Happy Sunday Everyone,
My gym has gone to checking in via computer. You plug your member number in and away you go, but they still have someone sitting behind the desk. I’m always taken back by how unfriendly the people at the front desk are, especially this guy I call “the putz”. I thought about writing about this guy before but figured it was a little small of me, after Friday’s check in, I just can’t help myself. Two months ago, I was walking out, and said “have a great day”, the guy flat our ignored me, just kept going on his phone. I stopped, came back, and said “can you hear me, it’s a common courtesy when someone says something to you, you say something back”. He just looked at me mumbled “sorry”. Since that day, nothing has improved, I walked in on Friday, checked in, ignored, he was talking to his buddy next to him about the cost of apartments, too busy to look up at any customer/client walking in the door.
I don’t really care about the putz. Where it does become a learnable moment is reflecting on making sure you don’t have any putz’s working for you, or with you. Most importantly, don’t be the putz. I talk to a 1000 people a year about a mortgage, it’s easy to forget those people talk to one, two, or three people about it. It’s easy to forget someone internally is calling me about a problem, a question, whatever. How I choose to respond impacts how they feel, and how they feel determines if they want to be a part of our team. We have to be aware of how we are making our internal and external clients feel by how we communicate with them. A players take this responsibility seriously. I think we underestimate the art of making people feel cared for in business. It’s something that should be discussed daily.
Short and simple but important (from my perspective).