Winning by doing the right thing
It’s amazing how many opportunities we are given each day to make a choice between right and wrong. I’m not talking about major decisions here, this isn’t should I or shouldn’t I murder. I’m talking about decisions that appear small when you’re faced with them, but can just seem huge after the decision has been made. I want to quickly highlight 3 such decisions that I noticed this week:
- My wife and I were buying dinner at the new Costco in north Gig Harbor. Just a simple pizza. My wife noticed when we ordered that the guy who took our order seemed new, and it seemed like he didn’t do something quite right, and my wife told me that she felt our order never got placed. Sure enough, about 20 minutes later (it should only take 10) they realized they never took our order. We weren’t too bothered, didn’t make a fuss at all, yet the person running the orders brought us each a free frozen yogurt and a free pizza as well. Wasn’t necessary, we’d already paid, we didn’t ask for anything, she just did it. As a result, we took the extra pizza and shared a nice dinner with some friends we hadn’t seen in a while.
- My wife bought some cute shoes online for our baby daughter. They came with free
shipping which was a bonus. When the shoes arrived, the little flowers weren’t sewn in correctly. They weren’t ruined, just not quite right. My wife called the company to see how we could send this pair back and get a new pair 
without getting dinged for shipping, and the company offered to send a new pair while we kept the first. Not necessary, not what we asked for, but it certainly made my wife happy and took away the inconvenience of sending the shoes back. - Western Oregon was playing Central Washington in a playoff implication softball game. A Western Oregon player hit a home run, but tore her ACL as she rounded first base (in her excitement she missed the bag, and tried to stop and turn around to touch the base when her knee tore). It was determined that since the runner couldn’t round the bases she’d be held to a single…if her teammates assisted her she’d be out (that rule was later found to be false, but at the time that was the umpire’s understanding).
CWU had a chance to turn a 3-run HR into a 2-run single…great! But two CWU players walked over and carried the Western Oregon runner around the bases (nothing in the rules said the opponents couldn’t help) giving up a run that they could have saved. CWU ended up losing by 2, but those players certainly take a win with them through life. Click the photo for the full story.
Doing the right thing matters, even if it appears small at the time. It’s something I strive for in my own business.
May 5th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Great Message
May 5th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
This is the sort of thing we need to hear more of all the time. Stories like these are often over-shadowed by the terrible news the media puts front and center … and while bad things DO happen, it is a fine thing to remember that good things DO happen, as well. And, it reminds us all to strive to do the right thing. Thanks, Matt, for posting this and thanks for striving to do the right thing in your business!
May 6th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Ken cut the article about the softball game out of our local paper for me to share with my PE classes at school.
I will be interested to see the reaction of my various students, as some are so competitive. Will they see the value of the team’s actions???
May 6th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Character is what you do when nobody is looking.