‘Off Duty’, are you ever really?

As a representative of your company are you ever really off duty? I have been thinking about this a good deal over the past week. Some of you may have noticed I didn’t post a blog last week. I took a few personal days to spend time with, in one aspect, the most important customers I will ever have, my children.

Now I do not say that to imply I treat them as customers, but many ways we react and treat our family members is the basic form of how we treat our customers. First we serve them, we serve them in fact it is our job to teach them how to be good adults, citizens, and people in general. So the roots of everything I do for my customers comes back to being as I was taught to be, honest, caring, fair, and take pride in everything you do. As we live our lives and spend time with our kids we are passing on these values on to them.

So are we really ever “Off Duty”? Driving into work this morning I was passed by a pickup truck with a General Contractors name on the side of the door. Now I wouldn’t think twice about this except I was traveling with the flow of traffic, which in the Charleston area, is qualifying speeds at some NASCAR tracks. Also after the truck passed me, in the right lane mind you as I was in the left, he pulled in front of me, braking since there was a slower moving traffic in the right lanes and traffic in front of me, traveling at the “qualifying” speed. He continued just a few feet from the bumper of the truck in front of him until that truck finally reached a position to move to the right and left him by. Now in this process another truck pulled out from the right lane in front of me, after signaling. Notice I never mentioned a signal on the first truck his must have been broken since he never used them.

But being the guy that normally gets notified if one of my service drivers gets a complaint phoned in on them, it started me thinking. How would the owner of the General Contractor react if he knew his customer service image being projected by one of his trucks was pushy, completely disregard for safety, and uncaring. Whereas the second truck was a company truck as well (fire alarm sub contractor), and it projected just the opposite impression. The driver was thoughtful, courteous, and respectful of others.

I allowed my mind to wonder a bit and thought of the past few days I had spent with my kids. I realized then we are never really “off duty”. What if you were out with friends and had a bit too much to drink, would you want to run into your customers then? How about letting your kids see that example? Felt wronged and used some inappropriate langue and turn only to be eye to eye with a client? Wish you could eat those words, right?

When are you “Off Duty”?