How many times have you looked for something in several stores only to be told everywhere the they don't carry it or they don't do special orders. How about the department store that sells riding lawn mowers, but if you need parts for one, it's a special order, you pay extra for shipping, and you still have to return to the store to pick it up?
That particular department store is in trouble financially. Wonder why?
I think some business owners really understand customer service, but too many others do not. Back in 1972 in my Air Force career, I got assigned to a radar site near the town of Max, North Dakota, some fifteen miles south of the city of Minot and about thirty miles south of Minot Air Force Base. Early in my tour, I had to go up to the big base for some sort of business and another fellow, one Harvey Broderson, went along to take care of one thing or another. By the time we both were done doing whatever it was we had to do, it was nearly three o'clock, so on the way home, we decided to stop for a beer rather than rush back to our work centers. It was during that stop that I learned what true customer service really is.
Harvey and I were both in uniform as we entered the darkened and empty Alley Cat (it was the bar in a bowling alley, but separated from the lanes by large plate glass windows) and perched on bar stools. I asked for an Old Style lager, a beer I knew to be relatively local and one that I'd liked during an earlier tour at a different base in North Dakota. The bartender told me they didn't carry it, so I ordered something else. We probably were on our second beer when a lady entered the bar, chatted with the bartender as if they knew each other, and asked for a six pack of Old Style. The bartender reached into the off-sale display and brought out what the customer had asked for.
I said something to the effect that I thought they didn't have Old Style and the bartender explained that they carried it by the six pack for off-sale, but there was no demand for it on-sale. I remember telling her they ought to get it on-sale because that was what I drank. At that point, the other customer reached into her bag, twisted a can of Old Style out of it's plastic collar and handed it to me with a smile. I was embarrassed a little and tried to refuse it, but she insisted, so I had an Old Style beer before I went home.
Fast forward to later that summer. I'd joined a town softball team and after a game, we'd all gone to the Alley Cat for a beer. We'd pulled two big tables together so we could all sit together and ordered the first round. Halfway through that first beer, the fellow that owned the whole place came over to me and said, "Aren't you McNamara? I've got your beer on the bar now."
I looked at him in astonishment. Unasked questions raced through my head, "How'd he know my name? How'd he know I liked Old Style beer?", but in reality I probably said something like, "You're kidding. Really? Great! I'll have one."
It turned out that the bartender had mentioned that an Air Force Sergeant named McNamara (our uniforms had name tags) had said they ought to sell Old Style on the bar, and the owner, one Larry Bertsch, had a pretty good idea what customer service was all about. I became a regular customer to the point that all I had to do was ask for a beer and every bartender knew it was Old Style. Lest this appear to be just a coincidence, there was another regular customer, a pretty good bowler who stopped in just about every night, for whom Larry carried a small stock of a beer named Special Export.
That, dear reader, is what customer service is all about. Larry could have shrugged it off and said that the Sergeant would just have to drink what they already carried, but he went the extra mile and earned a customer for several years and a believer for decades. I was stationed there for two years and seven months until December 25th, 1974 and I still remember his name some thirty seven years later.
Fast forward to the next summer. I'd joined a local bowling team and at the end of the season, one of my teammates invited us all with our ladies to his cottage on a small lake nearby. My date and I got there and several of my teammates were outside next to the grill that was being fired up to cook some ribs. The lady of the house came out to join us and when we saw each other, we both started to laugh - she was the same lady who'd given me an Old Style out of her six-pack the year before.
Fast forward to December 1974. My bowling and softball team mates decided to get together at the Alley Cat one last time to say goodbye and have one (or several) last beers to celebrate friendship. Larry had gone to the local Dunkin' Donut franchise and ordered a large doughnut, nearly a yard in diameter, with the words Good Luck Mac written on the top in frosting. Sometime that evening he came up, put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Mac, I've got a whole bunch of Old Style stock you need to drink up before you go." Damned if I didn't try.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, April 18, 2011
Jeep With a Fringe on Top
Many, many years before the spring of 2011 when I am writing this, my wife and I and our two children were stationed at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi. As an airman with three stripes and only about four years in the service, we had to make do on a pretty limited income, so we lived in a rented trailer that measured about 10" in width and 50' in length that was in a trailer park just off Beach Boulevard.
Many of our neighbors were also servicemen and women, but our nearest neighbors were two young women who were students at a nearby college. Their mother was a (or the) manager of of a large hotel just down Beach Boulevard a ways and we became accustomed to seeing her Lincoln Continental with the suicide rear doors parked on the grass behind our place whenever she'd stop and visit her daughters.
