Lessons in respect

What a morning!

So my sailing at 2:00 am got cancelled and Rebecca and I rushed down to the terminal to rebook.

The lovely Maddie rebooked me. And I turned up again at the terminal at 7:00 for a 7:15 check in.

The terminal was madness! Lots of angry people. The lady in front of me had been cancelled on the Wednesday and bumped last night like me. She didn’t have the luxury of coming down and rebooking, so like so many others, she was standing in the standby queue.

Smooth sailing? Nope!

There were inevitably difficulties with my booking. It turns out Maddie last night had booked me in for the 8:15am sailing on the 1 April – the same day.

How a computer system could even offer a past sailing time for a cancelled sailing as a rebooking option beggars belief. As an IT professional who makes these types of systems, a business rule of “don’t offer historical sailings as rebooking options” is system design 101 basics.

So initially I was feeling pretty toey about Maddie, bluebridge and the whole injustice of life.

Angry mob

There were lots of people who had questions about their incurred costs. For example, there was a foreign couple who wanted to know how they might be compensated for the campervan costs for the last 5 days.

And then there was Maddie still at her desk.

She hadn’t been home. She was still working and had been since she erroneously rebooked me. She still has a smile on her face, but obviously a lot more tired now.

And the Manager was manning the standby desk, and dealing with the frustrations of stranded travellers.

Dealing with horrible people

The Manager gave us all in the queue an absolute lesson in customer management.

There was one particularly frustrated customer who was venting all over the show. She was bitching to the ladies at the desk, she was grumping at the passengers in the queue because she felt they were standing too close to her.

After all of the other standby passengers were processed, this lady then got reseen by the Manager.

And the Manager ripped her a (justified) new arsehole. She took offence to the woman’s attitude, and how the lady had spoken to her staff. She took offence to how this woman had treated fellow passengers who were in exactly the same position as her. This lady, at the first hint of something going wrong had threatened to bring in lawyers and everything.

All the Manager demanded was that this woman show patience, and because she couldn’t the Manager treated her last. In the Managers view, she didn’t even want to put this lady on this ferry because she didn’t deserve it.

The Manager and her staff had worked a 16 hour day. Everyone was tired. And after this shift, the Manager still had to go home to her new born baby and young child. There would be no immediate sleep for her.

Yes Bluebridge was at fault, but she and her staff were trying to fix everybody’s situation. And all she demanded was courtesy and patience.

We in the line heard everything that was said. It was perfect justice and the Manager nailed this grumpy customer with exactly the right amount of professionalism and courtesy as she outlined her expectations of what is appropriate customer behaviour.

It was beautiful to watch and a textbook example of how to correctly address bad behavior.

Who ever she is, she is an asset to Bluebridge and, standing up for her team in front of the team, displayed the type of leadership which could lead people into battle. She commanded respect and got it.

Who ever was the lilly livered Nancy who cancelled the sailings and others since Wednesday could take a leaf out of this Managers book at commitment to service delivery.

But…

The good news is I got on. I was literally the last passenger, but a man and a bike are now heading over to Picton. Beachcomber have transferred my rider until tomorrow morning and I’ve only lost a day.