the pursuit of profit otherwise known as the old grind all right race chasing the buck what have you look familiar doesn't it  give you a jolt sometimes when it hits you that everything you do or don't do in this business directly affects  profits course not everyone sees it just that way and you take our friend arthur over there grocery department manager you know who he really is he's you look i had to mention and we have a rule around here that courteous helpful industrious and ambitious of five now i know you're not with the store and you're interested in how the store makes out right for sure i suppose so but being human you can also be thoughtless and sometimes little but well we all have our bad days don't we say are you a new supervisor or something not all of a manager comes back here and find me yep and whether it's the manager  just one of those days that's all either one of those magic days and certain questions that you've been carrying around with you for a long time suddenly come out many of them and strange things happen i've been watching you for some time i think you've been snooping on me i mean a grabbing you've been doing forget it we all grumbled our we all want more than we're getting and that's good that's what makes business that's what helps build profits the trouble is i see you as one guy i don't see how important you are to building those profits do you you sure be interested in knowing that wouldn't you but sure we all w down the street there's another one just like it or almost the fact that she thinks just as highly of several stores in the neighborhood as she does of yours or almost and you can change your mind about that any day of the week you know we're almost and that's what makes competition a competition between products on the shelves between stores in the neighborhood everybody trying and everybody free to try to make himself so good that the other fellow never catches up not just as good better and still make the profit he needs to stay better because the other fellow will try to get better to all it's a real battler all sides evenly matched or almost tied ballgame just a little more effort counts big you don't have that extra effort and right away you're almost ok ok i know it's something bugging you it's this whole business about profits i mean what  that got to do with one guy like me one guy i think that's where profits start with one guy one gal a lot of guys play football but it takes only one guy don't throw a pas provided a lot of other one guys are tough enough to protect there are a lot of guys in a baseball team but it takes only one guy it's a grand slam in the mind of a lot of other one great to see how about you being the one guy manager for a while i'm sure maybe someday find my time's a little tight i can't wait till sunday i have a date and a half an congratulations thanks you look a little harassed but the trouble for this is a doozy of a job for one guy maybe i can help i can assure you that your operating statement was the problem well it's the same problem that we had yesterday and the day before that we ought to be doing better that's a good start anyway i can't stand is a complacent manager that's enough i'll tell you what you got your weekly sales figures for doing about twenty five thousand dollars sales twenty five thousand now let's take a look at your profits for the week what's the merchandise cost about twenty thousand dollars you thousand dollars the difference is five thousand dollars that's your gross profit right that bet but that figure doesn't last very long does it out of it comes things like well it's just them  first fixed expenses read insurance warehousing cars depreciation and so on and the figure fifteen hundred dollars a week and they stay at that amount even if your sales drop those costs to build in there are a regular part of your everyday operation regulars a coffee break now let's look at the variable expenses utilities supplies salaries promotion costs and so forth those expenses that change from time to time there are about three thousand dollars a week here the biggest single item is you your salary and the salaries of all the others in the store you're quite an investment these total expenses are forty five hundred take that away from your gross profit of five thousand profit before taxes five hundred after taxes about two hundred fifty i never thought the figure one could be so small it is small but one percent or a little over is just above the national average for the grocery business would you like to increase it for the like three take a step three ball game of the world series ok let's see if there's anything you can do about it now let's break these figures down into percentages of sales sales one hundred percent or for example one dollar cost of goods eighty percent that's about normal fixed expenses are also normal six percent but variable expenses look here they're taking twelve percent of the gross sales that my friend is a little higher than the average and these two cents remaining are profit two percent pay your taxes half your profit and you wind up with one set profit out of every buck whatever we sell for a dollar rather make one penny sales able to expand this they're the only ones that you can control they're your baby just not just one guy the two main responsibilities of all the one guys in the store are faster over and control of variable expenses move the merchandise at the lowest cost now the big question is this the store manager what can you do about it got the idea done to ny have some ideas short everybody front and center all right i haven't i've just been over operating statement and if i have a heart attack in the next minutes you all know why you think we're running a rest oh man maybe be better if you would just lie down then you wouldn't be breaking things and leaving boxes in the aisles for people to stumble over and alienating customers and running up laundry bills and building displays that tipped over and marking merchandise wrong you can't run a business like a walk in the park we are going to start working around here from now on understand we're going to handle merchandise like it was all eggs we're going to build better displays we're going to watch pricing and price tags we're going to treat customers like royalty sales they've got a lot expenses they've got to go down and i mean right now and don't forget it yeah but what you want me to do you guys know what to do your head other just a minute are you going to tell them tell them what what they can do about it i don't have to tell em listen i know those guys do you what do you mean do i take another look at them other look at them more closely  they're all you others are more to the point you're all of them one guy that lets us know how they feel about your little p well i don't get through to them no you know are there whether you're in a bind in a well managed or the manager usually talks over his problems with an assistant everything we do in the store the items we carry the displays we build our housekeeping our attitude everything affects our profit because everything is for the customer we're in a penny business the profit on every one of those items is figured in pennies waste one penny and you have to sell an extra dollars worth of merchandise to get it back and that's a lot of work for just one penny sure one dollar doesn't seem like much but think of this take a couple of thousand customers going to the store two or three times a week that's about five thousand transactions punched out on the cash register if we can boost just one transaction in five by an extra buck here that's an extra thousand dollars at the checkout stand now the company paid about eight hundred dollars for the merchandise leaving two hundred dollars gross profit but there was no increase in the fixed expenses like rent and insurance and even if the operating in the handling course remain about the same let's say one hundred twenty dollars the net extra profit is eighty dollars or eight cent of the thousand dollars before taxes after taxes four percent instead of one percent how do you get that extra dollar that's where our individual initiative comes in the building of mass displays ti displays of go together products like cheese and crackers salad items a new and different recipe prominently displayed fresh fruit attractively displayed items we may be pushing seasonal items for vacations easter passover you get the pitch headquarters doesn't limit us to the weekly sales plan we got to add ideas of our own we're the experts in this neighborhood one new customer doesn't seem like much either but remember she represents a family and one new family can mean an increase in sales of nine hundred to twelve hundred dollars a year somebody wants very good guys like us make as many as four thousand separate clothes during a normal day and most of those most have a definite effect on our efficiency and therefore the stores profits things like correct price marking so there's no mix up  check out and careful stacking to avoid damage daily rotation don't waste a lot and keep things off the floors looks messy and causes accidents sure they seem like little things but of the little things that really make the difference in the store's profit if we can increase our efficiency twenty percent profit will double ok so it's up to me say you keep talking profit some guys act like profit is a dirty word profits my friends are the money we need to grow and nobody stands still these days everybody else moves ahead and you just stand still you're actually falling behind just to survive you gotta grow and you do it with profit only with profit of a guy in my situation exactly in your situation private so what move you from start boy to the department as you are right now private expanded the business created more jobs let you move up private to give you your security your chance for future advancement here serve privates have a big job  where they go as dividends to investors in the business profits help you get the good things of life that you want some must be retained for the company to grow on one new store means a new manager a new head cashier new department heads and newer systems yes more jobs and more security for more people integrating growing industry so that an ambitious guy like you may have a chance to become store manager some day he really thinks or is going to chance anyone else provided you never forget how important you are to the store success how important you are to your own success you they're pursuing profit to the mark of a free society so long and don't forget they think they're just good if you are