Great Service

I spent my birthday yesterday running errands. One that I kind of dreaded was going to the post office for our annual shipment of gifts to various parts of the country. I've found that any trip to the post office in December is bound to take a long time. I went to the one that allows you to do self-service parcel shipment in the hopes that my boxes would fit in the slot (they did) and that I could get the holiday snowflake stamps in the vending machine (I could). Imagine my surprise when I found a woman in a cheery red holiday Post Office sweatshirt assisting postal patrons in their parcel posting. She helpfully marked out the barcodes on my recycled boxes and helped me place the postage stamp in the right place. I was just blown away by this. In fact, I need to send a nice note to our Postmaster about this because I was so happily surprised. It was also nice that they had a desk going in the lobby for some simple tasks like buying stamps. This helped with the line a little bit.

I also received outstanding service at my local ACE Hardware, but that's no surprise. Every time I go to ACE for something like a washer or a nut I wonder why I ever bother with Lowe's. Lowe's may only be 3 minutes from my house, but the service at ACE makes it worth driving 4 times farther.

Finally, I got some great service from the Firehouse Subs corporate offices. I'm a member of their ecrew and am supposed to receive a free sub every year for my birthday. In fact, I planned my meals around that free sub. I didn't get the email at first, so I called and inquired about it. They took care of me.

I can't help but wonder if there is some connection to the fact that I did go to the Post Office to start with. I did it sort of begrudgingly because I really wanted to sit in the basement and play a couple of games of NCAA Football '07 (I almost typed '97--that dates my video gaming days). Amanda was going to let me off the hook after I whined a little bit about it. But I just had to take pity on her because she feels so consistently wretched with this pregnancy.

I think this all goes to show that we need to listen to that "still small voice" that speaks to Christians. And I am again reminded of what I think may be my life verse for marriage in James 4:17 - So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.