I was redirected on the way home last week to pick up a pizza.

I walked in and exchanged the normal pleasantries with the owner.

He handed me the pizza and I handed him my credit card.

“Sorry, cash or check. We are changing over our credit processing and it is down right now.”

I reached in my pocket and found eight dollars, a little over half of what I needed.

The owner says. “Don’t worry about it. Take it home and eat it while it is hot. Bring the money back later. We’re open until 10pm.”

[mouth hanging wide open]

I think it is amazing that the folks at Crossroads Pizza still trust their customers.

Yesterday, I was flying back from a couple of weeks in Virginia. Weather on East Coast was screwing up flights and causing all sorts of delays.

Just as I sit down in the terminal, the grumbling starts. “There’s no way we are going to get out of here on time.” “Oh look, the plane is finally here.” “Like I am going to have any chance of making my connection.”

We were on the plane for about an hour before they backed us away from the gate. Anyone you could look out the window could see the rain pouring down. Everyone else could hear the thunder and see the lightning flashes.

Grumbling rises to complaining. People are on their cellphones saying the plane is late and they don’t know anything else. The steward gets rung and asked a million times. “How much longer?” “Will I make my connection?”

I will grant you the information is controlled pretty tightly in the airline industry. They could use a little more transparency. What I will not grant you is the license to gripe about your predicament. People think it is a great way to strike up conversation and make funny jokes about how terrible the airline industry is.

If you find me sitting along you, keep your jokes to yourself. I think most of the folks there are doing the best job they can.

The power to our house was out for about an hour this afternoon. It makes working out of the house difficult.

I just got a automated call from We Energies apologizing for the outage and checking to make sure my power was now on.

“Press one if your power is on, press two if your power is not on, press three if you do not know.”

Check on everyone and collect a little data.

I thought that was nice.

I am in Chicago today for my third time in a week. Today it is to attend LexThink.

This is an event that was put together by Matt Homann and friends. The purpose of the event is pretty open ended. I would say one goal is to talk about what the perfect professional services firm looks like.

There is about 40 people here, which I think is pretty good.

The morning was a little slow. Everyone seemed to wallow in why things are the way they are. The after lunch session just finished and it was great. We talked about specific things can be done to improve client relationships.

Matt summarized the perfect firm:

Find your passion, talk to matching clients, and build your service around them.

Airlines are the customer service punching bag for most books, magazine articles, and blogger posts. I have been guilty of thrashing the industry myself.

I wanted to put in a good word for the good folks at Denver International Airport. We got to the airport on Saturday about an hour before our flight (yes, I know we should have gotten their earlier, but we drove that morning from Breckenridge). The line for the United counter stretched down the hall and took a left down another walkway. A United manager walked up to us and said it looked very intimidating, but we should be through in about 15 minutes. Amy started the stopwatch and to our amazement we where headed to security after 16 minutes and 30 seconds.

Security didn’t look much better. They had all of their retractable gates deployed. We must have done about 20 switchbacks before we reached the x-ray machines. Again, the line was moving constantly. I think we only stopped walking twice. The folks from TCA were courteous and clear about how to get through in a timely manner.

We made our flight with about 15 minutes to spare.

I also wanted to give a shout out to the United gate agent who said, “There is no baggage limit today.” Thank you!

Hiring the right people is really important. I know it is a truism, but it was painfully obvious on our trip.

During the last week and a half, my family took three flights with the America West Airlines. It was myself, my wife and our one year old son taking the trip and having the little guy with us required bringing the carseat.

As I am sure you are aware, there are a dozen buckles and straps sticking out. We were a bit concerned about something getting caught on the conveyors they use.

In Milwaukee, we asked the check-in folks if they had anything we could put the carseat in. Their response was, “We don’t carry supplies”. The TSA folks pointed us to the Delta counter, where they were more than happy to help with a large plastic bag.

In San Diego, we asked the same question. The person checking us in said, “Hang on. I will be right back.” He came back with a 55 gallon trash bag. It worked great.

In Phoenix, we got the same story about how they didn’t stock supplies. This time Southwest came to our rescue.

Same problem, same rules, but three different people. One of them got it right.