The autumn of 1965 was dismal, wet and cold, a period that seemed to begin with the dangerous Hurricane Betsy in September and that would last well through winter. One nasty, cold evening as were were watching our B&W television in the corner of the living room, I heard what sounded like a car spinning tires in a snow bank or on ice. Curious person that I am, I went outside to see what could be making such a noise so uncommon in southern Mississippi.
Behind my trailer, on the grassy patch in front of our neighbors' trailer, sat the mother's elegant sedan, it's rear wheels furiously spinning themselves deeper and deeper into the sandy soil. The two girls and I tried to help by pushing, but that car was too deeply mired. Finally, the mother got out and disdainfully picking her way out of the muddy lawn, announced that she'd have the Jeep sent out from the hotel to pull her car out of the mud.
I went back into my trailer and sat back to watch TV with my wife and children. Perhaps half an hour later, I heard more tires spinning, so I went back outside to watch. There, chained to the rear of that huge Lincoln was a Jeep, not just any Jeep, mind you, but a pretty blue jeep with no sides, but a blue canvas top with fringe around all three exposed sides. A Jeep with a fringe on top. The kind used to take hotel guests to the golf course or down to the gulf.
The driver had backed up up to the Lincoln and hooked some sort of tow chain to the undercarriage of the big car, getting himself muddied in the process. He sat in the Jeep, spinning the rear tires furiously on the pavement, the front end of the jeep bouncing up and down in the futile effort of pulling the Lincoln. I watched, bemused for a while, then offered a suggestion or two.
"Why don't you put the Jeep in four-wheel drive, low range, and turn the it around to pull from the front?"
The driver looked at me as if I'd spoken a foreign language, "How do you put it in four wheel drive?"
Then I realized that this guy was just a hotel driver, not a good-old boy with a fancy Jeep, so I wordlessly unhooked the chain, motioned him out of the Jeep, got in, turned it around, set the transmission, and told him to hook up the chain. He crawled back in the mud, hooked the end of the chain the the frame of the Jeep, then crawled back out. I put the shifter in reverse and slowly let out the clutch until the chain tightened. The tires tried to bite on the wet pavement, then let loose, so I pushed the clutch back in. I told the girls' mother to get back in the car and when she felt the car move, to give it some gas until it stopped moving, then to hit the brake and hold the car in place, until she felt it jerk and move some more.
Slowly, jerking the big car little by little, we got it back up on the pavement. They thought I'd performed a miracle, but all I'd really done was use that Jeep the way it was built to be used, no matter that it was a pretty blue Jeep with a fringe on top.
Many of our neighbors were also servicemen and women, but our nearest neighbors were two young women who were students at a nearby college. Their mother was a (or the) manager of of a large hotel just down Beach Boulevard a ways and we became accustomed to seeing her Lincoln Continental with the suicide rear doors parked on the grass behind our place whenever she'd stop and visit her daughters.
The autumn of 1965 was dismal, wet and cold, a period that seemed to begin with the dangerous Hurricane Betsy in September and that would last well through winter. One nasty, cold evening as were were watching our B&W television in the corner of the living room, I heard what sounded like a car spinning tires in a snow bank or on ice. Curious person that I am, I went outside to see what could be making such a noise so uncommon in southern Mississippi.
Behind my trailer, on the grassy patch in front of our neighbors' trailer, sat the mother's elegant sedan, it's rear wheels furiously spinning themselves deeper and deeper into the sandy soil. The two girls and I tried to help by pushing, but that car was too deeply mired. Finally, the mother got out and disdainfully picking her way out of the muddy lawn, announced that she'd have the Jeep sent out from the hotel to pull her car out of the mud.
I went back into my trailer and sat back to watch TV with my wife and children. Perhaps half an hour later, I heard more tires spinning, so I went back outside to watch. There, chained to the rear of that huge Lincoln was a Jeep, not just any Jeep, mind you, but a pretty blue jeep with no sides, but a blue canvas top with fringe around all three exposed sides. A Jeep with a fringe on top. The kind used to take hotel guests to the golf course or down to the gulf.
The driver had backed up up to the Lincoln and hooked some sort of tow chain to the undercarriage of the big car, getting himself muddied in the process. He sat in the Jeep, spinning the rear tires furiously on the pavement, the front end of the jeep bouncing up and down in the futile effort of pulling the Lincoln. I watched, bemused for a while, then offered a suggestion or two.
"Why don't you put the Jeep in four-wheel drive, low range, and turn the it around to pull from the front?"
The driver looked at me as if I'd spoken a foreign language, "How do you put it in four wheel drive?"
