While your men must feel all the time that they’ve got a boss who can see good work around a corner, they mustn’t be allowed to forget that there’s no private burying-ground on the premises for mistakes.  When a Western town loses one of its prominent citizens through some careless young fellow’s letting his gun go off sudden, if the sheriff buys a little rope and sends out invitations to an inquest, it’s apt to make the boys more reserved about exchanging repartee; and if you pull up your men sharp when you find them shooting off their mouths to customers and getting gay in their correspondence, it’s sure to cut down the mortality among our old friends in the trade.  A clerk’s never fresh in letters that the boss is going to see.

The men who stay in the office and plan are the brains of your business; those who go out and sell are its arms; and those who fill and deliver the orders are its legs.  There’s no use in the brains scheming and the arms gathering in, if the legs are going to deliver the goods with a kick.

That’s another reason why it’s very important for you to be in the office early.  You can’t personally see every order filled, and tell whether it was shipped promptly and the right goods sent, but when the telegrams and letters are opened, you can have all the kicks sorted out, and run through them before they’re distributed for the day.  That’s where you’ll meet the clerk who billed a tierce of hams to the man who ordered a box; the shipper who mislaid Bill Smith’s order for lard, and made Bill lose his Saturday’s trade through the delay; the department head who felt a little peevish one morning and so wrote Hardin & Co., who buy in car-lots, that if they didn’t like the smoke of the last car of Bacon Short Clears they could lump it, or words to that effect; and that’s where you’ll meet the salesman who played a sure thing on the New Orleans track and needs twenty to get to the next town, where his check is waiting.  Then, a little later, when you make the rounds of the different departments to find out how it happened, the heads will tell you all the good news that was in the morning’s mail.

Of course, you can keep track of your men in a sneaking way that will make them despise you, and talk to them in a nagging spirit that will make them bristle when they see you.  But it’s your right to know and your business to find out, and if you collect your information in an open, frank manner, going at it in the spirit of hoping to find everything all right, instead of wanting to find something all wrong; and if you talk to the responsible man with an air of “here’s a place where we can get together and correct a weakness in our business”—­not my business—­instead of with an “Ah! ha!  I’ve-found-you-out” expression, your men will throw handsprings for your good opinion.  Never nag a man tinder any circumstances; fire him.

A good boss, in these days when profits are pared down to the quick, can’t afford to have any holes, no matter how small, in his management; but there must be give enough in his seams so that every time he stoops down to pick up a penny he won’t split his pants.  He must know how to be big, as well as how to be small.