I feel like I’ve been slacking a little bit on my regular posts. I do have a number of additional bird entries to make, but figured I would step back and summarize some observations that I have made over the last week or so. Hopefully, this will hold you over until I get through the pending feathered posts.
For starters, I was the recipient of outstanding service at a downtown establishment last week. Around 9:00am, a coworker and I had a serious craving for some dark chocolate. Typically this is a result of a need to relieve some work stress – nothing like taking a stroll downtown to clear the head and come up with a new approach to a vexing problem. Our destination was a tiny little confectionary shop called the Nut House nestled in between the towering skyscrapers of Peoria IL (okay, if you are familiar with Peoria, you just laughed). So off we went to ruin our teeth. Disappointment soon took over as the shop did not open until 9:30 – Denied! Like kids we were gawking in the window at the chocolate we desired. A lady’s voice startled us from behind and asked if we were looking for something. I recognized her immediately (guilty of chocolate addiction) as the store owner. We mentioned we just came down for some candy, but noticed we were early. Having sat out on Black Fridays before, I’ve been conditioned to be at the mercy of posted hours so I was totally shocked with her response.
She stated she was there to turn on the Icee machine, but she would be more than happy to let us in to get our chocolate. This transaction probably cost her 10 minutes out of her busy day for a little over $4 of sales. But guess what… for 10 minutes of her time she won my business from that point on. For all I know she is in partnership with my dentist, but one thing is for sure… she has business sense.
The second observation also caused me to wear a smile for a few minutes as well. I was heading out to a vendor luncheon (a downside of having investment decision rights) to validate the progress on some commitments we had made and slightly stressed by the contact’s driving habits – it was obvious he was from Chicago because his gas pedal was binary which is totally unnecessary in Peoria now that the 2 car length ramps on to 74 have all been corrected. While trying to keep from a whiplash, I looked toward the crossing lanes and noticed a yellow school bus traveling by. I was curious as to why there would be a school bus out at 11:00am midweek. Visually panning up to the bus windows, I see a bunch of white hair staring out – the bus was completely full of elderly people with their faces pressed on the glass with excited looks on their faces. I have no idea what the reason for this was, but two things immediately popped into my head. The first was how great it was that these individuals could have the opportunity to go out and experience something (hopefully they were not heading to the doctors – generally not fun – but their expressions looked a little to jovial for that type of event)… and secondly, what an excellent use of resources – those buses generally just sit in a parking lot waiting for the end of the day. They could provide short distance group transports instead (having spent a significant number of years on big yellow, I can confirm that those seats are not the most comfortable) and have a win win for customer and school district.
And lastly, I had a surrogate observer today (my wife) that witnessed a bizarre visual. Apparently she was on her way home from work today when she turned off a pretty busy county highway and spotted a vehicle pulled to the side a few hundred feet ahead (clearly visible from the highway). As she approached the scene, she noticed a woman outside her vehicle on the street side talking on the cell phone. Someone who actually stopped driving to make a cell phone call? … as it turns out, maybe not. As my wife drove closer, she noticed a small kid by the back rear tire (street side) in the unmistakable pose of “relief”. There the kid stood with his pants down to his ankles and producing quite a stream on the rear tire. The lady appeared to be taking this much to calmly which would indicate to me that this wasn’t something new or surprising to her – odd since a) she was less than a mile from a filling station and b) in the country so probably another 200 feet would have put her in the trees. Nope – little Stevie has to peepee NOW! – I offered up that the kid was not getting the proper attention because his mom was on the cell phone so he took it upon himself to produce some attention — my wife dismissed this because she didn’t seem to care and it was going on for awhile.
So there you have it – a business wiz, a bus full of depends and a fountain of youth … birds don’t seem that bad now do they hehehehe.
