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Hello shoppers…

"Is that static...or The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show?"

Greetings, kind listener, or listeners if you brought a friend.

The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show For Saturday February 19th, 2011

(Left click to listen, right click to download, don’t click to not hear)

Today’s show includes interviews with Dan Wolf, CEO of Cape Air, and Jim White, VP of Guest Satisfaction for the Isle of Capri Casinos.

Both companies provide excellent customer service. Both men will tell you how they do it, and why.

I also give away a two nights stay at Casino Hotel in Waterloo, dinner for two at Otis and Henry’s Bar and Grill and $100 cash.

(Congratulations to my winner, Leila Draper of West Des Moines – she was caller #9. Nice job, Leila! Enjoy your stay – just don’t come back wearing a barrel. )

Today’s radio show (and this blog post) is my last for a while; my main focus for the next six months will be to work on customer service with the 1,200+ employees of the 12 Des Moines area Dahl’s Foods stores. The quality of their smiles and greetings and engagement and thanks yous is already good. We want to make it transcendent, which is a whole different ball game.

If you don’t think you’ve ever had “transcendent” customer service, especially in a grocery store, then stop in to a Dahl’s store over the next few months, and see if we’re transcending – then let me know, okay?

Most radio show hosts don’t voluntarily leave their shows; it’s usually the Program Director saying, “Hey, uh, Jonnie? Grab your coat and come into my office, will ya?”

Been there. Done that. Had food stamps (sold separately).

This time, I’m grabbing my coat because I want to, and stepping away from the mic because I need to. For a while.

Thank you so much for listening. See you back here this Fall.

Jonnie Wright is a customer service evaluator and trainer, professional secret shopper, marketing strategist and host of The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show, Saturday mornings 8-9am, on 1350, KRNT.       

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s Facebook page    

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s Twitter page    

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s blog    

Click to email Jonnie (jonnie@theunsecretshopper.com)    

Phone: 515-480-4190 

Hello shoppers…

Every blogger wants to believe that the readers who read their blog will surely keel over and die if the blogger stop blogging. Just like every radio show host likes to think that the people who listen to their show, will burst into flames if the host stops hosting.

As I step away from the laptop and the microphone for a while (after Saturday’s radio show), I’m mature enough to understand the actual ramifications of what I’m about to do: everyone will perish.

Sorry!

This stop for The Unsecret Shopper Media Train comes as the responsibilities of my “other” job are about to increase six-fold.

Currently I do weekly customer service training for a dozen clients in Iowa, Missouri and New York. That includes Dahl’s Foods – I do training at six of their twelve stores. Starting March 1st, the other six will be added. (The soon-to-be-new Ames Dahls will be #13, some time closer to summer.) So I’ll be traveling from Dahl’s store to Dahl’s store throughout the week – from the store at 50th and EP True Parkway, to the store on East 33rd, to the store in Ankeny, to the store in Johnston, to the store in Waukee, to all the stores in-between – conducting hour-long (employees say it feels longer) training sessions with hundreds and hundreds of staff. There’s also the army of secret shoppers I interview each week, who shop the stores. (Their testimony is used in training.)

Yes, it’s a lot of work, and a lot of responsibility. It’s also a tremendous honor to work for one of Des Moines’ landmark companies. And it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Blogging, it turns out, is also a lot of work; in fact, it has a lot in common with customer service training, except the pay (It doesn’t). The average post takes me 12 hours to write, not including the time I spend secret shopping the stores. There’s also the weekly Unsecret Shopper Radio Show, which requires hours of prep work.

Then there’s all the time I spend whining.

As much as I enjoy writing a blog and hosting a radio show, it pales in comparison to helping a great company improve its already-good customer service.

So that’s what I’ll be focusing on, for a while.

This will be much harder for you than it is for me (as I cry hysterically as I write this). Dry your eyes (Jonnie). I’ll be back this fall, writing the blog and hosting the radio show.

Meantime, please do this for me: Do not accept bad customer service from any employee or any store, any time, anywhere.

You deserve better. We all do.

Thank you for giving me more than I deserve – whether you are a reader, or a listener.

See you again. And soon. 

Hello shoppers…

I was doing a little adding the other day... 

Since January 1st, I’ve:

1. Sent 233 emails

2. Sent 281 texts

3. Checked for incoming emails and texts 12,392 times

4. Written 28,530 words in 18 blog posts

5. Played in zero oceans

To remedy this imbalance, I’m about to:

1. Turn off my cell phone

2. Shut off my laptop

3. Leave both at my apartment while I fly to San Diego

I’m totally jazzed about the part after “while,” but pretty freaked out about the five words before it.

The last time I roamed the Earth without the ability to contact anyone on it immediately, was six months ago, when my Blackberry fell out of my pocket and into the toilet. Verizon was on it like stink on etc, and I was happily reconnected with a new phone the same day.

Not being able to instantly check who friended me on Facebook was the longest 30 minutes of my life.

