purpose or by the head of the firm himself cannot be expected
to give "a smile with every purchase and a thank you for every goodbye."
The training of employees never stops, but it is something that should
be placed very largely in their own hands. After a certain point
supervision should be unnecessary.

Most places hate to discharge a man. Labor turnover is too expensive.
Most of them try to place their men in the positions for which they are
best suited. It is easier to take a round peg out of a square hole and
put it into a round one than it is to send out for another assortment of
pegs. Men are transferred from sales departments to accounting
departments, are taken off the road and brought into the home office,
and are shifted about in various ways until they fit. If a man shows
that "he has it in him" he is given every chance to succeed. "There is
only one thing we drop a man for right off," says an employment manager
in a place which has in its service several thousand people of both
sexes, "and that is for saying something out of the way to one of our
girls."

This same manager tells the story of a boy he hired and put into a
department which had been so badly managed that there were a number of
loose ends to be tied up. The boy threw himself into his work, cleared
up things, and found himself in a "soft snap" without a great deal to
do. He happened not to be the kind of person who can be satisfied with a
soft snap, and he became so restive and unhappy that he was recommended
for discharge. This brought him back to the head of the employment
bureau. He, instead of throwing the young man out, asked that he be
given a second trial in a department where the loose ends could not be
cleaned up. It was a place where there was always plenty of work to do,
and the young man has been happy and has been doing satisfactory work
ever since.

The house in which this happened is always generous toward the mistakes
of its employees if the mistakes do not occur too persistently and too
frequently. In one instance a boy made three successive errors in
figures in as many days. He was slated for discharge but sent first
before the employment manager. As they talked the latter noticed that
the boy leaned forward with a strained expression on his face. Thinking
perhaps he was slightly deaf, he lowered his voice, but the boy
understood every word he said. Then he noticed that there was a tiny red
ridge across his nose as if he we