Tag Archives: Values

Life Experiences

We Never Stop Laughing

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It wasn’t so long ago that when I received a call or text at 10pm I sighed heavily and resigned myself to the fact that it was going to be a work call that I would have to “manage”! 

So, you may be surprised to hear me say that last Friday night just before 10pm when I received a text from a work colleague (for the purpose of this blog, let’s refer to her as Jinny Whyte so as to ‘protect the innocent’), I actually didn’t sigh, but smiled.  You see Jinny had been prepping for her son’s 4th birthday and things had not gone quite according to plan!  There had been a whole load of hype around the Ben 10 cake that she was going to produce for her little boy, but time had worked against her, hence why she was baking at 10 at night. 

The text that came through simply read “Thought you might like to see the cake for tomorrow”, to which was attached the following picture:  (immediately below)

My response was simple – “Awesome job!!!  What r u on about???  U r a legend!!!”.  I was so suprised at how good it looked that I decided to show my wife as she is an avid baker and had offered to lend assistance to Jinny if it was required (we are all part of the White Now team – husbands, wives and kids included).  My wife was suitably impressed…………………and then she said, “Hey, hang on!  Isn’t Jinny’s son turning 4 and NOT 6?”.  “Good point!  You’re right”, I replied.  And so I sent a follow up text which said, “Nice job JW.  You truly are a ‘talented’ woman!”. 

“Just wait until you see the REAL THING“, was what I got back!

On the Saturday, my wife, two boys and I drove over to Jinny’s for the party.  A great day was had and the fanfare leading up to the revealing of the cake was building the tension………….you could cut the air with a knife (poetic license). 

The covers were pulled off and we were all met with: (see pic on bottom right)

We all fell apart with laughter!  Even with all of the stress of the previous evening (the details of which I have avoided intentionally).  Jinny had managed to see the funny side of things and had pulled us all in on the joke.

This is just ONE of a MILLION AND ONE stories that could have been shared!  This is genuinely just another day in the life of a White Now team member!  There is never a dull moment and we never stop laughing.  WORK or PLAY, we all get along so well and have such a similar sense of humour that we can’t help but include each other for a laugh.

We quite literally NEVER stop laughing!  No matter what the situation.  No matter how stressful things become.  We are always there to offer a hand and whilst doing so, make a “funny”!  What stems from this is a team that is engaged, passionate and involved.  Don’t get me wrong – we don’t live in each other’s pockets, but we do genuinely care about each other and about having fun and this is what makes White Now such a great place to work and such a successful organisation.

Business Brands, Life Experiences, Values

Tigers are on the prowl – The TRUE champions !

Tigers!
Farewell Balmain Tigers

After 52 years in Rozelle, Balmain Tigers is now officially closed for redevelopment.  The Club has in the mean time, opened two smaller sites at Flemington Markets and Five Dock.  With this closure came the redundancy of 30 or so staff.  It is a tough decision when a Club has to inform its often, long term and loyal staff of their future redundancy.  Some of the staff that had been made redundant had been with Tigers for over 20 years.  Sunday 28th March 2010 was a sad day – the closing of Tigers, mixed with the feeling of a positive future with a new and exciting redevelopment already started. 

White Now were honoured to have been called in to assist with the Outplacement Program for a number of redundant staff.  With this Program was the offer of interview training, resume and career direction training, skills audits and ongoing mentoring.  Our wonderful Toby delivered a fantastic session to a group of soon-to-be redundant staff on preparing a powerful resume and winning at interview.  Through this experience, the White Now team saw a bunch of dedicated, positive and enthusiastic people who looked at their redundancy as a chance to do great things, look at their lives as a whole and actually CREATE their own futures.  There were people who wanted to change direction totally, some wanted to find exactly the same role in another club, others wanted to search overseas for a role and some wanted to follow their dream of working part time.  What WAS refreshing though was that everyone was positive.  It is a credit to each and every person at Tigers for adopting the right attitude and being positive.  Thanks to you all for simply being great !

It was an absolute pleasure for White Now to be involved in the Outplacement and Redeployment of the Tigers team and we wish those CHAMPIONS all the best with the next stage of their lives.  – Think like a champion and you will become a champion !

Life Experiences

The Road to Recovery

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I received a phone call over 2 weeks from a mate that I have known for over 20 years, in fact he was the first person that I made friends with at my footy club when we moved over to Australia!  He called me to confirm that I would be attending his 4oth birthday on the weekend of 27th March and we agreed that we would spend the day with one eye on the tv watching the Formula 1 highlights and the other chatting to various people!  We laughed about it and that was that.

