For All Who Work With Rude Customers

This was sent to me by a client this morning. Now I don't believe in having rude customers, but for those businesses that have yet to sign up to operate with Positive Expectancy in their business and life, then this may look like poetic justice.

Lindy




For all Employees Who Work With Rude Customers

An award should go to the Virgin Airlines gate attendant in Sydney some months ago for being smart and funny, while making her point, when confronted with a passenger who probably deserved to fly as cargo. A crowded Virgin flight was cancelled after Virgin's 767s had been
withdrawn from service. A single attendant was re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travellers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it HAS to be FIRST CLASS".

The attendant replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these people first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?" Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone: "May I have your attention please, may I have your attention please," she began - her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal.

"We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."

With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the Virgin attendant, gritted his teeth and said, "F... You!"

Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry sir, but you'll have to fly QANTAS for that service."

What I Choose, Is What I Am.

 
This week has turned into my week for remembering that Positive Expectancy as a way of operating in business and life is not a univeral point of view. Not yet anyway! It occurs to me that it is also another aspect that fits, hand-in-glove, with understanding that we create our own reality. That's an unpopular idea with many people, I realize. It is however, the only position that gives one control over our own outcomes and empowers us to move forward, no matter what happens. Far more flexible (and therefore useful) than playing "victim" and reducing our responses to cowering and moaning when things don't go the way we prefer.

I've a quotation that I favour, so much in fact that I have it printed and posted in my office. It has no attribution for author and I have been unable to find a source for it so far. In any case, it is this:

My position in life
is equal to the sum
of all the decisions
I have made,
Or allowed
others
to make for me.

What I choose
is what I am.