Tropical Storm Fay
This is a house down the street from us, thanks to Tropical Storm Fay. We were lucky at our house. Nothing big fell on us, and because we live on one of the few hills in Jacksonville, Florida, we escaped flooding. Although we’ve been without power for going on 36 hours now, at least we’re safe, which is more than I can say for the mushy food in our freezer. We’re fortunate. We have friends, family, a Starbucks with electricity, and Marriott Rewards points.
It seems that those of us in Jacksonville anticipated Fay’s arrival longer than we did the announcement of Obama’s veep selection. She taunted us for most of the week, closing schools and businesses prematurely, days before the first breeze was felt. Then she finally got here…with a vengeance, dumping more than 12 inches of rain (after dropping twice that amount on Florida’s Space Coast, just south of here), and blowing winds up to about 60 mph.
Fay was no Katrina, and she’s done less total damage than the trifecta of Florida hurricanes in 2004. Still, we we’ll all be happy to see her fall apart and disappear. And for our electricity to come back.
One of my best friends is the managing partner of a good-sized local accounting firm. One of the firm’s employees, who recently moved here from Maine, expressed great anxiety about her first tropical storm, and asked her boss, “What are we going to do?!” My friend confided in me that at first he wanted to say, “What we’re going to do is turn on our windshield wipers and come to work.” But on further consideration, wisdom prevailed. He told everyone to use their own judgment about coming to work the next day (Thursday). In reality, conditions were fine on Thursday, and it could have been business as usual. But, as my friend reasoned, it was one day, and in the grand scheme of things, one day won’t mean very much.
Natural disasters, or in our case, natural inconveniences, are costly and disruptive. No question about it. Our small business has lost productivity, and the storm has put me behind on upcoming client obligations. But I’ll catch up. And so will my CPA friend. As he said to me on Thursday, when the rain was just starting to fall, “I really think everyone could have come in today. Several of us did. But I’m not going to make a big deal of it. I’ve got a really good group here, and it’s only one day. Besides,” he said with a wink, “I read a book that said something about - if you take care of people when they’re having a rough time of it, they’ll remember that, and take care of your customers. I’m gonna give that a try.”
Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.
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