a couple of earring sections on the back wall; and one tray (see, I speak the language) of white gold; there’s  even a pair with blue stones. Great; let’s have a look.

I turn to face the rest of the shop. On my right, a woman customer is becoming very annoyed an being kept waiting. She’s expelling air with the force of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and drumming of her newly-polished nails on the glass worktop. These are, I believe, well-established non-verbal signals.

My eyes switch to the assistant who’s standing to my left, ‘doing something’ with a small box. I guess that she’s serving the customer who’s noiw starting to  look like she’s been here since New Year 2007, when she came in to return a gift.

More fiddling. More tapping and heaving breathing; I fear she is about to hyperventilate.

The assistant looks up at me: “Can I help you?” This throws me completely. Not only have I been acknowledged, but who on earth is attending to tapping woman? I look at her, almost asking permission to be served. She shrugs and gives me a ‘be my guest’ wave of her palm and roll of her eyes.

I tell the assistant that I’d like to see the earrings in tray 60. Or perhaps I ask for the cosine of Pi? Could be either, because all I get is a blank look. I turn and point. ‘I’d like to see the earrings please. On tray 60. The blue ones.’

It’s like being a tourist trying to explain the Scotch egg to a  Moroccan street vendor.

The assistant comes out from behind the counter and unlocks the display. She removes the tray, locks the glass, and returns to the counter. But not the one I’m standing at; the one that’s on the other side of the square. With her back to me. She hunches there for a short while, and I wonder if she’s crying.

Was it something I’d said? Tapping woman shrugs again, and with the same eye-rolling communicates ‘what can you do?’.

I walk round the counter, but before I get halfway, the assistant says ‘I’ll need to put you on the other till’ and walks to the front of the shop, me following, a puppy desperate for walkies and a biscuit.

At the next counter she holds out her hand and asks if I’m paying debit or credit card? I realise that she has put the earring into a box and into a small bag, and now wants me to pay.

“Well, I’d quite like to have a closer look at them first,” I plead.

“I thought you saw them in the window.” Again, she stares at me with blank animosity. I stumble; “But…but…it’s part of the sale. Let me have a look at them close up. Put them on a piece of black velvet. I want to see them against skin, to imagine what they’ll look like being worn. SELL TO ME!”

Actually, I don’t say any of that. I want to, but she has followed her blank look with a “Whatever” as if she’s just been told that she was taking over from Mr Sisyphus on rock-pushing duties.

She takes the box out of the bag, and smacks it onto the surface like a WWF wrestler. A crack appears in the glass.

* * *

Perhaps they were all just having a  bad day. Perhaps they had all just dealt with the customer from hell. Perhaps I’M the customer from hell…

But when I compare Brian’s independent store with the jewellery chains, well, there is no comparison. Not for knowledge, enthusiasm, attention, service, sales, commitment or sheer good manners

It’s what we lost when we gave over town centres and out of town malls to the multiples. We may have gained cheaper prices (and even that’s not an absolute statement), and uniformity (was that ever presented as an option?) but we lost people who care.

During the boom years, most shop staff didn’t have to sell. It was enough to take orders. With high volume footfall through the doors, bringing enough customers with enough credit cards in their pockets, business almost transacted itself.

But in tougher times, every pound needs to be chased, and it will be the companies that invest in developing their shopfloor sales skills and genuine customer care who’ll survive.

And in case you’re wondering – after my aborted trip, eyes filled with tears of frustration, I asked J what she’d like as a gift. And she said a kitchen clock.

What man can begin to fathom the workings of the female mind?

It is Sunday morning. Ben and I sit in the kitchen. I skim the pages of a broadsheet, while my 13 year-old son reads one of yesterday’s supplements; he’s found a review of a new X-box game that, at a guess, involves disembowelling vampires.

BEN: That’s really cool.

ME (not looking up from the Arts section): Have you played it?

BEN: No. But it’s got 5 stars in here.

ME (wondering about getting tickets for the new ‘Godot’): And that makes it ‘cool’ does it, because it says so in there?

BEN: Well, it’s why we buy the big papers, isn’t it?

And I realise that I am at one of life’s key parental conversations. We’ve talked about sex, about bullying, about drugs. Now it’s ‘truth’ in the press.

