Today I bought a new friend. A friend who hopefully will inspire me to write and enable me to accomplish more.

It’s beyond hopeful, but hey, that’s what I do.

My new friend is in the thirteen inch variety, weighs very little and has Scrivener installed on it. Some might say I’m impulsive. Some might say I’m a moron. That’s why we listen to the voices in our heads (and not the ones that tell us to burn things). After demoing Scrivener and their incredibly generous twenty one days, which I never ran out of, I decided to take the plunge. Upon discovering it was half off in the App Store, I rejoiced and committed my novel to a life in Scrivener. To the people who made that program, I swear when I get published, I will mention you in a separate dedications page!

And now… Apple should thank those same people who created Scrivener for making me run out and buy a portable sexy beast with lit up keys for all those late night writings (like this one) and portability. Now I’m unsure if this is my newest tool of the trade, or if I am the tool of the trade! I mean really, am I fooling myself into believing that a thousand dollar machine will be the thing that gets me published? Will this new machine begin to gather dust after the wonder of looking down upon the keyboard like watching city streets from a plane wears off?

I must admit, the keyboard is a dream to type on and is relatively silent. My poor exhausted girlfriend sleeps right beside me while I write this very post. She’s got extremely long work days for the next week, and with the puppies out with her parents, that gives me all the time to spend with this magical beast. Lucky for me, I also have the next two days off, although at the cost of running into a nine day stretch of work. Tradeoffs.

Although for those of you who’ve read through here before, you may know that I work retail. I sincerely enjoy my job and the challenges it comes with. As a part of a management team, I manage to liken it to trying to assemble the Avengers/Justice League and trying to get all these awesome folk and misfits to work together and accomplish the task at hand. Some days are easier than others, others are like running with your pants down. But sometimes it is the challenge from the other side of the business that throws me for a loop.

I like to think I am a nice, helpful guy. Many people thank me, wave or shake my hand, smile and are generally positive on their way out. But I must say the one thing that shocks me about retail is the lack of customer compliments these days. I’m someone who would love to get promoted and I bend over backwards in my efforts to try and help the customer out while ensuring the business isn’t run into the ground. I have helped with minor issues (This was the wrong color) to the major issues (This five thousand dollar TV was busted when I went to set it up) and just about everything in between, and from my experience I could effortlessly get a million complaints a week. A million. Exaggerated? Maybe. But only on the number of people through our doors each week.

What am I getting at? I’m getting at the fact that somedays (myself included) when the world is going awesomely and everything is perfect, we forget to take the time to give out some good feedback to those who helped make it a great day. Today I helped a customer with their computer who had called the manufacturer and was told to bring it in. Somehow they had set up a password for the BIOS (that load up screen before any operating system starts) and had created a password for the computer and forgotten it. It took some time out of my day (around thirty minutes with a restore), but I managed to get rid of both passwords and set the computer up so everything ran smoothly. I decided as I had spent my time, I would politely ask the customer to take time out of their day to try and get me promoted.

This was where things got interesting.

When I placed them in front of a computer and set them up with the website, all I wanted was an honest opinion on how I had done today. What I got was, “I’m terrible at these things. Can you write it for me?” From a customer service point of view, I was actually a bit crushed. I pressed on and actually had to almost repeat the sales process by asking a ton of questions about how I had helped. In short, the customer was happy to put their name to whatever I wrote. I suppose at least that meant they trusted me fully by then, but still, I now know that it’s extremely hard to get a compliment. Lesson learned.

So for those of you out there who have complimented someone lately, thank you. On behalf of whoever that was, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It’s so easy to get out there and vent your anger or frustration, but I’d say it takes a bigger person to go out of their way to thank someone for exceptional service and the such. Have you ladies and gents beyond the screen given any compliments lately? Let me know, and try and keep it positive in the comments! Good luck!