It is a company policy that when we are working in a residential home and the homeowner (h/o) offers anything
in the way of a drink or a snack you are to politely accept it (if it is within reason i.e.. water, soda, coffee, a cookie or snack).
I have found that this has relaxed the h/o that they have done their HOST job and we can get more work done and not convey a rejection to the h/o.
With that established. My son Kendall was informed that we will be doing one of my best residential customers house and that he is to be
very friendly and involved with the chit chat. This client is deaf and so all communication to her needs to be facing her as we talk so she
can lip read. (She is VERY good at reading lips and expressions.)
She asked if he would like a roast beef sandwich and a glass of milk. He cheerfully accepted. He realized that as he took a bite of the
sandwich that the roast beef had a sharp flavor. He walk directly towards me with his back towards the h/o. He spit out the meat part and
asked me to look at the meat to see what I thought about it. The roast beef was green all over. I chuckled and said "nice sandwich."
He didn't know what to do so as to not offend her. I went into the kitchen only to find a roast beef sandwich waiting for me. She took a
bite of her sandwich and pointed to the one she had prepared for me. I looked right at her with a laughing smile told her that the meat was bad.
Her eyes enlarged like silver dollars and she looked for a paper towel to remove the ill tasting morsel only to spit it out onto her hand and
then made this strange face of disapproval. She said that she thought that once you had cooked the meat that it would stay fresh in the refrigerator
for a long while. I asked her how long while has it been? She replied with "Oh...I would say a couple of weeks or
so ... no maybe .. about four weeks.
(YIKES!!) We all had a good laugh in the kitchen.
My son is a little gun shy about accepting anything other than a sealed soda or water even to this day.
Ken Sanford & son Kendall
Pro-Vision Window Cleaning
Phoenix, Arizona
Looking in The Face of My Yesterday
On a beautiful summers day I'm cleaning an exterior window on the second floor of a residential home. I had my face real
close to the glass in order to reach and clean the top of the glass when my son (16 years old) walked up to clean the interior window.
He saw that my face was right near the glass so he stepped up to the his side of the glass and put his face right in front of mine mirroring
my expressions and movements. When I focused on him instead of the glass. I said " WOW!!! I'm young again." He returned
a big smile. Then I replied "OH NOOOO!!! NOT THE PIMPLE FAZE AGAIN!!!" We both laughed so hard that I got tears in my eyes
and almost came off the ladder the hard way.
Capturing the lighter side of the moment..... where has time gone?
Ken Sanford & son Kendall
Pro-Vision Window Cleaning
Phoenix, Arizona
If you have a thought or experience to share, forward them to:
Jack Nelson President@mwcoa.com
This is something that I thought was funny today. I usually never use swear words when I'm in a customers house but sometimes it happens.. Well, today I was in the house of the lord. Doing a job for the first time, and I was in the sanctuary I had to unscrew the benches from the floor to get to the windows and it was a pain. As my frustration level increased, I said, " dear lord give me the patience to finish this job without doing anything stupid". Then when I finished this hard section, I said, " thank you Jesus"!.
Many years ago I was doing a shop front, above front door on a set of steps and a old bloke about 80 watched - when I came down
he ran over and shook my hand and said "pleased to meet you mate." I said I had never had that before and why was he so
interested and pleased to meet me? He said it was such a long time since he heard someone sing on the job and such
a good voice! I looked up and where I had been working there was a shoping centre loudspeaker above my head and they were
playing a album over the P.A. --- I didn't have the heart to tell the old guy.