M: How do you think a newspaper makes money, Ben? Where does my £1.50 actually go?

B: The paper shop?

M: Yes – to Mr Singh, and to the distributor who delivers the papers to the shop each morning. By the time they’ve taken their cut, it doesn’t leave very much for the people who make the papers. So how does a newspaper make its money?

We pause. Ben flicks a page or two, looking for a picture of a hole to crawl into.

 

All he can find is listings for London cinemas.

B: Advertising.

M: Spot on. The newspapers sell space to companies who want to sell things to their readers. No advertising, no newspapers. So the first thing to remember about newspapers is that their business purpose isn’t to print news. It’s to generate advertising revenue.

B: Cool. So why do newspapers write all this sort of stuff? (He points at a feature about a soap actress in the ‘Property’ section.) Why not just run ads?

M: Because too much advertising wouldn’t be very interesting, then no one would buy the paper. That’s the publisher’s dilemma. It’s a question of balance.

B: So get more journalists writing more stories.

M: Well, that’s good for you as a reader, but not good for the publisher as a business. That’s more cost.

B: But there’s loads of writing in these papers, pages and pages of news.

M: Is there? What is ‘news’, Ben?

B: Um…Stories about things that happen in the world. Gaza and the Credit crunch and things like that.

M: And all the sections of this newspaper are full of that, are they?

B: Well, no. Looking at this part (the listings insert he has in front of him), it’s got records and dvds and films and stuff.

M: A famous newspaper publisher called Randolph Hearst once said: “News is something that somebody, somewhere doesn’t want to see in print. Everything else is publicity.”

B: So what’s this? (He points to the soapstar ‘profile’).

M: Read the final paragraph – the bit in italics.

B: “The Notting Hill flat is on the market for £675,000 with Foxtons”

He stops and smiles. A penny drops, and for the next few minutes he’s ploughing through pages of newsprint, looking for publicity stories: a disgraced MP and his new book; a glamour model and her new TV series.

B: Jokes! (it’s a different language, but I’m keeping up) It’s all Publicity! All of it!

M: Well, not quite ALL. But most of it is. And the reason is simple – it’s cheaper than news. News takes time to research, time to collate, time to write, time to check. And as the businessman running the newspaper, you want to cut your costs – but you need to keep the amount of editorial content, because your readers demand it.

B: So make the journalists work harder.

M: Going to be a media mogul when you grow up? Despite the stereotype, most journalists and editors are incredibly productive. But when the advertising people sell more space, it creates a need for more editorial to keep that balance. So it becomes very tempting to use packaged material from publicists and agents and PRs, who are being paid for by someone else.

B: So the editor can fill more space, while the publisher keeps his costs down. Cool. So is this publicity?

He has found a ‘car of the year’ piece by Jeremy Clarkson. To a teenage would-be petrol-head, Clarkson is a deity.

M: Well, it has no news value, but it isn’t promoting anything in particular. So we’ll call it Entertainment – one of the main reasons people chose their Sunday paper.

B: So what about all this (he points back at the cinema listings).

M: That’s the fifth type on content. That’s Information; helpful facts to help you make decisions. You’ll find a lot of those in the Sundays, especially in the Travel sections.

B: News. Advertising. Publicity. Entertainment. Information. Is that it?

M: Pretty much. It’s a good filter to apply each time you read the paper – especially to weed out the PR man’s dream – Publicity that’s being presented as News. Put it in another order, and it spells PAINE.

B ??

M : Thomas Paine was a man who lived round the time of the American and French Revolutions. He wrote a couple of very famous books, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. He was quite complicated, and no friend of the Church or the English Government, but all you need to remember is his basic philosophy – we should each think for ourselves. So when you read the paper, and to make sure you read with a questioning mind, remember PAINE. Think for yourself, not the way that others want you to think.

Fatherly advice duly dispensed, I head for a morning shower. Twenty minutes later, Ben is standing in the bedroom door.

B: I looked up Paine on the web. He might have written those books, but he died in poverty and no one went to his funeral.

M : Yes, well, ermm…

B : I bet the man who publishes the Sunday paper won’t die poor.

M : Probably not.

B : Although all that stuff we talked about, that’s on the internet for free. So ‘praps he will.