I’ve been far less dependant on my laptop; I can go without it for 2, 3, even 4 hours at a stretch.

Now, I’m chucking both for five days.

During that time, nearly 40 billion texts will be sent in just the U.S. Emails sent worldwide will total over a trillion. We’ll probably make a few cell phone calls, too.

But not moi.

No texting. No calling. No writing. I’m spending the next five days on the left coast, unplugged.

I wonder what’s out there.

Hello shoppers…

The flashing lights of a State Trooper’s car appeared in my side mirror last week, as I drove down I-235, towards downtown.

I did what most of us do: I glanced down to make sure I was driving the speed limit (I was), checked to make sure I was wearing my seat belt (I wasn’t) and waited for him to drive around me (he did).

It hasn’t always gone down like that.

Dangerous behind the wheel at an early age



I’ve always enjoyed driving - from listening to the hypnotic sound of tires rolling over pavement, to watching the beautiful countryside fall by the wayside, to feeling the warm breeze blow against my face through an open window.

For me, driving has always represented freedom.

I lost the latter because of the former, in the Summer of 1991.

I began racking up traffic tickets three years before that, while working as a 24 year-old morning show radio host in Carroll. The offenses were mainly mechanical at the beginning: headlight out, tail light out, no rearview mirror. I was driving a beater: a POS 1980 Pontiac Sunbird. I was making $1,000 a month, so there wasn’t much money for repairs. It wouldn’t have mattered. I was also arrogant and irresponsible, and drove that way, which led to more tickets – from running stop signs, to speeding. 

FYI – I don’t drink, have never been drunk and have never driven drunk, let alone been arrested for it.

I didn’t need booze. I was as dumb about paying the tickets as I was about getting them.

Eventually a warrant was issued. The Carroll cops (who listened to my show every morning and knew where to find me) came to the radio station, put me in handcuffs and took me to the police station, where they fingerprinted me, then kept me for a few hours.

On my last day at KKRL, the Carroll cops gave me a framed copy of my warrant

That humiliation would have been enough to straighten most people out.

I had other ideas.

Speed ahead to 1991. By this time, my license had been suspended. I had no insurance. And I was driving my brand new Chrysler LeBaron convertible on a Sunday morning in Boone.

The guy in front of me stopped at the stop sign. I was reading the Des Moines Sunday Register, and kept moving. The collision deployed my airbag. The cops came. I was arrested, fingerprinted and placed in a cell. A friend bailed me out six hours later.

A month later, I stood in front of a judge.

I’d racked up 33 tickets in three years. I’d paid thousands of dollars in fines. I figured I’d be hit with a large one, and that would be it. I was still arrogant, still stupid.

I was about to get a little smarter.

“Mr Wright,” said the judge, looking over the top of his glasses at the two pages of offenses, and then at me. ”It is clear to this court that you have not learned how to drive. I sentence you to ten days in jail.”

I wish I had a picture to show you now, the look on my face back then.

A few weeks later, I checked in to the Story County Jail, inside the Story County Courthouse in Nevada.

The booking personnel didn’t care that I was a radio personality. The jail staff didn’t laugh when I made a joke about the situation. Without expression, they printed me, checked in my personal items, explained the rules, told me to strip, did a cavity search, handed me an orange jumper and slip-on shoes, blanket and pillow and took me to my home for the next ten days.

It was also home for 18 other inmates, who looked up at me as I approached the commons area, accompanied by a jailer.

“There’s the toilet,” he pointed, opening the cell door. “There’s the shower. There’s your bed. Don’t cause me any problems.” He shut the cell door behind me, and disappeared.

My heart sunk.

I turned around.

Some inmates played games. Some read. Some laid in their beds. Some watched TV.

Each had committed a crime(s). All of them were strangers to me. I started shaking uncontrollably; I was trying to hold it together, and was failing.

The arrogance was leaving my body. It would get help from other parts of prison life.

There was no privacy; you used the toilet and shower in full view of everyone. Men would defecate, and the smell would waft throughout the cell. You slept in a sub-cell area with eight other men. Your “bed” was a thin pad on a slab of concrete, bolted to a wall. Lights went out at 10pm, back on at 5:30am, when breakfast was served. It was warm and bland, as was lunch and dinner, served at Noon and 5pm.

The worst part was passing the time.

I played mind games - imagining myself at a football game, or watching a movie, or taking a trip across the country by plane, train and automobile. I’d play the entire event out, moment by moment, scene by scene, then rewind it and play it again, and again and again - then look up at the clock…

Five minutes would have passed.

I read the first 10 pages of Catcher In The Rye, then gave up. I poured my loneliness out into letters I wrote to my girlfriend at the time. I slept as much as possible.

Another five minutes passed.

I eventually struck up conversations with a few inmates. Half of the men were in for DUI. One guy had 17 arrests for drunk driving and was serving a two-year sentence. One had committed armed robbery and was waiting to be transferred to Fort Madison. He was the biggest and baddest badass in the cell. When I told him why I was in, he laughed so hard, he choked.

