kindness

390 Good Service Goes Both Ways

Anyone who has ever worked in customer service has at some point or another dealt with that one customer. You know the type, the huffy, irritable, “My issues are more important than your wellbeing and rules” that insist and demand everything, while demeaning you in the process. Unfortunately, these people will always exist, however what we can change is how we allow these types of interactions to affect us. 

In today’s episode Sarah Elkins tells the story of one of her own unruly customer moments, as well as how she chose to learn and grow from the experience in order to teach others.

Episode 147: Every Person Has A Story to Tell if You Ask the Right Question

It was one of at least a dozen stories like it that my aunt, my father’s sister, told me when she visited. Each of her stories would start with something like “when we moved and needed to…, we met the nicest person!”

My uncle, who is far less exuberantly friendly, would shake his head, and with a small smile on his face he mumbled: “You always say that.”

Episode 131: Make Kind Loud - It's the Only Way Out of This Mess

Louisa Garrett used to rely on her sarcastic sense of humor to make people laugh. But when she saw herself through the eyes of her nieces and nephews, as a model for the behavior she wanted to see in them - and in others, she had an epiphany. Being sarcastic was not a kind sense of humor, sarcasm can certainly be funny, but it is rarely kind.

Episode 76: It's Harder Than You Think. Be Kind.

I had performed the National Anthem at baseball games a few times that summer as a duet with my close friend, and as a trio with that friend and my sister. Each time we performed together we heard rave reviews. As we walked away from home plate toward the fence and the bleachers, our home team would come up out of the dugout to high five us.