What we need in customer service these days is miracles. That’s good news because we live in a time when miracles are very possible. I’m not talking about walking into a day spa and asking for water to be turned into wine (or chai). I’m simply talking about being miracle minded. On both sides of the counter.  But most of the focus on what I am going to talk about today is for the folks who are in the service business.

Perception is the key. We customer service folks have the power to change our perception of our jobs from service worker to miracle worker. Let’s face it: some of us really do have a passion for people and some of us just needed the job. Either way, we all have the option to bring joy into the world through our service opportunities.

I hear the gasps and the ‘oh, butts’ already. Let me make one very clear statement: if we wait for society and customers to change first (or even at the same time) there will be no miracles. The onus is on us. And it is a wonderful thing. For us, this shift will make our lives better and our sense of fulfillment enormous. But I am not saying it is easy and will be perfect. As they say in twelve step groups: this is about progress not perfection.

I work in the airline industry. The culture among employees tends to swing towards that famous line uttered on the David Letterman Show “the passenger is the enemy.” That thinking will not only lead you to personal misery but global misery as well. There is also something prevalent that I call the Bitter Bandwagon.” I hate my company.” “I have been screwed and screwed.” “The customers are all trailer park jerks.”

To the Bitter Bandwagon I have a lot to say. For one, if it’s that bad, why do you stay? I’ll tell you why you stay: either it’s not that bad or you feel powerless. If it’s not that bad, great! If you feel powerless: empower yourself. Become miracle minded. How do you empower yourself? Change the way you feel, which means change your perceptions and your behaviors. It simply is not necessary to keep riding the Bitter Bandwagon even if conditions at your workplace are not ideal. Bitching about it in your head and to others only reinforces how bad things are. Of course, there is some value to venting. Once. Tactfully. Or not with tact, in private. (Private vent sessions with my cats are my favorite). But after that it’s just choosing to be a victim and choosing to live in a crib of misery.

So, if you are a person with a passion for people you get to be grateful you are in a people job. If you just need the job, you get to be grateful that you have the job. That little realignment  right there is a miracle.

In my experience (which is all I really have and your experience is all you really have), the majority of customers (I like to call them guests) are not jerks. Even when I was the Queen of the Jaded Parade, the truth is, the majority were not jerks. When my spiritual advisor suggested to start being honest about the behaviors of guests (they are guests in my life) and seeing them as fellow adventurers in the Universe, something changed. Honestly, at first, it just pissed me off. “How DARE they take away my misery! How DARE they prove me wrong”. Marianne Williamson has often said “We are a very angry generation. Date us and you will find that out.”  But she also challenges us to get over ourselves. And getting humble is actually a very nice thing.

Those two actions, practicing gratitude and changing my filters on people, are two of the best things I have ever done for myself. Really. First, I made a list of what was good about my job. For me, that list turned out to be pretty long. I was resistant to write down these things in the beginning because by putting them in writing it felt like my gripes were being undone. But really, what was so wrong with that? How did those gripes serve me? They kept me bitter, angry and irrational. Not to mention grumpy. The truth was kind of cool, actually. And when I started feeling that truth, I started enjoying my job. I started becoming grateful. Now many of my colleagues felt that being grateful meant ‘giving in’, allowing defeat. The enemies (customers and corporations) would now win and chew us up. That was not my experience. My experience was that I realized that rather than being a victim I had choices. Maybe not easy choices. And that is where another miracle needs to take place.

If we just lived in a world of easy choices, we would also be riding in a beige canoe in a river of dull. Choosing to not be a victim, choosing to leave or stay in a job, choosing to smile when folks are grumpy and really living that smile are not easy choices. And that is good news. The harder the choice, the stronger the feeling of accomplishment.