If he was happy, I was happy.

The second night, an inmate kept making weird sounds in an adjacent cell where nine more inmates slept. Suddenly, there was a dull thud sound; an inmate had slammed the guy’s head into the wall.

Day five brought some more excitement: an outbreak of crabs.

We were instructed to strip off our orange jumpers, and toss them into the middle of the cell. We were then paraded single-file out of our cell and into a shower area, where we were sprayed with a powder that made your skin tingle. We were then given new jumpers, and led back into our cell.

God had my full attention.

I got sick on day seven. I followed procedure, filling out a written request for aspirin. I would get them on the morning of Day 10, the day I left.

By then I’d struck up a semi-friendship with several inmates. I promised to come back and see them, and meant it at the time. They wished me well, and meant it, too.

Several of the jail staff joked with me as they took me through exit processing. These men and women had difficult jobs, and did them with a great sense of professionalism. I’d been polite and respectful to them during my brief stay, and I could tell they appreciated it.

As the final security door was unlocked for me, a staff member yelled out, “I hope I don’t see you again.”

He wouldn’t.

I stepped outside. It seemed impossibly bright. I looked up into the sky, closed my eyes and felt the sun shine on my face. I took a huge breath of fresh air. I bent down and felt the grass, grabbed a handful and brought it up to my nose. I smiled, then laughed. It had been just ten days – but everything in that moment, seemed brand new to me.

The moment didn’t last, of course. 

My arrogance and stupidity would eventually return, in coming years. None of it ever landed me back in prison. It did plenty of damage without having to.

I’ve slowed down a bit since those reckless days. I drive the speed limit. I (sometimes) use my seatbelt. And I pull over – WAY over – when a police officer comes up behind me with his/her lights flashing and siren blaring.

And I have the dream.

I’m driving a convertible with the top down, down an empty highway. It’s nighttime. The car’s lights are off. The only illumination comes from the car’s dash, and the stars overhead. I set the cruise control, then move up in the seat until I’m sitting against the head rest. I put my feet on the steering wheel, then slowly move my hands off of it. The wind buffets my face. I lean back, close my eyes and hold my arms towards the heavens.

I’m free.

Hello shoppers…

As you prepare for takeoff (off the couch) and fly to your friendly neighborhood (Dahl’s) grocery store to stock up on chips, dips, meats, treats (and Tums) of all sizes, shapes and flavas in preparation for Sunday’s Steelers/Packers Superbowl tilt, please enjoy this pre-flight audio:

The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show for Saturday February 5th, 2011 

(Left click to listen, right click to download, don’t click to not hear)

In today’s show, I give a 10,000 foot (over)view of Thursday’s secret shopper review of The Des Moines Airport, United Airlines, the TSA and flying in general.

I talk with Roy Criss, Air Service PR Manager for Des Moines International Airport, about the facility’s recent renovation, plus who to complain to if your flight is late, your car got ticketed or a TSA agent made you cry (hint: it ain’t the airport).

I also chat with Tony Garcia, VP of local markets for Regionalhelpwanted.com, about those great Des Moines Help Wanted ads, and why the site works so well, for employers and potential employees alike.

I’ll close out the show with Jeff Graham, mayor of Watertown, New York. Jeff talks about why everybody in Watertown seems so happy, even though they’re 30 miles from Canada and 1500 miles from Florida.

I hope you are happy wherever you may be, and regardless of the outcome of tomorrow’s game.

As a Dallas Cowboy fan, I will not be.

My prediction: Steelers 27, Pack, 21.

"How 'bout dem Cowboys!"

 

Shadup.

Hello shoppers… 

On December 17th, 1903, Orville (Redenbacher) Wright, assited by his brother Wilbur, flew 120 feet in 12 seconds -  and in so doing, invented pat downs, turbulence, lost luggage and six dollar bottled water.

Today, Americans fly over 100 billion miles annually. (We drive twice that.) The fact that any of us get where we’re going, at all, is a testament to the skill and dedication of the people who make it all possible – on the ground and in the air.

Nobody likes to fly. Check that – I don’t like to fly. Being an American, I believe that everyone in the whole wide world thinks and feels exactly as I do, which means nobody else likes to fly, either.

Can the people who help us fly, help it be less horrible?

Those are the issues through which Captain Unsecret Shopper, attempted to navigate.

Last week I flew from Des Moines to Watertown, New York on business. The 2,140 mile, 17 hour round trip included stops in Chicago and Albany. I flew United Airlines, and Cape Air.

Along the way I took note of how I was treated by flight attendants, TSA agents and airport personnel: Did they smile? Were they friendly and polite? Did they make my flying experience, enjoyable? Did they freak out when I started screaming, “There’s a gremlin on the wing!”

"Note to self: no more booking on Priceline.com."

It is amazing how much impact one human being can have on us, especially in situations that are stressful and uncomfortable. Flying certainly qualifies.

Let us see if the employees I met on my journey, helped make the skies friendly(er), indeed.

