Thursday, May 5, 2011

George

There's this elderly man named George who comes into the gym every morning. He refuses to get set up on "cardless check-in" (people who refuse this service are difficult, because it means I have to manually check them in each day). Anyways, each and every day he walks in, hands me his drivers license, refuses any attempt at small talk, and carries on. I greet him every day, and say bye to him every day as well. I don't greet or say goodbye to every guest by name, but because of how cold George is to me I do it out of principle; I want to see how long it takes to crack him and get him to warm up to me.
Well, ladies and gentlemen (more like Cassie and Laura), today was the day! George came in and I greeted him as usual, and he left and I said "bye George", as usual. The difference is that a minute later I noticed George park his car in front of the gym, get out, and start talking to my manager. George and my manager walked up to the front desk where George asked my name. I told him, and he proceded to tell my manager how nice I am, and how I do such a great job. He said that he had been purposefully acting cold for a few weeks now to see how the staff would act (seriously though?) and that I always handled it so well, and I continued to be nice to him, check him in quickly, and always remember his name.
Yes, I'm tooting my own horn right now, but it was so nice to finally get through to this man! Seriously, there are a few people at the gym who I can't get to be friendly to me, and it's annoying. I felt victorious when George finally warmed up and was kind back to me. Actually I got super embarrased and started blushing, but afterwards it was nice.


Kill 'em with kindness people!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

HahahaI love this story! What good persistence...so impressive :)

the walker family said...

what makes you think i read your blog. and did you get diarrhea, like you usually do when you're embarrassed or nervous? that's a killer.

Paige Clegg said...

When people are rude or grumpy to me at work I just act rude back and then they write complaint cards in our commentary box about me. Haha.

Anonymous said...

Tomorrow, you should try to give George a hug. Or maybe a kiss. I don't know, did he seem into you? Anyway, that is a really good story. I would have been super rude and asked him every single day if he wanted a ceck in card, just to be annoying. This is cassie.