Wednesday, August 4, 2010

An Affirmation.

With summer construction and befuddled drivers, with Portland's unique take on what constitutes good service by a waiter/tress, with emailing older folks who have no sense of emotion translated into writing... it's easy to identify incompetency all around.

And there is almost nothing I hold more dear than competency. It's the thing upon which I base my self-image, it's the thing I value in a person that will make me forget their politics, their sexism, (almost) any bad trait.

So this morning's Jack Handey-like daily affirmation is an appreciation for competency wherever it is found.

And as small as it sounds, the woman at HomeGoods who helped me with the new rug on Sunday was not only cheerful and polite - she was genuinely helpful and incredibly competent at packing up, carrying and loading the rug into my car all on her own. She was efficient and professional and a true antidote to the bad customer service I may or may not have experienced elsewhere last week. And I'm sure she disposed of my rug, hung another one, and never gave our interaction another thought. But she made my day, and I will pass that on this week with all the competence I can muster for the various tasks at work on the docket... which include maybe driving a rental van, taking my boss' bicycle measurements, explaining a 214(b) visa denial (again) and writing to no less than three U.S. embassies with new requests.

Accomplishment with competency, here I come!

2 comments:

  1. hooray! compentency is one of my favorite traits too. so glad you had a good rug experience at the hands of a skilled person. and you, my dear, have always been endlessly competent in my eyes.

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  2. Taking your boss' bicycle measurements! Now there's a job duty you don't perform every day. I hope you don't have to do that every day, anyway.

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