Landing in Bangalore, after a long flight in, and an even longer day, I don’t really look forward to the drive that awaits me – two hours many a times, an hour and a half for sure most of the time. So, it is a ritual to visit the rest room to freshen up and then get out.
Familiar sight in airport restrooms in India, except maybe T3 in Delhi where the supply sort of still outstrips demand, is long lines and harried faces, more so in the evenings. Also familiar is the not so pleasant state of the rest rooms………….. My family’s pet title for me is ‘sniffer dog’ so you can imagine my state where my keen sense of smell is offended.
But back to Bangalore Airport, and this one staffer who I invariably encounter in the rest rooms; she is a dragon, and she reminds me of the Italian nun who taught me history in school. She is a plump, short, stern faced woman, who guards her rest room like it is her kingdom. She inspects every cubicle before letting the next person enter, she stands, mop in hand to quickly wipe up any water on the floor, she doesn’t hesitate to pull out a waddle of tissues to wipe seats that don’t seem clean; she warns all saree- clad women, who she seems to believe are not capable of using western loos correctly, not to spill water from the hygiene tap on the floor or seat! She is always armed with a can of freshener and ensures the air smells sweet all the time. Next time I land in Bangalore and meet her, I am going to ask her name and thank her – if I am not in my customary saree J
She is not the norm in airports, or malls or any other public rest rooms. It is not a happy job to have, cleaning up after other people. I usually encounter, and so will you, people who are indifferent or at best do the bare necessities that they are paid to do. I have even had two of the ladies tasked with cleaning the rest room in a high end lounge, chatting, washing their face and armpits (I kid you not!) when passengers were waiting to use the wash basin.
So my Bangalore Dragon, is a special person. She demonstrates to me the pride I can take in my job, NO MATTER WHAT THE JOB IS; and the fact that I can take the job description to whatever extent I want to take it to – right down to the spirit of the role and do it meticulously, like she does, or stay on the surface, and meet the minimum acceptable criteria. No one pays anything extra for executing to the spirit, maybe no one even notices how dedicated one is and how well one does the job, except oneself!
And that I think is the key to excel in whatever I do – to stay true to my own sense of excellence, to stay committed to the highest levels of performance, not for any other reason but because it is my job, my output, and therefore a reflection and a part of ME. This is true for anything – whether it is a home maker tasked with cooking and cleaning and other unnoticed chores, or a CEO running a company, or a call center executive, or a sales man in a shop. What matters is how good I feel about my role and how I executed my tasks, and the sense of satisfaction that follows.
And I also have to accept the fact that such an inherent sense of excellence, of pride, cannot be created, cannot be supervised or managed into a person, cannot be enforced or created in a person. As a leader, I have to be smart and hire people with this quality, and do my best to inspire it in the rest; maybe find a way to set a culture in the team that promotes and reinforces this; create enablers. But ultimately, this is all about the individuals choice to send unformatted text or a power-point with no page numbers, to customer service that is brilliant or average……. ……
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