Through My Eyes

So you can imagine how impressed I was when I was stood up by one of the service providers I had invited to meet and showcase my product. I had gone out of my way to accommodate her and all I got was a "no-show'. This was her job and her company stood to make money out of the meeting, still no-show.

That evening while responding to my Facebook buddies I noticed she had been posting all day long on Facebook, whinging about power failures and commenting about this and that.

I was shocked when I realised that the time when she was posting was in fact the time she was meant to be at our appointment. I thought about the melktert and chocolate cake, brownies and stroopwaffels, which I had taken the effort to put out. I felt incensed and hurt that after confirming the appointment, she did not have the decency to even send me a "Facebook excuse" for her "no-show'.

Somewhere in me a chord snapped. What could have prevented her from coming? Ok so maybe she forgot - fair enough we all forget - we are all human. The next morning when I still had heard no excuse, not via phone or email, sms or tweet. No facebook message, what's App text or anything; I needed to give her a chance to explain. I dialled the office number.

She knew immediately who it was, "Oh its you! Ja, you know, I did not come yesterdayer we didn't have any electricity" All my other service providers that turned up that day also did not have electricity, what kind of excuse was that?

When working with an international company you cannot tell me that the power failure led to your no-show, after all it is in your interest to provide me with the service of the company that is paying your salary.

Had she said to me, "Kasia I forgot" I would have laughed it off and said "Ok come today - I don't have any wine or cake left but come anyway" she decided to brush me off with an unacceptable excuse.

Time is increasingly getting more and more strained and there is only so much that one can get through in a day. As a business owner I find it increasingly hard to accept people who make appointments and do not arrive or are not there when you arrive on a given time, and don't bother to communicate the change in arrangements, even when there are so many ways you can do it.

A 2010 TechJournal article cited a research study indicating that companies whose networks provided Facebook access experienced a 1.5 percent drop in employee productivity. Peter Cohan followed up on the study in a February 2012 piece for Forbes.com, using statistics on Facebook's growth during the interim to calculate that Facebook use within the workplace could lead to a 9.4 percent productivity decrease in companies throughout the U.S., a drop that could collectively cost businesses as much as $1.4 trillion.

I guess there is a lesson to learn from this. Firstly do not say you will when you know you won't. Honesty is the best remedy; nobody will accept your lies. Tell the truth - it is the lowest level of respect anyone expects from you! Lastly, just do the work you are being paid for, don't abuse your employers, think what it took to build their brand in the first place and also, think how your "no show' will make other people feel.