Building Strong Relationships

When you open your mouth, do you move one step closer to your goal?  Recently, I was standing in line at the security checkpoint at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport when this woman in front of me refused to take off her shoes and go through the x-ray machine. I’m a consultant. I’m a coach.  I can help. So, I told her that taking off your shoes, putting them in the grey buckets and they go through the machine and it’s so cool, you get them at the other end was going to be helpful information to her. She looked at me and said this, “Buddy boy, I’ve had surgery on my feet and I’m not taking off my shoes and for you (and she poked me right there), back off!”  I backed up. People around me chuckled; thought this was real funny. I also would have thought it was funny if she had been behind me and not in front of me holding me up in the line.

The TSA finally came out and put her in these blue surgical booties and pushed her butt through the x-ray machine.  But, she had made such a scene that they decided that she would be an excellent candidate for secondary inspection. Took her bag over to the stainless steel table, took the magic wand, ran it around her zipper, put in into the bomb sniffing machine and it came back green.  We’re all good. But it didn’t stop there.

The TSA agent came back, opened up her zipper and took out one of her shoes and I thought I’m gonna stick around for this because we know she’s got a thing about shoes.  They wanded the shoe, put it back in the machine. Once again, green. We’re good to go. The problem was they picked the slowest TSA agent they could find, and he saunters back to her bag and takes out the second identical shoe.  I’ve never seen them do that. That was special just for her.

She was so agitated she looked at this guy and she said, “You know what?” she said “You are so slow that, if there was a bomb in my bag, it would probably go off before you found it.”  Which really is the equivalent of personal foul, unpassenger-like conduct, automatic third area of inspection.

I lost her at this point until 7:03 am as we are landing at San Diego International Airport, I found out we’re not going to the terminal.  The pilot informed us that we were going to go to the far west end of the runway and we’re going to stay there, and some emergency vehicles were approaching us.  This crazy woman had checked in one bag in the Phoenix airport. We had that bag and since it was a threat, we’re not going to the terminal because what I learned is that the airport values their capital assets, the building.  Three hours later, after metro arson strike team was involved in this bomb sniffing, the French poodle “Shadow” could not conclusively confirm that it didn’t have a bomb, they submersed it in water, ripped it open and blew it up.  

The next day I found out a great piece of information.  This wonderful woman was actually a psychiatrist on her way to San Diego to give a speech to 750 other psychiatrists.  I so much wanted to call her and interview her for my next book.

When I did call and talk to her staff, they said the only way she would talk to me is if I would give my questions in advance.  And so, I did email them. There was only one and it was this.

When you opened your mouth at the TSA checkpoint, what was your goal?  Because if your goal was to miss your flight, get to San Diego 7 hours late, and buy new stuff when you got there, you were highly successful.  So as a leader, I ask you this great question. When you open your mouth, do you move one stop closer to your goal?