I have to go to the dermatologist regularly these days, because when I was younger I thought it’d be a great idea to lay out in the sun and burn myself to a crisp. Yes, it was stupid to expose myself to lethal doses of radiation, but on the other hand, I had a really […]
I was sitting in a hotel room a couple of months ago when I received the following instant message from a lady I didn’t know: “Mr. Marshall, I believe you have been hacked. Some creep has been messaging me on Facebook, wanting money. I did an image search and found you, and you don’t seem […]
It really isn’t what you say, but how you say it, isn’t it? Not long ago, I received a letter from the Post Office notifying me that it is time to pay my annual bulk rate mailing dues. I was expecting the letter but what I wasn’t expecting was the verbiage it contained: Dear Charles […]
When I walked into the electronics store the other day, I noticed that the customer service rep was talking to someone on her cell phone. I waved hello to her but she turned away from me and continued talking on the phone. I didn’t saying anything to her, thinking that I’d just let her finish […]
Are you customer service driven? I rent cars a lot. I rent them when I’m traveling across the country, but I also rent them when I’m doing events that are 3 or 4 hours away, so that I avoid putting extra miles on my own car. Consequently, I’ve come to know all of my local […]
They say that nature abhors a vacuum, but the truth is it hates all appliances. If you don’t believe me, leave a toaster in your yard for a couple of years and see what happens. Nature will not be kind to it. I live in the South, so seeing yard appliances isn’t that uncommon. There […]
One of the questions I am most frequently asked these days is: How do we hire quality employees who want to work? My answer is pretty simple, really: Always be recruiting. Recently, when I was speaking at a school nutrition conference, I asked for volunteers to stand up and tell me their best customer service […]
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is in The Matrix. Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) sit facing each other in old leather armchairs. The room they are in mirrors the chairs perfectly. In what appears to have once been upscale decor, old paper peels off the wall and every surface […]
“… if you feed and indulge your dark nature, it will one day consume and control you.” A serious man in a dark laboratory contemplates a small vial of liquid briefly before upending the contents into his mouth. Almost immediately after swallowing the concoction, his face contorts in spasms of unthinkable pain. Slowly, his countenance […]
What would Sherlock Holmes deduce in regard to your Power of Choice? I was already in my early thirties before I discovered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s wonderful books about master sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Like everyone else, I had been exposed to the character Homes all my life, but had somehow missed reading any of his adventures […]
