Have you noticed how, when you start some new project or venture, you keep track of even the smallest milestones along the way, and then gradually, they keep getting farther and farther apart?
This story is from the very early days of opening my retail store, when I was celebrating the most minutest of accomplishments… like getting 10 customers in a day, or having a single sale of over Rs. 100, or achieving sales of over Rs. 500 in a day…
You get the gist, right?
This story is related to my achieving a new milestone in the total sales figure, i.e. the cumulative sales amount, from the day I opened the store to the day of this story.
So, what exactly happened on the day of this story?
Well, we were closing for the day. I updated the day's sales on the computer, and then Dad counted the cash and I updated that too. And just then, I noticed that we were exactly Rs. 13 short of hitting the 20,000 sales figure! ONLY RS. THIRTEEN!
So, I told Dad - "Let's wait for another 10 minutes... maybe some customer would drop by and help us cross that 20K milestone today!"
Dad agreed (as if he had any choice!) and I started sending out mental signals to the Universe to bring another customer to my shop to help me cross 20,000. Two minutes passed, then five minutes, then the entire 10 minutes were up. Nope... no customer! 🙁
Amidst a lot of deep sighs, I finally decided to call it a day, took the necessary backups on my pen drive and told the computer to "shut down". Then, as I was gathering my stuff in my handbag, I told Dad - "Now I know how Sachin Tendulkar must have felt when he got out at 99."
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| Picture Credit: Satish Acharya (http://cartoonistsatish.blogspot.com/) |
Dad, who had been watching me with silent amusement all that time, started laughing at this, and said "Imagine if you got another customer now who bought stuff worth Rs. 12!"
OMG! What is he saying? TWELVE rupees? That would make me just ONE rupee short of 20K! Isn't it bad enough already!? Am I not miserable enough already!? 😮
I shushed him for even suggesting such an eventuality, and then turned around to switch off the lights. Before I could reach the switchboard though, he called me back. Guess what! Another customer!
Yayyyy! I was going to cross the 20,000 mark today! 😄
I was so happy, I could hardly keep myself from grinning!
But I was in for a disappointment! The people who had just walked in weren’t going to buy much that day. Their total sale amount was going to be only Rs. 8!
What rotten luck! I was still Rs. 5 short! 🙁
But then there was some confusion... they changed their mind regarding something! Added another quantity to their purchase... so that finally it totalled up to (you won't believe this!)... Rs. 12!
Which made my TOTAL sale amount till that day - EXACTLY Rs. 19,999 !!!
Damn!
Damn!
DAMN!
So much for sending out all those mental signals into the Universe!
As Dad and I dropped shutter and headed back home, this is what the two of us looked like…
This was, without a doubt, the most annoying milestone of my entire “shop journey” – the “trap of 99”, or the “ninyanvey ka fer”, as we call it in Hindi!
Has something like this ever happened with you?
Let me know you visited me. Leave a comment!
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