The longer my corporate life, it reaffirms me the real impact of attitude on life. I realize attitude is sometimes more important than even facts that are truly valuable. In the sense, it becomes more important than the education, experience, successes than what other people think or have to say about you. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break – be it personally or professionally.
The remarkable thing about attitude is it gives you a choice for that day to embrace it though we are uncertain of how the day would progress as we are unsure of how others may act. Attitude tells you very firmly that we cannot change the inevitable, The only thing we can do is to play on the only string we have, and that is our attitude……. I somehow get convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you if we are in charge of our attitudes.
Why this talk now? Sometime back I went to this hyper store and in one of the busiest seasons that the entire store was so crowded that the counter staff and sales girls struggled to manage their customers. Unwillingly, due to compulsion of my friend, visited to buy a gift for one of our colleague wedding that evening. As we entered, our bags were sealed and by mistake I dropped my mobile phone inside my hand bag. Within two steps from then, my mobile started ringing intermittently and it was becoming a nuisance to not only myself but also for co-customers who were shopping.
We chose a gift extremely quick and ran down for gift wrapping and as my friend agreed to pay and in the meantime, I could get my bag unlocked to examine the detail of the call, I rushed to the exit counter. I requested to please the tag quickly and the counter boy asked me “Ma’am could you complete your purchases? I saw you coming inside just few minutes back and now you are on your way out? Didn’t you like any item from our shop?” he asked. Controlling all my irritation I said “You guys don’t trust your customers. See how you treat us by locking our bags. I left my mobile inside and unable to take my calls. Hence I had to quickly complete our purchases” I said with literally a red face.
The boy standing opposite me with age equal to my experience with a smile on his face said “Ma’am there is no way we distrust any of our customers. Many of them complain of loss of their belongings due to such peak sale period and it is in the interest of every customer, we help them by locking their bags”. I was just speechless hearing this. What an attitude! The ulterior motive of the store is to stop the kleptomania but just see how the boy shifts this focus to the customer protection. I was thinking how many times I would have responded like this to my internal customers? How many of us do this ? There is no incentive or bonus he may get by saying this to any customer. How he wants to be driven is a choice he is making through his attitude.
After several years, I saw him in the same store but in a different position. Yes he manages the store as “Manager“. With deep gratitude to the learning he offered me, I walked across to him and asked him dozen number of questions. In his perfect style with a smile he very politely responded to all the query and as I exit the store he asked “Ma’am were you happy with our collections? If you have any better ideas you can share your views online and now you can book your visit online and come. This will help us serve you better and help you understand the crowd in the store as well”. His attitude truly rocks!!
