I have written many times in the past about how much attention to detail makes a difference in providing service to others. With that goes showing that you are actually paying attention to what you are doing, and not just going through the paces. Unfortunately, I have two recent examples of how not paying attention to what you are doing makes you come off looking like an idiot.First one comes from the school system where my children attend school. More specifically, the transportation department for the school system. One of our neighbors has two sons, one is a junior, and the other a freshman in the High School. One child received a bus schedule that had them being picked up at a stop near the house at 7:18am. The other received a schedule that had them being picked up at a stop one block closer and one minute later. These are children with the same last name and living at the same address. Someone just ran the computer program, and never looked at the result.The other story comes from a recent car that was shipped to a customer on our railroad, and for a number of reasons got lost in a large yard on a Class 1 railroad. When both the shipper and the M&E enquired about the car, we both got a by the book answer from the Class 1’s customer service people. When the same answer was being given a week after the initial inquiry, we both started to get a little warm under the collar. When the answer changed to “We are currently in the process of partnering with our field personnel to obtain an updated action plan” I had finally had enough. If you have to take every buzz word you can find to say that you don’t have a clue yet as to what is going on and until we get in touch with the people who do have some clue so that we might be able to tell you how we are going to fix what is already a really bad situation for us and we really don’t want to have to tell you this but we have to because the person writing the message drew the short straw, maybe you should be spending more time on trying to fix what caused the problem in the first place.Let’s face it, problems do happen, and sometimes we are faced with large volumes of work to get a project done. As long as it is not an emergent situation, take a deep breath, don’t procrastinate, and take pride in the quality of your work product so that I won’t have to include you as an example in the future.
---By Steve Friedland
Steve Friedland is a child of the railroad industry. Following summers and vacations working on the track gang for the family-owned Morristown & Erie Railway, a 42-mile New Jersey short line, he started full-time in 1994. He has worked in all areas of the railroad, including track, mechanical, signals, and operations, and currently is a member of the management team for the company as director of operations in Morristown, N.J. In 1999, he founded Short Line Data Systems, a provider of railroad EDI and dispatching software, AEI hardware, and management consulting to the short line industry. He currently serves as the ASLRRA representative to the AAR's Wireless Communications Committee and is chairman of the joint AAR-ASLRRA Short Line Information Improvement Committee. He also is a member of the ASLRRA's board of directors.
Steve Friedland is a child of the railroad industry. Following summers and vacations working on the track gang for the family-owned Morristown & Erie Railway, a 42-mile New Jersey short line, he started full-time in 1994. He has worked in all areas of the railroad, including track, mechanical, signals, and operations, and currently is a member of the management team for the company as director of operations in Morristown, N.J. In 1999, he founded Short Line Data Systems, a provider of railroad EDI and dispatching software, AEI hardware, and management consulting to the short line industry. He currently serves as the ASLRRA representative to the AAR's Wireless Communications Committee and is chairman of the joint AAR-ASLRRA Short Line Information Improvement Committee. He also is a member of the ASLRRA's board of directors.