Des Moines International Airport

Friday 5:07am

The herding began at United’s check-in counter.

There were a dozen drowsy luggage-toting passengers ahead of me, either checking in at United’s automated kiosks or waiting to check their bags with the two UA employees at the counter. I had two carry-ons and could have avoided the cluster altogether by checking in online. But that’s not how unsecret shoppers roll. 

I got to the kiosk and followed the instructions; I typed in my password, online check-in code, flight number, Travelocity ID number, height, weight and best time in the 100 yard dash. The reappearing “There seems to be an error” prompt, suggested the kiosk thought I’d be better off taking a bus. The three passengers in the three kiosks beside me were also doing their fair share of screen touching and face frowning.

Marsha, a nearby UA employee who seemed to be standing in the area so she could help poor kiosk-challenged slobs, chatted with a friend about her lack of job security.  

“They cut my hours back, and I’m really worried,” Marsha said to her friend, and the rest of us who were close enough to hear.

I wanted to do everything I could to get Marsha some more hours.

“Can you help me?” I asked.

She did, pleasantly but without a smile. ”None of those numbers matter,” she said as she approached, making me wonder why they were supposed to. “Just stick in your credit card.”

Money talks. The machine heard. It spit out two boarding passes. Rock and roll.

Next stop: security.

I wanted to stop and take a real picture of the baggage screening area, but I was afraid I’d be trampled by texting teens and stroller-pushing moms and cell-calling biz travelers, all amped up on Mountain Dews and Desitin fumes and triple shot vanilla lattes.

It was total chaos.

50 passengers ahead of me were being herded through a roped-off maze by a half-dozen TSA agents, including Richard, who, without a smile, barked, ”Come on through!” while he waved his hand, suggesting we were cars parked in line to be washed, and not people feeling humiliated enough as it was. I was waiting to be jabbed in the kidneys with a truncheon while Richard yelled, “Roust, everybody! Roust!”

As we approached the x-ray screening machine (There’s no advance body scan machine at DM Airport, and thus no “pat down” option.), Grant gave verbal directives: “Remove your shoes. Place laptops in containers. Say nice things about us in your blogs.” People obeyed, frantically removing their watches, wallets, keys, coats and shoes and tossing them in to dull gray reinforced plastic trays, like lunchroom 5th graders dumping leftovers on “Meatloaf Monday.”

I wasn’t sure what to remove and what to keep on, so I just started taking off everything. A TSA agent stopped me before I’d stripped down to my Spiderman boxers.

The TSA agents kept waving their hands, encouraging us to hurry up and go through. I wondered if one of them was going to tag my ear, and auction me off. I finally got up to the metal detector, and stepped through. No “beep.” The worst of it was over! I thought, as the thought was immediately laughed at by thoughts of crying babies and gassy passengers and Airport ’77.

There was so much pressure to get through the screening process (both TSA, and self-imposed) as fast as possible that I, along with plenty of other passengers, kept dropping my keys, laptop, magazine, coat and boarding ticket.

Stressful. Unpleasant. Weird.

Dorothy, another TSA agent, smiled at me (the first and only one to do so) as I came out the other side, and said a wonderfully warm, “Thank you! Have a great day!” That allowed me to stow my negative thoughts in my head’s overhead bin.

TSA agents are facing intense media scrutiny these days, although not quite as intense as a month ago. The constant pressure comes from knowing that lives depend on them doing their job perfectly, every day.

Passengers ain’t got it easy, either.

Few of us – agents and passengers alike – were at our best that morning. It was very easy, in the chaos of the process, to lose sight of the fact that all of the people involved were, and are, indeed, people, who deserve respect, and compassion.

My greatest thanks to Dorothy, and a few other TSA agents, who helped me remember that.

It was onward and up up upward, to Chicago.

The pilot eventually turned right, and to the east, towards Chicago

6:00am

US Airways Flight 6190

Des Moines to Chicago

I haven’t flown in a while, and hadn’t seen the beautifully remodeled passenger gate area at the Des Moines Airport. Awesome!

Less awesome was a guy in the line that formed to board the airplane. “I heard they got 22 inches of snow out east last night, and the power is off.”

Wait. I’m flying towards that?

“It’ll be a miracle if we don’t get diverted to another airport.”

This is also the guy who sits behind you on the three-hour flight to Orlando and kicks your seat.

A much more pleasant voice came on the loudspeaker.

“We’d like to invite our Premiere Executive customers to begin boarding first.”

Bad weather ahead guy: “This is gonna take all day.”

Note to self: carry carry-ons through aisle at waist level, and “accidentally” hit this dude in the head.

A different overhead voice: “If you see any suspicious activity, please report it to the nearest airport.”

…other than the one I’m standing in?

Troy, with a smile, ended my confusion by taking my boarding pass, and wishing me a great day.

