Average day gone exciting

Lesson of the week: maintain relationships, because you never know where people will show up.

Continuing on the “city living-tagged” stories, I had some exciting proof of this on the Monday-vacation day I tacked onto my last business trip of the year to New York City. I met my friend Alyssa at Penn Station in Manhattan to hang out for the day, and as we stood there deciding our next steps, I heard my name called. I looked up to see Kosta, a friend my age from Sts. Peter & Paul, on his was from one class to another, after just moving to NYC from Boston. Talk about right place, right time—just like walking onto a train car in Chicago and happening to see people from my sorority and Mizzou on the exact same car, you can’t make some of this stuff up. We chatted and caught up!

Later that day, after Alyssa and I explored lower Manhattan and Central Park, my pre-emptive, impatient self wanted to have a cab waiting for me instead of having to hail one when I picked up my luggage. On the previous trip to New York, I received a business card for Miguel, the cab driver who took me to the airport, so I decided to call him up. After a brief conversation on the phone, he agreed to pick me up and I texted him the address and the time. Sure enough, he was waiting promptly there and took me to LaGuardia on a flat rate instead of a running fare.

He knew I was from Chicago from our last ride but we hadn’t chatted much more than that. By the end of this day’s cab to the airport, I learned about his family, upbringing in the Dominican Republic and neighborhood in New York. He learned about my job, study-abroad experience and we spent the rest of the ride conversing entirely in Spanish about the media industry, social networks and how digital communication affects the business world.

The ride flew by, and I got to the airport to see that all the O’Hare flights were delayed. Great. As I competitively got in the standby lines for the two flights before mine, I looked up to see Helen, a senior individual at my company who I’ve worked on projects with, standing right there. We caught up about her board meeting, her family and upcoming travels and discussed my client projects and NYC trip too.

By developing a relationship, I’ll always have a cab driver to call in New York, who I’ll maybe one day refer to as a friend. By chatting with Kosta in Sunday School in 6^th grade, we were still happy to see each other on 7^th Avenue in New York. By connecting and effectively communicating on projects with Helen at work, we got to know each other and were happy to spend time together at the airport. She ended up flying standby on my flight and getting on at the last second.

Even if these are extrovert examples, don’t underestimate the power of small talk and getting to know others.