The same counter, a different morning

In a shopping centre in Sharjah, two phone repair counters sit at opposite ends of the same floor.

They fix the same handsets. They charge roughly the same. They were fitted out by the same contractor, with the same glass cabinets and the same blue lights. They sit in identical spots on the map, near an escalator.

One of them always has a short queue. The other is usually empty, and its reviews say why. Short answers, a sigh when you ask a question, a phone handed back without a word about what was wrong.

There is no secret advantage on the busy side. No better supplier, no cleverer sign. The difference is the man standing there and how he decides to meet the next customer. He looks up. He explains. He says when it will be ready and it is ready then.

That sounds like personality, as though some people are simply born cheerful. It is not, or not mostly. It is a choice, and an unusually free one. The rent, the parts, the footfall and the mood of the shopping centre are all outside his control. How he greets the person in front of him is not.

That is the hopeful part for the quiet counter too. Nothing about the location needs to change. Tomorrow morning the shutters go up at the same time, and the man behind the glass gets to decide, once again, what kind of day he will offer the people who walk up to it.

Most of what shapes a small business is handed to it. The attitude is the part that is not.