Have Fun With It

I just received a wonderful letter from a reader of my blog. It was very flattering and I totally appreciated the accolades. And I thought I’d share the following paragraph that really excited me.

“Holly,
I think you’ll be amused to learn that having to take a part-time job (thank to all the saints in heaven for a paycheck!) as a Costco product demonstrator, I took a page from your show biz book and make up songs for Costco members taking my product samples. The training film said to have fun, so one example is that on Valentine’s Day I was demonstrating French Brie and asking customers what could be more romantic than fromage from France, land of romance? Then I would break into song, “SHOP in the name of love!”

I just loved this expression of turning lemons into lemonade. The woman who is working at Costco had fallen on some bad economic times and could not sustain her business and needed to seek work elsewhere. It took a while to get a job, and because she was grateful as well as gregarious and talented, she turned her job as a Costco Food Demonstrator into a fun experience for the patrons as well as herself.

I was so inspired I called her and we talked for about an hour. She told me that she never knows what products she will be demonstrating and that they change daily, so she always tries to make a game out of it. When presented with the product, she’ll write a poem or a song on the spot. I thought I’d share a few other hysterical examples of where her creativity takes her. Once she had frozen cream puffs and sang to the tune of Bali Hai, “Mini cream puffs are calling.“ Another time, while demonstrating Angus burgers, she did a spoof on the old slicer dicer mixer demonstrators. She said, “Buy it, heat it, and serve it. What could be easier,” all in a fast-paced tone”

Oh, and by the way, she is always breaking sales records. Some people just buy the products because they are amused. Did you know that product demonstrations are in fact a sales tactic for individual products and not a Costco freebie offering to get you in the store? I wonder how many people take to heart the advice on the training video that says, “Have fun with it?”

The bigger lesson here, beyond higher sales, is to bring joy into everything you do. It would be so easy to complain about having to stand on a cement floor for hours doing something menial when you have multiple degrees. Instead, the power is in understanding that there is always an opportunity to take whatever cards you were dealt and recognize that you are at choice and not a victim. Your choice is to have fun with it.

In my Spirit in Service classes, we talk about being on stage, (Lights, Camera, Action), dancing through the day and finding humor in your work. It feels good that one of the readers of my “Neon Signs Of Service“ book put it into action.

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