The Front Desk

On Valentine’s Day I learned that a former colleague had passed. A woman who made everyone smile from the Senior Vice President to the Fed Ex delivery person.  She had an infectious laugh and a bright smile. She possessed the kind of dedication to her job and loyalty to the company that you wish you could bottle. It wasn’t because she was paid a lot of money. She wasn’t. She didn’t hold a senior position at the company. She was the receptionist. The person who sat at the front desk, greeted visitors  and answered the phones.

I was sad when I learned of the news. Anyone who had ever met Edie Strong would say the same thing. She made every one feel special, greeting you by name when you arrived in the morning and asking you when you would be back if you were going on an appointment and then writing the answer down in case she forgot.  She came in early even when she didn’t get paid anything extra and would personally deliver everyone’s newspapers to their office.

Her job may not have ranked high in an organizational chart, but she treated it as though she was the Chairwoman of the Board. Even when she did not agree with the way something was being communicated internally, she never let her feelings be known.

The clients knew her by name. They knew if they could not get a hold of whoever they were looking for all they had to do was press O for the Operator and she would help them however she could. Sometimes that meant getting up from her desk and tracking you down in the bathroom.  

She kept lists of all the answers to the possible questions she might get in the course of a day as well as the phone numbers to refer people to. She was pleasant to everyone but she kept close tabs on who was doing their job and who wasn’t. Her radar was impeccable.

She answered the phones in a distinct, pleasant and articulate voice. “Time Warner CityCable, NY1 News, may I help you?”  that somehow managed to stay calm and reassuring to our families on 9/11 when the phones went crazy. That voice became such a recognizable touchpoint for customers it was used as the voice over for the companies television and radio ads.

Edie Strong was one of a kind in so many respects. More than just a colleague, friend and good employee, she was a true Brand Ambassador. From where she sat she saw that part of her responsibility was to represent the company. While she might not have ever said it aloud she knew she had an impact on the impression someone formed.

Today organizations everywhere are on the search for people like her. They seek to cultivate the loyalists who will spread their message on the social networks and increase their exposure and hopefully form the opinions they would like created. Yet too few even think to look internally. Most have foregone a human to answer phones in lieu of an automated attendant. It seems such obvious customer service but the cost consideration in most organizations comes first. It’s so drilled in our heads that a website today is the first touchpoint for most customers, we forget about the other simpler, more human ones. Worse we forget to train our employees that how they act matters.

I can’t say that anyone trained Edie to be the way she was. She was that rare individual who got it without being told what to do. Most of the rest of us need help. 

She could take her job dedication a bit too far. Like the day she went to the doctor’s at lunch and they suspected her cancer had come back. They wanted her to go for tests immediately but Edie insisted on coming back to work.  I still remember her sitting in my office arguing the point while another colleague got her daughter on the phone to come get her.

One of Edie’s greatest gifts was that not only could she make you smile, no matter how bad your day was going, she could make you laugh. Out. Loud.  In fact, just thinking about that makes me giggle. Which was always her intention.

Days You'll Never Forget

There are days that you never forget. Days in your life that when you let yourself think about them, the memory is more clear and vivid that what you did in the last hour. Every detail floods your being as though you are watching a high definition television screen. Only here the experience takes over your body as if you are living it all over. 

Even though it is something you never want to relive.

And before you know it there are tears running down your face.

The day Kennedy was shot is like that for me. The day my father died. The day I walked out of a full time corporate job for the last time. And today.

When I left my house this morning to go to the gym I was glad it was overcast and humid. I've grown uncomfortable when today is one of those picture perfect September days in New York when the summer isn't really over and the fall hasn't really begun. The kind that of day it was twelve years ago.

I walked past my local fire house and I saw the trucks parked on Amsterdam Avenue blocking the driveway.  The garage was open and inside it was set up with tables and chairs and white paper tablecloths covering the tables. One firefighter stood on a ladder raising the flag.

By the time I was finished at the gym and I walked back the tables were filled with people. The families. Firemen were greeting each other at the entrance. One leaned on a cane. Someone was filming outside. He told me they asked not to take pictures of the families.

I paused. Because I will always pause today. As long as I live I will never not take a moment to remember.

I will go back to that moment standing in my office on 19th Street watching Pat Kiernan on NY1 with a picture of the North Tower behind him and what looked like a plane hitting it. I will be in our large conference room with my colleagues watching as the second tower hit. I will walk up Sixth Avenue with three of my coworkers in a daze along with throngs of strangers. I will see the looks of all those people - resolute and staring straight ahead. The sirens will blare in my ears. The firetrucks will race by.

I will walk into that church on 23rd Street and cry. I will walk back into my apartment and for the first time not feel safe there. I will walk through Central Park, the sun casting brilliant shadows over the eerie silence. I will hear a quiet I once thought impossible in this city. I will sit in that cafe on Second Avenue with my friend and no matter how many vodkas I have I will still be sober. I will live the days and the weeks after trying to make sense until I realize it will never make sense. I will let myself feel it all again as I watch the memorial on television. Until they read the name of my friend I went to junior high and high school with, William J. Dimmling. I will cry. 

