Yesterday an interesting quote from Winston Churchill popped up. Those quotes are scheduled well in advance so I hadn’t seen or thought about this particular quote in a while. It’s one of those that seems simple at first and then ends up having layers.
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.Obviously, this can be applied to any and all aspects of one’s life, but in particular, it makes me think of one’s attitude on the job. I am one of those obnoxiously annoying happy people. Nothing makes me crabby. In fact, if I happen to be crabby, people get scared.
Back when we ran a bunch of window cleaning crews, everyone preferred to get one or two big houses so they could just stay put and work. No one liked to be driving from job to job all day. Everyone but one. We had one guy that would complain the minute you pulled in the driveway of any house over 2,000 square feet. If he was working alone that day, he’d call the office to complain. Sometimes he’d call other window cleaners on our team to see where they were and what they were doing. To be frank, his attitude sucked. Big time.
One day, I happened to schedule him a bunch of piddley little jobs. Ten, to be exact. A half hour here, an hour there. Someone paid $20 to clean just one giant picture window. Another client had a small ranch and just needed the outs done. I threw in a little bit of route work, too. Guess what – he was happy.
His attitude did a 180. It made a big difference in his day and in the quality of his work. Once I realized that big houses just overwhelmed him mentally, I knew how to handle his scheduling. Sometimes it takes a few tries to figure out what works.
Have you ever had an employee/sub-contractor that you just couldn’t figure out? How did you fix the attitude?