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By Jesse Utz 

The tale of a cat and a motorcycle

 

Last updated 7/25/2018 at 9:57am



Let’s start with the cat. We have a very cuddly and cute kitty named Camaro. She has the sweetest temperament and has stayed pretty small for her age. We adopted her many years ago into our family and she joined Nova and Chevelle in our feline garage.

In the beginning, I was not a cat guy. But they grew on me. With every cuddle and purr, I grew fonder and fonder of them. About a month ago, when I was neck deep in graduation and everything that erupts at the end of a school year, we came home late one night to find little Camaro had a big problem. She was hurt, and hurt badly; it appeared that her internal stomach parts were exposed, and she was in great pain. It was late. The local vet was closed, we knew Brewster was far away, so we made the decision to wait until morning and hoped she would make it through the night.

She did. So, when the local vet opened, we took her there. Surgery was needed. It was a rough day as we waited, full of prayer and some tears. We also had to have the difficult conversation during the day — the conversation about how much we would be willing to invest in our cat. It is hard to put a dollar sign on a pet you love. But we did and hoped that we were doing the right thing.


Camaro pulled through with outstanding care and compassion from our local vet. They are an awesome group of ladies. It was determined that a hawk more than likely got a hold of her and punctured her deeply as it tried to carry her off. She was probably too heavy for the bird to carry her off, so it let her go. After a long recovery time and a few follow-up appointments, Camaro is purring like an engine again after her traumatic tummy tuck and her embarrassing cone of shame, now retired. By the way, she is now my favorite and the investment is paying off for her.


Now, the motorcycle. This one has not completely ended yet; it is an ongoing saga. Someone I am close to owns a motorcycle and has owned it for a long time. It needed a little work done, so he loaded it up and hauled it to a motorcycle shop in a town not far from us.

After a few weeks, he got the call to come pick it up and he headed out, with me in tow, to retrieve the treasured toy. We walked into the shop and were greeted with a look of shock on their faces and the words, “It is not here.” To make a long story short, the motorcycle had been stolen that morning in the early hours. That is one thing, but through conversation while waiting for the sheriff and the shop owner, we learned that someone had tried stealing it a week earlier, too. It was a baffling experience.

We wanted to know why we were not notified the first time. There is no answer there to pass on to all of you; we are still waiting. We are still waiting for the owner of the shop, as well, to make things right. We know that the bike is long gone by now, but we would like some compensation, or at the very least some answers. The saga continues.

The reason I wrote this column the way I did this week is to take a look at the way two businesses can have an effect on us at a local level. One provided extreme customer service in a difficult time for us. The other seemed to not even care or want to try. A shoulder shrug and no callbacks, compared to calling us and checking in before they close for the day to make sure our little kitty was OK for the weekend. One business we will recommend and continue to use as needed. The other is looking at a report to the Better Business Bureau and us telling everyone we know that their property is not safe there. But it is an open saga, like I said.

Customer service and caring about what you do is so important. It is also good business. Sometimes we could all really look at the way we operate and evaluate whether we are giving our customers everything they deserve and how we can help them better. I know comparing a hawk attack on a cat to a stolen motorcycle might be a stretch. But is it, when we are examining customer service? I’m Jess saying.

 

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