One morning last week I called my bank to set up an appointment to meet with someone in commercial banking. I was told I would have to talk to someone named Sandy and that she wouldn’t be in the office until 10am. Here’s what happened next:
Around 10:30am, I got a call from someone at the bank who handles scheduling Sandy’s appointments.
Them: “Hi, I heard you wanted to arrange a meeting with Sandy to discuss……”
Me: “Yes, that would be great.”
Them: “OK – Well, Sandy won’t be able to see you for a few weeks; she hurt her hand.”
Me: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. This is really important, so I’m sure there must be someone else in the bank I can meet with to discuss this with while Sandy is away?”
Them: “Oh no, Sandy’s still here. She’s still working; she’s just not able to do anything.”
At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that Sandy has the best job in the world and Alan Weiss was right when he gave this award.
She gets to show up for work at 10am. If she gets hurt over the weekend, she still goes to work come Monday, gets paid, and doesn’t have to do her job.
Amazing. You can’t make this stuff up.
Language is everything and I didn’t miss a beat with my response.
Me: “Great. In that case, how about I come in Wednesday at 10am to meet with Sandy?”
Them: “OK – that should be fine.”
And just for good measure they added this…
Them: “Just keep in mind that if Sandy has to do anything, she’ll need to have someone in the room helping her. Is that OK with you?”
Me: “That will be fine.”
It’s beyond me how we went from a few weeks in scheduling a meeting down to 48 hours – but we did.
Let’s just hope Sandy doesn’t actually have to do anything.
Not even blink.
P.S. as an added bonus… This started last week. I did end up meeting Sandy last Wednesday and she said I could expect to hear from her Monday. Today, a week and a day later, I stopped in to see how things were coming. She hand’t even started. You really can’t make this stuff up.
