My three delivery guys who work for me part time on Saturdays : Tommy, Jim and Tommy's son Shep take a lot of pride in doing the deliveries right. They've been doing them about five years now and have it down right. If there's a difficult delivery into a home, they can make it better than anyone I've seen. A couple of weeks ago they had to take a stair-rail bannister apart to get the sofa in a customer's home and that's not something we normally do (it takes a lot of time, that was a 2 hour delivery vs normal 15 min) but they didn't want to bring the sofa back as non-deliverable. They got it in, damage-free but it put them two hours behind the rest of the day.

Last Saturday they came back beaming, all hot - sweaty and looking dogged. The had a busy, full day but couldn't wait to tell me when they got back in, they said "The lady in Maryland said we were the best delivery team she has ever had, and that she can see why we we have such a great reputation on your furniture forum. She even gave us a tip!" I had to chuckle, because that pumped them up for the whole day and they were very excited to get that praise.

Tommy continued with "I didn't know we were ever mentioned in your posts?"

"Sure you are, I brag on you guys all the time as do some of the customers - you guys have a solid rep out there".

Sometimes we forget that a little 'atta-boy - job well done' goes a long ways with the guys doing the grunt work. It really puts a spring in their step to hear that. You don't ever have to tip my guys, they don't expect it - but if they do a good job, tell them so as they work hard to do it better than the other guys out there and a little verbal appreciation costs nothing. If they don't do a good job, I want to hear about it as well, but I've not yet got the first complaint on them.