About a year ago this time, Steve and I were having some problems with our septic system not draining correctly. I know, too much information, but that is a fact. We knew that something needed to be done quickly as we would have guests over the holidays and certainly did not want to be dealing with septic systems during the "ho ho ho's" of the season so we called a man who had been recommended highly to us.
I'll call him Dale. Dale was pleasant to talk to on the phone and he agreed to come by to look over the situation the following day. He was prompt, pleasant, and seemed very capable of doing the job for us. He couldn't pinpoint the exact cause of any problems but he was the kind of guy that you are so confident in that we just said: "We'll be gone. You do what you would do if it were your system and send us the bill." Whew, a leap of faith but that we had.
Within his promised time, our system was fixed and running as good as new. It just so happened that Steve was able to observe him at work and was quite impressed with Dale's expertise.
The bill for his services arrived and I gladly paid promptly. Since it was such a pleasure to do business with Dale, and you always want to keep the septic guy happy, I enclosed a note to him commenting on his promptness, ability, and how much he had saved us by having a second sense about so many things having to do with drain lines, pipes, and systems in general. Took me about three minutes and the note, along with a check, was in the mail the next day.
A week ago, my brother-in-law saw Dale at a farm sale and had a nice visit with him. Dale mentioned how much the note had meant to him. He said no one had ever thanked him with a note before, how good it made him feel, and how he had framed it and put it up in his office! He went on and on about how we were at the top of his list for any work we ever needed done.
I wrote this blog not to brag, but to remind each of us how important those random acts of sincere kindness can be. Something that took me three minutes to do has lasted this man an entire year and he was still talking about it. How easy it is to call a company when we are unhappy about a situation yet we take little or no time to tell others how much we appreciate them when we do. Next time you pay a bill or send something in the mail, or someone waits on you that just makes you happy, let them know how much it means. What a wonderful world it would be if we just did this a little more often.
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