Customer Service

As I've gotten settled in to my job here in Anchorage, and as the season has started to pick up, I spend a lot of my time working customer service. Usually this just means wandering the rows between our plants and asking people if they're finding everything they need, maybe answering a question or two. But sometimes I get a chance to actually help someone find a solution to their landscape problems, with the perfect shrub or tree for their location. Today there was a lot of that. So it wasn't a huge surprise that when I walked up to Burl Stephens to ask if he needed help he started asking me questions about lilacs and spruce trees. What was a surprise was when he left, and hour and twelve hundred dollars later, and asked me to come out and do a bit of design work for him. Me. Not "one of our experienced Evergreen landscape designers". Me, inexperienced except in the classroom Caresse. And considering that landscape design is kind of exactly what I want to do with my life, I'm pretty excited. Just goes to show that it never, ever, hurts to smile, and carry on a cheerful conversation with a person you're working with. Not even if they start out looking like they're going to be nothing but difficult and grumpy.