It’s election season! Yes, again! I don’t watch that show, so if you’re looking for hot election takes, you’re going to have to look somewhere else.
But I am, just to offset all the negativity, going to tell you a very happy government-based story. I had my all-time favorite interaction with a government employee last week. I’m going to be vague about the details for reasons that will become clear, but someone out there absolutely deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor for customer service.
The details of this anecdote have changed slightly in the interest of protecting that person, God bless them.
An extremely critical piece of paper had left the family. Whether this was through being misplaced or lost or some other nefarious means remains unresolved. The priority was to get the piece of paper replaced swiftly — so swiftly that even my family forewent the blame-assignment portion of the lost-paper grieving process and went directly to the frenzied effort at replacement.
A government piece of paper is not a thing you replace swiftly. Sometimes there are emergencies, and your average government agency is extremely understanding about emergencies. They are often deeply sympathetic when they tell you there is nothing they can do. You can even sometimes almost perceive genuine regret in their tone as they reiterate that there is nothing they can do. Often, they are telling the truth.
But sometimes there are workarounds.
The party most affected by the urgently needed lost paper was dispatched along with an aide. The aide was there to shepherd both the affected party and the cornucopia of papers required to replace the very important piece of paper. The aide executed both portions of this assignment flawlessly and was an absolute godsend.
Among the requirements for the very important piece of paper’s replacement was to print out an application to receive the very important piece of paper, fill it out, and bring it with you to the relevant government office, unsigned. Presumably the idea is that you are to sign it only after the tribunal has proofread your document and verified that it is complete.
The papers we took were reviewed and found satisfactory. To the great surprise of all, we were told that six hours hence we would be able to pick up the replacement piece of paper. I do not wish to brag, but I was entrusted with the job of picking up the replacement very important piece of paper through an extensive qualification process of asking me if I happened to be working downtown that day (Yes).
When I arrived to pick up the piece of paper and seal our triumph, the person behind the desk asked me if the original person in need of the piece of paper was with me. I said “No.”
This is the customer service Medal of Honor part:
The person behind the desk then said, “Maybe the applicant is downstairs at Starbucks. You may want to check, as we forgot to have the document signed this morning before they left. Here, take the document and this pen in case the applicant is in fact still in the neighborhood. If so, have them sign it and bring it directly back to me. Go ahead and bypass the front desk when you return.”
I was not born yesterday. I can pick up what someone is putting down.
So of course I immediately went downstairs to the Starbucks and, as luck would have it, the applicant was in fact sitting right there! It was as though they had known something might go sideways. They were able to sign a remarkably authentic-looking version of their own John Hancock with their own hand. I returned alone to the office upstairs with the signed form, which was promptly transmuted into the replacement very important piece of paper.
All is well.
So now whenever someone asks me who I think should be the President, I will point them to one small office in downtown Chicago and say, “In this office is a person who knows how to get things done.”
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