People (not customers) at the conference

I was at the big conference for my profession last weekend, and chatted with a number of people.

I saw Maggie from New York, one of my former customers and a friend.  I looked for her at our reception, and we gave each other a big hug when we saw each other.  She told me the story that at the conference last year (about year ago), she asked James our support guy if it was true — was Marie back? She had heard a rumor that I had returned from El Salvador and was working for the company again, and wanted to know if it was true or not.   James joked that he couldn’t say because if the people from NY and FL knew I was back, they would call the office all of the time looking for Marie and asking her questions, and Marie would never get anything done.  Maggie told me this story, both of us knowing that I had left her personally in a bit of a lurch when I left to go to ES, but I think that for both of us it was more important to see each other as people and friends rather than vendors and customers, and to mutually remember James.

James passed away last year, about two weeks after the conference.

I  also saw Carl, the former president of our company, and now the president for a competing company.    As soon as I saw Carl at the airport, I made a beeline to him and gave him a big hug, and chatted with him until we boarded the plane.  Speaking from a purely corporate standpoint, I probably shouldn’t be hanging out with Carl very much, since he is the competition in a way.   However, I wanted to make sure that Carl knew that I still thought of him as a friend, and that I saw him as a person more than as the role he plays in my corporate life.   The last time I had seen Carl was when he gave the eulogy for James’ memorial service.

James had lived alone, and passed away on [we think] Saturday morning.  His body wasn’t discovered until after he hadn’t shown up for work on Monday morning.

I think about Carl’s eulogy for James fairly often. He commented on James dying alone, and how he wondered to himself afterwards if he had made it clear to James how much he appreciated him as a person and not just as the customer support manager.   Too often we just treat people as the role they play and and don’t really make it clear that we appreciate them for the person they are as well.   I don’t remember it all in detail, but I remember him closing with the statement [along the lines of] “If I ask you how you are, I really want to know how you are.  Remember that I see you as a person, and I hope you see me that way too.”

It was good to see Carl at the beginning of the conference, because I was reminded of his eulogy all weekend, when I saw Maggie from NY, when I hugged Michele from Florida and hoped that she carried my regards back to her gang [my favorite customers], and when I had that beer with Leslie from Massachussetts that she promised me during one of the tense times this past August.   Whatever vendor/customer role these people play in my life, they are also people who are dear to me and I hope they see me that way too.

Posted by Marie on January 28th, 2007 under Uncategorized

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