Ice-cream

Jeevan Sivasubramaniam Posted by Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, Managing Director, Editorial, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.



A man runs a small neighborhood ice-cream shop. One day the ice cream shop has a visitor--a little boy. Seeing him at the entrance to the store, the shopkeeper says, "Welcome, you came to the right place for your ice cream needs, young man!" The little boy shouts while he is still at the door, "Do you guys have onion-flavoured ice cream?" The man is suprised and says, "No, we don't--sorry." The boy leaves.

The next day at the same time, the boy comes in. The shopkeeper says, "Welcome!" but he sees that it is the boy and silences himself. The boy again asks, "Do you have onion-flavoured ice cream?" The man responds, "No, We dont. Sorry!"

This keeps going every day for two weeks until the man thought to himself, "You know, Why dont I make onion flavoured Ice-cream for the little guy?" And he worked all night to make onion-flavored ice-cream and it was great.

The boy comes in again the next day. "Welcome!" says the shop keeper. The boy says the usual line, "Do you have onion-flavoured Ice cream?" The man excitingly says, "Why yes we do! We do indeed have onion-flavored ice-cream!"

The boy then says, "Wow you guys must be idiots. Who would buy that crap?"

Moral of the Story: Customer queries do not mean customer demands, neccessarily.