Good Morning! Thank You For Calling...

It's a somewhat funny thing, I think, to be right back where I started.

When I moved to Dallas in 1998 after living and working in Kenya, I was desperate to get a job, any job. I found work as the receptionist for a mid-sized accounting firm, a position where I faithfully served for four weeks before they transferred me to the marketing department.

And the rest, you could say, is history.

Now I'm the marketing director for a mid-sized architecture firm. Like everyone else in the world, we're making do with what we absolutely need to move forward while "the economy" sorts itself out. I like to tell folks that we're staying busy, but we're not as busy as we'd like to be. That's the story for a majority of firms the architecture, engineering and construction business.

So what's so funny about that? Nothing, really, except to stretch our dollars as far as they will go we've decided to have the admin team (that is, anyone who isn't directly billable to our clients) take turns answering the phones.

My shifts are early morning Tuesdays and all morning Fridays.

Call after call, it's:

Ring....(smile)

Good morning! XYZ Company.

How may I help you?

More than a decade after moving upstairs from the reception desk, I've still got skills. After all, smiling and being welcoming is part of the marketing game.