Entering the huge Airbus A-320 (heading for section 4, in the rear with the gear), it was interesting to walk the wide aisle of 1st class (two big seats to a side) only to have it immediately narrow, indicating that I’d now entered the cheap seats, cheap skate. It felt like I’d just lost my job and needed to go on food stamps.

There were rumps in almost all of the 125 seats - the plane was full.

Instead of a flight attendant explaining for the 1,293,853 time where the flotation devices/oxygen masks/emergency exits were located, 40 TV monitors dropped down, and pretty, fresh-faced actors did the ‘splaining, to a very cool version of Gershwin’s already uber-cool, Rhapsody in Blue (United’s theme song).

I ignored it, and started reading the front page of my Des Moines Register.

I put down the paper.

I picked up the front page of my USA Today. 

AIRLINES OFFER LITTLE HELP TO FLIERS AFTER IN-FLIGHT TRAUMA

I put down the paper.

I turned towards the guy sitting across the aisle from me. He was trying to turn on his overhead light by twisting it. It came off in his hands.

I stopped looking at the guy sitting across the aisle from me.

I looked up at the TV monitor.

“In the event of a water landing…”

I closed my eyes.

Suddenly a loud “ka-THUMP” came from underneath the plane. Passengers jumped out of their seats.

I wrapped my Des Moines Register around my head, and fell asleep.

15 minutes later I woke up, airborne, to the sound of the Captain’s monotone voice, mumbling through the cabin speakers like a 15 year-old at a McDonald’s drive-thru:

“Hopeyouhaveagoodflightwehavethreeofthemostexperiencedflightcrewpleasekeepyourseatbeltsonbecausewe’vegotourseatbeltson.”

Roberto and Lita, our flight attendants, rolled the beverage cart down the aisle.

Roberto, very pleasantly and with a smile, asked passengers open-endedly, ”What would you like to drink?” while Lita, without a smile and a bit less enthusiastically, asked, closed-endedly, “Anything to drink?”

Lita had told me earlier to “shut that off,” referring to the recorder I was talking into at the time, about Lita. As our plane began its descent towards O’Hare, she was now walking through the aisles and, still just a bit on the impatient side, waving her hands toward passengers, telling them to ”Turn off your electronics. I need you to turn it off.”

We made good time, with a nice jet stream push from the rear, and touched down in Chicago a little more than an hour after leaving Des Moines.

Lining up to get on the happy plane

8:35am

United Express Flight 6170

Chicago to Albany

The plane got a little smaller, the people got a little friendlier and the flight got a little smoother, the a lot further east I got.

The United Airlines guy taking our boarding passes was a hoot; he had that wonderful Chicago sense of humor, slightly sarcastic and wonderfully engaging.

During the flight, Denise, the main flight attendant, was kind, friendly, efficient and seemed genuinely happy to be taking care of us.

I grabbed my Time Magazine that I’d purchased at a newstand kiosk at O’hare, from a smiling, pleasant woman

President Obama smiled on the cover. His good buddy, Ronald Regan was grinning ear to ear, and had his arm around the prez. (Abe Lincoln was supposed to be sitting down in the shot, giving a thumbs up, but apparently his people forgot to remind him about the photo shoot.)

I cracked it open to page 1.

MOSCOW: TERROR IN THE AIRPORT

I  closed it. And haven’t read anything since.

The diet Coke was cold, the flight was silky smooth and the two hours we were in the air, flew by.

Denita, Enga and Bill

2:02pm

Cape Air Flight 1805

Albany to Watertown

During my two-hour layover, I played on my laptop while enjoying a half a bag of peanut M&M’s, a diet soda and a big bagel with a cream cheese schmear, which I purchased at the Saranac Pub from Kim, who had a huge smile schmeared on her face when she served it to me.

About 15 minutes before boarding, I walked downstairs to the gate, where I was met by Denita, Enga and Bill, some of the happiest people I’ve ever seen who worked inside an airport, who weren’t about to get off work.

Bill had previously visited where I’d left that morning.

“I came up through Des Moines and traveled to Ames once,” he told me. “It was pretty, but flat – no mountains.”

Jessica, our pilot, was no slouch in the “happy and engaging” department. That was a good thing, since the puddle jumper all four of us passengers were about to board for the hour-long flight to Watertown, had two propellers, nine seats and was about twice the size of the previous plane’s potty.

I started at the (vibrating) floor as we took off.

The rest of the flight was silky smooth, like we were riding on the ground in an SUV, albeit a loud one.

While we flew, I leafed through a Cape Air promotional magazine. On the inside cover was a message from Dan Wolf, the company’s CEO, and Dave Bushy, the President. At the bottom was the Cape Air/Nantucket Airlines logo.

Below it were the words, ”Mocha HAGoTDI.” At first, I thought it might be Native American. Then I read the translation: it was an acronym, which stands for: Make Our Customers Happy And Have A GOod Time Doing It.”

Mission accomplished.

Monday 11am, 4:38pm and 8:05pm

The three flights back

The trips back home on the following Monday were exactly like the trips out east on the previous Friday, except in a different direction.

