Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Above and Beyond, Southern Style

First of all, I want to thank everyone who sent me a message wishing me a happy birthday. I do appreciate it and, don't worry, I am past my annual case of melancholy. Hey, I figure I'm a pretty cheerful guy the rest of the year, so that makes me about 99.7% cheerful. How many can say that?

Anyway, on to my story. Over the Labor Day weekend, Lisa, her sister, JoAnn, my sister, Rebecca, and I all went down to Atlanta to go to the DragonCon Science Fiction Convention. "Hello, my name is Greg and I'm a nerd." As if you didn't guess that from my "Web Master" post. My nefarious plan is to bring others into the fold.

We stayed in the lovely Marriott Marquis, one of the convention hotels. A beautiful place, but beyond that, a place of exemplary service. Of course, everyone was polite and performed their duties as expected. One individual, though, a member of the housekeeping staff named Azalea went above and beyond. On Friday night, one of our number came down with a nasty case of food poisoning. Came the day on Saturday and she just wanted to sleep, not that I could blame her. When Azalea heard of our situation, she told us to go ahead and enjoy the convention. She took it upon herself to check in on our fallen comrade and even went down to the kitchen to get her some nice bland crackers. Of course, we stopped by periodically, too, but knowing Azalea was up there looking after things made our worries much easier to bear and allowed us to enjoy the events of the day.

If you are ever in the Atlanta area, I highly recommend the Marriott Marquis. The people who work there live up to the beautiful surroundings. Tell them Greg sent you. It won't get you any discount or anything, but you might enjoy the momentary look of confusion on their faces. ;-)

I'll keep asking: What above and beyond service have you had recently?