Finding a way to connect to other people is an important part of life – in our personal relationships, obviously, but also in business. It is of course perfectly fine to have professional relationships that are entirely transactional. I do not, for example, have a deep connection most of the people who take my money…
A couple weeks ago, I was in a flower shop, buying flowers for myself so that others would think someone loved me. I was browsing, trying to remember what my favorite color was, when a lady entered in a perfect fury. She was seething, livid, beside herself with rage because the arrangement she had received…
‘Tis the season to squeeze as much money out of your customers as humanly possible! I know that’s not the standard phrase – it’s ‘tis the season to eat jelly,’ in case you were wondering – but the desire to trick people into paying us is always hiding just under the surface. You can hear…
Recently a friend of mine treated himself and his wife to a new mattress, which is the most boring way to begin an article that I can think of. Dinner? No. A romantic vacation? No. How about shopping for a way to more comfortably be unconscious? Woo-hoo! Oh, and by the way, I’m not saying…
Recently a good friend of mine (which means I have at least two good friends, or else I would have said ‘recently the good friend I have’) chose not to run for a leadership position in an association she belongs to. She decided not to run because there were two other candidates interested in the…
Normally I write about generational issues each month; however, I had an interesting customer service experience this past week I simply had to share. No matter the job title or industry, we’re all in some sort of customer experience field. Every handshake, every business deal, and every conference call is an interaction which leaves an…
Wow! Today is an awesome day to have no idea what I was going to write until 10 minutes ago. When I woke up this morning I had absolutely no useful thoughts. I couldn’t even decide what I wanted to eat for breakfast; I merely stared at my various boxes of cereal, trying to remember…
I worked for seven years as a waiter, through high school and college. I did this because it was the best money I knew how to make that didn’t involve selling drugs. And for the most part I liked it, even though I once worked at a breakfast place and always always came up smelling…
Let’s face it – customers are annoying. They’re constantly asking for things, and they touch everything – and they’re no telling if they washed their hands the last time they went to the bathroom. Customers are gross. They should be illegal.
So I fly a lot, and most of it is with Delta. Part of that is because I’ve never had any problem with them, but part of it is because I live in the kind of sprawling megalopolis where the airport offers a choice of…wait for it…two airlines, and the other one is United, and…