Lucky Break

Gufflumpgufflumpgufflump. OMDG this can’t be happening, I thought.  I was on the uphill portion of a bridge to Cape Cod when my very new Mazda 3i started bucking.  Quick glances: plenty of gas, temp was fine, battery ok.   By the way,  I don’t have a house on Cape Cod.  I mooch off other people’s houses.  On this particular Saturday, we were going to visit friends who themselves were mooching their friend’s house.  That made us moooooches.  I turned to my wife, “Call info and find a Mazda dealer on the Cape, whatever this is, it’s bad.”

We bucked over the bridge, breathed, and then bucked all the way to Hyannis Mazda, on a bleak stretch of road.  If Hyannis is where the Kennedy’s live, then it must be a big town, because there was no appropriate housing for Kennedys in sight.
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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.

Hilton housekeeping says, “Hello.”

None of the coolio hotels we like for our New York getaways could accommodate four guests in one room, but the Hilton on 53rd St fit our family and our budget.  Leaving our room on the first morning, we got a nice big “Hello” from every member of the housekeeping staff whom we passed in the hallway.  These employees were busy doing their work, but not too busy to look up, share a smile and wish us a good day.  By the end of our stay, we got to be fairly chatty together.  I don’t know if Hilton trains all of its employees to stop their work and greet the guests or if these folks were just personally inclined to put something extra into their job.  I do know that it made a difference for me.  Rule #3 of great service: Say, “Hello.”

Yolanda sees the other side

I was coming home from from a visit to the Center for Creative Leadership, which teaches C-levels, admirals, and strivers of all levels to lead others better by first understanding self. The approach is humanistic but entirely without fluff — every principle is backed by decades of supporting data.

Flying from Greensboro to Boston, the only good flight is on Delta — unless it’s cancelled like mine. Along with my travelmates, I scrambled onto an already-boarding two-leg flight by US Airways. I arrived in Philly and found the connecting gate to be overflowing with misery. The preceding flight to Boston had been boarded, then held on the tarmac, and then returned to the gate. The customers were variously folded, splayed and contorted in seats that were designed for the short rests of the previous era of air travel — regulated, expensive and punctual. The previous flight was defunct, and it became clear that those passengers were to be given my plane for their ride home. My mates left for the bar, and I stayed at the gate, determined to join these ragged souls on the next plane to Boston.

One US Airways employee was at the gate desk, occasionally looking around at the scene but never at any one person, and typing into his screen prodigiously. The plane arrived for boarding. Travelers shoved their way to gate door. A few customers were not passing through but were instead lingering near the desk and leering needily at the US Airways employee, whom I shall now name Sir System. Sir System was expert at the operations of the gate computer, and he was assiduous about the order of boarding. Glued tightly to Sir System’s counter was a customer whom I shall name Nigel (Nice Intelligent Guy with English Lilt). As a customer, Nigel had everything going for him. We was tidily groomed, had a pleasant face and wore a gentlemanly overcoat. Nigel was, I imagined, an ex-pat of many years, as he spoke with the perfectly diluted English accent that Americans equate with social refinement. But Nigel was not happy.

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UPS driver breaks rule and charms my wife

Our new carpet arrived from Pottery Barn. My wife convinced the UPS guy to carry it into the house…and up the stairs…and into our bedroom. I’m breaking into a sweat just thinking about it. Remember that study about how women dig the brown uniforms? Confident that my wife gave no invitation, I must ask myself, why would the driver do that? He must have broken both corporate and union rules. UPS drivers are Teamsters, not movers. But they are people.

UPS asks, “What can brown do for you?” One driver realized the answer: he could carry that heavy rug for the nice young lady. Breaking a rule is a great way to win a customer’s loyalty. Rule #1 of great service: break a rule for the customer.