Attitude Adjustment

Working as an order-taker for a company has never been my idea of fun employment. However, this is exactly what I found myself doing shortly after the radio station I was working for sold to another company.

As a general rule, or at least every time I’ve been employed at a station that has sold, most everyone gets a pink slip. While I think it’s a piss-poor way to operate a business – that’s the way things go.

So in between radio jobs, I landed a position with the Regional Transportation Commission’s CitiLift. It is the Reno and Sparks area’s Para-transit system and at the time we were located on Hymer Avenue.

Originally, I was hired as a van washer, but because I had some radio skills, the yard manager went to the general manager and I was hired to answer phones and dispatch radio calls. It wasn’t a bad job – unless you were the only one working in the office at night.

While it didn’t often happen – it did occur to me at least once. The night it did, I was given a lesson in customer service and good manners.

While attempting to handle both the radio, responding to drivers as they completed their routes, manually insert trip-tickets for passengers, I also had to answer the telephones and make reservations for people needing a ride. Needless to say – by the time I was nearing the end of my shift – I was feeling angry at the system.

Now I don’t recall the elderly woman’s name – but I do remember what she said to me over the phone as I lost my temper at the situation: “Tommy, I am so ashamed of you.”

She didn’t yell or say it in a mean manner. No, she simply said it and let it hang there.

Immediately, I apologized and corrected my bad attitude. Her pointed statement taught me a lesson: I am dealing with a person, who has feelings too and not a statistic.

I still get an uneasy feeling in my gut every time I think about that night.