The company I used to work for, experimented with print sites in a retail chain, that on a handful of occasions I was asked to cover. Didn’t dig it much, but I got to interact with some actually cool people once in a while.
On one occasion, a man came in and asked me a couple of questions about printing some photo collages.
“I’m doing up plaques for my team and I want to have some pictures from the past few years in the center.”
All he had was Microsoft Office, so, go with what you have I guess. He said he needed to do it that afternoon, so I told him about the coffee shop around the corner he could go to.
“The chairs are comfy, the staff is cool, and if they give you a hard time, tell them I sent you.”
Off he went and I got back to some other tasks. His mention of a team didn’t make me think it was anything more exciting than a little league soccer team he coached out in Stoney Creek or something along those lines.
He came back an hour later and handed over a USB key. I plugged it in and pulled up his file. Right in the center was a photo of a Mitsubishi Evolution leaping over a hill and around it were smaller photos of other races and photos of mechanics working on cars and the like.
He came back an hour later and handed over a USB key. I plugged it in and pulled up his file. Right in the center was a photo of a Mitsubishi Evolution leaping over a hill and around it were smaller photos of other races and photos of mechanics working on cars and the like.
Well, that’s a little more exciting than a little league soccer team.
The file was pretty massive and took quite a while to process. We struck up a conversation. I told him what I thought his ‘team’ consisted of when he first walked in.
I can’t say I’m a huge rally fan, but it is about the only moto–sport I have any patience for. When I was in Toronto, a bunch of us would congregate at Jarkko’s on Sunday evenings for “church”. Aperitifs, The Simpsons and WRC on Speed network. Fun times.
It turns out his name was Andrew Comrie-Picard and he was kind of a big deal on the North American rally circuit, has become an even bigger deal in the intervening years, and a television figure as well. http://www.acpracing.com/
I asked him how he got into rally.
“I grew up on a farm in Alberta and got to drive all sorts of things. Tractors, motocross bikes, trucks, cars, you name it. Got into racing motocross bikes when I was pretty young. Then when I was at Oxford, I got interested in classic rally. You take an old car and fix it up and race that. I had a 1955 Volvo that I raced. Really got into that. Then when I came back here I bought an old Lada that I fixed up and started competing on the Canadian Rally circuit. I eventually moved my way up to a Mitsubishi car.”
“So, I don’t mean to be crass or anything, but rally has got to be a pricy proposition to get involved in.”
He laughed. “Yeah it is! Well, I work as an entertainment lawyer in New York, so that helps fund it. But it is an incremental thing. You get better and better as you compete and sponsors begin to take notice of you. So you get some better tires from a sponsor in exchange for putting their logo on your car, so that helps. It builds from there.”
He readily answered a bunch of questions I had and explained to me the intricacies of course notes.
He was in Hamilton filming a TV show for Global, War of the Wheels.
He also worked as an instructor at a driving school in New Hampshire where he was teaching evasive driving skills to PSDs going to Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’m taking my crew down there so they can bomb around in cars for the weekend. There is no way that I could do what I do without their support. But it isn’t really feasible to say ‘hey take the car out and have fun with it for a while, an hour before a race.’ So this gives them the chance to tear around in the schools cars, have fun, blow off some steam.
It was getting late in the day. He needed to go and pick up the plaque portion at a place across town. “Just go and do that. I’ll take care of all this here, trim them down. If you don’t make it back here before the store closes, I’ll just wait over at the coffee shop for you with this stuff.”
“Oh dude, you’re a life saver.”
His file was mammoth and it took forever to spit out all the copies. I trimmed them all down to size, placed them between some cardboard, and in a large envelope. I went and hung out at the cafe until he showed up.
“Thomas, thank you so much. If I didn’t have a dozen things to do and be on the road for New Hampshire at 03:00, I would take you out for beers and dinner.”
“Oh no worries. Glad I could help you out. I think we’ve all been in a similar position. A fun conversation was all the thanks I need. Good luck.”
Chances were good I would never see him again, and I might never get any repeat business from him. But he may well tell someone else about the good service he received, and there really is nothing like good word of mouth to help propel a business along. There were a lot of things that my managers were doing wrong with those sites, but I felt that offering great service was something I could easily do right. The slight inconvenience it was for me to sit in a cafe for a half hour reading a book, could very well translate into good words and more business in the long run. And he was a nice guy, so doing him a favour was no big deal at all. (Not at all like this tactless jackass. Isn’t it amazing how just following simple directions and being half decently pleasant gets you somewhere in life?)
I can’t say I’m a huge rally fan, but it is about the only moto–sport I have any patience for. When I was in Toronto, a bunch of us would congregate at Jarkko’s on Sunday evenings for “church”. Aperitifs, The Simpsons and WRC on Speed network. Fun times.
It turns out his name was Andrew Comrie-Picard and he was kind of a big deal on the North American rally circuit, has become an even bigger deal in the intervening years, and a television figure as well. http://www.acpracing.com/
I asked him how he got into rally.
“I grew up on a farm in Alberta and got to drive all sorts of things. Tractors, motocross bikes, trucks, cars, you name it. Got into racing motocross bikes when I was pretty young. Then when I was at Oxford, I got interested in classic rally. You take an old car and fix it up and race that. I had a 1955 Volvo that I raced. Really got into that. Then when I came back here I bought an old Lada that I fixed up and started competing on the Canadian Rally circuit. I eventually moved my way up to a Mitsubishi car.”
“So, I don’t mean to be crass or anything, but rally has got to be a pricy proposition to get involved in.”
He laughed. “Yeah it is! Well, I work as an entertainment lawyer in New York, so that helps fund it. But it is an incremental thing. You get better and better as you compete and sponsors begin to take notice of you. So you get some better tires from a sponsor in exchange for putting their logo on your car, so that helps. It builds from there.”
He readily answered a bunch of questions I had and explained to me the intricacies of course notes.
He was in Hamilton filming a TV show for Global, War of the Wheels.
He also worked as an instructor at a driving school in New Hampshire where he was teaching evasive driving skills to PSDs going to Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’m taking my crew down there so they can bomb around in cars for the weekend. There is no way that I could do what I do without their support. But it isn’t really feasible to say ‘hey take the car out and have fun with it for a while, an hour before a race.’ So this gives them the chance to tear around in the schools cars, have fun, blow off some steam.
It was getting late in the day. He needed to go and pick up the plaque portion at a place across town. “Just go and do that. I’ll take care of all this here, trim them down. If you don’t make it back here before the store closes, I’ll just wait over at the coffee shop for you with this stuff.”
“Oh dude, you’re a life saver.”
His file was mammoth and it took forever to spit out all the copies. I trimmed them all down to size, placed them between some cardboard, and in a large envelope. I went and hung out at the cafe until he showed up.
“Thomas, thank you so much. If I didn’t have a dozen things to do and be on the road for New Hampshire at 03:00, I would take you out for beers and dinner.”
“Oh no worries. Glad I could help you out. I think we’ve all been in a similar position. A fun conversation was all the thanks I need. Good luck.”
Chances were good I would never see him again, and I might never get any repeat business from him. But he may well tell someone else about the good service he received, and there really is nothing like good word of mouth to help propel a business along. There were a lot of things that my managers were doing wrong with those sites, but I felt that offering great service was something I could easily do right. The slight inconvenience it was for me to sit in a cafe for a half hour reading a book, could very well translate into good words and more business in the long run. And he was a nice guy, so doing him a favour was no big deal at all. (Not at all like this tactless jackass. Isn’t it amazing how just following simple directions and being half decently pleasant gets you somewhere in life?)
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