Kindness, Attention, the Occasional Unsolicited Gift.

In or about 1977, I had a job.

The job was to visit as many grocery stores as possible in a day. In a week I would visit over a hundred stores easily. I did this week after week, visiting the same stores over and over.

I would enter each store and count the number of facings of a particular brand of frozen orange juice concentrate in the freezer section.

The brand was less popular than the number one brand, but as good tasting.

As part of the job, I was to find the frozen grocery manager and thank the person for the placement of the juice in the freezer, regardless of the number of facings.

Occasionally I would provide the person with a few free samples of the frozen cans of the concentrated juice for themselves.

Those facings represented real estate.

There is only so much frozen grocery space available and more space devoted to any particular brand resulted in greater sales of that brand.

The mere act of thanking that manager and the occasional free sample saw the number of facings increase, dramatically.

Kindness, attention, the occasional unsolicited gift.

That was my first lesson in psychology, long before taking any courses.

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Gary Direnfeld is a social worker. Courts in Ontario, Canada, consider him an expert in social work, marital and family therapy, child development, parent-child relations and custody and access matters. Gary is the host of the TV reality show, Newlywed, Nearly Dead, former parenting columnist for the Hamilton Spectator and author of Marriage Rescue: Overcoming the ten deadly sins in failing relationships. Gary maintains a private practice in Georgina Ontario, providing a range of services for people in distress. He speaks at conferences and workshops throughout North America. He consults to mental health professionals as well as to mediators and collaborative law professionals about good practice as well as building their practice.