In June of 2012, a group of volunteers gathered at Placer High School in Auburn, California. They had assembled to repaint the school’s weight room, a facility that hadn’t received any TLC in decades. But as they began the process of emptying the room and prepping the walls, they made an incredible discovery.
Situated on one of the interior walls was a small screen door. Barely big enough to crawl through, the door sported a padlock and peeking through the screen revealed only darkness. Several alumni were familiar with this door – it had been there for as long as any of them could remember – but no one had any idea where it led or what was inside. Curiosity got the better of the group and the decision was quickly made to remove the lock and find out.
The exploration reveled a make-shift bomb shelter dating back to the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the midst of nuclear tension between the USA and the USSR, similar shelters had been funded by the Civil Defense Department. The nuclear fallout never came and they were mostly dismantled to make way for more pressing needs. This one, however, was still fully stocked. There was medicine, food rations, paper supplies, and even bagged water. All was perfectly preserved, having been forgotten by those who created it.
Day after day, people walked by that door, never realizing what waited on the other side.
It seems amazing that something like this could go undiscovered for so long. Yet every day, we walk by corners of our own homes and workplaces without giving them a second thought. Who knows what we’d find if we’d just take the initiative to look?
Think about your daily routine. As you make your way from the car into your office, what areas lie just outside of observation? What would you see if you approached from a different direction or used another entrance? What aspects of your business’ appearance go ignored simply because they aren’t part of your typical route? Sometimes things go unnoticed despite being right under our noses.
I once visited the men’s room of a bank branch and found the sink faucet handle laying to the side. There was no way for me to turn on the water and wash my hands. I mentioned it to the manager and she thanked me for bringing it to her attention. She said “We’re all women working here, so we never go into that restroom. Guess we ought to check it out once in a while” Who knows how long that faucet had been broken?
Customer service author/consultant Dennis Snow says “everything speaks.” In a time when just about every business struggles to differentiate themselves form the competition, it’s often the details that make the biggest difference. Those who choose to excel at the little things are the ones who win. It pays to look at things from a different perspective once in a while.
There may not be a hidden room waiting to be discovered in your building; but I bet there are areas that you haven’t given any thought to in quite a while. Identifying them, and addressing them, could be just enough to lift you above the competition in your customer’s mind. Perhaps it’s time to do a little exploring.
We recently had our first really warm weekend out here in Lubbock, Texas. My entire family spent the better part of it outside, weeding and tidying things up in anticipation of spring. As we worked, my wife I got to reminiscing about our first house. At only 1,100 square feet or so, it wasn’t much to look at. It was a starter home in a new subdivision and the amenities were pretty sparse.
In December of 1974, Phillip Kunz and his wife sat down to write their annual Christmas cards. To some people, they wrote short notes. Other cards included a family photograph. Each envelope included their return address in the upper left hand corner. The Kuntz’s mailed hundreds of Christmas cards that year – most of them to complete strangers.
Technically, it’s called dexiosis. That’s the short ritual in which “two people grasp one of each other’s like hands,” typically the right ones. In most cases, it’s accompanied by a brief up and down movement of the grasped hands.
In 2011, an international team came together to try and decipher a manuscript written almost 300 years earlier. The document was penned in the 1730’s and contained 105 pages covered in Roman letters, mathematical symbols, shapes, and unrecognizable runes. There were no spaces to indicate word breaks. No previously known documents matched the style of writing and there was no key to help understand what they meant. The entire book was written in code.
Since January 1st, I have received more than 3,400 emails that have been classified as “junk.” That means every day, my email account automatically detects and quarantines somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 undesirable messages. And that doesn’t count the SPAM that slips by the filter or is caught by my ISP before it ever gets to my account.
Last Monday, I accompanied my son Alex on a visit to 
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” No doubt, you heard this phrase from your parents growing up. You may even have shared it with your own children in an attempt to sooth the pain caused by hurtful comments. It’s meant as a declaration of mental strength, a statement of an individual’s ability to rise above insult, and a belief that words hold no power.
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