19th Century Romantic
As a small business owner I am constantly adapting to market shifts and technology advancements. For a nineteenth century romantic, this can be daunting. But, I do peruse the tech blogs and fight the zombie stare when Mr. PQ is explaining things to me, just managing to cling to the tail of a rapidly advancing society. I love iPad mini, and my iPhone 5, even more as it’s encased in a PQ Little Pocket Book. That being said, I use a sand timer for my tea, hike with a compass and generally run gadget free. There is value in remembering life before technology, in most cases.
Earlier this week a parcel arrived from our new merchant service provider. As I extracted the contents I showcased each new item for Will and Karl (Operations and Customer Service) A new iOS credit card scanner, (“sweet”, Will and Karl) new software to install (“awesome” Will and Karl), and a stack of carbon duplicate sheets for credit card transactions. Cue the blank stares and crickets. I don’t necessarily like being old enough to remember the days of hand cranking a credit card receipt, or worse yet, hand writing the entries, but the boys perplexity was priceless. Karl had a faint memory of having seen one in a hipster vinyl store, Will was still trying to imagine how those carbon sheets sales would hit his inventory software in the cloud. Meanwhile I was busy reminiscing about the good old days when a transaction could be penciled rubbed onto a paper, mailed to a bank, debited from an account and some 10-14 days later a check would arrive back to the merchant.
As our dear Uncle Mel once said when he learned that transactions are not hand written anymore "Damn, it’s just like printing money"(true story). Not quite Uncle Mel but close. Though much has changed in how money is exchanged, some things still remain the same. A company delivering handmade quality goods to customers has never gone out of fashion for this days of old reminiscing girl.
Mrs. PQ
