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Making a Deal
Priscilla Van Gundy generally avoided looking into customers' faces, believing business shouldn't get personal. When her husband said, "A group of women want a special price on the diamond necklace. What can we sell it for?" she began tapping figures on an adding machine: one for the actual cost of the necklace, another for the number of months it had been in the store, a third for what the store needed to make a profit from it."Eighteen thousand," she said.
Tom knew that number wasn't going to fly, but he was used to the back-and-forth. He returned to Jonell to counter her bid.
"Not low enough," she said firmly.
Tom went back to Priscilla. "Can we go any lower?" She felt his apprehension. Thirty-three years of marriage and she could read his emotions like a spreadsheet. She tapped out more numbers. "Seventeen thousand," she said.
Tom crossed out the $12,000 figure on the piece of paper and scribbled $15,000. "Can we do this?" he asked. "It could be good for business."
"We sell it for that and we won't have a business," Priscilla replied.
Tom knew the store was successful because of her; she had her finger on every dollar. But just for once, he wanted her to be flexible. "I have a feeling about this," he said.
"We'd make no profit."
He realized he was willing to let go of any profit. He didn't want to turn these women away, and he really wanted to see his wife smile the way they were all smiling -- the way he hadn't seen Priscilla smile since her sister died of cancer six months earlier. He walked up front, showing Jonell the number he had written down.
"I'll give it to you for this price, with one condition," he said. "Let my wife be in your group."
Jonell had no idea why, nor did she even know who his wife was. But this necklace was about inclusion and sharing. "It's a deal," she said.
"I gave it to them for $15,000," Tom reported to Priscilla. "But you get to be in the group."
"What?" she said.
"The group of women. You get to be part of it."
Had he forgotten that the mall took 7 percent of the sale price? she thought. They wouldn't even get their cost from it. And she had no interest in being part of the group. But there was little point in arguing, Priscilla figured, so she went back to the books to find a way to make up for the loss.
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