My very first customer Mr Lalani

So I had a surreal moment today. I had to hit the road today to North Vancouver, and while I was out, I stopped at the Lynn Valley Mall for lunch. While in the mall, I walked past a store, and immediately remembered my very first customer Mr. Lalani owned a shop in there. I figured I would stroll by, and see if he was still there, and sure enough he was. He was about 15 years older, a little greyer, and I actually stopped to watch him for a bit. It brought back a lot of memories of that elusive first customer.

I had ran an ad in a coupon book, offering a special on water. He was the only response I got, and he aggressively negotiated me down to $5.93 per bottle. Not wanting to lose my first customer, I signed him up. When I installed the water cooler, he was unhappy that the spigot on the water cooler was not perfectly straight up and down. As hard as I tried to turn the spigot into position, I was unable to, so I had to back the spigot off in order to get it right. This of course meant "unscrewing" the spigot back a bit. Well, after I left the water cooler leaked all over his carpets.

Unhappy with the water on the carpets, I had to hire a carpet cleaner to clean his carpets, stairs, and living room chairs at a cost of about $300. I can't remember how long he actually stayed a customer but I don't think it was very long. That was my introduction to doing business as Premium Springs. Oddly enough, during my 8 years prior working for another water company, I had never experienced a situation as that before, and as difficult as that first experience was, it taught me a lot about doing business.