There were a few things of note.

In Albany, Bill, from Cape Air, either remembered my name or got it off the computer. It didn’t matter. “Have a great flight, Mr. Wright!” he said through a smile, as he shut the plane door. Awesome!

Jerry, the captain on the Albany to Chicago flight, didn’t swallow the mic when he spoke into it, spoke slow enough to be understood and did so with a smile in his voice. Carol, one of the super-trio of flight attendants on the plane, was extremely engaging, friendly and outgoing.  I thanked her for being so great to me, and was so glad I did, as was she. The woman sitting next to me said, “You must be in customer service. They’re the only ones who give compliments.”

One of the flight attendants said that we could use our cell phones, as long as they were in “airplane” mode – the first and only FA to point this out.

The soap in the lavatory smelled expensive, like marigolds and honey. The rinse water felt spring soft, and wonderfully warm. The potty itself smelled fresh and clean. The ride from Albany to Chicago was as smooth as any I’ve ever experienced on an airplane. I’m not sure we ever left the tarmac. I think the whole thing was staged ala Capricorn One, with blue screens, fog machines and “airplane engine” sound effects.

My overall experience on United Flight 481, Albany to Chicago, Monday, January 31st, 2011, 4:38pm to 6:04pm will now be my template against which all other flights will be judged.

Cheryl, Carol and Marissa - three of the flight crew rock stars...

...along with Mike and Jerry, the pilots

The flight from Chicago to Des Moines wasn’t quite as nice. One difference: when they closed the luggage compartment on the A-319 Airbus from Albany to Chicago, it sounded like a one ton drawbridge being slowly drawn up. On the Embraer 175 to Des Moines, it felt like somebody slamming the hood on a ’72 Camaro.

On the front of the emergency exit directions, it said, “Final assembly of this aircraft was completed in Brazil.” I wanted to put a line through the last four words, and write, “is still being worked on.”

The ride into Des Moines was bump-free, but took a little longer than planned; sleet had fallen in Des Moines, and the runway had to be de-iced. To the ground crew’s credit, we were no more than 15 minutes late as we got off the plane, past the gate and towards the airport’s exit.

As I walked past the security screening area, it was vacant, except for a few TSA agents, who sat with their feet propped up, relaxed and chatting, in the middle of what had been complete chaos just over 72 hours before.

The place was quiet.

I took a picture. And took my sweet time taking it.

Hello shoppers…

Watertown, New York, July 1st, 2010

Same location, 24 hours later

People who live so close to Canada have no right to be so happy.

They do. They are.

I was in the Watertown, New York area over the weekend to meet the staff at Service Plus Automotive, a new Buyosphere training client.

Watertown (pop 27,000) is 7 degrees colder than Des Moines, 16% more expensive and doesn’t have AE dip.

Yet all these people do is smile. Nutjobs.

Wherever I went - Stewarts gas station, Taco Bell, Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppe, McDonalds, Microtel – the employees always greeted me with a grin, and a “Hi, how are you?” Even the non-employees were sweet. I accidently cut off a guy as I was trying to navigate the city’s narrow, confusing streets. His response? He smiled, and waved me through.

It got so bad (good) that when I turned on the local AM radio station, I heard Clark Howard, nationally syndiated talk show host, tell a caller, ”I’m so very glad and thankful that you have chosen to call me today. Please tell me how I might be able to possibly help you!”

In Iowa, we get Rush Limbaugh: “You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh Show, hello.”

This was confusing to my narrow, uninformed, stereotypical view of northeasterners as cold and distant.

So I visited the capital of cold and distant: Walmart. If I was going to find a frowning and ambivalent employee, it would be here.

Instead I found Lena - the smiling, engaging greeter at the Leray (just outside Watertown) Walmart.

The retail area was full of potential Smile Project winners. But Lena  – as one of the first Walmart greeters who has a) greeted me, and b) meant it, seemed especially worthy.

The worthy got worthier.

“I moved here from Florida,” Lena told me.

Whaaaaaat????

“It’s taken some getting used to,” she admitted, with the first really good understatement of 2011. “My son and daughter-in-law are in the Army and stationed at Fort Drum (nearby), and I wanted to be closer to them. So I came here.”

Okay, I get it. But still…this woman didn’t deserve $25, she deserved sainthood, and a show on OWN.

I gave her the $25, told her why and asked her why she was so happy, in an area plagued with it.

“I guess it’s the only way I know how to be,” Lena said. “I just love greeting and helping people. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t stand here for eight hours a day, doing it.”

I give up. These upstate New Yorkers are crazy (happy). And Lena is their leader.

Jonnie Wright is a customer service evaluator and trainer, professional secret shopper, marketing strategist and host of The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show, Saturday mornings 8-9am, on 1350, KRNT.       

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s Facebook page    

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Click to email Jonnie (jonnie@theunsecretshopper.com)    

Phone: 515-480-4190 

Hello shoppers…

Today’s show is, in part, a tribute to Brenda Carpenter, who lost her battle with lung cancer two weeks ago.

