After my haircut this morning, I went down to Chinatown to pick up some groceries and goods. Whenever I go to specific stores or street carts over the last 15 years of living in New York City, the vendors and workers have always addressed me the same way by calling me “mui mui” or “moi moi” (Cantonese or Toisan for “little sister,” which is how a younger woman/girl is addressed in a semi-affectionate/friendly manner). Usually when you get older, people will either call you “jie jie” (big sister) or even “tai tai” (married woman). But that’s never happened to me in any Chinatown I’ve visited, whether it was 15 years ago or now. The funny thing I did notice between 2008 and 2019 when I visited Vietnam was that in 2008, everyone addressed me as “little sister” there, but in 2019, everyone addressed me as “big sister,” so clearly in their eyes, I was “older” the second time around.

I was meeting Chris for lunch and wanted to try a place that had been on my list but I hadn’t eaten at yet, so I chose S Wan Cafe, a hole-in-the-wall Hong Kong style cafe that had been around forever, but was a true “locals” joint; everyone in there was speaking either Cantonese or Toisan, and they were all older than me. There were barely four tables in there, and the vast majority of people ordering were doing takeout. When Chris came in, he realized how “local” and no-frills it felt, and he said he was adding diversity to the place as the only non-Chinese person there. I told him that I was adding diversity because I was younger. He kind of scoffed at me and said that I wasn’t actually much younger than some of the women in there, who could easily have been in their mid forties if not even younger. I retorted back, okay, maybe, but I look younger than most of the people here!

That’s the thing, though. Even though at heart, I don’t feel old, and I certainly look and sound younger than I am, the truth is that yes, I am getting older every day like everyone else. I’m 37 years old and quickly approaching “middle age.” In Chinatown for whatever reason, I rarely think or feel this because of how I am treated and addressed. But then I thought: how would I get treated if people actually did realize I wasn’t some 20- or early 30-something year old person, and I was actually in my late 30s and quickly approaching my 40s? Would the treatment actually get better or worse? Would there be any deferential treatment at all? I’m not sure.

Pre-sales and post-sales work are pretty much the same regardless of any company you are at. The only difference is the slight nuances that go with a given industry. As Chris always used to say and (half) joke, “Sales sells the dream; post sales (or customer success) services the nightmare.” It’s not a total departure from reality: sales people tend to have larger budgets and leeway for things like travel, (prospective) customer entertainment. The most successful sales people tend to get away with a lot of pretty egregious things at most companies, whether that’s ill treatment of colleagues or flat out refusal to follow company policies and guidelines. At my current company, where we are being conservative with spend given the current economic climate, my sales counterparts are traveling pretty much wherever they want, whenever they want to see prospective customers and close deals; in my customer success role, I have to seek out department level approval and outline approximate costs for everything, ranging from airfare/hotel, per diem, etc. Does it seem fair? Well, yes and no. A sales role has higher risk with a higher reward; a post sales role has a lower risk, and thus a lower reward. If you don’t hit your quota every quarter, you risk not only losing out on commissions, but your entire job as a sales person. On the flip side, if you are a higher performer, you’ll likely make a killing in commissions and potentially even out-earn your boss… and sometimes even the company CEO. In customer success or post sales roles, you rarely risk completely losing your job unless you’re a total slacker or just flat out incompetent. But when great things happen, like a customer decides to expand, while you may get paid out on it, your payout is going to be a tiny fraction next to your sales counterpart.

Why am I even saying this? Well, late last week as I went to a prospective families event at my child’s daycare, it hit me how grueling and thankless the post sales role can be, as well as how much money and effort is poured into net new business as opposed to keeping already paying customers happy. I’ve always known that post sales is a pretty thankless, unglamorous role, but it was even more apparent to me on Friday. To attract new families, our daycare not only blocked out three hours of prime business time to host a welcoming event complete with food, drinks, and decoration, but also even hired a bubble artist, a face painter, and endless party props and equipment just to increase the “wow” factor of the center. All these fun toys, crayons, and snacks were laid out — but for prospective families and kids, not so much meant for already paying families. I came early for pickup because I wanted to see what the party was about, and I also wanted Kaia to experience the party. But this bubble artist really was just completely over the top; I cannot imagine how much this artist would have charged our daycare for her time. But I also got frustrated when I thought: Wow. My hard-earned money going into this daycare is being used for… wooing new families? Now, why isn’t my child getting a regular bubble artist or face painting on the regular during the usual business hours and curriculum, even as a treat? Plus, why was our main teacher being leveraged all day to prep for this event rather than teaching our child? Our child got jammed into another classroom with 12 kids and two overwhelmed teachers, who were given no notice that any of this was even happening that day. As you can probably imagine, it was a bit of a cluster all day. We didn’t get the usual app updates in the timely manner we usually get them, Kaia wasn’t wearing her own diapers (or even ones her size), and she was covered in food when I came to pick her up, meaning she didn’t have her bib at lunch time. Is this what you call caring for and retaining your paying customers?

I cannot fault the daycare for investing money into attracting new families and thus new business. But I do think they should be thinking harder about how to retain the business they already have… because like any business, you need to retain your existing customers in order to thrive. Wooing new customers should not be at the expense of taking care of your current paying customers. And those existing customers can easily taint your potential to get net new customers. We have networks of people we know. We also have the power of social media and parenting groups where we can share the good, the bad, and the ugly of our daycare situations. We won’t hesitate to leverage that power when needed. And they had better remember this.

Years ago, a friend of mine used to host a “Silk Road of Queens” food tour, which he did to raise money for a nonprofit called Upwardly Global. Every year I was in town, I supported his food tour by attending. The first year he hosted the tour, he had a few prizes you could win if you answered different questions about culture correctly. I answered a few questions correctly, so I was gifted this book called Crossing the BLVD: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America. I liked the idea of the book when I won it, but it wasn’t until this weekend when I finally pulled it off my shelf and opened it to read. The two authors, who are married and live in Queens, take three years to be “travelers in their own backyard” of Queens, exploring all the different diverse neighborhoods and interviewing people in each area to give a sense of what all these different perspectives are in the most diverse land mass in the world.

When I read the first few pages, I realized that that was why I moved to New York in the first place: I wanted to be in the center of all this diversity and experience what this city had to offer. I wanted to see and meet people different from me and get a literal taste of what their cultures were like. And in many ways on Saturdays when we’re home, that’s what Chris and I do: we are essentially travelers in our own backyard of all of New York City, exploring what our city has to offer in all its different boroughs and neighborhoods. We’ve never been the kind of people who just want to stay in our own neighborhoods or in our own borough. In fact, we scoff at and make fun of people who say ignorant things like “I don’t leave Manhattan” or “I don’t go north of 14th street” because we realize that those types of people would never jive with our life views anyway. I think spending my first four years living in Elmhurst, Queens, also gave me a really good perspective of New York, one that most people don’t get when they move to Manhattan. And it definitely gave me a deep appreciation and love of Queens that I will always have.