Ah, the holidays! This is what we in the carpet cleaning world call “busy season.” And it is! We have been running full steam for the last several weeks, and that is a great feeling. It does come with some stresses though.
On Wednesday, one of my technicians sent me some pictures and was really upset about the condition the home was left in.
Yep… It was a mess. I admit I was a little surprised by it as well. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, by far, but it was definitely a mess. My technician was really upset about it, and wanted to either leave or charge a lot to clean the mess up. Actually, he just wanted to leave. As I talked to him, he stated he wasn’t hired to do this kind of thing, to which I asked him what he was hired for. He said he was hired to clean carpet, to serve the customer by performing the services which we offer. His recitation was a bit longer than that, but I said I could boil the reason he was hired down to three words: “Serve the Customer.”
His argument was that he felt the customer was taking advantage of our work, and was being lazy, expecting us to pick up the mess without any compensation. He stated he thought it bad policy to pick up the mess at all. While to some extent I agree with him, and that I don’t want all of my customers to leave the house in this shape when we are on the way, I do think that once in a while it is ok for us to do something out of the norm, and to go a little above and beyond. I asked him what is going to happen when it snows outside and we have to shovel a bit of the driveway in order to pull our hoses in. He said that didn’t bother him at all. In my mind, it is the exact same thing: serving the customer means serving the customer, and doing what it takes to be able to serve that customer.
Is our time valuable? Yes. Should we have to pick up a bunch of crap off the floor? No. But my pride isn’t above picking it up to make sure I am able to do my job. In this case, the job was worth about $60-80 to the technician. The 15-20 minutes he’d have to spend picking things up is definitely worth it for that kind of money. I did try to make it clear that he just needed to move the stuff- in cases where I have been in that situation everything went on the bed or onto the couch or onto another floor surface that I wasn’t cleaning. I am not organizing the mess, I’m moving it. I’m doing what I need to do to get my job done. Usually it is teenager rooms that are like that, and then everything ends up on the bed. Sometimes its even a good incentive for teenagers (especially the girls) to realize that some random dude is going to be picking up their underwear off the floor and throwing it on the bed… Not our favorite part of the job, but if it helps to teach some responsibility, so be it.
The point is this: sometimes we have to do things that aren’t in our job description in order to do the job that is. And it isn’t going to hurt us, in fact, it will make us better. When we run into situations like this, we have to sit and look at ourselves, and why we are upset. Is it because our pride is getting too much? Is it because something is now beneath me? In times like these, I remember He who went below us all, in order to save us all.
We can’t serve too much, or be too generous to those around us. Especially at this time of year. The world will be a better place if we remember that.
DaveGrigsby.com 