*INTRODUCTION:
The Go-Getter by Peter B. Kyne is an allegory that inspires us to be one. The book was first published in 1921 and has become the bible for salesmen and businessmen to find a way where there seems to be no way. The Go-Getter might just be the book you need to read to put that spark back in your life and put a fire in your belly to go after your dreams unapologetically.
*CHARACTERS:
So, the characters in this story are:
*MR. ALDER RICKS:
Aka~ Cappy Ricks, retired owner and founder of RICKS LOGGING AND LUMBERING COMPANY.
*MR. SKINNER:
The president and general manager of RICKS LOGGING COMPANY.
*MR. MATT PEASELY:
The president and manager of BLUE STAR NAVIGATION COMPANY.
*MR. HANDERSON:
The manager at the Shanghai office, who is responsible for delivering lumber to China, has failed the task and put the company in a worrisome situation due to his mismanagement.
*MR. ANDREWS:
The selected successor to Henderson by Mr. Alden who has planned to send him out to Shanghai as he ticks the qualities of a good manager overseas.
Meanwhile,
*MR. WILLIAM E. PECK:
An ex-veteran who served in the U.S. Army and in the course had lost his left forearm and walks with a slight limp, is looking for any job in the company no matter how meager it is.
*PLOT:
So, the story goes...
Mr. Cappy Ricks gets a call from the office boy who tells him that a young man named Mr. William E. Peck is waiting in the general office to meet him. Mr. Cappy Ricks accepts to meet him and Mr. Peck is ushered into his presence.
He introduces himself saying, "Mr. Ricks, Peck is my name Sir, William E. Peck; thank you, Sir, for acceding to my request for an interview; "I've called for my job." Mr. Cappy Ricks is belligerent and stunned by the courage and confidence he possesses to secure a job in the company.
Mr. William Peck sells himself to Mr. Cappy Ricks on his abilities and how he's willing to take on any meager job in the company. To which Mr. Ricks replies that he retired 10 years ago and he must go and see Mr. Skinner or Mr. Peasely and see if they could help him.
To which Mr. Peck replies that his already seen both of them and that they had turned him down saying that there isn't sufficient business to keep his present staff of salesman busy and that business is so good that there was no place for him.
Mr. Ricks asks him, "Well, my dear boy, my dear young friend! Why do you come to me?" To which Mr. Peck replies smilingly, "Because, I want you to go over their heads and give me a job. I don't care a hoot what it is, provided I can do it. "
"If I can do it, I'll do it better than it was ever done before, and if I can't do that, I'll quit to save you the embarrassment of firing me." Mr. Ricks calls in Mr. Skinner and requests him to squeeze in a job for Mr. Peck and to give him a chance and try and test him to see what he's truly made of.
Mr. Skinner reluctantly agrees and gives him the job of selling some skunk spruce and a couple of dozen carloads of red fir or bull pine (some stuff that doesn't sell well, and even the best of salesmen fail to sell them. Meanwhile, Mr. Andrew is sent to Shanghai to take over the position of Handerson temporarily.
So, for the next two months, Bill Peck was selling skunk spruce and other lumber of no good for a dollar above the price given him by Mr. Skinner and demonstrated his immense selling ability. Mr. Skinner and Mr. Cappy Ricks more than impressed with his results decided to raise his pay.
The thought of putting Bill as Oriental Manager in Shanghai lingers in Mr. Ricks' mind. And so Mr. Ricks decides to test Bill Peck before putting him in the position of an Oriental Manager in Shanghai by asking Bill to deliver to him a BLUE VASE.
*THE BLUE VASE TEST:
The passing of the BLUE VASE TEST would put him in charge as a manager in the Shanghai office with a pay of 10,000 dollars a year. So, one Sunday afternoon, Mr. Skinner invited Bill Peck to his home to discuss business matters.
Amid the discussion, Mr. Ricks telephones, and Bill Peck is assigned with an errand to find Mr. Ricks to gift an acquaintance a blue vase for her wedding anniversary and gives specific details to find one, the specific colour, the dimensions et cetera, et cetera.
He's given a deadline to get the vase before 7:45 PM as he will be leaving at 8 PM for Santa Barbara to attend the acquaintance's wedding which is the following night. Now, around 3 o'clock, Bill Peck leaves Mr. Skinner's place and goes downtown to get the blue vase that Mr. Ricks was talking about.
