Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
I wanted to share this true story about how life’s twists and turns can never be anticipated and how they may put you in positions where you really never imagined you would be.
In 1993 I was working for a legal publisher who provided print subscription services to professionals such as accountants, lawyers, and executives. One of my customers was a former senior executive with a well-known multi-national company, who had retired but still stayed in touch with the market. Accordingly, he subscribed to various publications from my company.
My client contacted our office to obtain information on several other publications and this request was forwarded to me to address his needs. Somehow this request fell through the cracks and I did not reply to him for several days which led him to write quite a scathing letter to my manager criticising my poor customer service. Of course I was then chastised, rightly, by my Manager and told to send the gentleman a letter of apology, which I did promptly. This was not the end of the matter however.
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My manager received a phone call from my client who was now even more upset because although I had sent a typed apology letter, I had committed the cardinal sin of writing his name and address in handwriting on the envelope! He contended that this was totally unprofessional and demanded that I attend his home office to offer yet another, personal, apology.
I in due course attended my client’s home office and received the appropriate dressing-down together with a lecture about declining professional standards and the need for me to pick up my act if I wanted to retain him as a customer. Whilst I did not argue his points, I felt that he had overreacted and had failed to put the whole incident in context. I had serviced him well previously and he had been getting very good value from my company’s products but all he could see was a handwritten envelope reflecting declining professional standards.
It seemed to me after my interactions with my client that this man had little to do in retirement other than to find fault with generations following and to hold fast to false standards that had nothing to do with providing good service. And in doing so, he was taking a “holier than thou” attitude and being quite obnoxious. Yet again though, the story didn’t end there.
Six years later in 1999 I found myself in hospital for an operation to remove my spleen after a period of chemotherapy treatment for cancer. In a bed within the ward of six patients there was a man who was unfortunately suffering bowel cancer. He was in some distress during my stay, having had I believe chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The effects of this was that in his current recovery mode, he had no control over his bowels and at various times night and day he would soil his bed and with great embarrassment have to call the nurses yet again to clean him up and change his bed linen.
Yes, you guessed it; this person was my former client! Although I felt very bad for my client and was sympathetic to his circumstances given what I was going through, I couldn’t help but ponder his situation. Six years earlier one of the most important things that this man was concerned with was a handwritten address on an envelope and here he was having to be looked after like a baby, soiling his pants and bed a number of times a day.
There may not be any real point in this story other than that life throws up curve balls regularly, but for me I was poignantly reminded of the phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff”.