The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show For Saturday January 29th, 2011 

The story of Brenda’s courage was chronicled in these pages last Monday. This morning you’ll hear more about Brenda from her cousin, Dawn Mills, who attends to Brenda’s four grieving children while dealing with the loss of her best friend.

I also talk with Todd Cerveris, a talented Broadway actor who not only has graced theater stages around the country (including Des Moines) but also finds time to train dogs for pet therapy. Todd has written and directed a series of TV public service announcements for Paws And Effect, a Des Moines based organization that trains service dogs.

Plus I dig into the Unsecret Shopper mail bag (Do we actually still get mail?) and read some reader responses to secret shopper reviews, and other stories.

As Brenda Carpenter’s life is celebrated tomorrow at 1pm at The Eagles Lodge, 6567 Bloomfield Road, may we all celebrate our own, and the lives of those who we love. Hold them a little closer this weekend. Love them a little bit more.

For Brenda.

Jonnie Wright is a customer service evaluator and trainer, professional secret shopper, marketing strategist and host of The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show, Saturday mornings 8-9am, on 1350, KRNT.       

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s Facebook page    

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s Twitter page    

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s blog    

Click to email Jonnie (jonnie@theunsecretshopper.com)    

Phone: 515-480-4190

Hello shoppers…

"Dear Unsecret Shopper...why you not like cats?"

Many years ago I asked my mother if she would like me to get her a trailer cat, as a pet, companion and mouser. (She’d never have to feed it.)

Her unprintable response suggested she wasn’t quite ready.

So I brought my own cat (Puddie) over to her place.

Mom melted like butta.

Puddie - fat, immobile, soft as a feather pillow and producing a hypnotic purrrrrr - had mom eating out of the pads of her paws.

That lasted about 10 minutes.

I should have brought her a dog.

Nearly 40% of U.S. households own at least one dog, according to the Humane Society - that’s over 77 million Busters, Maggies, Smokies, Cocos, Obamas, and Hooches.

How much do we love our dogs?

Yesterday’s Des Moines Register featured a story (page 3A) about a recent AP/Petside.com poll of American pet owners which shows a sizeable chunk (14% of married, 25% of unmarried) would choose their dog over their significant other.

Dogs are not surprised by these findings.

The numbers make sense to most of us humans, too; we get married because we don’t want to be alone, because we want to be loved unconditionally and because we want someone to grow old with – sooo…

Exactly.

Yes you can marry a dog in India. Round trip airfare from Des Moines to Delhi is $1,261. I know some divorce attorneys, if it doesn’t work out.

It has always worked out with me and dogs.

I grew up in the western suburbs of Cambridge, on a hobby farm (one pig, one chicken, one horse, one pitchfork, one acre) with a lot of dogs.

Two “Toby”‘s died before I had enough brain folds to be able to recall riding them (I was told), although I distinctly remember riding overtop of their unmarked graves with a lawn mower, much later on. 

Mitzi joined our clan in 1974; the black and brown chihuahua barked a lot, pooped a lot, got pregnant a lot (by Prince, the neighbor’s slutty Pomeranian) and survived a lot of M and M’s, which we fed to her every Christmas (“Mitzi want a present, too?”)

My Aunt Candy, giving Mitzi her "gift"

I remember finding “some panty hose” underneath her one day, as she lay on the couch. I told my grandmother, who informed me, “That is Mitzi’s baby.” This was my first experience with the miracle of birth, that we all start out as a pair of Leggs.   

23 puppies and 12 years later, Mitzi had had enough. She walked to the end of the hallway, laid down and died. This was my first experience with how much it sucks to die.

She’d be the last one to go that easy.

Empress Moko Meling (her registered AKC name; we just called her Nikki) was accidentally run over by our next door neighbor on Christmas Day, 1975. I watched that next summer as another Nikki, this one a mutt, was lured into the back of a slowly passing pickup truck by a town drunk, who snapped her neck and tossed her lifeless body over the side, and into our yard. I can still remember dragging her by the back feet into the backyard, feeling ashamed that I could not bring myself to actually pick up her body. Later on I found Rex, another un-purebred, in a nearby ditch, a victim of a hit and run.   

We didn’t put much stock in training. Or invisible fencing. Or a chain.

I got to make my own doggie rules when I got my first radio job (KKRL in Carroll), in 1989. Barfy was nuthin but a pound dog, so named because she threw up on me as I took her home.

I lived in a dark, dinky efficiency, and was always at the radio station. When I did come was home, I was lonely, homesick and depressed, and had no idea how to take care of a dog, let alone myself.

I took it out on her.

I didn’t kennel train Barfy or even keep her in one, so she went all over the floor. I’d come home, find the mess, yell, pick her up, yell into her face, throw her back down, yell some more while I kicked the side of the bed. She’d cower underneath it until the storm subsided, then eventually come out, lick my hand and try to tell me she forgave me and that everything would be alright, in the way dogs do. One day I kicked her. I took her back to the shelter a week later, before it got worse. 