In a recent conversation with a friend we were poking fun at the ‘grass is always greener’ phrase. My friend remarked that it was puzzling that if the grass was greener wouldn’t we want to use the same landscaper and fertilizer from the other lawn? I came back with “well, yes, but we want the landscaper, the fertilizer, a margarita and we want it cheap and easy, and therein lies the problem.” My friend’s puzzlement was actually his miracle taking place. He was seeing that rather than jumping the fence to the other lawn there was something nifty that could be taking place in his own yard.

Staying with this somewhat mixed metaphor, we also tend to want to hang on to dead leaves. Paycuts, executive bonuses, poor perks, that holiday we didn’t get off. Okay. I get it. I’m not saying those things aren’t worth being passionate about. But my broken record is not going to sing a new chorus. Be grateful. Make choices. Maybe you are one of the folks that can change some of that dead weight mulch that hang on by our choice or by other practices. If you are, then get to work (in a miracle minded manner). I am not, so I choose to get over it. I actually did choose to leave a situation and make a go at it elsewhere.I did just what I preach. And guess what? It didn’t work out so well for me. I missed each and every thing on my list. But I also chose not to be fragged by that either. I tried something on and it didn’t fit. Big whoop. Turns out my old fertilizer was just fine and I welcomed it back. Yes, I was lucky in a sense to be given that opportunity, well, more like forced that opportunity, but that is part of the miracle. I get to testify to my experience ‘out there’ and maybe help someone else think about where they are. Maybe. That’s all I need.. maybe help someone.

Part Two

Something a respected writer  said really struck me. He said that serving another fellow man or woman is really a sacred act.

Sacred act. Now that’s some miracle minded, radical thinking. And make no mistake about it, this approach to customer service is based on radical thinking, but radical thinking is what this world as a whole, and our ever growing service sector needs. And it starts with us.

I think in some current customer service venues a lot is held sacred. We hold sacred our negativity. ‘Those managers.” “Those paycuts.” “Those working conditions”. “Those crazy customers.”

Are you feeling the leap I am about to as you to take? I believe if we began to hold sacred the act of serving our fellow man, miracles would definitely occur.

One meaning of sacred is to hold something as highly venerated, respected. What a shift it would be to hold sacred the act of pouring a beverage, finding something on the shelf, ringing up a sale, serving a salad. This would be, of course, a practiced and repetitive mind training art. And it’s not about whitening the teeth, smiling fakely and pretending. It’s about really embodying this change of perception and following it through,  Just imagine what walking into a hotel would be like. How boarding a plane would feel. How going to a retail store would become.

More importantly for us, imagine how great your job could be transformed. Knowing that serving that beverage was really a higher act of sacredness in the Universe certainly would give your sense of purpose a boost. I bet you would start to feel a bit grateful that the Universe had placed you in such a position of honor. I can guarantee your customers (guests) would notice. And when they notice they become filled with light. The light that is a reflection of you. Beyond that, I am pretty sure your managers and peers would notice. You become a miracle worker.

So once again we return to shifting to practicing gratitude and making choices. We would be making the choice to spend our day in customer service as an important part of the world. We would be practicing gratitude as a byproduct of this choice and the act.

This of course will only work if you also make the choice to get off that Bitter Bandwagon. Again, I am not saying abandon your principles and roll over. But why not be the ambassador of change? Many of those old things we hold sacred, the negative things, would most assuredly change, with time, as a result of your miracle mindedness. The probability of the larger institutions changing is rather low. We have already learned that trickle down economics doesn’t work. So let’s band together and employ a trickle up principle of miracles. I’m convinced it can work. I bet if we even had the audacity (a pretty hip word these days) to talk about what we are doing would alone have a great effect. Tell your manager that you believe in miracles. That the miracle you are practicing is changing  your perception, your filters, and choosing to be happy and proud in your job function. Radical, yes. Respected by your manager, you bet. And yes, you will be observed more and thus your duty to shine would be increased. But what is so bad, for a miracle worker, to shine? To play big? To paraphrase Marianne Williamson again, “it is our responsibility to shine, to play big, to be important in what we do.” But Marianne isn’t saying you have to be the CEO or a Vice President to play big. In fact, she tells us that the smallest role in this vast world can be the best places to glow bright and achieve greatness. We just have to let go of our attachments of what success and greatness are. For me, success and greatness simply are a job well done and seeing smiles on the faces I encounter.  So as a flight attendant, I know I have achieved greatness when the guests leave the airplane smiling, thanking me and in good humor, weather delay or not.

