Love what you do

Have you ever experienced bad customer service, or dealt with someone who is so miserable that you feel like telling them to find a new job?

We have all experienced those situations. Everyone has a bad day, but we have all experienced those who are just nasty, who clearly should not be providing customer service.

And we have experienced the flip side, receiving great service from a friendly person, or even a pleasant interaction with someone who perhaps can’t even help us but does their best.

In my two days of travel to get to Europe, I experienced quite a few wonderful interactions from people who clearly like what they do. That was my conclusion – they love what they do. The people who are so awful to deal with clearly do not enjoy what they. They really should find a new job.

In two days in which I was frustrated a few times by glitches in a travel schedule, including being bumped off a flight and getting stranded overnight, I experienced:

• a customer service agent for the airline who was so friendly she was almost apologetic, and who remembered me the next day.
• a front desk manager who was extremely accommodating of me when I called hoping for a room. He was also very friendly and I witnessed him looking after other people in an equally accommodating way (in other words, it wasn’t just me, in any of these examples).
• a flight attendant who clearly loved what he did. He developed a banter with his customers, he let a little girl help him hand out chocolates (great way to keep a youngster entertained on a six-plus-hour overseas flight) and he dealt with a complaint from a cranky customer in a respectful but firm way.
• a clerk who had been helping two customers with their phones for so long that she finally asked them if she could help me because I had been waiting so long.

Maybe I was extra sensitive to being looked after so well, because travel can be frustrating at the best of times. But I really do believe that enjoying what you do makes such a difference in your every day dealings with others that it stands out when you are interacting with people.

Like others before me, I believe strongly that we should enjoy what we do – in what we do every day to earn money, in our hobbies, and in the people with whom we choose to be around.