I'm in Boston for a set of customer meetings this week being held a very nice Mariott. They fly in a bunch of key customer representatives for 2 days of product roadmap discussions and technical presentations. I'd weaseled my way on to the agenda because I'm desperate for some feedback on a prototype proposal that I've been working on for months and months. I really needed to get some good feedback and direction on this so I was very stressed out about giving this presentation and the round table discussion after.
My presentation was not until late in the afternoon so I stayed in my room for most of the morning catching up on work e-mails etc. I'd put my "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door so that the housekeeping people would know that I had not left yet.
Anyway, around 10:30 I headed down to the meeting rooms. As I was walking down the hall, I saw an asian woman working on cleaning a room a few doors down from mine. She had her housekeeping cart in front of the door ad she was standing in the doorway getting towels off the cart. As I walked by she looked up at me and in a very thick asian accent said good morning. I sai d Good Morning back and mentioned off hand that 217 was ready to be cleaned. She nodded and smiled and I wasn't sure if she understood me or not. But it really didn't matter. I knew she would get to it eventually. I just felt like saying something more than Good Morning.
I went down to the meeting rooms and listened in on some of the other presentations for about an hour and then I realized I'd left my notebook power cord in the room. I probably coul have gotten by without it, but I decided to run back up to the room and get it.
When I got back the room, the housekeeping lady was working on my room and her cart was in front of the door etc just like it had been for the other room. I could see her in there working. So I moved her cart and slipped into the room. I said hello and that I was just stopping in to get my power cord. She smiled and profusely nodded and said Good mornign about hundred times and other minor phrases and I quickly got the impression that she had no idea what was going on and that she really didn't know English very well and only knew a few phrases to get her through the day. Anyway, I picked up the power cord and pointed to it in an exaggerated fashion so she could see what I was there for and then quickly left.
I got through the day. Presentation went about as good as I could hope for. Some aspects of my prototype proposal did not go over well at all and I'm going to drop them. But most of the customers agreed with the core idea. So I think I have enough to go forward. My presentation was 90 minutes long and I was exhausted when I was done. All I wanted to do was got out of there and get back to my room. I hung out for a few minutes but as soon as was "polite" I got the hell out of there and went back to my room.
When I got back to my room, I noticed that on the night stand someone had written a note on the notepad. I knew that I hadn't written anything on it. So I went over to see what was written on it. What I saw made my day:
After stressing out for 90 minutes this was an incredibly nice surprise to have. Put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment