Marie from HMS is nice.

Driving up the Garden State Parkway, enduring brutal summer beach traffic, we were forced to pull into a rest stop.  This is a rant-free blog column, so I won’t get started on the condition of the bathrooms or the gall of able-bodied people galavanting out of cars that were plated for and parked in handicap spots.  But I would like to put out a commendation to Marie, a uniformed employee of HMS Host Corporation which runs the rest stop, including the gift shop.  We collect snow globes, even on beach trips.  When my daughter brought her preferred snow globe (and a keychain) to the counter, Marie said, “You picked a great one.  That’s my favorite snow globe in the store.”  Then she offered a very kid-savvy option, “I’ll wrap up the snow globe so it’s safe, but would you like to hang on to the keychain yourself?”  Of course.  Walking out of the store, into the hot and crowded rest stop, destined for hours of crawling up the Parkway, my daughter was bouyed by the extra attention and glowed, “She’s really nice.”

Rule #4 of great service: Be nice to the kids.