Then I realized that this guy was just a hotel driver, not a good-old boy with a fancy Jeep, so I wordlessly unhooked the chain, motioned him out of the Jeep, got in, turned it around, set the transmission, and told him to hook up the chain. He crawled back in the mud, hooked the end of the chain the the frame of the Jeep, then crawled back out. I put the shifter in reverse and slowly let out the clutch until the chain tightened. The tires tried to bite on the wet pavement, then let loose, so I pushed the clutch back in. I told the girls' mother to get back in the car and when she felt the car move, to give it some gas until it stopped moving, then to hit the brake and hold the car in place, until she felt it jerk and move some more.
Slowly, jerking the big car little by little, we got it back up on the pavement. They thought I'd performed a miracle, but all I'd really done was use that Jeep the way it was built to be used, no matter that it was a pretty blue Jeep with a fringe on top.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Thirty Years
A number of years ago, nearly thirty by my count, I was the First Sergeant of a small USAF combat radar unit home based in Arizona. The unit mission was to provide radar service wherever the need should arise. We trained in the desert of Arizona and the mountains of Nevada. During my time in the early 1980's, we deployed to Saudi Arabia twice during the Iraq-Iran war, maintaining and operating tactical radar on top of a small hill overlooking the Arabian Gulf.
It was a neat little unit, one in which the members felt confidence in each other, whether or not they were equal in rank. As one of the senior NCO's, I had many opportunities to talk with the people in the unit on a person-to-person basis. Part of my job was to identify rising problems before they became issues and to do that, I tried to know the folks in the unit, from the Commander on down to the lowliest Airman straight out of technical school. The door to my office was open to all at any time, unless of course, there was someone else in there. I've counseled young officers, older sergeants, and airmen on all sorts of difficulties they might have or I perceived them as having.
At times, folks would just drop in to BS, tell a story or a joke, or ask for some help. One day, out of the blue, an airman said that he had some books about the Air Force if I was interested. I was and told him so, and the next day he dropped two books on my desk. That night, I began going through them, sitting in a recliner in front of a bookcase in my home office. Over the next few weeks, when I had a spare moment, I'd pull one of those books out of the bookcase for some pleasurable reading.
Many of the men are but featureless faces now with the exception of those with whom I worked most closely. Of particular clarity are the faces of the Commanders I worked for, Majors Bowen and Bakonyi, a senior NCO named Bill Baker, three NCO's in the radar shop, Cliff Sucher, Al Ashford and Dennis Wuebker, and the fellow who took over as First Sergeant when I left, MSgt Tom (Slick) Seidel.
Now, there are people with whom I have come into contact on the Internet who have identified themselves as having been in my unit. Just this past week, two fellows who were in the unit caught up to me on Facebook. In the past year, I've swapped notes with two others and for well over a year, I've been reading messages (responding now and again) of one Jeff Turkel who identified himself to me, but I honestly could not place him. I remember he came to us from the fire department, but I could not have picked him out of a crowd of two.
The other morning, about 5 AM, I awoke with a start. Jeff Turkel. Those books. After getting the coffee going and my newspaper, I went into my office and started going through my bookcases. I found what I thought I would. One book, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, and the other, The US War Machine, both with the name Jeff Turkel inside the cover.
For 30 years I've been harboring borrowed books, perhaps referring to them from time to time in my research, and even occasionally noting that there was a name there, but not remembering who he was.
I'll send Jeff a link to this and promise to return his books as soon as I've finished reading them.
It was a neat little unit, one in which the members felt confidence in each other, whether or not they were equal in rank. As one of the senior NCO's, I had many opportunities to talk with the people in the unit on a person-to-person basis. Part of my job was to identify rising problems before they became issues and to do that, I tried to know the folks in the unit, from the Commander on down to the lowliest Airman straight out of technical school. The door to my office was open to all at any time, unless of course, there was someone else in there. I've counseled young officers, older sergeants, and airmen on all sorts of difficulties they might have or I perceived them as having.
At times, folks would just drop in to BS, tell a story or a joke, or ask for some help. One day, out of the blue, an airman said that he had some books about the Air Force if I was interested. I was and told him so, and the next day he dropped two books on my desk. That night, I began going through them, sitting in a recliner in front of a bookcase in my home office. Over the next few weeks, when I had a spare moment, I'd pull one of those books out of the bookcase for some pleasurable reading.
Many of the men are but featureless faces now with the exception of those with whom I worked most closely. Of particular clarity are the faces of the Commanders I worked for, Majors Bowen and Bakonyi, a senior NCO named Bill Baker, three NCO's in the radar shop, Cliff Sucher, Al Ashford and Dennis Wuebker, and the fellow who took over as First Sergeant when I left, MSgt Tom (Slick) Seidel.