The years ahead would be full of much kicking.

Today my mind knows that Barfy found the warm arms of a loving owner, and forgot about our dark days together. My heart has a looong memory.

Stupid heart.

Things were “looking up” in 1990, when my mother died and left me $200,000 in inheritance money.

I decided to stop being an animal abuser, and start being a chick magnet – by buying a Chrysler Lebaron convertible, and two dachshunds.

Wally, Boz and car

Mission accomplished: women loved the car, and the wiener dogs.

They (Boz and Wally) decided they could tolerate me; they would be my nearly constant companions for the next 16 years.

They were the Odd Couple; Boz (short for Brian Bozworth, of NFL fame) was small (the runt of his litter) and smart (He’d fetch a stick). Wally (short for walrus) was fat (like his owner) and dumb (He’d watch a stick sail over his head).

The three of us lived at Washington Heights Apartments, a West Des Moines apartment complex that did allow pets, but would have preferred that I not allow mine to run free around the neighborhood while I watched TV, ran errands and came back, expecting them to be sitting by the front door, waiting to greet me.

One day someone knocked, holding Boz and Wally. “I found them walking down the 35th street entrance ramp onto I-235 (eastbound – probably a lunch date in the city).” That was a mile from home – not bad!

I still have no idea how the person knew that the dogs - who were wearing pink flea collars and nothing else – belonged to me.

Chained up. Briefly.

The three of us were unemployed, bored, rich and had time to kill.

We also killed it by driving everywhere, anywhere, all summer long, with the top down, until they smelled like boiled wienerschnitzel and I looked like I’d witnessed a hydrogen bomb blast.

We’d stay up till 3am watching HBO, and munching on pizza, then roll out of bed around Noon and finish it.

I wrote a script and shot a movie on VHS (now gone, alas) in which Boz and Wally played POW’s (Prisoners of Wright) while I portrayed an evil prison guard. In this thriller, Boz deftly throws a kitchen steak knife, (Germans are expert with weapons), striking me in the heart, then picks the jail cell lock, allowing he and his brother to escape.

Bozzie, the alpha dog, would constantly be trying to induce Wally into play-fighting, while Wal-ass was very content to lay by me, wherever me was. Occasionally Boz would get his bigger and younger brother to do battle, and Wally, 5 pounds heavier, would flatten him like a bowling ball taking out a pin, then jump back into my lap.

I’d had mixed results kennel training them but finally had a breakthrough; I sent them to live with my girlfriend’s mother in Texas while I traveled around the country, working at radio stations. After a year I brought them with me to WJHR in Flemmington, New Jersey, where I talked the owners into letting the three of us literally live at the radio station, which was situated on six acres of beautiful rolling prairie grass, bordered by timber, inside Hunterdon County, which has the highest deer population in the country.

Radio station transmitter on the left, comfy bed on the right

At the turn of the century, and now back in Iowa, we had our most memorable moment together.

It was just before midnight, December 31st, 1999 – Y2K. Boz and Wall and I sat on the back porch of a house I rented by Four Mile Creek, a few blocks off East Euclid.

It was cold outside but not unbearably so. The wind was calm; the air was still. Then in the distance, we began to hear firecrackers, and the occasional gun fire. The dogs ears twitched in all directions; they were on high alert. I brought them into my lap and ran my hands gently along their backs. We waited for the end of the world.

Bozzie’s would end, for real, four months later in a vet’s office, after a short bout with lymphatic cancer. He was 11. Wally would live another six years, until succumbing to kidney failure at the ripe old age of 16.

I dug a hole on an acreage in Fort Dodge where I lived at the time; I placed the box that held Wally’s body into the hole, filled it back in with dirt, scattered Doritos (His favorite) and roses on it, then knelt down and looked at the spot where he lay, for a long time.

I thought about the butcher lady who used to give him and his brother, hunks of bologna, and the way they’d growl but never bite if I reached for their supper while they were eating it. I remembered the way they’d howl if I howled first, and chasing them with the vacuum cleaner, and holding them like babies, and feeling like I had never loved two living things so much, or felt so loved in return.

They mattered.

Today, another dog does: Tater. I have written several stories about Tater. I wonder what he writes on his own dog blog, which he works on, at night, under the bed, I’m quite certain. I sometimes peek down and try to catch him, but he’s always too fast for me, and pretends to be asleep. 

There is a gentle peace that comes from looking into the eyes of a dog you love, and knowing that the dog loves you more than you could ever love yourself. In that way, dogs are like God.

Honestly? I think they really are.

Jonnie Wright is a customer service evaluator and trainer, professional secret shopper, marketing strategist and host of The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show, Saturday mornings 8-9am, on 1350, KRNT.       

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s Facebook page    

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s Twitter page    

Click to be taken to Jonnie’s blog    

Click to email Jonnie (jonnie@theunsecretshopper.com)    

Phone: 515-480-4190