The e-mail came lateish in the day. Another Records Guy had sent a panicked e-mail about Linkedin getting hacked and you must change your passwords! And...and...AND!! Lucky for me...I don’t have a Linkedin account. Or do I? I can’t recall because I never use it. I get Linkedin requests all the time but I don’t pay any attention to them. Why? Because every time I attempt to accept them, or link them, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do – it never ever works for me. So...why bother? So I don’t.
But this got me thinking about a friend and a story from years ago.
We used to have a neighbor by the name of Katie. She was a great gal who had a scaredy-cat German Sheppard by name of Sarah. Sarah wouldn’t hurt a fly and would run scared the moment you said “boo” to her. Miriam and I would take Sarah for walks and she’d get many a treat when I’d barbecue ribs as I’d toss the bones over the fence.
Sarah did do ONE thing particularly well – and that was to scare the UPS guy. Sarah could look mean and vicious if one didn’t know her and since the UPS guy was deemed a threat – Sarah would bark and snarl and he’d deliver Katie’s UPS packages to our house.
Since, at the time, Miriam worked out of our house – the UPS guy began to just show up on our doorstep and hand us off Katie’s packages. He wouldn’t leave Katie a note, he’d just ask us to call her. And, soon, we’d get packages for all the other neighbors, too. We were a non-paid subcontracted UPS drop box.
Now for probably most of you readers, you might get a package maybe once a week. Once ever couple weeks. With Katie and her QVC addiction – the packages came on a near daily basis. UPS guy shows up, Miriam signs for the package, Miriam calls Katie, Katie comes home from work and walks over and gets package.
As the years wore on, this scenario worked to near perfection and though it inhibited our day a little – at least Miriam got to interact with someone who didn’t need help going potty or wouldn’t give her grief about not eating their broccoli.
One day, though, things took a sketchy turn. Katie came over to pick up a package and explained to us that QVC had sent her to collections for not paying her bill. That, for some reason, the auto withdraw account didn’t have enough funds to cover the purchase, and it would be a few days until this got figured out. No worry, Katie had another account that she would tap into but, still, we might go two or three days between getting packages and she just wanted to give us the heads up.
After Katie left, Miriam was incensed! How could QVC do this! This woman was keeping them in business! She was a loyal customer! I’m going to write them a letter!! I had to laugh. For some reason Miriam seemed to think that QVC was the local grocery store, or the local convenience store, or the sweet old guy at the Farmer’s Market who lets you eat a couple grapes. What she didn’t seem to grasp is that QVC didn’t out-and-out go after Katie because they hate her – it’s simply that when her bill didn’t get paid, the computers do what computers do and a letter of collection was sent. Her name popped up on a computer and the process went into play...simple. No malice intended. It’s a company doing what a company does.
When Miriam was growing up she had a small store up the hill from her house where she’d get candy and “ice cubes” (dice). I had the “Vita-Del Market” in Ballard (I don’t know if it still exists) where I’d go after school and buy candy. Then there was the dairy store – which was even closer, where I’d get tootsie pops and RC-Cola, and if the cap said you got .25 back, you got .25 back. The guy who worked there – I didn’t know his name – got to know me. Years later he worked at a Radio Shack in Mountlake Terrace and I ran into him at a Fred Meyer once.
You don’t create relationships through QVC or Linkedin or, even, Facebook. You create those relationships over fences and scared German Sheppards and doing favors for your neighbors.
Michelle worked for years at Rogers Market and I was reminded of this a few months ago as I was up there buying something and an elderly person came in and said something to one of the managers along the lines of: “Can I return this? I don’t have a receipt.” And he said: “sure.” As the old guy wandered off to find something to buy the manager turned to a co-worker and said: “It’s fine, that’s so-and-so from the local assisted living place.”
This doesn’t count all the times Michelle would mention: “There goes a customer....I saw a customer at...I ran into a customer the other day...”
Katie succumbed to cancer last year after she had long moved away to Puyallup with her husband Bob. I’m sure she was still ordering stuff from QVC a few weeks before she passed away.
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