8
Little Things
Mean a Lot
It’s not the one thousand dollar things that upset the
customer, but the five buck things that bug them.
—Earl Fletcher
Sales and Management Trainer
Volkswagen Canada
New arrivals to the combat zones of Vietnam quickly learned
that the difference between a veteran and a novice was far
more than war stories. They had an expression for it on the
front lines: “grunt eyes.” Grunts were the enlisted ranks of the
infantry—low rank, little prestige, people whose job descrip-
tion started and ended with the simple requirement, “Do what
the ‘old man’ tells you to do.”
Those with “grunt eyes” were able to see things a new in-
country recruit would completely miss. And there was little
correlation with rank. Whether you were a captain or ...