The difference between sharing and taking

We took The Boy to the park today, and when he wasn’t literally running around in circles, he was engaging in his other favorite pastime: trying to gather up everything in sight and hold it all simultaneously. He’s not happy unless he has at least one thing in each hand, which can be hard when you’re climbing on monkey bars.

There was a little girl with some sort of primary-colored wheeled conveyance, and Conrad naturally decided he should be driving it. She wasn’t playing with it at the moment, and he sprinted across the playground, climbed on top of it and started to peddle away.

Now I know he’s only two, but I want him to understand that you don’t just get to grab everything you see. And by the look on the little girl’s face, I could tell she wasn’t particularly happy that this sweaty little boy was absconding with her vehicle. So I said, “Conrad, please give that back to her.”

To which her grandmother replied, “No, he can ride it. Can’t he, honey? You need to share.”

First of all, don’t go turning my lesson about not taking other people’s stuff into your lesson about sharing. I’ve just told my son to do something. Please don’t tell him he doesn’t have to, since, you know, you’re not his parent and all.

Second, do you really want your child to grow up thinking it’s okay to just take other people’s stuff? Or that if someone wants to take your stuff you need to let them? I know the instinct is right, but maybe we need to be teaching the toddlers that you should share your stuff when the other person asks, not when the other person just grabs.

The “big” Boy, the Bunny and the T-shirt

Since becoming a parent I’ve noticed two things: all the cliches are true, and it’s nearly impossible to avoid them when talking about your child. So this post is basically an extended “they grow up so fast,” with picture.

I just took this picture at breakfast. “I realize I take a lot of pictures of him eating because it’s just about the only time he’s sitting still.” I find it especially poignant for two reasons:

First, he’s wearing a t-shirt we bought him last week on Ocracoke. They didn’t have toddler sizes, so we got him an extra small, thinking he’d grow into it. It fits.

Second, the bunny. I bought that for The Mrs in the days leading up to Conrad’s birth. Somebody had recommended having “focal points” to concentrate on during labor, and this was one of them.

Jean stared at that stuffed rabbit for hours during the most intense and meaningful experience of our “all three of our” lives. Now, two years and a bit later, the reason for that concentration is here, wearing boy’s clothes and getting blueberry juice on Mommy’s focal point.

“insert cliche”

Explaining social media with a sippy cup

I’m on vacation with The Mrs and The Boy on Ocracoke Island, NC, one of my favorite places on Earth. We had lunch today at Howard’s Pub, an Ocracoke institution known for staying open 365 days a year no matter what the weather.

Somehow we only brought two sippy cups with us to the beach, so when we got back in the car after lunch and realized we’d left one on the table, it was a big deal. I walked back in to try to find it. Keep in mind it had only been a few minutes since we had left.

I told someone who I thought was a manager that we’d left a sippy cup on the table. He seemed kind of annoyed and said, “They probably threw it away. Do you want another one?” I realized he thought I meant the kids cup they had provided and told him it was a cup we had brought ourselves.

“Oh, then it would be at the hostess station,” he replied, and walked away. When I asked the hostess, she gave me a blank look, looked under the counter for a moment and went back to selling t-shirts.

The frustrating thing was I knew the sippy cup was somewhere on the other side of the kitchen door, either in a bus tray or at the top of a trash can or maybe on a shelf if someone had noticed it. I suppose I could have walked into the dish room myself and looked around, but of course, we just don’t do that. All I needed was someone willing to listen to what I was actually saying I needed, and take a moment to look for it.

I spotted our very helpful waiter and asked him. He walked through the door, asked the dish room guys if they’d seen it, and handed it back to me. I thanked him, and was happy we’d tipped him well for his earlier friendly and helpful service.

The old model of customer service requires the customer to conform to the procedures and structures of the company. In the social media model of customer service, it’s incumbent on the company to be where its customers are asking questions and answer them in the way the customer needs, regardless of how things have always been done or whether or not it conforms to their organizational silos and responsibilities.

Even more, it requires people who are willing and able to listen, think for a moment, and do what it takes to resolve a situation to the customer’s satisfaction. That’s always been the customer service model at exemplary organizations. Social media is making it the norm, and highlighting the exceptions.