On critters in the loft and rewarding bad behaviour?...
Nick Russill
Hon. Associate Professor | Co-Founder of Snow-Forecast.com & TerraDat Geophysics | Photographer
My friend Paul runs a holiday cottage business. It's located on the family farm straddling the River Neath in the Swansea Valley amid rolling green hills and mature leafy woodlands.
He grew up here and is passionate about sharing the natural beauty in this hidden corner of Wales with his guests.
We live in a world filled with mirrors. The black mirror of the smartphone is often weaponised to become a mirror of the darkest depths of its owner's soul.
Internet review websites are used as battlefields to pour inner sadness onto people in the service industry, often in the most disproportionate ways.
They use the service industry in service of their misery. Why can't the world be happier, and happiness be used in service of the world instead?
One memorable review saw Paul crawling several tens of feet along a dusty, narrow loft cavity to find the cause of one guest's dissatisfaction.
The nocturnal scratchings of, as the review stated, "critters in the loft" became the focus of a whole world of dissatisfaction for them, smothering an otherwise idyllic weak in the Welsh countryside.?
Paul didn't find the source of the noises but later learned that if the critters were squirrels, they could have attacked at close quarters, leaving him with life-changing injuries!
领英推荐
Turning to a larger example in the service industry, I was fortunate to be invited yesterday to lunch in aid Cardiff’s City Hospice charity with guest speaker Margaret Waters , the General Manager of the Park Plaza Hotel.?
She shared some insightful wisdom from her 30 years in the industry, including Adele's penchant for Californian wine and Marlborough Lights, One Direction's love of ping pong and diet Coke and Justin Bieber's escalation from "lots of snacks" in the early days to a "private jet on standby in case he fancied going somewhere."
When it came to questions, and with Paul's story in mind, I asked Margaret how she dealt with the unkindness and unfair criticism she received from the keyboard warriors. She took the positive view that it was an excellent way to learn about issues and fix them - and demonstrate their high level of care.
Since Covid, however, she said the frequency of threatening and unpleasant reviews had increased significantly. Guests (or even people who had never visited the hotel) would publicly voice outrage in the hope of upgrades or a free stay.
Margeret's approach was to use these instances as a chance to take the higher ground. To share with her team, and now with all of us, that it's okay to not always nod to "the customer always being right".
To not reward bad behaviour.
That was refreshing to hear and something we can take with us everywhere, regardless of whether we run a cottage business, a 129-bed hotel, or are simply out and about in the world.
To meet hostility with informed kindness to ourselves, everyone else and maybe even squirrels.
Author, teacher, esoteric student, pilgrim and retired Anglican priest, singer and guitar player of sorts
2 年Informed kindness is an expression of goodwill. If we can keep an attitude of essential goodwill towards all, we can overcome hostility and bad behaviour. It's not accepting or capitulating to the behaviour, but evoking and projecting goodwill throughout the interaction.
Data Driven Construction
2 年There’s bad behaviour that’s naughty and there’s bad behaviour that’s pure arrogance. I’ll typically approve of the naughty kind because it highlights a flaw in the system. The arrogant behaviour highlights a flaw in society. Light, love, pride and respect #forTheWin Great writing Nick Russill