As someone who has been diagnosed with cancer, I can tell you that cancer is a life changing event!!!! There is no good type of cancer. We recently lost Jimmy Buffett to skin cancer and I had always scoffed at sun screen as a young man. Not any more!!!! I was lucky. My rectal cancer was found early but the treatment did permanent damage to my body. But the trade off is I'm still alive!!! For women, I would imagine that breast cancer is always a worry.
This blog is not meant to diminish the fear or worry of breast cancer, not in the least. In fact, consider it a subtle reminder to visit your doctor regularly for exams. No, today is the anniversary of 9/11 and also, would have been my son's 31st birthday. Theres nothing funny about today...but I thought of a little incident that happened to me when I was working at National City as a banker. I needed a chuckle and I hope you will chuckle too.
As many of you know, October has always been National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and when I was working as a banker, our bank promoted the month with our women customers. I think we had special credit cards printed with a pink ribbon on them or something of that nature. We were groomed in morning meetings to raise the awareness of breast cancer month by promoting our new credit card.
I usually did very well at promoting new bank products but I never was a fan of the CANNED PITCH. I HATED THAT!!!! I did not like coming off phony or un genuine. I think that is why I was fairly successful...I just used normal conversation to maneuver from topic to topic and from product to product. I alway felt customers let their guard down more when they weren't feeling that they were being "sold" something. One day, my "normal conversation" got a little ahead of me and my filter was a bit slow.
It happened one afternoon as the day was beginning to drag. All I could think about was the weekend and how I was going to spend it...when SHE came into our lobby. It was an unusually warm October day and our customer sat down in one of the hard chairs in our lobby. It seemed that the other bankers were busy so I greeted her with a warm handshake and invited her to my desk. She was about my age and was very attractive. We talked for a while and I eventually helped her with her initial needs. Now this is when as a banker, conversation builds and need profiling usually begins. My blonde haired customer decided that she was getting warm in her light jacket and before I could get too much further into my needs based questioning, she removed her jacket and carefully placed it on the back of her chair in my office.
Now with out sounding like a male chauvinist, let me just say bluntly..... my customer was very busty and her plunging blouse was not helping the situation much. I think she was flirting and could tell I was a bit uncomfortable for a split second.
I immediately switched to professional banker mode and told myself to LOOK HER IN THE EYES ONLY!!!!! Which I did. that was until I began the credit card conversation!!!!
I was just finishing up my needs analysis when I reached for the National Breast Cancer Awareness credit card brochures. With a slight twist of my body, I reached behind me to present her with our new credit card information. As I turned to look her in the eye, SOMETHING SNAPPED and I couldn't believe what came out of my mouth!!!!!
"As you may well know Ms Customer, October is National BREAST APPRECIATION MONTH!!!!" "and we have this new credit card............ What?
What the hell did I just say??????? Did I just tell this busty woman customer that October was breast appreciation month???? OMG!!!!
I mean I did appreciate womens breasts but I wasn't supposed to tell her that!!!!
After that forbidden sentance came out of my mouth, she slyly looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and said, yes, she'd like to hear more. I must have been seven shades of red!!!!! I think she let me go through my pitch and then took the brochure with her. I thanked her for her business but nothing was ever mentioned about my breast appreciation!!!!
I quietly thanked my lucky stars that she didn't make me feel any more stupid than I did. I don't think I ever saw that customer again.
Just another tit for tat from the ORANGE ROOM!!!!
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