Locking Up the Ice: A Tale of Grumpiness & Customer Alienation
Living in a small community means you often know things about strangers’ lives: who he’s related to, where she works, who her kids hang out with, where else he has worked, and a myriad other odd details. At the same time, you might not really know that person – around here people say, “I know of him.”
My family knew of one man who was a Dollar General cashier. He had another job as well. All four of us had a positive impression of him. He was always friendly and particularly polite. We even know that he lives on our street because we see his truck at a house about a mile away from ours. When we heard that he was fired from his second job for being rude, we were really surprised. We felt it was probably unfair. After awhile, he didn’t work at the Dollar General anymore, but showed up in the convenient store across the street. Again, we felt bad for the guy. He was clearly a hard worker, and willing to do whatever he needed to in order to have a job. Third shift in a convenient store can be a tough gig.
Then, one night, we were headed out of town and needed a bag of ice. We stopped at the store and the friendly cashier was working.
image courtesy of JorgeBRAZIL, via flickr.com
There was a group of teenage boys in line in front of my husband, who really just needed the key to the ice chest (really? people steal ice? geez.). My husband asked for the key. The nice man we thought so well of suddenly turned rude. He refused to give my husband the key, and acted like we were going to steal the ice.
Maybe he was afraid he would get in trouble for just handing over the key. Maybe he was worried about the group of teenagers stealing something. Regardless, he didn’t have to be rude. But he was. It ended up taking over 15 minutes for us to buy a $2 bag of ice, and we felt like suspects or something.
That one interaction changed everything we thought about this person. Now instead of saying “the nice cashier who lives down the street,” we say “that weird guy who used to work at the Dollar Store.” After hundreds of positive encounters, this ONE ugly one wiped away our good feelings toward this man. It didn’t have anything to do with customer service, although it was a bad experience on that level, too. What I’m talking about is much more personal.
Now when we run into this guy, or he is our cashier, we feel wary. We don’t know what to expect. Will he be nice? Will he imply we are thieves? How is he feeling that day?
It amazes me that one bad experience can outweigh hundreds of good ones. But, since the night we bought ice, I’ve observed the same sort of thing with other people – you think you have a comfortable – if shallow – relationship with them, then all of a sudden, things aren’t so comfortable.
As the owner of a small business, I’m finding an especially important lesson in these observations. Everyone has “off” days when we are maybe snippier than we realize. It’s scary to think that on one of those not-so-fabulous days I might unwittingly change how a long-term client views me and my business. Some client relationships take months or even years to build, and while I hope that after that much time, both parties would be a little more lenient with judgement, you never know.
Of course, I work hard to make sure my relationships with clients go a little deeper than my relationships with cashiers who work at stores nearby. But in one way it doesn’t really matter. A bad interaction can color the relationship, making it so that either party is looking for the negatives – and that is bad for a service provider who bases her prices partly on providing outstanding overall service.
I’m not sure there is a way to guard against coming across rougher than you intend to once in a while. The best we can do is try to understand when someone else does so in the hopes others will do the same for us. I’m going to try to think of the “weird guy” as a “nice guy” again, and just imagine that he was having a bad day and that he didn’t really think we would steal the ice.
Have you ever had one incident change the nature of a sales or customer oriented relationship?
Why It’s OK If Your Goals & Priorities Don’t Line Up
Yesterday, I wrote out some lists of things that are important. It’s what I do when I’m feeling confused and conflicted and my husband isn’t around to listen. First, I listed the things and people that are most important in my life, then I listed the things I want to accomplish. After it was all typed out, I re-read it several times.
You know how your goals and priorities are supposed to “match up”? How, if you want to be successful in life, you are supposed to make sure you work toward your goals everyday (thereby making them priorities)? Well, mine don’t really match at all. And that’s okay.
It’s okay because my top three priorities are relationships. My husband, my children, and the rest of my family will always be more important than anything else. None of my goals involve other people – they are, after all, personal goals. I can’t set goals for anyone but me.
By making relationships your top priority, you end up feeling conflicted. You can’t “work on” your relationships everyday, at least not in the make-a-list-check-everything-off-by-the-end-of-the-day kind of way. Of course you can make sure to say “I love you” or to kiss your kids each day, but those are things that most of us do the way that we brush our teeth. Maintaining our important relationships is usually a built-in part of everyday and doesn’t require the kind of carefully planned work reaching a goal might.
It would be pretty weird to map out a week-by-week, month-by-month plan for making sure your children have happy lives (a priority), but that is exactly what you do if you want to run a marathon (a goal). Priorities and goals are different, and they don’t have to match up.
The real revelation that hit me while re-reading my lists yesterday is that sometimes priorities actually hinder the progress towards reaching a goal. For the last couple of months, my grandfather was gravely ill, and needed someone with him all the time. I live the closest, and have the most flexible work schedule, so spent quite a bit of time with him. Some of that time I normally would have spent running because eventually I WILL be able to run 13.1 miles. (It was also time I would have spent cleaning, but that is a different story altogether.)
I can resume running any time. Yes, I will have lost endurance, and it will take (even) longer to reach my goal, but so what? I can still do it. There will not be more time to spend with my grandfather. I’m glad that I put most of my goals on hold for a couple of months.
Have you ever experienced a conflict between your priorities and goals? Which one was most important for you?
