How far will you go to 'eat' that problem?

I was talking to a friend of mine just yesterday. In the course of our discussion came up the topic of Customer Service Jobs and how taxing they must be when one is faced with an irate customer.

Luckily, when working at a BPO job, I had never been faced with an angry client, but the reality is there, and one always has the chance of seeing it first hand, as happened when I was visiting a restaurant yesterday.

The restaurant was swarmed with people, and the atmosphere was noisy. A table in the absolute corner had ordered – and paid for – a plate of vegetarian paneer tikka. Instead, they’d been served chicken tikka. Oddly enough, they ate halfway through the plate of it before realizing it was most definitely not paneer tikka. With irritation that could’ve won an audition for some of Shakespeare’s plays, they annouced to the employees that they would not rest till the General Manager had heard all about it. I for one, had better things to do on a weekend, than wait around to see the end of that.

As I was relating this experience to my friend however, he mentioned how he’d spoken to someone working in a pizza joint who had an interesting story along these line. The guy with the pizza job told my friend the following story:

A customer had ordered a vegetarian pizza. As there was only a single pizza knife for both the veg and non-veg pizzas, a sliver of chicken had accidentally landed up on the new customer’s veg paneer pizza.

Holding up the piece of chicken, the irate customer stormed up to the counter and told the employees what they’d done. He demanded that they explain to him why he’d found chicken in his paneer pizza. He also informed them that he’d called the press, and that they were on their way. One employee asked to see the chicken piece.

As the customer handed it over to him, he promptly put it in his mouth and promptly declared that it wasn’t chicken, but in fact a piece of paneer.

By the time the press arrived, I’m told the conversation went something like this:

“There was NON-veg chicken in my VEG paneer pizza!”

“Very well. Can you show the evidence to us?”

“No! He ate it!”

That quick-thinking employee certainly saved the day for his company and I’m sure he was aptly rewarded.

How many situations can be solved with not only quick-thinking employees, but from employees who are quick to take action to resolve negative situations. Are you a quick-thinking employee who is willing to ‘eat’ that piece of problem before it turns nasty? If you are, you’re a resource your company is depending on and you have a skill that will keep you recession-proof.

We know that not every situation can be resolved by eating it. What are some situations you have found yourself in and what means did you use to get yourself out of it? Write about it here and let others learn from your experiences.

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Be an active job seeker, gain success!

Do you procrastinate when it comes to searching for a new job? Are you discontent with your job, and yet you’re just sitting idly watching those chances go by? If you are comfortable enough with seeing other around you jump for new opportunities, while you make no effort to grab your own, chances are, you’re a job-search procrastinator.

You may be wondering what exactly it means to be a job-search procrastinator. Dictionary.com says that the word ‘procrastinate’ means “to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost” or “to put off till another day or time; defer; delay”.

So to be a job-search procrastinator, all you have to do is to keep telling yourself that you will job hunt, but you’ll do it tomorrow. There’s an old saying which says: “Mañana (tomorrow) never comes”. Therefore, you know you are a job-search procrastinator if you deliberately dodge better possibilities, or try to make yourself believe that you’ll do it ‘tomorrow’.

A procrastinator may display characteristics such as being an introvert, shy and/ or expect nothing from their career as they are content to just stay wherever they are at. They are not risk-takers, and as such, will not move ahead like those around them.

If you find yourself in this category of people, it’s time you wake up and kick-start your move ahead in your professional life. You can be transformed into an active job seeker with just a few simple steps.

One of the best ways to reverse this vicious cycle is to make a task-list and endeavor to achieve it. It will serve as a map for where you want to go and where you are headed.

There’s no place in the halls of success for those who procrastinate. If you’ve been laid back and still expecting the miracles to happen, you’ll find that you’re wrong. Get up, get moving and grab success by the horns.