Alison Hartley

My last blog will make sense of that statement. I took it to my trusted mechanic this morning, and it had a broken suspension spring. More to the point, it had a very sharp point about to pierce the front tyre, which he showed me. He wouldn’t let me take it home. Instead he ordered the part, drove me home and said the car would be ready tomorrow.

Now this level of service is not because he is short of work! It’s because he puts customers first. He makes it easy to keep going back to him because he never gives me duff advice, never exaggerates and always delivers. And this is a one man business!

I asked him if he’d worked through the ‘hurricane-force winds battering Scotland’ yesterday, to which he said he’d decided to finish ‘early’ at 5.30pm.. And by the way, my husband was at work for a full day, and came home on the bus, at the normal time.

In summary, it seems to me we can decide to be committed to hard work, excellence and putting customers first, if we really want to..

By the way, if you’re in the Edinburgh area, and want a fantastic mechanic, go to Iain McLennan, Clerk St Motors, 0131 440 4719.

“This plane’s a tech” said the airline representative, as we weary travellers sat at the gate, hopefully looking at the said plane just outside on the tarmac.

We all looked at each other enquiringly, but thankfully the young man gathered his thoughts, and put on his proper customer voice. “We apologise for the delay but this plane has a technical fault, which we’re trying to fix as quickly as possible.” His first phrase reminded me of a couple of things, and as we all switched our phones on again, I thought I should call the mechanic who looks after my cars about a technical fault of my own.

Something fell off the bottom of my car. Now, it doesn’t seem to have affected its performance at all. In fact, something that was clanking rather annoyingly has stopped. However I recognise that it probably had a purpose. Therefore I called my friend Iain, who has been my car guru for 17 years or so. As usual, he quickly identified what was likely to be the problem from my sketchy description, and said I should drop by and he’d have a look.

He is brilliant! He is always calm, always helpful, has fixed absolutely everything I’ve thrown at him, and is always cheaper than I had expected. He has a large and loyal client base and is never short of work. We have a long-term, profitable relationship. What can we all learn, I wonder?

As for second thing: ‘the plane’s a tech’, that’s one of my pet hates- using obscure jargon.. More on that soon.