This is my ritual of remembrance.

And then I will go back to my life today. I will go on. Because that is what you do. Even after days you will never forget.

Not Business As Usual

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 and it is not business as usual. Nor should it be.

I don’t want to see your cheery tweet about the recap to the Fashion for PAWS runway show or the agony and ecstasy of book reviews. I am not interested in your ability to tune out tragedy and get on with what is most important to you. Whether you are an individual doing that or a brand not smart enough to pull those scheduled social media messages for just a little bit, I lose respect for you. You’ve shown me another side of who you really are and I don’t like it. PS. When given a choice, you won’t be getting my money anytime soon.

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe in moving on. I believe in moving past. I believe in getting on with life. And I understand the mentality behind such acts of terror is for us to not do that. Whoever was behind this wants to instill fear. Deep, abiding fear that makes us not want to leave our house and to alter our way of life. But that does not mean its okay to inundate me with Tweets asking me what books I like to read or taking me to articles on how to fire someone in a respectful manner. Not today.

Today is not about business as usual. Not just yet. Victims are lying in Mass General fighting for their lives. Men and women who were running a race with two legs yesterday are now being told they are missing a limb. And children. At the moment we know of at least one little boy who lost his life. 

The sun is shining today. Even brighter than yesterday but the world is much different.

I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to wake up one bright sunny morning when all seems right with the world and go to sleep knowing your city will never be the same place again. I am after all, a New Yorker. I was here on 9/11.  And while I have gone on and so has the city, I will never forget.

So I let my heart ache today. I let the tears well in my eyes when I listen to the accounts of horror mixed with the acts of heroics by those who raced to help. I am struck as I always am by the inherent spirit of humans to pull together in community in the face of such adversity.  I feel the pain of that city and remember that of my own.

Yes, I will be working today. I will make progress on projects in the cue and keep my business meetings. I will break to get an update. To see if they have found whoever was responsible for all this. I will pray and send love and light to those who need it.  But I will not fill my social networks with solicitations for business. I will not be sharing tips on digital strategy. Not today.

It’s not business as usual. Not yet. Not for me.

Yes, there are other tragedies that happen every day. Shootings and killings and acts of violence all over the world. But for me, this is not just any place.

This is Boston.

This is where my cousin JoJo and Ted grew up. The first city I visited outside of New York when I was a kid. A city that did not have a Central Park but a Boston Commons complete with Swan Boat rides that my Aunt Helen took us on. It is where I watched my best friend from college get married in a ceremony overlooking the Charles River. It is where a waiter at a restaurant in the North End  adamantly told me I was ruining my seafood pasta for asking him to put cheese on it.  It’s a city whose people I know. Good, solid people proud of their town and of their world famous marathon.  I’ve wandered up and down those shops on Newbury and Boylston Streets. I’ve traveled there for pleasure and for work. It’s a city with character, with soul and with a heart.

Today that heart has big crack in it. It deserves deference and respect.

I consider myself a digital evalengist of sorts. Which means I understand that our 24/7 world never really shuts down and trying to get it to is near impossible.

But it can slow a bit. It can pause. It can take some time to feel instead of spew. It can exercise sensibility. It can spread a conversation fitting of the day after such a horrific event.  

Not one soliciting me to sign up for your new five week class on how to build a better website or informing me  that Game of Thrones has slipped in their social rankings. Not today.

Today is not business as usual.  

My Love/Hate Relationship With September

I have this love/hate relationship with September. I always have. At my core I am a summer girl. Yes, I love autumn leaves and the first sign of a forsythia blooming in the spring.  A day spent skiing the Rockies after a fresh fallen snow will never fail to make me smile. But the summer is my season. And September's arrival says it's over. 


And then there is the other side of September that I do like. Fresh starts, clean blackboards, sharpened pencils and of course the excuse to buy new shoes.


There is a lot to love about September and a lot not to. 


September was the month my parents married. It was also the month my father died. Several of my nearest and dearest friends have birthdays that fall in September. And then there was that fateful Tuesday in 2001. 


You see where I am with this month. Vacillating between joyous anticipation and fear of the what ifs, now intensified with the news of new and credible terror threats.


I've reflected on this blog on September 11 before and perhaps I will every year. But this year it feels bigger. Maybe because it is ten full years. And so much has changed. Maybe because once again I am adding another item to the love September side and publishing my novel. 


I am torn. Between sadness in remembering and excitement for what's next.


My life was entirely different ten years ago. September 10, 2001 was the day I was officially promoted to Director of Sales for NY1 News. This was the job that was going to renew the love I had for my corporate life. And in the space of 24 hours the shine was gone. My new job seemed inconsequential as I walked the streets of a city coated in the ash of debris that was once the Twin Towers. I will never forget the eerie silence that set upon a city noted for its ability to never sleep as the souls of the thousands the tragedy took left this world. Nor the stories I read every day in the New York Times of the lives that were lost.