Then, Wednesday last week he rang me back.  There was the usual banter and a brief chat about the first round of the F1.  This was then followed up with “Hey mate, you know how my party was locked in for the 27th?”.  “Yes”.  “Well, we are going to have to postpone it for a later date”.  “Oh!  Ok.  Is everything alright?”.

What followed was him informing me that he had been feeling a bit crook in the last week and so he had been to the Doc’s on the Monday and after a couple of tests that day, then a HEAP of tests on the Tuesday, they had decided to rush him in for an emergency procedure to remove a cancerous tumour from his right kidney.  They would need to break a couple of ribs to do so, make an incision about 30cm+ long and he would be under for 4 hours or so!

He was (as always) pretty philosophical about the whole thing and said that it was great that they had found it and that the surgery was the cure and that in 95% of cases, that is the end of it!

So, last week he went in to hospital and had the operation and I spoke with his wife on the Thursday and then with him on the Sunday.  He said that he was in massive pain, but that the op had gone really well and that they were talking about releasing him “soon”.  The VERY NEXT day, I got a text from him to say that he was in the car on his way home!  I was shocked, but told him that I would be over to visit the next day (yesterday)!

I was even more shocked when I saw the state of him yesterday when I got to his place!  He could hardly move he was in so much pain and the poor bloke looked a lot older than his (almost) 40 years!  I said to him, “What the hell are you doing back at home in this state?” (the terminology has been cleaned up for the purposes of the blog)!!!  His response was along the lines of the hospital needed the bed and they offered to give him some strong medication to handle the pain and as he was ‘young and fit’ (young – defintely.  fit – not so sure!!!) he should recover well .

Now, I am obviously NOT a Doctor, but there is no way my  mate should have been let out of the hospital.  I won’t go in to the gory details, but let me just say that he had not even cleared his system since the operation so they should have at least have kept him until that milestone had been successfully achieved!  It should also be noted that he was released against the protestations of both his wife and sister AND that he was paying TOP DOLLAR in a private hostpital with a VERY good name!!!

I am gob-smacked that anyone would be released after such major surgery!  And to let someone go home where there was not going to be any care for the first two days that he was back there is beyond me and quite frankly bordering on culpable in my limited opinion!!!

However, from all of this there have been some real positives:

  • Primarily that my friend is better and should be fine from here!
  • It has woken him up to his unhealthy lifestyle
  • And has woken myself and a couple of our other close friends up to theirs (unhealthy lifestyles).  We have all agreed to getting a bit fitter and being healthier and to making some wiser decisions when it comes to our lifestyles (work vs play vs late nights vs parties vs etc, etc)!

Life is so precious, particularly when we all have kids involved!  We should therefore hold on tight to it and take the time to look at what is important us and make the decisions required to ensure that we are around and about to enjoy each and every moment that we have to spend with those that we love and cherish as ultimately we are all mortal, which for (relatively) young Australian blokes to admit is a MAJOR milestone!!!  🙂

Life Experiences

Good Peoples (intentional typo) !

Isn’t it funny how “Good Peoples” attract “Good Peoples” ???

What a treat !

I can quite honestly say that I work in a truly great organisation and am surrounded by a whole load of genuinely “Good Peoples” both professionally and personally.  And sometimes things happen that reaffirm this, such as yesterday (a work day):

My fantastic MD arranged through one of her contacts for me to be taken for a drive in a BMW M3……………………..something that I have always wanted to do.  (I openly admit to be a Revhead, but promise to do my best not to make this a car story as such !).

I was instructed to be at a certain location at a certain time and as my Dad (a fellow Car Tragic) was visiting from SA, he was also invited along for the ride.  Upon our arrival we were greeted by the owner of the aforementioned M3 who saw my Dad was using a walking stick and so very kindly told us to wait there whilst he collected the car and brought it out the front.  As this gorgeous charcoal-silver M3 pulled up to the collection point, Dad and I prepared to load ourselves in to the passenger seats, but the owner had another offer – one that quite frankly blew me away.  He wandered over to me and handed me the keys to his VERY powerful and VERY expensive ‘pride and joy’ and told me that I would be driving.

Mouth agape and in a mouse-like voice I tried to decline but he insisted and so I climbed in to the driver’s seat and got myself comfortable.

