I was talking to a young bench jeweler at the RJO show in Chicago who has only been in our industry a couple of years. The subject of ‘red flags’ that you should look for when it came to bench jewelers came up. Hah! Red flags are what define us!
If any bench jeweler you meet doesn’t have these personality traits, you must rethink your relationship with that person.
Personality
If your bench jeweler has one, that’s a red flag. As a rule, bench jewelers are very creative, talented, introverts. Bench jewelers choose to spend their entire career in a small space that a retail store carved out for them, as far away from the showroom as possible, so no one will know it’s there. And, with all of the statistics that dictate how much every square foot of a retail location should generate in sales, that space in the back is way smaller than it should be. Oh, and don’t forget it also doubles as a storeroom and coat rack.
Intellect
Very high, they just won’t let you see it. See above note about personality. Unless you do bench work for a living, it’s hard to comprehend the difficulty of the job. They have to go from setting a 2 carat, $20,000 diamond, to reweaving a broken, gunked up, hollow rope chain, to retipping a dozen prongs, all without losing their place on each job.
Then, a sales staffer walks back and asks ‘pretty please’ if you could drop whatever you were doing because whatever they are holding in their hands is far more important than the other jobs on your bench. And then, after the disruption, they have to remember where they were with the project they were working on before they were interrupted. I’m not lying when I say you have to be really intelligent to do that job.
Very outgoing and the life of the party
Serious red flag! Okay, maybe once in a while, but definitely not a dominant personality trait of the trained bench jeweler. As a rule, they have no problem spending hours and hours by themselves. It should actually be on the job application: ‘Are you capable of spending up to 8 hours per day without any other human interaction?’ Of course, they don’t tell you during the interview that was a trick question, since someone is going to come in about every 6 minutes and bug you about something.
Great conversationalist
That’s not a bench jeweler, that’s an imposter. Bench jewelers are trained professionals at not talking. Unless, of course, they are talking to other bench jewelers. Then they can talk all day about how horrible it is at the store they work at because the salespeople come back and bother them about every six minutes and won’t leave them alone. Worse yet, those same sales people want the bench jeweler to come out front and talk to those people they call customers. Oh, the humanity.
A couple of years ago, I was in my shop and heard a customer come in. My assistant, Anna, greets them and starts to ask her how she could help, when the customer said, “I need to talk to the jeweler.” Anna assured her that she could help her, but the lady was insistent, and borderline rude. This goes on for a few minutes, so I just got up and walked out front to deal with the situation.
The customer had a ‘Home Shopping Club’ special with a simple broken solder joint on the bottom, a very common problem. I look at her, throw my hands out with that ‘What do you want?’ look. She showed me her broken ‘buy it for only 6 EZ payments of $69 a month’ piece of garbage. I looked at Anna and said, “$45 and next Friday,” and walked away. The customer looked at Anna and said, “Well he was certainly unpleasant.” To which Anna replied, “I tried to warn you.”
What can I say – I’m a bench jeweler at heart.
Loves to go out front and meet with customers
Who is this person and what have you done with my bench jeweler? See all of the above. But seriously, why do the front-of-the-house people insist that the back-of-the-house people stop what they’re doing and go up and help them do their job?
What would happen if your bench jeweler walked up front and interrupted a salesperson, in the middle of a sale, and asked them to stop what they were doing and insists that they come back to the shop and help them? “Alex, I’ll take ‘Things that will never happen for $1,000, please.” In all honesty though, the only time we really need help is either understanding instructions, deciphering illegible handwriting, or helping us find that 3.5 x 2.0 mm baguette sapphire that just flew out of our tweezers.
Loves to be interrupted
Not! This happened to me recently. I ordered a couple of 5.7 mm diamonds to set into earrings to match a customer’s solitaire pendant. One minute both of the diamonds are in front of me, and the next minute/hour/day (who can keep up), I could only find one. So, we all know what happens next; you start cleaning till you find it. I didn’t find it. I didn’t find it the next day either, or the one after that.
After about a week, I resign myself to the fact that I’m just going to have to order another one because I didn’t have that specific size in stock – bummer! And, of course, it was a natural diamond, not a lab grown. Finally, I couldn’t put it off any longer and decide to order a replacement.
I reached over to the shelf beside my bench and grabbed my Leveridge gauge to measure the one diamond that I hadn’t lost yet, and son of a bitch, there it was. Turns out, I was measuring the lost diamond so I could order the mountings, and I got interrupted. At some point that day, forgetting what I was doing beforehand, I just put my Leverage gauge back where it belongs on that shelf. Whew! And that’s why we hate to be interrupted.
Also, I’d like to give a big shout out to RJO for bringing in several of us bench jewelers from around the country to host roundtable discussions and classroom instruction for bench jewelers at their Chicago show. I had a blast doing it, and I hope everyone that attended our programs liked what we brought to the show.
And, as usual, my friend Anish, from Star Gems debuted the ‘next big thing’ as is customary with Anish and his team. I was sitting at the bar when Anish started telling me about his new app that uses AI to design jewelry. Because I was drinking a bottled beer at the time, he asked his program to design a 14K gold pendant, with 6 small diamonds, in the shape of a beer bottle. Within about 30 seconds, there it was on his phone, complete with pricing in 14K or 10K, and natural or lab grown diamonds. It was awesome.
And, if you’re coming to the Atlanta Jewelry Show, stop by the Southern/Mid-America Jewelry News booth and say hi to me.
