Service With A Smile

Today’s world moves faster than it ever has before. We have devices that can send photos of our kids to distant family in an instant or can pull up a video from twenty years ago on the internet. A Google search for “orange shoes” pulls up 1,570,000,000 results in 0.83 seconds. We have modes of transportation that can move us across the world in less than a day or across the city during the intermission of a sports game. In the craziness that comes with this pace of life we often forget to slow down and appreciate the moments that we are in and to appreciate those around us.

Not only is technology moving at an insane pace, but often our relationships are hard to keep up with!

My wife and I had five different Christmas gatherings over the holidays. Coordinating what gifts go to which location, what we need to wear and of course which gathering has the best dessert to save room for at the others. Reflecting back on the last month, I’ve noticed that I can unintentionally put my family, and friends, on the back burner of appreciation even though they are often the people that I am spending a significant amount of time with. 

I fail to recognize the blessing that they are in my life when I have an extra hard week of work, getting ready to be a first-time parent (there is so much to learn) or planning the game night with friends. Over the last two months, it’s safe to say that my life was pretty hectic! I stopped checking in with some of my closest friends, but they are gracious to understand crazy schedules and poor planning and have been willing to pick up right where we left off when I finally make some time to reconnect.

All of these people are important to me and while I know I do not tell them enough, I know that I do express that gratitude that I have for them in my life. 

Can you relate?

Among our busy lives there is a forgotten people group that is in the most need for our appreciation and gratitude. In fact, I have come to be intentionally thankful for this particular group of men and women that are essential in allowing us to keep our fast pace of life.

This group of people can be hard to define, but not difficult to find. They are regularly mistreated and often taken advantage of as obligation and not seen for the value that they provide. While these people don’t have a particular classification, I dub them as the “provision sustainers.”

These people are the men and women who ring you out at the grocery store in the fifteenth full isle, the people who miss the Big Game because they’re busy making your hot pizza for half time, the people that clean up the sticky lunch tables at sports bars and the people that have filthy hands from changing your oil in between your busy, scheduled events. These sustainers are around us every single day, they provide us with services or products that have become essential to our pace of life providing things that seem so basic and every day.

These people are often in thankless positions, only receiving feedback from an angry customer or a sassy comment about their attitude or speed. It’s not often that they are praised for their work in a genuine way that shows the value that they are bringing. Not that they are worthy of false praise, but so often they are denied a simple “thank you” for the time that they saved you.

Having worked at a large, blue, electronics retail store in college doing customer service, I have experienced this first hand. And from my experience, I decided to operate a little differently:

I have made a habit of thanking the people who work at drive-throughs for the meal that they and their team have prepared. Not just a mindless thank you, but I make eye contact and say “thank you for preparing my dinner. It really saves me a lot of time tonight.” It’s amazing to see how the wait staff perks up a bit as they turn around, an acknowledgement that their working hard has indeed made my day better and they have value in the work that they are doing.

I am a regular at the Von Hanson’s to buy their beef jerky. A great snack when playing disc golf with friends, the staff will now inquire weekly as to where I am going and remind me how crazy I am for playing in thewinter. Recently, we had extra doughnuts from Hangtime (a time for families to connect) between services at Friendship Church. Instead of bringing them home to get stale on the counter, I decided to bring them to this Von Hanson’s as a thank you for their service and friendship. In a turn of events, they were quite surprised to be the one to receive treats and their joy and appreciation only encourages me to continue to think who else I can bless with surprise snacks.

I’ve spent the last 6 years working in corporate IT. Looking for ways to shine the light of Christ can sometimes be hard, but I found a really practical way in an office setting. Acknowledge and verbally thank the person who works nights cleaning the office and bathrooms that everyone else tends to ignore. I learned their names and thanked them for their hard work every time I saw them in the hallway. It became a great way to start conversations with more coworkers and bring life to their jobs in a new and fresh way.

The day after Christmas my wife and I went out to eat at a local food chain. The place was packed and the wait was out the door. Apparently, people hadn’t eaten enough carbs, ourselves included, over Christmas gatherings. Our server took a little longer than I would have preferred. I took this as an opportunity to have a real conversation with Micki about her day and not just the weather or traffic. Turns out she was on her ninth hour of a likely thirteen-hour shift on her feet, serving upwards of ten parties at once and was quite aware that things weren’t moving at the speed that everyone wanted. This gave Micki a chance to let her guard down and connect on a human level, instead of constantly being in service mode. It was a refreshing time to connect with a stranger over the chaos of a busy restaurant and to acknowledge that she was working her hardest to assist everyone the very best that she could.

So what?

I’ve come to look for opportunities to encourage and love on those provision sustainers who are enabling me to eat, shop or get my hair cut; seeing people walk a little taller in the work they are doing, being engaged in an authentic conversation or feeling valued as a human before a worker. I believe that this is how Christ would operate in today’s word.

I’ve challenged myself to look at how I can show Christ’s love in more practical ways. More than telling myself that I’m “practicing patience” when I’m stuck behind the world’s slowest driver, but by being truly impactful to those I am interacting with.

How can we, together, be intentional to look for these opportunities to show Christ-like love to the people in our daily routines?

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18 (NIV)

When our lives continue to accelerate from zero to sixty ever faster, how can we slow down to love those around us with the supernatural love of Christ?

Let’s begin to change the way we operate when we start to feel entitled or impatient. Let’s create the reason for people to provide us a service with a smile!