"Not my section. Not my job." How an attendee turned around bad service to make a difference.
May 29, 2026
(Thank you to Kelly Bishop, Sr. Director Experience Strategy & Organizational Engagement
Blood Centers of America for an exceptional conference experience and for encouraging attendees like Moe to share their stories with all of us.)
She sat there for eight minutes. Not one person asked if she needed anything. What happened next is worth sharing.
I had the privilege of speaking to a room full of people at Blood Centers of America recently. Their entire profession is built around giving something of themselves to help strangers they will never meet.
If there is an audience that already understands what it means to care for another human being without expecting anything in return, it's this one.
A few days after the session I received a forwarded email from an attendee named Moe. She wanted to share what happened on her way home and gave me permission to share it with you because she thought it was worth talking about.
She had an hour layover at Midway Airport and sat down at a bar to grab some food before her flight. She sat there for eight full minutes without a single person coming over to ask if she needed anything. She made eye contact with a bartender and asked if she could place a to go order.
He told her she was not sitting in his section and that he would find someone for her.
He never did. Disappointing but sadly not surprising.
She boarded her flight and settled into her aisle seat. A man sat down next to her in the middle seat and noticed the book she was reading.
He asked about it.
She was kind enough to engage even though most of us quietly hope that fellow passengers will just let us read in peace.
However, this time, no one was using the often used..."I have headphones on but am not actually listening to anything, just to avoid conversation."
He explained that he was on a last-minute flight to Philadelphia. That morning his sister had called to tell him that their mother didn't have much longer to live. Sadly, she had passed away before he even made it to the airport. He was flying home to a family that was already grieving without him.
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The flight attendant overheard their conversation & right after the main cabin door closed he quietly moved this man to the front row.
No fanfare. He just noticed, decided to do something about it, and did it.
We call this "Notice, Anticipate, and Overdeliver."
Moe then asked the flight attendant to take the food she had brought on board and deliver it to the man up front.
She gave away her dinner to a stranger who had just lost his mother.
The flight attendant offered to bring her free drinks and snack boxes for the rest of the flight. Sometimes the universe has a way of doing that.
She ended her email to me with this:
"I consider myself a decent person and your speech reinforced that it doesn't take much to be nice to one another."
She is right.
The bartender at Midway was not a bad person. He was probably tired, probably busy, and following a rule that made sense in most situations. But he used that rule as a reason not to engage, and Moe sat there for eight minutes feeling like she didn't matter.
The flight attendant had rules too.
Policies and procedures and a cabin to prepare before takeoff.
He took care of all of it and still found thirty seconds to move a grieving man to a better seat.
Moe had a long travel day and food she was genuinely looking forward to eating. She gave it away without hesitation to someone she had just met and will likely never see again.
The difference between how Moe felt at that bar and how that man felt on that plane came down to one simple decision that each person made about whether to pay attention to the human being in front of them.
Decision like this are available to all, many times, of us every single day.
In the elevator, at the coffee machine, on the phone, in the meeting, at the restaurant.
Every interaction is a chance to make someone feel a certain way.
Why not choose to make people feel a little more valued than they did a moment ago.
It really doesn't take much to be nice.
Most People don't choose it anyway.
But you're not most people.
Thank you, Moe, for sharing your story and for being exactly the kind of person this message is meant to celebrate.