Now, there are people with whom I have come into contact on the Internet who have identified themselves as having been in my unit. Just this past week, two fellows who were in the unit caught up to me on Facebook. In the past year, I've swapped notes with two others and for well over a year, I've been reading messages (responding now and again) of one Jeff Turkel who identified himself to me, but I honestly could not place him. I remember he came to us from the fire department, but I could not have picked him out of a crowd of two.
The other morning, about 5 AM, I awoke with a start. Jeff Turkel. Those books. After getting the coffee going and my newspaper, I went into my office and started going through my bookcases. I found what I thought I would. One book, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, and the other, The US War Machine, both with the name Jeff Turkel inside the cover.
For 30 years I've been harboring borrowed books, perhaps referring to them from time to time in my research, and even occasionally noting that there was a name there, but not remembering who he was.
I'll send Jeff a link to this and promise to return his books as soon as I've finished reading them.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The Exodus
CHAPTER ONE
Friday the 13th - Massacre
Before you read the story, you must first know how it ended, with a bang. Friday the 13th of December, began like most others days for the division, but before it was over, fully two thirds of all division employees would be out of work, half of the total work force fired less than two weeks before Christmas. That by a CEO who had once said he'd never had a lay off and did not anticipate ever having one. Of course, by saying it, he clearly overlooked the fact that less than a year earlier he had directed the lay off of an entire division in Georgia.
The week had started ominously. A week earlier, all the Quality Assurance travel crews had been called in, ostensibly to go through an equipment inventory, but on Tuesday, as they trickled in from various cities across the country, they had each been fired and given an airline ticket back home.
On Wednesday, a rumor had flown through the factory that half of the division would soon be history, but nothing was confirmed. After all, nobody with any heart at all would lay off good workers just before Christmas. In case there is any question about these workers being good, remember that the division had already gone through two layoffs, so those remaining have to be considered good workers, or they'd have gone in earlier waves. Wouldn't they? That, plus the fact that the fiscal year had been the best year ever for the corporation and our division had provided in excess of thirty percent of corporate earnings.
With the firing of the inspectors and now a rumor that more were to go, Nathan Ballou panicked. Instead of going home precisely at quitting time as he would normally, he dashed wide-eyed into the center and dragged Dan Wakefield into Dave Scudamore's office, apparently expecting Scudamore could lay to rest all rumors and reassure him that his job was safe for all eternity. But Scudamore had been able only to say that he had not been told of any plans to lay off more workers. Nathan was having trouble breathing and seemed on the verge of major panic, so Scudamore and Wakefield stayed with him, hoping to calm him down enough so that he wouldn't have a seizure on his way home. After all, Nathan was easily the least stable person in the division. He was also the fellow who took sick leave every time he broke a finger nail or had his teeth cleaned, so there was good reason to worry about his mental health.
Friday ended early for QA. Around three in the afternoon, Dave Scudamore stuck his head in the office and said something about a meeting at three o'clock. I looked at my watch and said we'd better hurry because it was already three. He had already turned to go, but paused, turned back, and said that the meeting was for Maxi only, not me. Maxi looked at me and then followed Scudamore. As she reached the railing outside our office, she turned and, with a little smile, told me she had been right all along, that she'd go before I did.
I watched them leave and knew she was right. Then it hit me that once again, the company had failed to recognize its own chain of command. As Maxi's supervisor, I should have been the one to let her know officially, not some personnel weenie.
A few minutes later, Dan Wakefield came into my office wanting to know if I knew what was happening, "What's up? You and I are the only one's left."
Up until he said that I didn't realize what exactly was happening. I figured Maxi and a few others would go, but the massacre was wide-spread. Several had been laid off that morning in the manufacturing department and now Shelley Paonne, Nathan Ballou, Josh Berry and Dave Machievski were being axed from the center and losses in the hen house included Denise Macieira, Tanya May, and the twins. We lost all of our data entry people, all but one of the program supervisors and my right arm had disappeared as well.
Dan and I stood at the railing overlooking the factory contemplating our navels and the workers swarming over yet another of the other division's product on the floor below. Abbey Merrick was walking up through the factory, her eyes red from crying. She must have been told something or her imagination was very real.
