The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

This past Friday, my family and I embarked on a 10-day vacation to Europe. For this post, I’m going to make an observation, and it deals with the subject of effort – which, of course, happens to be the subject (specifically Discretionary Effort) of our most recent book.

But before I express this observation, let me issue a disclaimer. First, I’m not complaining. We’re having a wonderful time, and I fully realize how very fortunate I am to be able to make such a trip. Second, please don’t interpret this observation as a criticism, or a generalization of Europe, Europeans, or all things non-American.

Now – here’s what I’ve observed, on this, and come to think of it, every trip I’ve made to Europe.

Compared to life in the United States, many things in Europe seem to require a great deal of effort. And it’s not just because I’m unaccustomed to being here. Here’s but one example.

Our flight arrived on Saturday at Milan’s Malpensa Airport. We got off the plane, and onto a bus, rode to Terminal 2, went through immigration, collected our bags, went through customs, then had to get on yet another bus to go to Terminal 1, more than 2 miles away, to pick up our rental car. After the bus dropped us in the general vicinity of Terminal 1, we walked about 500 yards to the car rental desks, and alighted at the Hertz counter. When in the US, as a Hertz #1 Gold member, I’m often driving off in my rental car within 15 minutes of having left the plane, with zero paperwork to fill out. Here I waited for a very nice Italian woman to print out roughly the same number of forms as for my home mortgage. She explained them all in very good English, and I signed them. She gave me the key, and then we walked back the 500 yards to where the bus had dropped us off, and then yet another 300 yards to the car.

Next chapter – same topic: effort.

I awoke the next morning (Easter Sunday) in our three-and-a-half-star hotel to a stunning view over the lakes of Varese, with a light snow falling. We paid roughly what we would have paid for a nice full-service Marriott in the center of a major US city, or near a major airport. But, as is often the case in European hotels, the price included breakfast. In my experience, that’s usually a nice roll, maybe some yogurt, cheese, and cereal. Instead, in this case, we entered the breakfast room and were overwhelmed by a huge table loaded with more than 50 different items (yes, I counted). Croissants, Danish, eggs, bacon, fresh fruit (chopped and sliced), cereal, musli, yogurt, cheese, ham, cakes, tarts, juices of orange, grapefruit, and papaya. At 7:00 in the morning, we were the only ones having breakfast. Indeed, for some reason, there were only a handful of guests in the hotel. And yet, someone had obviously risen early that morning, made it to work in the snow, and baked, scrambled, fried, peeled, sliced, chopped, and otherwise prepared this remarkable feast, and displayed it as though it were ready for a photo shoot for a gourmet food magazine.

It was quite possibly the very best breakfast I have ever had in a restaurant or hotel. Ever. And with my family around the table in this elegant, and for us, private, dining room, with the snow softly falling over the lakes of Varese, Italy, on Easter morning, I was very thankful that someone – undoubtedly several someones had gone to a great deal of effort.

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