The clerk at the counter looked at me. She was in her mid to late twenties, with dark eyes, olive skin, and long brown hair swept up in a style that a man with three daughters and five granddaughters should have been able to identify but couldn’t. This wasn’t surprising, though, since I was focused on a technique that I learned from Jordan Peterson on YouTube. It consists of greeting an employee or salesperson by their name and asking how their day is going. If they don’t have a nametag, ask their name anyway. According to Peterson, this works wonders.
It did for me. This young woman couldn’t help me but went out of her way to escort me to another part of the gym where she thought I could get an answer to my question about judo mats. It turns out, they couldn’t help me there, either. But what threw her–so to speak–wasn’t my question about judo mats but my asking, “Do you have a card?”
I got the same reaction from another clerk at a dance supply store just around the corner from the gym. After explaining my need for a portable floor that I could set up in the backyard for tap dancing (what else do you do at summer barbecues?), she referred me to a rental supply company in the area. She did not have a nametag, so I asked her name and then added, “So, Chelsea, do you have a card?”
In my mind, this isn’t a strange question, since it lets me keep track of information that I might need later on. And–who knows?–someone might ask where to buy tap shoes, in which case I can send them to the dance store. In fact, I have two old cigar boxes filled with business cards that I have collected over the years. They serve not just as a deposit of data regarding everything from plumbing to cybersecurity, but a chronicle of my personal history including people, places, and events.
Apparently, it’s not done that way anymore. I should have known. Not long ago, a student boxer asked for my contact information, so I handed him a business card from my gym bag. I got the same look as the two clerks, although he was impressed that I had a card. “Doesn’t everyone?” I asked. He looked at me again and took out his phone.
I keep things. I have a metal file cabinet three columns wide from an insurance company with all relevant–and not so relevant–documents not just from my childhood but going back to the mid 1500s when a direct relative was a priest in Italy. That may be a bit much, but I am the family historian, which means guardian of the “deposit.” That’s actually one of Pope Leo’s functions, but that’s another story.
I also keep index cards of nearly all the students I have had in class over a twenty-year period. I used to have them fill out the cards with name, major, year, interest in the course, etc. These sit in an old walnut card catalogue from the College of New Rochelle in New York. There’s a story there about a librarian, but that, too, is another story.
If you’re thinking that this is just boomer blah-blah and I need to get with the times, consider this. Both the olive-skinned woman at the gym and the woman at the dance supply store handed me a printed piece of paper with the company website and a QR code. Honestly, I don’t see how a flimsy piece of paper is any better than card stock. Maybe it costs more to print cards, but isn’t that part of the marketing budget? What do you do at a live meetup?
I went to a meetup once at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. To share their info, attendees rubbed what looked like thumb drives together. The thumb drive came with a lanyard so you could hang it around your neck like some sort of digital branding. I finally asked a woman I had been talking to, “Do you have a card?” She reached into her tote bag and handed me one. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said, relieved.
I still have her card.
Image credits: Kelly Sikkema; Beau Keally. Want more? Click on Amazon above, right for other publications, or go to Robert Brancatelli. Visit other blog readers under “Who You Are.” Leave a comment by clicking on the Comment tab above.
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Ahh, the business card! A long-forgotten artifact of business society. I had lots of them over the years – and these were just mine, as I changed titles, phone numbers and business addresses.
Then there were the cards of customers, suppliers, regulators, distributors and carriers – rail and truck. Government agencies were well represented, as were lawyers of all types – ours and the other guy’s.
Like carbon paper, they disappeared into the digital universe of computers, cell phones and iPads. And like the paper cards of yore, the digital entries multiplied over time, with out-of-date “cards” never deleted.
The good news is that the digital cards cost nothing and are not limited to the business contacts. They also include friends, neighbors and the many people with whom we just wish to stay in touch….and many of whom do not have traditional cards.
The sadness comes when, once in a while, I peruse the list of names and begin to delete some of them. Not because I no longer value them, but because they have passed on. But it gives me the opportunity to think of them, remember how we met and what we mutually valued, and to acknowledge their contribution to my own life.
I used to frequent bar near campus that had thousands of business cards pinned to the ceiling. Can’t do that with digital…Carbon paper–now, that’s a memory.
I still carry cards around with me even though the address is my New York apartment, which we recently gave up. However, the cell phone is correct and the email address works as well.
Finally, there is a QR code on the back for my time travel book. I’ve sold 12 via the business cards. I may just take the remaining 300 and scatter them on Siesta Key beach.
That reminds me. I need to take a nap.