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1 " The tavern keeper, a wiry man with a sharp-nosed face, round, prominent ears and a receding hairline that combined to give him a rodentlike look, glanced at him, absentmindedly wiping a tankard with a grubby cloth. Will raised an eyebrow as he looked at it. He'd be willing to bet the cloth was transferring more dirt to the tankard then it was removing. " Drink?" the tavern keeper asked. He set the tankard down on the bar, as if in preparation for filling it with whatever the stranger might order. " Not out of that," Will said evenly, jerking a thumb at the tankard. Ratface shrugged, shoved it aside and produced another from a rack above the bar. " Suit yourself. Ale or ouisgeah?" Ousigeah, Will knew, was the strong malt spirit they distilled and drank in Hibernia. In a tavern like this, it might be more suitable for stripping runt than drinking. " I'd like coffee," he said, noticing the battered pot by the fire at one end of the bar. " I've got ale or ouisgeah. Take your pick." Ratface was becoming more peremptory. Will gestured toward the coffeepot. The tavern keeper shook his head. " None made," he said. " I'm not making a new pot just for you." " But he's drinking coffee," Will said, nodding to one side. Inevitably the tavern keeper glanced that way, to see who he was talking about. The moment his eyes left Will, an iron grip seized the front of his shirt collar, twisting it into a knot that choked him and at the same time dragged him forward, off balance, over the bar,. The stranger's eyes were suddenly very close. He no longer looked boyish. The eyes were dark brown, almost black in this dim light, and the tavern keeper read danger there. A lot of danger. He heard a soft whisper of steel, and glancing down past the fist that held him so tightly, he glimpsed the heavy, gleaming blade of the saxe knife as the stranger laid it on the bar between them. He looked around for possible help. But there was nobody else at the bar, and none of the customers at the tables had noticed what was going on. " Aach...mach co'hee," he choked. The tension on his collar eased and the stranger said softly, " What was that?" " I'll...make...coffee," he repeated, gasping for breath. The stranger smiled. It was a pleasant smile, but the tavern keep noticed that it never reached those dark eyes. " That's wonderful. I'll wait here. "
2 " The ultimate profit from all of my businesses is to be happy and to make all of the customers happy. "
3 " He was looking for a brightness, a resolve, a triumph over tomorrow that hardly seemed to be there. Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge they carried, to glow as lanterns glow, with the light in them...They weren't at all certain that the things they carried in their heads might make every future dawn glow with a purer light, they were sure of nothing save that the books were on file behind their quiet eyes, the books were waiting, with their pages uncut, for the customers who might come by in later years, some with clean and some with dirty fingers. "
― Ray Bradbury , Fahrenheit 451
4 " RULE #1Market your business to the customer YOU WANT.Most beauty businesses try to be everything to everyone. It's exhausting and expensive promoting yourself to everyone. Most people simply give up.Focus on the customers you really want. What is your passion, what do you excel in? Who is your ideal customer? What would you ideally like to do every day in your business?Focus on what you want to do and the clients you want, and market directly to them and only them. "
― Jana Elston , RETAIL LEGENDS: How to have more CUSTOMERS coming through your door FAST, Beauty Salon Tips
5 " Though you may be paid minimum wage, to the customers you are the face of the entire company. "
― Sophia Amoruso , #Girlboss
6 " Realize that employees and the customers both have to be engaged, at the same time, to move your business forward for sustainable success. "
― Robert G. Thompson , Hooked on Customers: The Five Habits of Legendary Customer-Centric Companies
7 " Most IoT devices that lack security by design simply pass the security responsibility to the consumer, thus, treating the customers as techno-crash test dummies.James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology "
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8 " I wish they'd conduct a national poll to find out who feels out of place and who doesn't. Just to get the numbers, you know? To get a feel for how many of us there are. Sometimes at work I get the feeling that it's got to be right up against 100%. I’ll head out to the register to help out during the lunch rush and the new cashier will look so confused and lost, and then I’ll look at the customers she’s supposed to be helping, and they’ll look lost, too, and then when I sneak a glance toward the tables there’ll be all these people staring at their food or at each other with blank looks in their eyes. And I’ll think: Is this just me? Is everybody else actually fine, and I’m just trying to imagine that they’re like me? But I don’t think so. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m pretty sure that some ridiculous percentage of the population is walking around feeling like aliens. I think teenagers feel that all the time... "
― John Darnielle
9 " Tamina serves coffee and calvados to the customers (there aren't all that many, the room being always half empty) and then goes back behind the bar. Almost always there is someone sitting on a barstool, trying to talk to her. Everyone likes Tamina. Because she knows how to listen to people.But is she really listening? Or is she merely looking at them so attentively, so silently? I don't know, and it's not very important. What matters is that she doesn't interrupt anyone. You know what happens when two people talk. One of them speaks and the other breaks in: " It's absolutely the same with me, I..." and starts talking about himself until the first one manages to slip back in with his own " It's absolutely the same with me, I..." The phrase " It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others. The whole secret of Tamina's popularity is that she has no desire to talk about herself. She submits to the forces occupying her ear, never saying: " It's absolutely the same with me, I... "
10 " I've noticed the customers in health food stores. They are pale skinny people who usually look half dead. In a steak house you see robust ruddy people. They're dying of course but they look terrific. "
11 " I hope people understand that when you tax corporations that the concrete and the steel and the plastic don't pay. People pay. And so when you tax corporations, either the employees are going to pay or the shareholders are going to pay or the customers are going to pay. And so corporations are people. "
12 " We recruit our people for personality. We look for the people person, with innate warmth, sweetness, and intelligence. These are the people who are sending your message out to the customers and potential customers, so we recruit for personality first and foremost. "
13 " If we're building high quality companies, if the customers like the products, if the technology innovation is real, then the substance is going to win out in the end. "