Sometimes you’ve got to laugh

We’ve had many a laugh over the years at some of the people we’ve met, the stories we’ve heard and some of the things that get said.

However, none makes me laugh more than some of the interactions I have with our cleaning staff. Two particular “conversations” that have happened this week are examples of some of the things that regularly come my way:

I had a call at 7.15 am on Tuesday morning from one of our early morning cleaners. I could tell he was eating whilst he called and the call went something like this:

Cleaner: “Hi Steve, how you doing?”
Me: “Hi, I’m good, how are you? Is everything okay?”
Cleaner: “Aye, everything is great. I just phoned you to tell you that I got a bacon roll from Greggs and a coffee for only £2. That’s brilliant eh?”
Me: doing my best not to laugh “Yes, that’s brilliant, I’ll need to go myself some time”.
Cleaner: “Aye you will, it’s brilliant. Anyway got to go, see you later”

And that was that – he was gone just as quick as he’d been on.

The second “conversation” was by text and I received these 2 separate texts from one of our guys totally out of the blue as I hadn’t spoken with him in over a week.

Text 1:
Today is our anniversary of the day me and my partner met 12 years ago we are going to have steak onions and roast potatoes

Text 2:
Then for afterwards mint ice cream

I just hoped he didn’t start texting if they happened to get a bit amorous. Thankfully he didn’t.

There’s two key things that I take from these regular interactions:

1. The first is that both these guys (as I hope all our staff do) feel comfortable phoning/texting me and that we haven’t created a culture where folks feel you can’t speak to the boss.
2. The second is that both of these guys took time out of their day to tell me about the happiness they had in their lives and that they wanted to share that with me.

They both made me laugh but they both made me smile even more.