Note: I’m in the process of posting some of my favorite columns from over the years. Of all the columns I’ve ever written, this one got the wildest response. First, the column, published in the February 18, 2005 edition of the AFN:

This is an open letter to the woman who was standing behind me at the bank the other day when I got the phone call from my son asking, for the 33rd time this year, to bring his lunch to school after he had forgotten it on the kitchen counter.

I could tell from the really rude sound you made that you disapproved of my decision not to bring my son his lunch, even after you understood that it was, indeed, the 33rd time this school year that this particular request had been made. You couldn’t help but know it because I got a little exasperated (read ‘loud’) at that point and please know that I am really, really sorry about inadvertently smacking that poodle you were carrying in your purse.

I tend to talk with my hands. People who know me stand back.

What really got to me was not the rude noise, but your snarky comment to your companion how it was, after all, my job to bring my forgetful little 10-year-old his lunch, even if it was (everybody sing!) the 33rd time he’s forgotten it this year.

I have a job all right, raising these kids, but I think you have mistakenly identified my son as my customer. If he is, indeed, my customer, all the principles of good customer service apply: the customer is always right; anticipate the customer’s needs; fill those needs without the customer having to ask, and always leave the customer delighted.

If I’m going to delight the little dickens, then I’ll just hand him the jar of peanut butter and say, “Hey! Use your fingers! We don’t mind!” Perhaps it would delight you if I just carried an assortment of Twinkies, Sunny Delight, and hot dogs in my car on the off-chance (well, OK, the near-certainty) that Forgetful Man will leave his lunch bag on the counter again tomorrow so I could more easily make that 25-mile dart from the office to school and make sure his every wish was satisfied.

But I see the little red-headed terror not as my customer, but as my product. When he’s 18 years old he’s going to roll off my assembly line, which is an efficient repetition of “Don’t pick your nose” and “For Pete’s sake, flush!” and “Why is your homework lying in the back yard?” and be loosed on an unsuspecting world. So I see you, Mrs. Poodle-in-a-Purse, as my customer, since your’e going to have to deal with the fruits of my labor.

My simple hope is that if he learns with his lunch that he has to remember to pick up the bag and put it in his backpack or otherwise he will go hungry for a few hours, then he is more likely to be very interested in remembering little details like making his mortgage payment and picking his children up at preschool.

In fact, I see my ultimate customer as the unsuspecting young woman Mr. Peanut Butter Fingers is going to convince to marry him. While my first instinct is to shout, “Run! Save yourself! He wipes boogers on the wall!” I know that she is the one who will have to live with my production process.

And she will know where I live.

Click here to read what happened next.

      

©     E. Stocking Evans 2005