A client called when I was out and left a message. “Remove the spots on the carpet in my family room. No other cleaning is needed. Just remove the spots.” And she added that, while she was going to be out of town, she had left the key to her home with a neighbor.

I went to her home and removed spots, as requested. But when the lady returned home, she called. “You left a huge spot. I can’t understand how you could have missed it,” she said.

I went back to her home immediately. And as we walked into her family room, I looked around but couldn’t see the spot I missed, much less a “huge” one. “Where is the spot?” I asked.

“You still don’t see it? It starts right here and ends over there,” she explained. She was talking about the soiled pathway that ran across the room from one door to another. “Ma’am, that’s not a ‘spot.’ It’s a dirty path.”
“Well, it’s a ‘spot’ to me,” she said.

Of course, I apologized for the misunderstanding and cleaned the pathway. But later it occurred to me that many of our clients may also believe that I think as they think, which, of course, may or may not be the case.

I have come to realize that everyone has a different perception of reality. We must understand this when talking to others and especially our clients. The way one person perceives one thing may not be the way you perceive the same thing. We must all be patient and understanding as we all look at things differently. As I said before….different people think differently.