Quick Flight Notes

I'm in New Jersey, staying with John C. Havens of About.com's guide to podcasting. He asked me if I wanted to work with him on a freelance project that had come his way and I agreed, so here I am.

This means I rushed around town all day running errands because I knew I'd be out of communication for most of tomorrow. So I get to the airport and I have 80 unchecked messages in my inbox. I answer those, and now I logon to my account and find I have 30 more responses in the 4 hours I've been away from my machine.

Egad. If this is busy for me, I can only imagine what the Jeff Pulvers and Andrew Barons of the world are greeted by when they click their "Mail" icon...

******

Meanwhile, I saw a fantastic example of customer service in action today. I went to Quizno's in the Pittsburgh International Airport food concourse and ordered a vegetarian sub (which is not on their menu, but they have the ingredients to make it; interestingly, it IS on their register keypad...).

While waiting for the sandwich to come through the mini-oven, the girl who adds the post-oven toppings dropped my order sheet on the floor. She stared down at it, perplexed. She was wearing plastic gloves, and she knew that picking up the paper would mean she'd need to throw the gloves away and get a new pair.

So she TURNED THE ORDER SLIP OVER WITH HER FEET, which was not an easy task -- many failed attempts preceded her success -- and read it (accurately) off the floor.

Now THAT'S finding a creative solution to a simple yet vexing problem...

PS The sub was excellent.