Then I knew. Maxi walked up through the factory carrying two flattened cardboard packing cartons, looking as if she were about to cry, but too damned stubborn to actually let any tears flow. Maxi herself told me that she and ten others were gone, to leave that afternoon. As if to punctuate what she was saying to me, she said that they had already taken her company security badge and her office key. The cardboard cartons were to load her personal belongings. So the Quality Assurance and Customer Service Manager was told by his employee that she had been let go by the division hierarchy. I never received even so much as a briefing as to why it happened, much less an apology for completely ignoring normal guidelines. In fact, a week later I was moved out of my office into a cubicle precisely the same width as my desk and deeper than the computer wing on my desk by about two inches. I decided then and there that I would actively pursue employment in other directions. I decided that I probably would be treated like that forever and there was absolutely nothing that could be done to change the company's way of doing things.
CHAPTER ONE
Friday the 13th - Massacre
Before you read the story, you must first know how it ended, with a bang. Friday the 13th of December, began like most others days for the division, but before it was over, fully two thirds of all division employees would be out of work, half of the total work force fired less than two weeks before Christmas. That by a CEO who had once said he'd never had a lay off and did not anticipate ever having one. Of course, by saying it, he clearly overlooked the fact that less than a year earlier he had directed the lay off of an entire division in Georgia.
The week had started ominously. A week earlier, all the Quality Assurance travel crews had been called in, ostensibly to go through an equipment inventory, but on Tuesday, as they trickled in from various cities across the country, they had each been fired and given an airline ticket back home.
On Wednesday, a rumor had flown through the factory that half of the division would soon be history, but nothing was confirmed. After all, nobody with any heart at all would lay off good workers just before Christmas. In case there is any question about these workers being good, remember that the division had already gone through two layoffs, so those remaining have to be considered good workers, or they'd have gone in earlier waves. Wouldn't they? That, plus the fact that the fiscal year had been the best year ever for the corporation and our division had provided in excess of thirty percent of corporate earnings.
With the firing of the inspectors and now a rumor that more were to go, Nathan Ballou panicked. Instead of going home precisely at quitting time as he would normally, he dashed wide-eyed into the center and dragged Dan Wakefield into Dave Scudamore's office, apparently expecting Scudamore could lay to rest all rumors and reassure him that his job was safe for all eternity. But Scudamore had been able only to say that he had not been told of any plans to lay off more workers. Nathan was having trouble breathing and seemed on the verge of major panic, so Scudamore and Wakefield stayed with him, hoping to calm him down enough so that he wouldn't have a seizure on his way home. After all, Nathan was easily the least stable person in the division. He was also the fellow who took sick leave every time he broke a finger nail or had his teeth cleaned, so there was good reason to worry about his mental health.
Friday ended early for QA. Around three in the afternoon, Dave Scudamore stuck his head in the office and said something about a meeting at three o'clock. I looked at my watch and said we'd better hurry because it was already three. He had already turned to go, but paused, turned back, and said that the meeting was for Maxi only, not me. Maxi looked at me and then followed Scudamore. As she reached the railing outside our office, she turned and, with a little smile, told me she had been right all along, that she'd go before I did.
I watched them leave and knew she was right. Then it hit me that once again, the company had failed to recognize its own chain of command. As Maxi's supervisor, I should have been the one to let her know officially, not some personnel weenie.
A few minutes later, Dan Wakefield came into my office wanting to know if I knew what was happening, "What's up? You and I are the only one's left."
Up until he said that I didn't realize what exactly was happening. I figured Maxi and a few others would go, but the massacre was wide-spread. Several had been laid off that morning in the manufacturing department and now Shelley Paonne, Nathan Ballou, Josh Berry and Dave Machievski were being axed from the center and losses in the hen house included Denise Macieira, Tanya May, and the twins. We lost all of our data entry people, all but one of the program supervisors and my right arm had disappeared as well.
Dan and I stood at the railing overlooking the factory contemplating our navels and the workers swarming over yet another of the other division's product on the floor below. Abbey Merrick was walking up through the factory, her eyes red from crying. She must have been told something or her imagination was very real.
Then I knew. Maxi walked up through the factory carrying two flattened cardboard packing cartons, looking as if she were about to cry, but too damned stubborn to actually let any tears flow. Maxi herself told me that she and ten others were gone, to leave that afternoon. As if to punctuate what she was saying to me, she said that they had already taken her company security badge and her office key. The cardboard cartons were to load her personal belongings. So the Quality Assurance and Customer Service Manager was told by his employee that she had been let go by the division hierarchy. I never received even so much as a briefing as to why it happened, much less an apology for completely ignoring normal guidelines. In fact, a week later I was moved out of my office into a cubicle precisely the same width as my desk and deeper than the computer wing on my desk by about two inches. I decided then and there that I would actively pursue employment in other directions. I decided that I probably would be treated like that forever and there was absolutely nothing that could be done to change the company's way of doing things.
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