As he walks down the street looking for the blue vase he doesn't find a single shop with the vase Mr. Ricks had mentioned about. He walks down the street once more to double-check if there's a shop with the blue vase, but he finds none.
Then he scouted two blocks away from the specified location, yet there was no blue vase. After painstakingly surveilling several blocks around the area, he finds the blue vase on the glass window of a shop- called the COHEN's ART SHOP.
After confirming that this was the exact blue vase that Mr. Ricks had requested he attempted to get into the shop, but the door was locked. So he tries to contact Mr. Cohen- the owner of the shop to convince him to open the shop so that he could buy the vase.
He painstakingly goes through all the Cohens in the telephone directory and one by one calls them to no avail, but he can't find the owner of the shop! Vexed with perspiration dripping down, he wonders if he got the spelling right.
He walks down the street again to recheck the spelling and lo and behold, the sign reads, COHN's ART SHOP. Irritated he goes back to the telephone booth to call all the COHNs in town. And when he lands at the residence of the right Mr. Cohn, he's informed that Mr. Cohn was dining at the home of Mr. Simons in Mill Valley.
So, he calls up the Simons in Mill Valley one by one and lands on the right one. And when he's informed that Mr. Cohn is dining and doesn't like to be disturbed unless the matter is of grave importance. Mr. Peck tells him that the store is on fire!
Mr. Cohn sputteringly attends the call with Mr. Peck only to be told that it was a lie and that all he wanted was this blue vase in his shop window with urgency. Mr. Cohn is enraged yet still tells him to call up his head salesman, Herman Joost, and hangs up the phone.
He contacts Mr. Joost's residence but he's not at home, so, he decides to break in. After endlessly tracking down Mr. Herman Joost he finally gets in touch with him. The salesman appears on the scene at 9:15 PM (way past the deadline Mr. Ricks gave).
After enquiring and confirming the authenticity of the message with Mr. Cohn, Joost unlocks the shop and tells him that the vase costs two thousand dollars. Mr. Peck reaches into his wallet only to find that he had about ten dollars in his possession. And that was the final straw!
Now, he was hungry, angry, irritable, and it was late. But since he had given his word to Mr. Ricks, he plows through and decides to get his platinum ring set with diamonds and sapphires worth two thousand five hundred dollars from his apartment and give it in exchange for the vase for now, and return with cash later.
Fifteen minutes later the blue vase was packed and given to Mr. Peck who decided to fly to Santa Barbara after dining. An hour and a half later, at 2 in the morning, Bill Peck trudges across to the railroad track lighting a paper and signalling the train to halt.
Bill Peck boarded the train and said that he was looking for an old man with the Henry Clay collar. To which the breakman replied, "Well, he was looking for you just before we left San Francisco. He asked me if I had seen a one-armed man with a box under his good arm." "I'll lead you to him", he said.
On meeting, Mr. Ricks, Bill Peck apologised for disturbing him, reached out to give him the blue vase, and explained that he couldn't accomplish the task within the time limit set. To which Mr. Ricks replied, "By the Twelve Ragged Apostles! By the Holy Pink-toed Prophet!"
"We changed the sign on you and we stacked the Cohens on you and we set a policeman to guard the shop to keep you from breaking the window, and we made you dig up two thousand dollars on a Sunday night in a town where you are practically unknown; and while you missed the train at 8 o'clock, you overtake it at 2 0'clock in the morning and deliver the blue vase."
"Come in and rest your poor old game leg, Bill." Enraged, hurt, and exhausted all at the same time, Bill rambles that he shouldn't be treated like a buffoon and goes on and on and on, about how he shouldn't be seen as a laughing stock.
To which Mr. Ricks paternally replies, "Bill, old boy, it was cruel, damnably cruel, but I had a big job for you, and I had to find out a lot of things about you before I entrusted you with that job." And told that he would be the next Shanghai Manager with a ten thousand dollars a year pay.
*IT SHALL BE DONE!
As Bill was listening to all of this, he reminisced on how in the army he was taught the motto: IT SHALL BE DONE! He said, "In the army, Sir, the esprit de corps doesn't bubble up from the bottom. It filters down from the top. An organisation is what its commanding officer is, neither better nor worse."
*CONCLUSION:
So, the lesson to learn from this short story is to be a GO-GETTER and persist through the obstacles set in your way. To have an 'IT SHALL BE DONE!' attitude is rare but crucial. To possess an 'I'M GONNA DO IT THAT'S IT, PERIOD!' attitude is precisely what we need to trump in life.
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