Patience and persistence on our part is going to play a big role. None of this is going to happen overnight for you. Make it your goal to hold sacred one transaction each day. Then reflect on how you felt after that sacred transaction. I am willing to believe you will smile. Smiles are powerful. The make you feel good.

Again, repeating myself, these are big choices requiring a real commitment. Some of us can leap into this pool and swim laps right away. Some of us need to test the water with one or two toes and wade in the shallow end. Either way, you are letting your miracle begin. You are changing not only your personal work environment but in the long run, the world.

starmarked@gmail.com

Thanks a Bunch!!

I was so excited when I saw the San Francisco Bay, as that city has been my home more than any other. But I don’t know if it is to be my home again. There are a great number of things I don’t know. I don’t know what my real mission coming out west is. I don’t know how my job is going to pan out. I don’t know how many or when my days off will tend to be. I don’t know how my finances are going to get back in order. I don’t know when I will get to see and spend time with the many folk my heart longs to. The list continues. This is probably the singular most profound ‘don’t know’ time of my life. But I do know this period is not my foe. 

Despite a surge of physiological depression and the accompanying physical symptoms and senses/feelings that are so unfamiliar, when I pause to give thought to all this I repeatedly hear “test”. 

Test is okay. Life tests are rarely easy, but they do not have to be agonizing. Everyday, several times a day, I pause to remind myself what I have or what I find dear. And it is this that is getting me through this test. 

I suspect that my whole summer may just be living in limbo because of some of the circumstances I have. So to make it through this summer, using whatever tools I discover, until things are settled, will be a great success story. For I can also say, I haven’t had many waiting periods in my life. So in a way, I am grateful for this limbo land waiting test. I have some good lessons to learn and some valuable skills to attain.

I know a multitude of ways I do not wish to approach this space. With the many changes that have recently occurred in my life and the fact I am working many hours which require me to be out of town most of the time, my choices are going to be limited. It is as if the Universe is telling me the space belongs to me and perhaps getting to know the owner of that space a little better may be a good idea. 

How well do we really know ourselves? How often do we spend time with ourselves and take notice of what makes us smile, what brings a soft tear, what perplexes and what brings forth wonder? 

I’m not alone in that I want special people to share my life with. Right now that would be cultivating and nurturing friendships. I am very fortunate to have more than a few folk who are eager to explore having me as their friend. And these same folk, many who I have yet to actually meet, have within their heart the understanding of and patience towards the circumstances of my life. While we all are excited to meet, we all share the knowledge that we will when life carves out the meeting. To them, I express much gratitude for hanging in with me. It’s amazing that we are able to care for one another through our unique methods in the mean time.

So I think it goes without saying one way I wish to fill this space is with these friends. Yet I tend to think the Universe is allowing me a lot of alone time to meet and know myself even more. For one of the most beautiful things you can bring to a friendship is a sense of who you are independently. 

As I go through my day and my journeys I am going to be grateful for my own company. I am going to take notice when something catches my eye and observe it. Study it. Know what makes it interesting to me. I am going to examine my beliefs, their origins and really pay attention to how and why they make me feel. I am going to let my senses stir me. I am going to make mental notes about what my senses are telling me. I am going to choose to take delight in my own wonderment. I am going to practice that gratitude I spoke of of having the gift of spending time with me. 

Then when I am able to spend time with my friends, new and old, I bet I start noticing some things about them. What puts a sparkle in their eye. What gives them a gentle pause throughout the day. What puts color in their cheeks and brings instant smiles to their faces. And together our friendships will take on a quality that makes them very special indeed.