In these strange scary crazy times, we thought a bit of light-hearted blog fun would be a nice relief. We all know how far we’ve got to go so we can start interacting socially again, so this blog is all about the lengths we’ve gone to, to visit or be there for our customers. These little moments made us chuckle and we hope they make you do too!
Before the lockdown MarXtar’s consultants were constantly on the road. Travelling was part of the day to day, getting to our customers and supporting them to keep their businesses running smoothly, but here are our top stories from our consultants of when the road to a customer anything was but easy!
Time Travel
It was early on a Monday morning and I had a two-hour drive to get to my customer for 9am. I set off super early, but all the forces seemed to be aligning against me to prevent me from getting to the customer on time.
You know the journey I mean? The one where every single traffic light turns red! Well add to that getting stuck behind a tractor that was travelling the breadth of the county and then, when I was nearly there, I was held back by traffic police due to an abnormal load on the motorway.
Eventually after two hours in the car, I sat down with the customer with 3 minutes to spare.
Then the buildings fire alarm went off and we stood outside for the next hour……
New Shoes
With one customer I needed to be on site at 7:30am. As they were 4 ½ hours’ drive away I drove up the night before and stayed close by.
The following morning, I realised that I hadn’t packed my work shoes, I only had the trainers I’d driven up in.
As the shops wouldn’t be opening until 9am, but I needed to be with the customer at 7:30am, I called a family member who lived 30 minutes away to borrow a pair of my nephews’ shoes. I drove the half hour there and left with some work shoes…that were 2 sizes too small for me.
Cramming my size 11 feet into size 9 black school shoes I drove over to the customer, arriving on time! Never have I been so pleased to kick my shoes off at the end of the day.
What’s in a Name?
Every year we attend the same SITS conference in London, and every year we stay in the same hotel. This last year I asked a new member of our team to book the accommodation – using the info from the previous years’ booking.
I, and a colleague were travelling late down to London the night before SITS started, and as we were getting closer to the hotel, nothing was looking familiar. Double checking the name and address it appeared we were on the right course, so we followed the SAT NAV.
Pulling up to the hotel I didn’t recognise it, nor the road it was on, but the name was the same as the year before …. so, we went to check in.
Walking into the reception it became clear that not only was this the wrong hotel, but this place doubled up as a brothel! And when the guy on reception offered me room service, he wasn’t talking about a pot of tea!
Flight of Fancy
Some of our customers are overseas, and one such customer has its head office based in Frankfurt.
On one occasion flying over to Frankfurt, I had a quick turnaround at the airport before driving straight over for a meeting with the customer.
After an unusually uncomfortable flight, I stood up to discover I was glued to the seat. When sitting down I hadn’t noticed that, blended nicely with the Lufthansa grey seat, was also someone’s chewing gum.
With no real time to spare and only one clothing shop in the airport, namely Harrods. I ended up buying the only pair of trousers they had that were two sizes too big and cost the same as a small car! So, after paying a ridiculous price for a pair of trousers that didn’t fit (and I only ever wore for half a day) I was able to make my way over to the customer.
Oh Baby!
I took an early morning call from a customer who was having difficulties with their service desk. Although I was sitting in a hospital car park, I thought it would be a quick call, needless to say after 40 minutes of support I let them know that I really needed to go now……. My heavily pregnant wife who was sat next to me in the car, patiently waiting while practising her breathing techniques was now experiencing contractions every minute and they were getting stronger! Within 20 minutes of saying goodbye to the customer my daughter was born!