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Bought a new winter coat last year. It's got a removable liner...with a zipper.
In the spring, I unzipped the liner, took it out and wore the coat as a lighter jacket. As summer rolled in I went to zip the liner back in, ready to take it to the cleaners for the coming fall.
Only it wouldn't zip back in.
I lined up the ends perfectly, glided the little end pieces together and zipped. Or actually did not zip. It traveled about an inch and a half and stopped.
It was stuck.
I tried to zip it back down...wouldn't move that way either. So I tried up again...nothing. I grabbed it with my left hand and tugged hard on it with my right...still nothing.
"You've got to be kidding," I thought. "What kind of manufacturer puts a garbage zipper in its lining?!"
I put the coat on the ground, placed my foot on top of it and tugged upward toward me. My forehead vein pulsing, my arms straining, focus lasered, huffing, grunting and grimacing. Finally, some movement. But after another inch and a half, it was stuck again.
And then I looked down and realized that even the part that I thought I had successfully zipped had come apart.
Frustrated, I hung up the coat and walked away. There it rested on a hook by the front door, me passing it all summer long, a navy blue coat with its insides dangling menacingly below. Taunting me it was. I knew at some point we'd meet again.
Last week it was time.
I pulled it off its hook and stared it down. And then I had a thought. I decided to take it to the dry-cleaner in the state it was in. Maybe they would know how to negotiate the zipper, a skill that obviously eluded me.
With my heart full of promise, I pulled into the dry-cleaner about twenty minutes later. But when the dry-cleaner, after having tugged on it for a minute or so, looked puzzled, my heart sank.
But then...
She paused, pulled out a pen and slip of paper, jotted a name and address. "Take it here," she said.
It was the name and address of an alteration shop near downtown Lake Geneva about thirty minutes from my home.
I was desperate. Indeed, this was my last hope.
"I hear you're good," I said to Karen as I entered her shop.
Karen made no grimaces. She was not perplexed or frustrated. I showed her the coat...she told me to follow her. Her confident gait put a spring in my step.
To the back room we went...cloth hanging everywhere like meat on hooks, much of it in every stage of repair and disrepair...the operating table in the midst of it all.
She stabbed my coat with her hands, snatched it from me and flopped it on the table.
In thirty seconds she diagnosed the problem.
Ahem...
I had tried to zip it up backwards. There is a zipper that zips the coat and a zipper that zips the lining. I inadvertently tried the impossible; to zip the coat zipper teeth to the liner zipper teeth. The tracks, of course, did not match. Thus, the stickage.
A wham, a bam, a slam later and it was all fixed...good as new. Five minutes. That's it... five minutes. The coat hardly felt a thing. I, on the other hand, felt a wee bit embarrassed and a lot elated.
"How much?" I asked the doctor.
"Here's your coat," said she, intending to take nothing.
I pulled out my wallet. "You're in business. I'm going to give you something."
I dropped two fives on the table. She shoved one of them back to me. The negotiation was on.
"You didn't just fix my coat," I said, "You took away my frustration. Do you know how valuable that is?" I slid the five back to her. She smiled and took them both.
The purpose of an expert is to shorten the distance between the problem and the solution. This is when consultants are at their best. Karen did this brilliantly.
Sometimes it pays-and more often than you might think-to call an expert.
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