I won’t bore you with the details of the drive as I know cars are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I will just comment that it was everything and more than I had imagined.  I came back quite literally shaking with excitement, nervousness and awe.  The car’s owner had happily let me have a pretty serious “go” and was quite obviously chuffed at my enthusiasm and enjoyment.

Upon returning to where we had set off from, we all went out for lunch where we shared a fantastic meal and some amazing company.  Dad and I spent nearly three hours with a person that we had never met before and he had managed to clear his very, very busy schedule to make time for us !  Dad had a ball !!!  He has been retired for a few years now and so rarely has the opportunity to mix in “business” circles which afford a level of intellectual conversation.  I had the opportunity to spend some quality time almost one on one with a highly intelligent and very successful businessman and in doing so discovered a person of great integrity and passion – a person that enjoyed the opportunity to give with absolutely no expectation of anything in return.  A truly “Good People” !

Yesterday was indeed a VERY special day !  I not only got to drive one of the cars of my dreams, but I had the opportunity to witness my Dad be genuinely happy (not that this is uncommon, but it is something that you never grow tired of) and I also got to broaden my network of “Good Peoples”.

To everyone involved (you know who you are)………………….THANK YOU !  THANK YOU !!  THANK YOU !!!  I wake up on a daily basis and thank my lucky stars for all of the wonderful things around me and yesterday was yet another moment to be thankful for !

You guys ROCK !

Life Experiences, Values

Working for Dough !

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Isn’t it funny how your perception of a business can change ?

When we moved in to our new home two years ago,  the process of unpacking the multitude of boxes made the hunger pains start however the fridge had not been plugged in and the food boxes contained nothing that appealed to the appetite !  Fortunately we had relocated to the Inner West and two minute’s walk from our place is a run of shops.

I grabbed my wallet and my then 18 month old and I walked (he got carried) up to our very local shops.  Within quite literally ten metres of each other there are two bakeries.  I strolled in to the slightly closer one and was met by 3 smiling faces and a big “can I help you ?”.  We were off to a great start !  The lady serving me was very helpful whilst the other two ladies were very taken with my little boy.  They clucked and cooed and after I spent my $20 or thereabouts and was about to leave they gave my little boy a cookie and said, “see you soon”.

Needless to say we started going back on an almost daily basis and would easily spend on average $30 a week, which I would suggest should have made us a “regular customer”.

The service remained reasonably consistent for about 12 months and we could not have been happier – buying bread became a bit of an outing/event and my son was always the first one at the door, champing at the bit to buy bread (and maybe score a free cookie……………he was only two and a half afterall !!!).

Both my wife and I enjoy a nice chunky sandwich and so we have always bought our bread UNsliced – the added benefit being the bread seems to remain fresher for longer.  Upon arriving at the bakery every second day, if not every day we would ask if they had an UNcut loaf or if there was anything fresh out of the oven ?  (There is NOTHING better than warm/fresh bread with a chunk of butter on it).

Now,  for the purpose of this post I am going to ignore the fact that we had to request an uncut loaf each and every time, which in itself is frustrating.  What we both began to notice was that we were gradually being treated with more and more disdain until eventually we were almost ignored and then one day the owner’s wife came out and informed my wife that the cut loaves were fresh each morning and why couldn’t we just take one of those ?  Shocked, my wife left the bakery without purchasing anything and she came home to tell me the story.

Interestingly enough and against my usual mode of doing things; rather than speak directly to the owner or his wife about loyalty and customer service, we “voted with our feet” and now we buy all of our bread from either the bakery two doors up OR we go to the less expensive and much friendlier again bakery that is a car trip away !!!

All of this got me to thinking………………

All of the hard work that these people did at first to gain our repeat business was undone over a period of time by making us FEEL like we were being difficult !  And then, it came to a head when they then confirmed our feelings by confronting us.  Would it not have been much easier to just keep a loaf aside for us each day ?  Worst case scenario is that someone else would have bought it later on.  As os often happens with this sort of experience, I shared it with local friends and family and they too have stopped using the bakery as my experience was echoed (if not to the same degree) by them.  Overnight, their business is potentially $2000-$3000 a year less profitable due to the loss of “our” business.

Will this send them broke ?  I sincerely hope not !  It is a family owned business and they have a small family to feed.

Someone once said to me “there is plenty of dough in dough” !!!  Unfortunately, no matter how much money there is in a product/service without CUSTOMER SERVICE it can be worthless…..