I cannot imagine what it was like to lose a husband or wife or child, a mother or father, but that did not exempt me from changing who I was and how I saw things. It was the beginning of a deep cellular shift in what I wanted my life to look like.


It did not take me long to become appalled as I witnessed how quickly the world forgot and our corporate dominated culture got back to what they considered the most important goal above all, making money at any cost. That brief moment of solidarity, of being joined together as a country seems in retrospect like a psychedelic drug experience.


I live my life with the belief that things happen with purpose. 9/11 tested me in that regard as did the death of my father in 1986. But how else to get past such a horror without looking for what good can be created in its aftermath? Tragedy does not befall to punish, but too often to wake us up and make us stop and look around. Sometimes we pay attention. Sometimes we go back to our old ways. 


I paid attention. I try and spend more time with the people I love. I take note on a daily basis of all I have to be grateful for. I look for what is right and not what is wrong. I empathize more. I choose more carefully who and what I let in my space. I am not as afraid to show my vulnerability. I am willing to go for my passion. I live all too aware of the fragility of time.


In the spring of 2002 I signed up for Sonia Pilcer's writing class at the West Side Y. I had said for years that I wanted writing to be my third career but until then had done very little about it. I can't say for sure I would have if not for the events of that previous September. As it happened it was in Sonia's class that my protagonist in The Secrets They Kept, Elena Poulous was born. 


So yes, I love September and I hate it. It is full of memories for me both painful and wonderful and all life defining. In all respects it is a pivotal month. In 1986 my life became defined as before and after my father died. In 2001 all of our lives became before and after 9/11. And now in 2011, for me it will be before and after The Secrets They Kept was published.


How has your life changed since September 11?

The Secrets They Kept will be released later this month and will be available in print and e-versions at on-line retailers everywhere.

Pausing to Remember

Nine years ago today I laid out my party clothes on my bed before I went to the office. September 11 was the date of our annual client gala at Tavern on the Green and my plan was to stop home and change before the event. I had just returned from a week hiking in Utah to a promotion as Director of Sales for NY1 News. Life felt pretty grand.  It was one of those brilliant sunshine filled Fall mornings that makes a New Yorker fall in love with their city all over again.

I never anticipated that later that day I would be walking up 6th Avenue amidst a sea of strangers with three of my coworkers in tow. From our offices on 19th Street you used to be able to look downtown and see the Twin Towers.  That day, each time I turned around all that was visible behind the throngs of frightened New Yorkers was a thick, dark cloud of smoke that looked like it was trying to find a way to swallow the whole city. One  of my crew made us stop inside the Catholic church on 23rd Street. That was the first time the numbness of what was happening wore off of me and I broke into tears.

When I think  back every moment of that day becomes real again. But most days it seems like an awful horror movie that could not possibly be true.

The days after now seem just as unreal. That feeling of solidarity in this city and country strengthened by our collective grief. We all felt it,  what America is supposed to be about, freedom and our right to own it and protect it. No matter what. We would go on and we would be stronger for it.

I even remember liking George W. Bush for a brief moment. In one grief stricken, vodka induced so I could sleep through the night period, I thought maybe he was going to really prove to us all that there was something more to him than he was intent on presenting.

But that passed quickly, as did the feeling of a united America. Nine years later what should have made us stronger seems to have pulled us further apart.  A new order in the world has been used as a way to stronghold politics and to gather following based on fear instead of strength and faith.

And for what seems like so many reasons, this year I am thinking about it more than most. I suppose it was that pastor in the South that has gotten way more press than he deserves. One misdirected man in search for his ten minutes of fame is now the symbol for everything that is wrong with America. Perceived intolerance, irrational behavior and a media that fuels it all.

But I, as you all know, am the girl with the glass eternally half full. I am hoping that on this day, nine years later, that maybe the gift of one man's irrational behavior and the inappropriate attention the media and our viral world has put on him will at the very least cause all of us to take pause today and start to regain our senses.

This is not a country formed by holding on to anger and fear but just the opposite. One based on freedom from tyranny and the gift to practice your faith to whomever you call your God however you choose.

The idea that the rest of the world might judge us all as we do that Pastor seems  unfair and untrue.  Yet there are those still so angry and fearful about this day nine years ago that they want to  judge every person who is of the Muslim faith to be a terrorist. And in doing so seem to have created their own brand of terrorism.

So today I pause and I remember.  I will allow myself to feel again the horror of that day. It is something none of us should forget. I am also going to remember that the picture the media creates for us is a version of the world we are living in. It is designed too often more to draw attention for ratings and revenue than a true interest in good journalism. I will remember that I am not alone in my sanity. That there are others like me. But because I and they are not burning anything on the balcony today, the media cameras will not be focused on us.