The Trial Period

When Eva proposed keeping the bookshop open for two extra hours on Thursdays, her manager agreed to a four-week trial. Several customers had said they could never get there before closing time, and Eva suspected that the shop was losing business. Rather than changing everyone’s hours permanently, she offered to work the late shift herself while they collected figures.

By the end of the trial, Thursday sales had risen. Eva prepared a short proposal recommending that the evening opening should continue. It was only when her colleague Paul asked whether the extra sales covered the extra costs that she realised how little her chart actually explained. She had recorded what customers spent, but not the cost of keeping the shop open.

Together they added the extra wages and electricity to the calculation. The evening opening still brought in a small profit, although considerably less than Eva had expected. More awkwardly, some regular customers appeared to be buying on Thursday what they would otherwise have bought on Saturday. Higher Thursday sales did not necessarily mean higher weekly sales.

Eva could have presented the first chart and left the difficult questions for someone else. Instead, she rewrote the proposal. She recommended a second, shorter trial, this time comparing weekly profit and asking evening customers whether the later opening had made their visit possible. She also insisted that taking the late shift should remain voluntary; her willingness to do it was not evidence that everyone else would feel the same.

At the meeting, the manager accepted the revised plan but asked Eva whether she was disappointed that her original idea had not been approved outright. She considered saying no, then admitted that she was. The figures had made the decision less satisfying and the proposal more useful. As Paul put it afterwards, she had stopped trying to win the argument and started finding out what would make the idea worthwhile.