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Making Things Convenient
Oct 11 2008

How important is it to make things convenient for your customer, your friend, your boss, your co-worker, your employees, your spouse, your family?  Do people even think about that?  Do people wake up every day and think to themselves, “How can I make life easier for someone else?” I know that I don’t wake up every day thinking that, but I have seen the positive results when I accidentally or on purpose try to make others lives just a bit easier and fight some of their battles for them so that they don’t have to. 

Sometimes people notice and other times people do not.  Sometimes they say ‘thank you‘ and sometimes they say nothing leaving you wondering if they noticed or not.  I’m probably guilty of not noticing what people might be doing for me because sometimes I get too caught up in moving from one thing to the next to appreciate the little things.  The busier we get sometimes the harder it is to notice except for when your expectations are exceeded. 

I recently had my expectations exceeded (nay blown away) and by a government entity no less.  It almost made up for my traffic court tribulations!  I recently received the annual mailing about renewing my car registration.  I’m already grateful that I can pay $1.00 extra to do this by mail.  This time I saw that there was a notice on the renewal form that said something like “You need to order new plates.”  It was in all capital letters but no where on the notice could I find instructions on how and when I needed to get them. 

First, I wondered why the heck I needed new plates even though my current ones were 7 years old.  I guess I haven’t owned a car for 7 years before and it didn’t (and still doesn’t) make sense why I needed to replace perfectly good plates.  I groaned inside thinking that now I’ll have to figure out how to get new plates.  I decided not to think about it and mailed in my check.  I figured I’d deal with the bureaucratic mess of calling and/or going to multiple government/city offices to get these new plates sometime in the not so distant future. 

To my absolute amazement and utter surprise, I received in the mail from the County Tax Collector – Travis County, Nelda Wells Spears, two new plates!  I almost fell over with excitement because I was now relieved of having to figure out how to get them.  I could literally feel a small weight being lifted off my mind.  I can only hope that whoever wins the next US presidential election, they wake up every day thinking about out how they can make all of our lives just a little bit easier!

As a busy, working-mom, when someone makes my life easier I am ever so grateful.  I don’t know how to personally thank the Tax Collector’s office so I’ll thank them with this blog post.  Maybe Nelda has a Google Alert set-up for her name, and she’ll see this post. 🙂

So if you have nothing better to do or even if you do, go try to make someone else’s life just a little more convenient…even if they don’t say anything, I bet they smile a little inside.

Author: | Filed under: FYI, random stuff, working mom, working mother | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments »

6 Comments on “Making Things Convenient”

  1. 1 Carole said at 6:54 PM on October 11th, 2008:

    Clint got his in the mail too, and we were NOT expecting that either! It really did make for a pleasant surprise…. : )

    Caroles last blog post..Correcting a blown-out, hazy photo

  2. 2 Paul said at 10:56 AM on October 12th, 2008:

    Of course, the other lesson here is about beating expectations. You (rightfully) assumed that getting new plates was going to be difficult and time consuming. So when it wasn’t, it’s like, ‘omg, what a great experience!’.

    I think that’s why companies that come into overly complicated, ‘bureaucratic type’ markets and do the simple things well, are often successful. They just have to do better than expected.

    Pauls last blog post..New city, new blog…

  3. 3 Aruni said at 6:38 AM on October 13th, 2008:

    @Carole – It was a pleasant suprise!

    @Paul – That’s very true about making things simple. In some industries it’s easier to do things better than expected than in others!

  4. 4 Robb said at 11:34 AM on October 13th, 2008:

    I’m still trying to figure out why you would need new plates – sounds like bureaucratic waste to me. We never need new plates in California…

    Robbs last blog post..Random Question #38

  5. 5 khurt said at 4:44 PM on October 13th, 2008:

    Been in NJ 13 years with the same plates. My wife hax had hers for almost 20 years.

  6. 6 Aruni said at 7:56 PM on October 13th, 2008:

    @Robb – I’m still wondering the same myself. Maybe they need something for the prisoners to do? Thanks for commenting.

    @khurt – I would think with the weather in New Jersey your plates would wear out faster than ours here in Texas!