For their first three years in business Ruiz, Diaz, and Wong went without salary, living on bread and rice, scouring their neighborhood door-to-door in Wong's battered pickup truck, looking for small jobs to make ends meet. Their first big break, a $94,000 order from Northrop, seemed a miracle -- Ruiz called the buyer herself and said there must have been a mistake: "There were just so many zeros."
I don't think I've ever seen any business owners prouder of what they'd accomplished than Rosie Ruiz and her partners. But they refused to think of themselves as heroes. The credit for the growth of Independent Forge to some $3.5 million in sales didn't belong to them alone, Ruiz insisted, but also to their adopted homeland. "We're all very, very fortunate to live in this country, because your dreams can be fulfilled here."
Corny? Sure. As corny as one of those old Frank Capra movies of the '30s. But when I've had enough of reading about Michael Milken or RJR-Nabisco, I like to remember the three of them, standing in the middle of their busy factory, as true a picture of the triumph of the American dream as I've ever seen.
BRUCE POSNER
I always run a little bit late. Despite my best intentions, the eternal hope that next time will be different, there I am racing to meet another deadline. Years ago I tried to compensate for this problem by working into the night. Or I'd drive envelopes to air-freight counters at distant airports -- praying they'd reach their destination on time.
Finally, somebody came along who understood my predicament. His name was Fred Smith.
I can't remember the exact circumstances of the first time I used Federal Express. But I can recall the relief I felt when the driver appeared. He was enthusiastic and purposeful, the sort of fellow you'd want inspecting your basement for gas leaks. No big deal, he told me. The envelope would get there "absolutely and positively." He zipped through the paperwork and off he went, out into the night. The next morning the package had indeed arrived.
Over the past decade Federal Express has come to my rescue more times than I can count. In an age when most attempts at customer service raise my blood pressure, the mere sighting of a Federal Express truck calms me down. The drivers treat my problem as their problem. They manage to locate me on unmarked roads. They repack boxes. And, of course, they know the quickest way to any airport.
Sometimes I wonder what my world would be like if Federal Express didn't exist -- or just as bad, if I had to endure service like that of my local dry cleaner. Luckily, I haven't had to worry about this. It seems that Fred Smith -- or someone who works for him -- is worrying for me.
TOM RICHMAN
Magazine writers don't usually get asked for endorsements, and I wasn't. Nonetheless, one day several years ago a friend returned from San Francisco with a flier she had been handed on the street. It quoted me as saying that Blue Chip Cookies Inc.'s "white chocolate cookie surpassed anything I've ever eaten." My blurb topped the page, even ahead of Clint Eastwood's: "Great cookies . . . I love 'em."
Well, they were good, and I had said it, but not, I thought, for print. I had merely mentioned my enthusiasm in a personal note to the president of the company, along with some other business.
I bring this up to make the point that while Mrs. Fields Cookies is my favorite company, it's not because it makes my favorite cookie. It is also not because I had any more fun than usual in researching either of the stories I've written on the company. The Fields research was fine, but my prize for most fun during research has to go to two other stories.
One of those I wrote about the odd collaboration of people who tried to build the country's first civilian space-launch vehicle. Their rocket, called Percheron, blew up, but they had a good time anyway. The company, if you could call it that, consisted of some bright California engineers recruited by a charismatic college dropout and financed by a Presbyterian Texas land developer predestined, he believed, to create a commercial space industry. Their enterprise would have been ludicrous except that they were so serious about it, and the rocket they designed and built actually did work, up to a point. They established a significant precedent: that NASA and the Pentagon didn't have a lockup on space.
Tied for most fun to research was another motley crew. This one worked in a telephone boiler room selling outrageously overpriced promotional gadgets -- coffee mugs, key chains, ballpoint pens, and so forth -- to the likes of cafe, beauty-shop, and feed-and-seed store owners, small-business proprietors who knew they were getting screwed but were always good for one more sale. This was greed exploiting greed. The owners bought the junk because they were getting "free" gifts -- TVs, microwaves, diamond and emerald rings -- just for placing the order. The salespeople, closed into an airless, windowless room, manipulated their marks -- people who, after all, could hang up anytime they wanted to -- with the skill of superb actors. It was pure selling, devoid of any ethical or moral concern. But the sellers were as effectively and crudely manipulated as the people they cheated. Cash defined their lives. It was dangled, withheld, and awarded by an employer who understood money's power to subjugate souls. The company, in other words, knew how to get the performance it wanted out of employees, effectively if not admirably.
Mrs. Fields Cookies is my favorite company for somewhat the same reason -- which is that Debbi and Randy Fields, whatever you think of their cookies (a little too sweet) or their recent corporate earnings (not sweet enough), between them have a genius for getting employees to do something most employers find so, so hard. Approximately 8,000 people sell Mrs. Fields cookies over company-owned store counters. The amazing thing about them is that almost every one of them smiles at customers.
Imagine that.
The Fields system doesn't work all the time on everyone, of course, but it works far better than most -- which means that on customer service, Mrs. Fields pretty consistently outperforms the average U.S. company, and not just those selling cookies. It's not something business schools teach, but how much sweeter the world would be if they did.
