When I am worn out at the end of the day and am dragging my feet back towards home I enter the metro system and the first people I see are the staff at the scanning machines. They stand there all day, smart in their uniforms – two people whose job it is to point at the scanner and one person whose job it is to look blankly at a screen. I feel sorry for these people. They have a very dull job and the worse part of it is that people walk straight past them without even acknowledging them.
Yes, I know that we don’t have to put our bags through this scanner but sometimes if I’m not in a rush I put mine through just to give the woman staring at the screen something to look at. If nobody chose to put their bag through her scanner imagine how much more boring her job would be.
The two people standing at the scanner whose job it is to persuade you in a very pleasant way to put your bag on the conveyor belt, have a thankless task. They stand there all day with people walking straight past them like they are a beggars holding out a begging bowl.
Dale Carnegie wrote a very famous book called How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936 which has since sold over 15 millions copies. I remember many things from that book but the one which I recall more often than the others was his observation that ‘Everyone likes to feel important’. It only takes a moment to smile, say hello, open your bag and let them look inside or even better stick it through the scanner.