You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
~ John Wooden, All-Time Winningest College Basketball Coach, 1910 – 2010

The first day of The Kind Year was not exactly the day of inspiration I had hoped it would be, but I did manage a kind act.

I spent most of my day setting up this website and blog – which is not as easy as I had hoped. I wouldn’t say I’m a “technophobe” – I think I am fairly open to embracing technology. But website creation and hosting and domain names and blog templates and widgets (OH MY!) were all just a bit outside my current knowledge base. Thankfully, I had some help from my friend and co-worker, G.H., who gave me some extremely helpful tutoring and was able to adequately “dumb it down” for me to understand. Many thanks to G.H.! I was beginning to wonder if I would be able to interact with anyone to be able to do a kind act. And then my website hosting service dropped an opportunity in my lap.

Shortly after setting up my website, I got an email from my web host asking me to call them to verify my billing information. I guess they wanted to make sure I really did want to create a hosting account with them – hosting account fraud must be becoming an issue?!? So after doing an online chat with the hosting service to make sure this “Please call us” email was legit, I called the number. I spent several minutes on hold and finally my call was answered by Charles. I decided that when he told me his name, I should make a point to remember it so I could thank him by name later. Then, Charles had to transfer my call to Adam in “Account Verification”. So I thanked Charles for his assistance (by name) and continued on with Adam. He asked me just a few questions to confirm that my account information was correct, and that was all he needed. I made sure to also thank him by name as well.

It’s a matter of courtesy and respect to remember someone’s name if they give it to you. If they took the time to share that piece of personal information, I should have the courtesy to make a note of it so that I can call them by name later. It makes the “Thank You” much more personal. And I’m sure that these two guys get enough unhappy people on the phone that any amount of courtesy and respect they can get is worth it. It wasn’t a big thing and perhaps they didn’t even notice that I thanked them by name, but I know I did and I felt good about it. Some people say “I’m so bad with names” and expect that to exempt them from remembering names later. I think it’s just a choice – it’s what you choose to remember. Are they also bad with “their social security numbers” or “directions home” or “their birthdate” or “remembering how to tie their shoes?” No! It’s what you choose to remember. Charles and Adam will probably not remember me, but I chose to remember them.

Tags: choices, courtesy, kindness, remembering names

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at 10:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.