Note to foreigners not familiar with US TV: We have a hit show in the states where adults try to will million dollars by answering 5th grade (or lower) questions with a help of a fifth grader. Play on words title..

I’m on a little vacation in New York City and have been doing the usual tourist stuff. Now its no news that New Yorkers are the most inhospitable and rude people on the face of the earth and displaying that arrogance even in tourist destinations is just incredible.. but this weekend I learned more about my ignorance and showcomings than about NYC. It has been a very ugly mirror to say the least.

Empire State Building: Typical line ride, more lines, rooms, stairs and elevators than you’d imagine Indiana Jones would take while raiding a tomb. So here is what I’ve noticed – the area is under construction. They obviously have a solution. But it doesn’t involve signs!

They literally had two guys that walked back and forth down the 10’ hallway to yell at tourists “You don’t have to take an elevator, you can take the stairs. Way to go genius. How many times are you going to do that before you figure, hey, maybe I’ll put up a sign.

Irony: I have seen at least 8 tickets opened up during the light weekend about items that we knew about! Routine maintenance stuff. Is it on the blog? No. Is it in the Shockey Monkey? No.

Statue of Liberty Double-Play: I made reservations online for a ticket that included a visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Awesome! But wile picking up the tickets this morning I am told that they can’t give me Statue of Liberty tickets. “So sorry, they stopped selling tickets to third parties so you’re going on a cruise.” – Ok, did they stop selling them yesterday? Last week? Month ago? Oh, no, they stopped doing it in 2005!!!! I made a reservation last week. Think they could have told me that one?

Irony: I announced last week that we’d be closed for business this weekend. But a global company never sleeps – maintenance still goes on. We worked on the ExchangeDefender reports, worked on the backup server, worked on the SharePoint 3.0, worked on ExchangeDefender portal.

And aside from the folks who were doing maintenance, who else knew or was told about it?

Point being – the better I get with the communication with my customers and partners, the more holes I see in the practice as well. What’s worse is, people that get excellent service do not expect anything but. The first time you slip up you lose all the credit and are second guessed for a month. Makes sense – If they didn’t bother to announce that I better check with them again. 

Back to the lab…. Nothing like a mirror to show you how everything you’re up to is nowhere near where it needs to be.

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