"Breaking Free from the Comfort Zone" Part One

Back in time, about half a decade ago, I had a watch that needed a new battery. Interestingly, the area I lived in hardly had a shop where I could get my watch fixed, so I went around looking for one. After a good half an hour of wandering and a long distance away from home, I came across a new shop. The board read ‘Firefly Watch Company,’ run by two brothers. Both were extremely friendly and helpful. They took extra care to personally look at the watch with the mechanic and gave their advice on safety and maintenance for it. Before I could realize it, my loyalty to this shop had been secured for a very long time with some exceptional customer handling.

The experience only got better with time, so much so that I would even take some very old watches and wall clocks to get fixed at the shop, which otherwise I would have junked for sure. I was not only preserving some of these old machines that had practically run out of time for me, but I was also recommending the brothers to my family and others in my social circle. I was literally marketing Firefly Watch Company without even realizing it!

A few years passed by, I got busy with life, but my loyalty remained with the brothers when it came to repairing watches. There came a time when I even stopped negotiating with them and accepted whatever reason they would give me for it. I would blindly hand over my watches and pay the amount without even looking at the details of the service provided. Firefly Watch Company had a customer for life…

But nothing lasts forever, and if the trust is broken, the cracks widen faster than the reaction time of the one at fault. Also, another factor contributing to this abrupt crash could be the rough days at work that made me aware of all the overspending I was doing all this while, generally in life.

The friendly smile, the courteous treatment, the soft-spoken demeanor of the shopkeeper, the attention, the care… all of it began to lose its mojo once I started noticing a certain recommendation being pushed my way quite frequently. In their typical friendly way, the brothers would persuade me to send my watch for service even when I observed that I didn’t need one. I would resist but fail to strike the right note of being subtle and smooth like them and end up giving in to their advice.

My suspicion turned into belief with time, but at my own peril, I was again too lazy to look up for another shop, which strangely was still not easy to find in my area, and I wasn’t interested in wasting time finding one either. I was entrapped and entrenched in my comfort zone but just didn’t realize it!

I needed divine intervention for that one triumphant moment when I would unmask the betrayer of my trust, the enslaver of my loyalty, and the exploiter of my indolence. The Almighty sent my mother with me one day just to give me that...

One of her watches had stopped working, and reluctantly I brought her again to this place for the very same old reasons. The shop had now become bigger and fancier, and so had the repair charges. While the mechanic was checking the watch, I could see the team of salesmen at the counter trying to push complete servicing to every second customer that came in. I was now sure about the scam at work, but I was helpless and could not do anything. I just didn’t want to return to this place ever again, but deep within I knew it would not make any difference to the world or to the brothers. I desperately needed a moral victory to end this ordeal personally for me, and that is exactly what I got in the very next moment.

As predicted, the salesman came with my mother’s watch, and like every second customer, it was our turn to submit to his recommendation for a complete servicing. My mother argued against it, saying that the watch was brand-new, and it was highly unlikely that something major might have happened. She suggested checking the battery, but the shop’s loyal frontline soldier said the problem was not with the battery and bulldozed all her reasons with an onslaught of jargon that bounced off our heads.

There is no justice, truth doesn’t prevail, faith is a wasted emotion, submitting is the only way to salvation… overwhelmed by feelings pulling me down, I prepared myself to give in to his trick… Just in this moment, my mother said something that turned the tables upside down in our favor and left the salesman stuttering all kinds of mumbo-jumbo that had well and truly caught the attention of the owners and a few customers.

She rejected the offer to put in a new battery and asked him to deduct the cost from the total service charges. But strangely, he remained stuck on his offer to change the battery as part of the total service cost. I don’t know what, but there was something hidden in that battery cost and the total service charges that they didn’t want to negotiate.

Perhaps the watch did not need any service? They would have put in a new battery and charged for complete servicing, which would have been many times the cost of the battery? If they agreed to my mother’s request, they would have had to service the watch there, putting pressure on an already overburdened mechanic, losing more time and possibly more customers to scam? This is a mystery I am still trying to figure out and may perhaps risk becoming a victim once again to crack it.

Later, as I was driving away, I realized that apart from the possible scam, my comfort zone with Firefly Watch Company had kept me in a state of perpetual inaction. While it felt like a divine intervention had finally awakened me, wouldn’t it be better if we acted before our options ran out?