At Your Service by Maggie Inge

Service is always about attention to the needs of the customer. It is a lesson we must learn again and again if we are to remain in the business of serving people. One of the reasons we can never consider it “a lesson learned” is because each and every customer is unique.

Scratch the surface of almost any successful venture and you will find someone with a passion for a critical aspect of the business. There is usually a direct link that connects, say, a love of vehicles to an auto repair shop. Sometimes it is more indirect, as when someone who really loves to sell things makes a go of it selling a particular product. It is this passion that drives the business through the tough times and makes palpable the 1,001 mundane tasks that are also necessary to the creation of any success.

The economy is on everyone’s lips these days; the number two conversation starter is some form of the privacy/security question. They are subjects that have large-scale ramifications for the nation and world. Closer to home, they can impact our lives in little but important ways.

There are times when the best thing that we can do is a far, far cry from our personal best. That is because despite our efforts to always make the right decision we are sometimes reduced to simply making the decision right. Few of us have the savvy to recognize mistakes as we make them; mistakes are more often revealed by circumstance or the people they impacted. Mistakes brought to our attention by others usually fall into the category known colloquially as “whoppers.”

At 8 on Monday evenings my computer’s security system runs a scan to identify and then quarantine viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other nefarious software programs. The entire operation takes about an hour. It is exactly what I programmed it to do when it was new, like the computer before it and the one before that. Nonetheless, I am regularly taken aback at about 8:15 most Mondays when I go to check my e-mail and find it running.