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| Blogs > Skier0752 > Staring at my navel |
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Changes I’m sitting in an airport waiting for a plane that has been delayed for 90 minutes. At least I’m on a direct flight and when I get to my final destination I don’t have to worry about re-booking connecting flights. The only problem is the flight was supposed to leave at 6:30 AM. You would think that planes scheduled for first thing in the morning would at least leave on time. Traveling by plane is getting to feel more and more like traveling on a bus. Service has become an oxymoron in the airline industry. When they announced the delay they didn’t even bother to tell us why it happened. I happen to know why there is a delay because of add on software I have on my phone that gives me all sorts of cool flight information. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fix the service level or even get the airline people to act like human beings. So, here I sit whining about not going anywhere. I think we’re actually having a service crisis in this country. Everything I’ve encountered over the past several months seems to have deteriorating service levels. I spend more and more time every year correcting poor service from others that we deal with. Not only do I have to apologize for the ball being dropped, but the attitude of those dropping the ball continues to get worse. I had a period of time over the summer that anytime I went out for dinner we had absolutely horrible service with people who just didn’t care. The owner of at least one establishment didn’t care either. I took the time to write a letter to the owner and he never bothered to respond. I guess I not only take that restaurant off the list, but do my best to have others do the same. The plane finally took off and I’m finishing this post three days later. It’s funny how when one gets sick we think the world stops, but in reality the world keeps going. I just experienced that over the past three days. I was at a meeting where I haven’t been for<b> eighteen </font></b>months. For me, the world had stopped and it felt to me that the world should have picked up where I left, but that doesn’t happen and things changed and the world kept going. As I think about this, it makes perfectly good sense that the world would keep turning and changes would keep happening, but it was sort of a surprise to me. The reality is that the world just keeps going whether you can participate or not in it. What I did learn over the past three days is that not only did the organization I’m working with keep changing, but my needs have changed as well. I no longer am trying to be master of the universe. I’m not willing to give up things just for business success. Not that I don’t want a certain amount of success, but I’ve learned that it’s not likely I’ll become a three thousand pound gorilla at anything. I’ll just continue to do what I can within the bounds of my energy, mental capacity and health concerns. It’s funny that this is really the first time that I’ve been thinking that things are going to really be different in the future. It makes sense that things will be different, I just haven’t really thought a lot about it. |
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Going through the same thing -- frantically swimming after the corporate ship that is sailing away... Looks like I may be doing the stem cell harvest and transplant, so I'll be out of work for 3 months. Bleh. I'm grateful to you for leaving some of your experience crumbs as a trail for me to nibble. I work on the service side of a manufacturing organization. Heads have rolled twice in a year -- not just "deadwood", but good people -- and enthusiasm is gone. Most of us feel grateful to have jobs, even though we are so-called experts at what we do. The company has a median age of 53. The industry it's in is either changing rapidly or doing a slow death. This seems to be happening in a lot of industries an organizations. No one is willing to work for slow growth anymore. Everyone's after a quick buck. We do that, we find we have been chasing our tail and have nothing to show for it. I've been told how my fellow employees admire me for soldiering on during this challenge. I wonder if they secretly wish I was pulling more of my weight, as my effectiveness has obviously waned while trying to work and get treatment at the same time. In any case, I know it'll be a changed world when I return after a 3-month absence. And traveling in the U.S. is infinitely worse since 9/11.
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waves to fit - will be thinking of you skier - service hasn't been service since the 60's. i remember (god i sound like an old fart, eh?) being able to ask a clerk for help and actually having them walk you over to the spot and HELPING i think any major life change, crisis, rite of passage brings that reality into play....no one waited with bated breath for you, except family and they still plodded along as well....funny how that works. perhaps we all would like to feel indispensible....or would we? it would be crippling in a way to think that only I-me-moi could handle something.... leaning is difficult to do when you always been the one leaned on...but lean we all must...at least some times much love m You cannot conceive the many without the one.
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