Everything I learned in business ...

With all due respect to Robert Fulgham and kindergarten, all I really needed to know in business, I learned at Fenton Art Glass.

I was a tour guide there for two summers.

It was the best job in Williamstown, West Virginia and really only one of two.

You either swatted gnats from a lifeguard's chair while getting the best tan thigh to knee making $2.55 an hour or you got to work at Fenton, where, armed with a shoulder speaker, you directed tourists from all over the world through the glass factory.

USA Today once called in one of the ten best factory tours in the world.

In Williamstown, it was always number one.

It was a hotly contested position back then. They'd receive 100 applications and hire 8-10 each summer.

I had an in. My father was the minister of the local Methodist church and the Fentons were Methodist.

One, in fact, had his eye on my sister.

He would pay me $20 to wash his car every week so he could drop it off and pick it up at my house hoping my sister was home.

One day I decided to wax his car in the sun.

Bad call.

The next week I was on as a tour guide.

There, we would gather tourists the way Southwest Airlines boards their planes ... by number.

We would take our 10 guests and direct them to a factory board, where we would explain the glass-making process.

Then we would lead them around, advising them how silica sand and other elements were cooked to 3000 degrees, then shaped into some of the most beautiful art glass in the world.

Each piece took as many as 12 workers to make. Some glass would even make its way downstairs where true artists would paint the glass with paint that contained glass and it would be sealed in forever with another step.

It seemed to make sense as we would announce via speaker that as many as 20 people would be involved from start to finish on each piece of glass.

There was no arguing the beauty. Collectors would come from every country in the world to take the tour and buy the glass.

When we weren't giving tours, we were pricing and arranging glass.

They categorized it two ways.

Fenton "first quality" received its own stamp, made its way to the front of the Gift Shop and more importantly to retailers around the world.

Another category of glass was called "second quality" and was only sold in the Gift Shop. It was sellable but not up to standard and was priced in half.

All other glass was discarded and could not be used again. There were several dumping grounds in the town that received that lump of uselessness regularly.

If you got there as it was dropped off, you could still smell the smoke and it would burn a hole through your sneakers.

Another bad idea.

Point is, very little of the glass that started in the factory ever made it out the door and around the world.

Workers themself would discard glass in the factory if they knew it wasn't up to snuff.

More glass would not make it through the cooling process and would be discarded.

Highly trained inspectors would give the glass that made it through a thorough once-over and would break the glass on the spot.

They would do it for effect as the tour guides made their way with their groups to another section of the plant.

I'd address the concerned look of my guests by saying, "I don't believe that one's going to make it."

Cheap laughs on a free tour.

I remember those days fondly.

It was my first "professional job" and I took it seriously. I remember telling myself before every tour, "This is going to be the best tour ever. Let's be perfect and give them something they'll never forget."

It was an opportunity and I made the most of it.

It cured my fear for public speaking, taught me to think on my feet and also taught me to listen.

It taught me that you could make a difference in people's life by simply caring enough to give them your very best.

It taught me that everyone wanted to be treated as if they were the only one on your tour and it was my job to make them feel that way.

It taught me that only the best make it and that second best end up in a landfill or the trash.

Glass, of course.

The job invoked a sense of pride in me.

I would return every Thanksgiving to the Gift Shop.

Other kids were buying jeans at Grand Central Mall.

I was buying glass from the front off the store.