noble man

some season gone by i knew a man who was noble. i don't recall his name and i did not know him well, but the primary sense i got of the man was simply that he was a noble man.

i was working as a trainer in a large customer service call center. i trained hundreds of people yearly in those days, 9-12 classes of 15 to 25 csr's for two weeks at a time, plus ongoing classes periodically for already working csr's on specific skill sets such as empathy or selling or how to operate a new desktop telephone. call centers tend to have high turnover which is calculated by a churn rate.

i knew virtually every person in the call center because i was connected to management and i trained every person who worked in this 150-seat center. the man i refer to worked as a csr for no more than two months.

he showed up in my class one day and he was a good student. he was about 40, i would say-i was probably 31. he was kind of regular in as much as he was a white guy of average build who did not have any tattoos or attention-drawing features or style choices whatsoever. in a class of about 20 this man was not one of the top two i would expect to have in any new hire training, who would be highly involved in the training and who would take to the computer system with intuition. he was just below that group, being respectfully involved in the training and taking to the computer system with aplomb.

he explained to me one day that he had his own business in auto glass. he operated as a mobile service somewhere in the valley and had an ad in the yellow pages. business had slowed to an uncomfortable level however, and so this man took a job as a customer service representative in a call center for a water service. he took in the company's values, learned the computer system, brushed up on open and closed ended questions and took to representing a corporation's interests by being its ears and mouth for 28 to 40 hours per week.

the man also told me he had a wife and two little girls at home. he had a mortgage and he had bills and he was doing what he had to do to provide. this was not a hellish job in any regard. a csr with some skill and effort could completely divorce his person from the conversations, employ empathy and follow instructions and have a relatively resistance free group of conversations daily.

as a csr this man made about $11 per hour. he showed up for work every day. he put effort into his interactions with the water customers and he was cordial with his coworkers.

i was always impressed by this man but more so after he had returned to his life as he knew it. he came to me one day and shook my hand, explaining that his auto glass business had been picking up and so he had resigned. he thanked me for the training and said something nice about how i worked, said he wanted to be sure to say goodbye to me. the respect was mutual.

professionally i might have been remiss about this resignation as this man had not been a cost effective investment for my organization because of his premature departure. but i understood his perspective. he had been struggling financially. he had a family to provide for. as business slowed, he decided to take a second job and figured speaking to the customers of a water company and working on behalf of a staffing company, he could augment his income in order to pay his bills and allow his family to continue living in the manner to which they had become accustomed.

when business picked up again, he could not take on the work without quitting his second job.

this man's action was noble. he is not someone i know today or will ever know again. he is common, proof even of the basically good nature of man. i respect him just as i respect all good men.